But it was his knees that did Lennox in, not his breastbone. He came down just a fraction in back of vertical, like a guy aiming to squat on his heels. But he was big and heavy and he was forty-one years old and his knees had stiffened. They bent a little more than ninety degrees and then they stopped bending. His upper-body mass was pitched backward by the sudden obstruction and his ass hit square on the door sill and the weight of his shoulders and his head rolled him over the pivot and took him right out the door into the night. The last Reacher saw of him was the soles of his shoes, still well apart, whipping away into the windy darkness like afterthoughts.
By that point it was much less than two seconds since he had dropped the seat, but to Reacher it seemed like two lifetimes. Franz's and Orozco's, maybe. He felt infinitely fluent and languid. He was floating in a state of grace and torment, planning his moves like chess, minutely aware of potentials and drawbacks and threats and opportunities. The others in the cabin had barely reacted at all. O'Donnell was facedown, trying to lift his head far enough to turn. Dixon was trying to roll onto her back. The pilot was half-turned, immobile in his seat. Parker was frozen in his absurd crouch. Lamaison was gazing at the empty air where Lennox had been, like he was completely unable to understand what had just happened.
Then Reacher stood up.
He dropped the second seat and climbed out over it like a nightmare apparition, a sudden giant figure from nowhere looming silently into the noisy orange glow. Then he stood still, close to fully upright, his head jammed up hard against the roof, his feet a yard apart, perfectly triangulated for maximum stability. His left hand held a SIG, pointing straight at Parker's face. His right held his Glock, pointing straight at Lamaison's. Both guns were motionless. His face was expressionless. The rotor thrashed on. The Bell continued its slow clockwise rotation. The door held wide open, pushed back like a sail. Gales of noise and wind and kerosene stink blew in.
O'Donnell arched his back and got his head high enough to turn. His eyes tracked left to Reacher's boots and closed for a second. Dixon toppled onto her back and rolled over on her bound arms and settled on her other shoulder, facing the rear.
The pilot stared. Parker stared. Lamaison stared.
The time of maximum danger.
Reacher could not afford to fire forward. The chance of hitting some essential cockpit avionics was far too great. He couldn't afford to put a gun down and work on freeing O'Donnell or Dixon, because Parker was loose in the cabin not more than four feet away. He couldn't take Parker down hand to hand, because he couldn't even move. There was no floor space. O'Donnell and Dixon were occupying it all.
Whereas Lamaison was still strapped in his seat. The pilot was still strapped in his. All the pilot had to do was throw the Bell all over the sky until everyone in the back fell out. They would sacrifice Parker that way, but Reacher couldn't see Lamaison losing sleep over that decision.
Stalemate, if they understood.
Victory, if they seized the moment.
80
They didn't understand. They didn't seize the moment. Instead O'Donnell got his head and his feet off the floor and porpoised desperately six inches closer to Reacher and Dixon rolled back the other way and a precious foot of free space opened up between them. Reacher stepped gratefully into it and smashed Parker in the gut with the SIG's muzzle. The breath punched out of Parker's lungs and he folded up at the waist and staggered one instinctive step, straight into the channel that O'Donnell and Dixon had created. Reacher dodged past him like a bullfighter and planted the sole of his boot flat on Parker's ass and shoved him hard from behind and sent him stumbling on stiff legs straight across the cabin and blindly out the door into the night. Before his scream had died Reacher had his left arm hooked around Lamaison's throat with the SIG pointing straight at the pilot and the Glock jammed hard into the back of Lamaison's neck.
After that, it got easier.
The pilot stayed frozen at the controls. The Bell hung there in its noisy hover. The rotor beat loud and the whole craft kept on turning slow. The door stayed open, wide and inviting, pinned back by the airflow. Reacher clamped his elbow and hauled backward on Lamaison's neck and pulled him up out of the seat until his shoulder straps went tight. Then he put the Glock on the floor and fished in his pocket for O'Donnell's knuckleduster. He held it between his fingers like a tool and glanced behind him. He extended his arm and pushed Dixon onto her front and used the knuckleduster's wicked spines to rub at the bonds on her wrists. She tensed her arms and the sisal fibers ruptured slowly, one by one. Reacher felt each success quite clearly through the hard ceramic material, tiny dull harmonic pings, sometimes two at once. Lamaison started to struggle and Reacher tightened his elbow, which had the advantage of choking Lamaison into submission but the disadvantage of aiming the SIG behind the pilot instead of straight at him. But the pilot made no attempt to take advantage. He didn't react at all. He just sat there, hands on the stick, feet on the pedals, keeping the Bell turning slow.
Reacher kept on sawing away, blindly. One minute. Two. Dixon kept on moving her arms, offering new strands, testing progress. Lamaison struggled harder. He was a big guy, strong and powerful, thick neck, broad shoulders. And he was scared. But Reacher was bigger, and Reacher was stronger, and Reacher was angry. More angry than Lamaison was scared. Reacher tightened his arm. Lamaison struggled on. Reacher debated taking time out to hit him, but he wanted him conscious, for later. So he just worried on at the ropes and suddenly a whole skein of sisal fibers unraveled and Dixon's wrists came free and she pushed herself up into a kneeling position. Reacher gave her the knuckleduster and his Glock and swapped the SIG from his left hand to his right.
After that, it got a whole lot easier.
Dixon did the smart thing, which was to ignore the knuckleduster and haul herself across the cabin like a mermaid to Lamaison's pockets, where she found a wallet and another SIG and O'Donnell's switchblade. Two seconds later her feet were free, and five seconds after that O'Donnell was free. Both of them had been tied up for hours, and they were stiff and cramped and their hands were shaking pretty badly. But they didn't have difficult tasks ahead of them. There was only the pilot to subdue. O'Donnell grabbed the guy's collar in one fist and jammed a SIG's muzzle up under his chin. There was no chance of him missing with a contact shot, however badly his hands were shaking. No chance at all. The pilot understood that. He stayed passive. Reacher stuck his SIG in Lamaison's ear and leaned the other way, toward the pilot, and asked, "Height?"
The pilot swallowed and said, "Three thousand feet."
"Let's take it up a little," Reacher said. "Let's try five thousand feet."
81
The climb took the Bell out of its slow rotation and the open door flapped around for a moment and then slammed itself shut. The cabin went quiet. Almost silent, by comparison. O'Donnell still had his gun to the pilot's head. Reacher still had Lamaison arched backward in his seat. Lamaison had his hands on Reacher's forearm, hauling downward, but listlessly. He had gone strangely passive and inert. Like he sensed exactly what was threatened, but couldn't believe it was really going to happen.
Like Swan couldn't, Reacher thought. Like Orozco couldn't, and Franz couldn't, and Sanchez couldn't.
He felt the Bell top out and level off. Heard the rotor bite stationary air, felt the turbines settle to a fast urgent whine. The pilot glanced in his direction and nodded.
"More," Reacher said. "Let's do another two hundred and eighty feet. Let's make it a whole mile."