Franks shifted into gear, popped the clutch, and the truck lurched forward. The wall separating the cargo bay from the cockpit looked solid, but it was mostly aluminum, and the front of the truck crumpled rather easily. His windshield shattered and Franks bounced off the steering wheel. It was a good thing old surplus military trucks didn’t have airbags. Franks threw it in reverse. Torn metal scraped along the hood as the truck pulled free. It made a beeping noise . . . for safety. That thought was particularly ironic.

The demon prince tried to catch hold of the truck, but Franks threw his door open and hit Kurst with it, knocking him aside. The demon piloting this thing had to be having a hell of a time with this much weight shifting back and forth, but Franks was about to make his job impossible. He kept backing up until his rear bumper sparked against the ramp. Franks put it in first. Now he had a running start.

But if he drove straight through the front of the plane and rode this thing back to Earth, he wouldn’t get to see the look on Kurst’s face when they crashed in a giant fireball. Franks needed a tool. He checked his pockets. The only thing he had left was the St. Hubert’s Key he’d taken from MHI. So Franks took out the thirteen-hundred-year-old holy relic and used it to pin down the accelerator. Then he got out.

The truck picked up a surprising amount of speed during its short trip across the cargo bay.

Kurst tried to catch hold, but there simply wasn’t time to pull himself into the cab and stop it before the impressive impact. The demon prince was scraped off. The plane shook so hard it knocked Franks off his feet. The front of the C-17 simply came apart. Wide swaths of blue sky appeared as a four-hundred-knot wind struck him in the face. Franks couldn’t see what happened to Thymos as the truck crashed through the bottom of the cockpit, but it couldn’t have been pretty.

And then they went into a dive.

Franks rolled, weightless, through the air. He collided with Kurst. The demon prince was raging at him, but nothing could be heard over the wind anyway, so Franks punched him in the mouth. It was a pointless gesture, since they were about to crash, but Franks enjoyed it so he hit him again. They struck the ramp and were crushed there by the G force, but Franks kept on hitting Kurst. Depending on their altitude when they’d started the dive, he might just get the satisfaction of beating the demon to death before the ground got them. He checked. The view through the massive hole in the front of the plane was of rapidly approaching fields of green. Nope. It looked like he wouldn’t have time after all.