A new sound separated itself from the engine noise. This was a higher-pitched sound than the jets or the hydraulics. Kurst turned just in time to catch a motorcycle in the face.

* * *

Franks’ momentum caused him to roll across the cargo bay until he slammed into the bulkhead. He’d barely made it in time. The plane was picking up speed for takeoff. The ramp was closing. Franks took stock. The STFU truck didn’t take up that much interior space inside a plane that was designed to hold an M1 Abrams. Gutterres’ bullet bike was laid on its side far forward, and Franks tracked the blood trail from there back to where Kurst had been flattened.

The demon prince was knocked down. They sat up at the same time. The impact had peeled most of the skin from Kurst’s face and a swath of his torso, leaving nothing but red muscle and spots of white skull.

“You’ve ruined everything,” Kurst spat.

“Not everything . . . Yet.”

They glared at each other for a long moment, before both of them sprang up and simultaneously hurled their bodies against the other. The collision rocked Franks, and then they came crashing down. Franks punched him in the side of the head, but Kurst kicked him in the chest. Franks hit the truck and left a dent in the door.

Franks still had that Sig stuck in his belt, but no idea how many rounds it had left in it, and whatever that number was, it wouldn’t be sufficient to stop Kurst. They circled each other, looking for an opening as the C-17 lifted off sharply. Kurst was hurt, and he might have been in a more human-looking form, but he was still the chief warrior of Hell’s army, and that made him deadly. They clashed, striking violently at each other. Franks had spent hundreds of years learning every fighting art known to man, but Kurst had all of those encoded directly into his being by his artificial womb. Kurst took hold of the rags that were all that remained of Franks’ suit, trying to throw him. Franks locked up on his hands and tried to break his wrists. They began to slide back toward the ramp as the plane continued its steep climb.

They were turning toward the east. The airfield was approximately two hundred and thirty kilometers from the ocean. Franks knew that at a C-17’s maximum speed they would be there in less than twenty minutes, but then what? Where was Kurst running to? Who was he running to? Franks also knew he would never get that information from Kurst, because he did not plan on taking this particular enemy alive.