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the other hand there were some unsettling differences. The spars and the floor, for example, looked to be far too heavily built to be for any conventional aircraft. That and the area was too sterile, it was completely void of the wire harnesses and machinery that littered the interior of any cargo plane he had ever been on.
    His inspection was cut short when two louvered vents on the forward bulkhead opened and the interior of the cargo bay was suddenly transformed into a wind tunnel. Jason dropped to one knee and grabbed a tie-down point with his left hand while his right maintained control of his weapon. He closed his eyes and grimaced in agony from the overpressure as the air velocity continued to increase and an acrid smell began to fill the area. He opened his eyes and saw the vents were now belching out a thick noxious, smoke. His throat and eyes were on fire as he turned and tried to safely exit the cargo bay. Mercifully, the violent rush of air/smoke died down as suddenly as it started. Coughing and streaming mucus, he only wanted to get down the ramp and into the fresh mountain air he knew was just outside.
    He turned back around just in time to see the ramp raise and lock and a set of interior doors slide around into place. He felt his ears pop from the pressure change and knew he was sealed in. Unfortunately, so was a good amount of the fumes from the vents. He was quickly losing consciousness, so he couldn't tell if the floor was actually moving or not. Climbing into this thing may have been a tad impulsive. Even through his tunneled vision and detached perception he was still surprised when the floor heaved and threw him into the rear doors.              

Chapter 2

                  The blackness started to become grey.

                  Jason swam towards the light as his concussed brain struggled to restart all his cognitive functions. The gray tunnel he was looking though wavered, and then coalesced into the deck plates of a C-17's cargo bay. But something was wrong about the metal surface his face was planted into. He lifted his head as his brain began to get feedback from the rest of his body; it hurt, everywhere. His training overrode his panic and he lay still and began to systematically flex muscle groups to find out if, or where, he was injured. To his relief the only true injury was his little finger on the left hand, it was severely dislocated. It hurt like hell, but he was still mobile.
    He smoothly rolled to his side and got to his knees, every part of his body screamed in pain, but he ignored it. He blinked his eyes and shook his head side to side to chase away the grogginess. Ah, yes... the "aircraft". Rushing in was probably not a great idea. Other than his finger, that was sticking out at an unnatural angle, he appeared to be only slightly bruised and battered from his impact with the rear doors of the cargo bay. The lights in the hold were now dimmed considerably from when he first made entry, but he could still see well enough to move about. The next thing he noticed after his injuries, was a conspicuous lack of weight in his hands. Where the hell did my rifle go? While he would normally be humiliated for losing control of his weapon, right then he was so confused as to what he had gotten himself into that he was not especially concerned with the normal operator bravado, doubly so since there was nobody there to see him anyway.
    Climbing to his feet, he saw the AR-15, sans magazine, against the starboard wall of the cargo hold. Even as he was moving to retrieve the rifle he was scanning the room for the magazine that must have ejected on impact. It took him a few more minutes to find the black polymer magazine, and when he saw it he feared the worse; if it had broken he would be down to a single round in the chamber, and he was now half convinced he had gotten himself into a situation that he may have to shoot his way out of. Happily, the magazine appeared to