James Patterson - Toys

Well, not anything.

I dropped the cargo hatch!

Instantly, a ferocious wind sprang up inside the plane.

The first two commandos were too shocked and surprised to grab hold of anything. The suction pulled them flying through the cabin, then shot them out the hatch into the dark ether.

The same could be said for just about everything else that wasn’t fastened down tightly. Bottles from the bar flew past me like a hail of bullets, along with luggage, wads of plush upholstery, entire cabinets that had been torn from the walls.

Then my luck turned bad again. Our luck, since Lucy was involved now too. The cutout section of hull was wrenched off the floor and came spinning along with the rest of the debris-but it hit the hatch opening flat, blocking most of it.

When the three remaining commandos got sucked toward the hatch, they slammed into the hull cutout instead. Not good for me. Suddenly, it was three against one, and these guys were trained to maim, then kill.

Of course, I tried to remind myself, so am I.

I unwedged myself, pointed my feet at them, and let go of my grip. The wind shot me toward the hatch like a human pile driver. This certainly should be interesting. If I survive.

Proving that I still had “it,” I slammed into two of the muscular commandos, a boot planted squarely in each man’s chest. The force of our impact caved in the hull section, folding it in the middle. It blew out through the hatch and we went with it, twisting into the air outside with gut-wrenching speed.

I grabbed hold of the nearest commando’s throat, then gave my jetpack a hard blast.

The two of us broke free from the others and rocketed away, punching and kneeing each other viciously as we struggled for control of his rifle.

His buddies were quick to follow, moving faster than I could with my unwilling passenger in tow. Flashing bursts of laser fire started hissing past us.

I managed to spin the commando around and into a headlock with the rifle pinned across his throat. As best I could, I was using him as a shield.

His “buddies” didn’t hesitate for a second. They continued to fire mercilessly. The tough skin of the Deathwish Suits kept the blasts from traveling all the way through, but I suffered the shock of successive shots hitting his body. I felt him convulse-then go limp in my arms.

Hanging on to the rifle, I curled myself up tightly and shoved the dead body into their path. Then I jetted away in a series of sharp, erratic somersaults. That bought me a few seconds, long enough to turn around and start shooting back.

That was when another Deathwish-Suited figure came spinning into sight.

Lucy in the sky-no diamonds!

She was zooming in behind the pair of commandos, so they didn’t see her-not until she crashed piggyback onto one Elite’s shoulders. She locked the poor guy’s neck between her thighs in a scissor hold. Then her hands snapped his neck, tearing off his helmet with such fury that I was surprised when his head wasn’t still inside it.

As she rode that flopping body past the other commando, the sight distracted him for the instant I needed to fire off several shots. The lasers slammed his back; his hands jerked up and tossed his rifle into the icy wind rushing around us.

Lucy released her grip on the dead man she was straddling, and he sailed away, out to join his brethren in a long, final plunge to oblivion in the wild waters of the Bering Sea.

Lucy turned, grinned rather insanely, and gave me a double thumbs-up.

For my part, I grinned insanely back at her, wondering what I’d gotten myself into with this crazy, but obviously brave and impressive, human woman.

The insane grins and double thumbs-ups between Lucy and me were long gone and almost forgotten now. Unfortunately, and as promised, flying in a Deathwish Suit was no joyride. I had to fight my way through the fierce air currents that tossed me around like a snowflake, and my body took a relentless, terrible pounding.

But the more serious problem was that our jetpack charges were running low. Lucy and I conserved some fuel by dropping into nearly heart-stopping free falls-then gave the jets a blast to lunge our bodies forward again.

But by the time we sighted land, still far away, we were running on empty.

I saw Lucy straighten her body like a high diver leaping off a cliff, cut in her jets for a final burst of juice, and shoot forward in a long, arcing glide.

Now what? Follow the kamikaze, of course.

I did the same as Lucy, staying a few yards behind her. Wherever we hit, it was going to be together. Matching grave sites? That seemed a likely possibility.

Gravity sucked us downward with dizzying speed, hurling us straight toward frothing coastal breakers. At the last possible second, Lucy popped her parachute. So did I.

My chute engaged with a jolt that yanked me full around, but I still plunged the last couple hundred feet with the speed of a supercharged Mercedes on an open highway. I hit the shoreline in a tumbling roll that sent a white-hot shock through my blood and bones.

Then I bounced and skittered for a good ten to fifteen seconds before I finally skidded to a stop, face to face with an unresponsive boulder.

At least the earth was solid underneath me. I’d had more than enough sky.

Lucy was about fifty yards away, just getting to her feet.

I walked to join her, taking in the surroundings. Wherever we were, this place was damned cold; it might have been summer back in New Lake City, but here, the ground was half-frozen tundra. It stretched unbroken to the horizon, fading into the misted-over gray light of early morning.

All of a sudden I spotted a small blur moving in the distance-which quickly turned out to be a scene from an earlier century .

Unbelievable!

Two dozen fierce-looking men mounted on shaggy horses and wearing animal skins were riding toward us with astonishing speed. They were black-haired and golden-skinned, not very tall but powerfully built. They sat on their ponies with a confidence and ease that suggested they’d grown up on them.

I got the feeling that the grins on their faces would stay there even if their heads were being cut off-and probably had stayed on while they were cutting off other people’s heads.

As they got close, the wings of their V-formation pulled ahead to form a circle, completely surrounding Lucy and me.

They’d done this before, hadn’t they?

“Oh no,” I said quietly.

The leader leaped off his still-moving horse, landing as nimbly and as well balanced as a cat would, and strode toward us, rifle in hand.

He completely ignored me, throwing open his arms and bellowing a word that sounded like “Mehkween!”

“Tazh Khan!” Lucy cried back, and then she hurried past me into his waiting embrace. The two of them hugged like long-lost lovers, then they talked excitedly and very rapidly in a language that was like nothing I’d ever heard or read.

Hoo boy! So these were the “friends” she’d contacted to help us save the human race from extinction?

Things didn’t look too good for us skunks.

“There are many tribes-and nations-out here in the real world,” Lucy explained to me a few minutes later. We were riding horses-side by side. In Russia. Siberia, I believe.

“Is he a former boyfriend?” I asked.

“Certainly preferable to your wife,” she answered. “But no, Tazh Khan is just a good friend. We’ve fought the Elites together and kicked some butt.”