‘Suggested course of action?’ Abrahamson asked.
‘I think we should see what that lander found on the Moon,’ Jack said. ‘It’ll take about two hours for those assassins to get to Diego Garcia in that seaplane. And they have to fly right past us here to get there.’
‘Yes…’ Abrahamson said warily.
‘That lander means something,’ Jack said. ‘And the Caldwell Group went to a lot of trouble to get it. The last time they wanted something this badly, it was connected to the end of the world. I have an idea, and if I can execute it right, we could get that lander and neither the Caldwells nor China will know we have it.’1
Jack outlined his plan and Abrahamson nodded slowly.
‘That’s absolutely crazy, even by your standards, Jack. Do it.’
1 THE CALDWELL GROUP. During the Great Games a few days later, (as recounted in The Four Legendary Kingdoms) Jack would discover that the Caldwell Group was part of the Kingdom of the Sea, one of the four legendary kingdoms that rule the world from the shadows. At the same time, he learned that China was actively trying to take control of another of the four kingdoms, the Kingdom of the Sky.
Sixty minutes later, the stingray-shaped ‘aerosub’ plane containing the team of Navy SEAL assassins and the Chinese moon lander was soaring over the Indian Ocean, heading toward the island base of Diego Garcia.
None of the men on board the aerosub saw the lone figure soar out of the clouds directly above their plane with a pair of gullwings on his back.
Jack.
He swooped hard and fast out of the sky, aided by the compressed-air thrusters on his gullwings. Quick as his gullwings were, normally they wouldn’t have been able to keep up with a plane, but the aerosub was a series of compromises and was thus slower than a standard plane of its size.
Soon, Jack was rocketing along only a few feet above the unsuspecting aerosub and its occupants.
As he hit the same speed as the aerosub, Jack reached down and carefully unscrewed a cap on the plane’s air pressure system. There was no lock or security feature on the system’s external cap, as no-one had ever anticipated someone opening it in flight or deep underwater. Jack quickly attached a small canister to the system and released the canister’s contents.
A moment later, after a quick glance inside the moving plane, he lowered himself alongside it and cut through the lock on its right-side hatch with a small handheld blowtorch. Then he yanked open the hatch and clambered inside.
Still wearing his high-altitude facemask, Jack peered around the cabin.
The eight assassins lay slumped in their seats, knocked out by the gas he had pumped into the air pressure system. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would knock them out for some time.
Jack quickly grabbed the small moon lander and its camera, and then—after taking some photos of the amazing aerosub’s cockpit—reset the plane’s automatic landing system.