Their seats had been relocated from the side of the cargo bay and bolted in its center facing the doors. When the Crescent reached its vertical position, the team would unbuckle one at a time and fall out into the open air.

“Here we go, folks,” the pilot said.

The Crescent dipped forward quickly. There was no moment of weightlessness that people experienced with airplane zero G simulations. Instead, intense pressure pushed against their chests as the Crescent quickly reached its top speed of Mach 2, and then surpassed it. With gravity helping the plane’s return to earth, it reached Mach 2.5 and covered the distance in ten seconds.

But the real g-force struck when the Crescent began its ascent. As the plane leveled out and continued pulling up, the seat belt straps pulled tight, crushing the air from their lungs.

As the pressure reached its apex, when each and every member of the team was seeing colors dancing in their vision, the row of seats tilted forward. King knew what it meant. The fresh bolts were coming loose. He tried to speak, but the pressure was still too great.

The Crescent continued its ascent, heading toward a vertical position. As it reached the seventy percent mark, the pressure lessened and King shouted an order into his throat mic. “Open the bay doors now!”

“We’re not yet at a vertical position sir, the draft could throw us off,” the pilot said.

The bolts gave again, tilting the group forward. If they tore free, the team would be flung against the back doors at incredible speed. King had no doubt only Bishop and Alexander would survive the impact.

“The chairs are about to break loose!” King shouted. “Open the doors now!”

The red light above the door immediately turned green and a loud grinding filled the cabin. The doors opened quickly. Wind pounded over them. If not for the goggles over their eyes, seeing would have been impossible.

King felt a slow tilting of the chair as the bolts slid from the floor. Gravity, wind, and g-forces were working against them. With the bay doors open halfway King could see the Turkish mountains shrinking away beneath them.

“Fifteen seconds,” the pilot said.

But they didn’t have fifteen seconds. The chairs were about to break loose, and with the doors now open sixty percent, there was barely enough room to fit. “Duck your head and pull in your legs,” King shouted to the team.

The bolts gave way all at once. As the team fell, they followed King’s orders, ducking their heads and bringing their knees up to their chests. Forty-five hundred feet above the earth, the Chess Team shot out from the back of the Crescent still strapped into a row of chairs like a bunch of teenagers at a carnival death drop.

Chapter Seventy-Eight

SEVENTY-SEVEN

Babel