Jed executed a reverse lunge, settling back onto his left knee, placed the holographic targeting dot in the middle of the man’s forehead, and fired a three-round burst. The dark warrior’s head evaporated in a puff of red, white, and gray, spattering the ceiling with gore—a gruesome image Jed’s mind would not soon forget. Then the nearly headless body collapsed to the deck like a sack of wet cement. It twitched twice, hands and arms moving as if trying to push back up, then lay still.

Wordlessly, they converged on the cockpit door.

Jed took the left side and Eli the right, keeping some of his body behind the corner of the small galley. Offset as best he could in the narrow space, Jed pounded twice on the door, then pulled back and announced: “We are American operators. We have control of the cabin of the aircraft. Open the cockpit door immediately.”

He rounded the corner by the edge of the door to the lavatory, expecting a barrage of gunfire to punch holes through the door any second. Instead, he was met with silence and steady, unaltered flight—no pitching, rolling, or altitude or speed change.

Jed gave Eli a nod, holding his weapon trained on the door.

Eli quickly pressed a tiny amount of breacher charge into the edge of the door beside the latch, pushed a detonator into the plastic pile, then unwound the attached cord and moved behind the wall of the galley as Jed pulled back behind the corner of the lav by the main cabin door. Eli gave a nod, connected the wires to the small device he pulled from his cargo pants, and a moment later there was a dull whump as the small explosion blew a hole where the door latch had been. Eli rounded the corner, pulling the door open toward him with his left hand, his right holding his weapon up at a forty-five so as not to tag Jed in the narrow space, while Jed surged forward to sweep the cockpit.

“Nice,” Jed said, lowering his weapon as he surveyed the carnage in the pilot and copilot chairs.

“So that’s a problem,” Eli said in a soft, sarcastic drawl.

“Yep . . .”

The captain’s throat had been slit nearly to his spine, his face white, eyes open, and features twisted in pain and fear. His shirt was soaked through in drying blood and the windscreen and control panel were caked in it. The copilot was slumped over the panel between them, facedown, with two large, bloody holes in the back of his white uniform shirt, evidence of two bullets fired right through his heart.

“Now what?” Eli’s calm voice didn’t match the tension on his face. “We can’t just bail out and let it crash; we’d kill innocents on the ground.”

“Maybe we can turn it around so it’s headed out to sea?”