BRAINRUSH 02 - The Enemy of My Enemy Read Free

face that she’d heard it, too.
    **
    Jake sensed he wasn’t going to make it. The ground was too close. Tariq’s eyes had glazed over but he wasn’t out yet. Jake needed another second or two. But time had run out.
    Two hundred feet. No choice.
    In one quick movement, Jake pushed the nose at the ground, leveled the wings, and yanked back on the stick. The accelerometer snapped to ten Gs and the Pitts broke out of the dive barely thirty feet over the schoolyard. Jake caught a brief glimpse of children running across the playground before a welcome blue sky filled his windscreen.
    In the mirror, Tariq’s face paled, his eyes lolled, and his head slumped forward in his seat.
    Jake pushed the throttles to the max. He put the Pitts into a high-speed climb toward the Pacific Ocean. He had to move fast. Tariq would regain consciousness in less than thirty seconds. He’d be disoriented for a minute or so, but that wouldn’t prevent him from detonating the explosives strapped to his chest.
    Or those he’d placed at the school.
    At two thousand feet, Jake reduced power and trimmed the nose into a shallow dive toward the water. He unfastened his safety harness and headset, flipped a middle finger to the unconscious man in the backseat, and jumped out of the plane.

 
     
     
    Chapter 4
     
     
    Malaga Cove, California
     
    T he round canopy of the emergency chute snapped open above him, jerking Jake from his tumbling free fall into a controlled, eighteen-feet-per-second descent. His pounding heart felt like it wanted to break out of his chest. For just a moment, he felt a slight tingling in his left hand. His breath was short. He sucked in deep lungfuls of air to calm himself. The sensation passed.
    The altimeter on his watch read fifteen hundred feet. He was over the water but the breeze was pushing him back toward the shore. In ninety seconds he’d be on the ground, or at least in the breakers. Craning his neck over his shoulder, Jake watched as the Pitts descended toward the dark blue water. The starboard wings of the biplane began a slow dip as it lost trim. In another few seconds, the double wingtips would strike the water and the plane would cartwheel to a gut-wrenching end. 
    Jake reached for the smart phone he usually kept in his breast pocket. He came up empty-handed. The phone was still in its cockpit holster on the plane. Too bad, he thought. The crash would’ve made a great YouTube video. In any case, the violent scene he was about to witness would be forever ingrained in his brain. Like so many others.
    Jake watched in fascination, counting down the seconds to impact. A small part of him would die with the loss of the Pitts, but every part of him was glad to say good riddance to the suicide bomber in the backseat—and the detonator that threatened to blow up the people he loved. He prayed that Francesca had heard his warning.
    The Pitts was at eighty feet and dropping fast. The wings dipped further.
    Right…about…n—
    The biplane’s altitude shifted abruptly. The lower wingtips jerked upward. The whine of the three-bladed prop surged. The plane leveled off just above the undulating water. Every nerve in Jake’s body seemed to fire off simultaneously. He jerked his head toward the approaching shore, willing himself to move faster. Five hundred feet above the water. The school’s nearly a mile away.
    The drone of the plane behind him increased in pitch. Jake twisted in his harness to get a better look. The Pitts accelerated as it skimmed over the water. It was headed straight for him. It didn’t take a genius to calculate that the plane would be on him before he completed his descent. He pulled down on the starboard riser, twisting to face the approaching plane. With both hands on the risers, he fought to maintain his position against the offshore wind.
    At three seconds before impact, Jake was sixty feet over the water. The Pitts streaked straight at him.
    Two seconds. 
    Now!
    Jake dropped his hands and