Boom!

The noise funneled up the stairwell. The explosion was earsplitting. Mike shook his head, but it didn’t help the ringing in his ears. Some of the concussive force had extended into the open bay. It drove him into Julia’s body. Tom and Al silently, from his perspective, crawled back to their positions next to the stairwell. Pushing off the ground, he strained to hear anything from downstairs. The stair the grenade landed on had helped push the shock wave from the grenade up and back down into the stairway. Shrapnel peppered the stairs and walls.

Quick to his feet, he reached down and pulled Julia up. Al gave him a thumbs up and turned back to the stairwell. Something touched his feet, and he looked down. JP-8 gushed around his boots, rushing for a drain under the helicopter. Sounds were slowly coming back to him. The fuel entering the grate and falling through the drain almost sounded surreal. He grabbed the lever on the nozzle and shut it off. He pulled three flares out from his back pocket and handed them to Julia.

“I think I know what you’re doing, but I don’t think…”

“Come on, help me with this.” He dragged the hose full of fuel toward the stairs.

She stared at his back as he pulled the hose toward the stairs. Shaking her head, she bent down, grabbed the hose, and helped pull.

Her effort on the hose helped them reach the stairs in a few seconds. Tom fired his weapon downstairs. After the grenade blast, the rifle fire didn’t seem as loud. His ears were still ringing.

One last heave of the hose to give him some slack, he worked the lever and threw the nozzle down the stairs. Jp-8 streamed down the stairwell, hit the landing, flooded it, and flowed down the next set of stairs.

The men below yelled out, panicking; they knew aviation fuel was coming at them. A smile twisted Mike’s mouth.

He held his hand out. “Flares.” He made quick eye contact with the two men on guard. “Get ready to run.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you this won’t work.”

“What won’t work.” Tom kept his rifle and eyes pointed downstairs.

“He wants to ignite the fuel and burn this place down, or at least everything flammable anyway.”

“Why won’t it work?” Mike pulled the top off one flare.

“Because that type of fuel isn’t flammable, it’s a combustible type of fuel. In a plane or helicopter, it is aerosolized.”

Mike shrugged.

“Meaning the fuel is atomized.” She stared at his blank face and continued. It becomes a fine mist. It is then ignited at a flashpoint of a hundred degrees Fahrenheit to propel the aircraft.”

Mike lifted the flare. “These…”

“Yes,” she interrupted. “Road flares like that one burn hot as hell, but as I said, JP-8 isn’t flammable. It’s combustible.”

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“Sooo.”

“Look.” She tensed her shoulders, grimaced, and then breathed out. “When a plane full of fuel crashes, the engines are still atomizing the fuel, aerosolizing it. The friction of the crash produces extreme heat energy. That heat energy is enough to ignite the fuel released from the ruptured fuel tanks. Those two points are enough to cause an explosive reaction. Even still, not all of the fuel is involved in the explosion. A lot of the fuel does not ignite and is simply hurled away from the energy release point.”

“I told you she was smart,” Al said with a grin.

“If I didn’t know that, it stands to reason a bunch of goat herders wouldn’t know it either.” Mike lit one of the flares he had found in a toolbox and threw it against the landing wall. The flare ricocheted out of sight down the next set of stairs.

They heard screams from below.

“Hey!” Julia’s eyes went wide as saucers.

“You said it wouldn’t ignite.”

“Yeah, but that’s stuff I learned from books. I’ve never actually messed with this stuff before.”

Tom glanced over at Al. “What were you saying?”

The lips on one side of Al’s mouth raised. “I said, I told you she was book smart.”

The yells of the men below receded down the stairs.

Mike didn’t see any smoke or flame. “I guess she was right.”

Her crooked smile acknowledged his statement.

Mike pulled two more flares from his back pocket. “I’m still burning that helicopter to the ground.”

He pointed and turned Julia physically. “Get outside and move Randall and Niki to the edge of the landing pad. We’ll be there in a minute.” He watched her run toward the open door, then turned to the two men. “I’ll call you when I’m ready for you to move.”

“Roger that,” Tom said.

JP-8 had settled where the pilot’s feet would have been inside the cockpit. JP-8 had soaked everything and dripped out onto the hangar floor.

It was a big helicopter. The side hatch behind the cockpit was big enough to fit personnel and equipment.

The caps of the flares flipped off, his head came up, and he made eye contact with the two men at the stairs. “Al, move.”

Al jumped up and ran to the back of the helicopter. He took a knee and covered the stairwell.

“Tom, move.”

Tom ran past Al and found a spot at the doorway.

Mike ignited the long cylindrical flares and dropped them on the pilot’s seat and the co-pilot’s seat. Grabbing his AK, he ran past Al. Al waited for a second and took off behind him. The light of the flares illuminated the walls around the chamber. The white light of the flares grew more intense. With each second, the red light from the fixtures above became less distinguishable. They ran out the door. Tom followed at a jog to join the others waiting at the edge of the helipad.

Light from the flares shined out through the doorway. Suddenly, a cracking noise boomed out the doorway. More light spilled out the door from much larger flames.

They all turned to look at the shadows as they played through the doorway.

“No time,” Mike said. “To admire our work. Al, you’re point getting us down. We’re heading to where we left the machine gun. Randall and Julia are next. Tom, you help Niki down.”

“No can do.”

He’d seen that look on Tom’s face before, arms loosely crossed, head tilted, mouth closed and taunt, eyes squinted. Whatever was going on in his mind, Mike wouldn’t be able to change it, and he wasn’t going to try.

“Tom, you’re on point, Al, you have Niki. I’ll take rear security. I don’t know if any of Hotak’s men are still out there, so stay quiet and alert.” He looked at his watch. “I figure it will be close to sunrise when we get down and to the machine gun, so let’s get going.”

Tom moved to the edge and looked back. Al took his place next to Niki.

“Questions?”

Julia raised a hand. “What do we do when we get to the machine gun.”

“That’s a good question. Let’s get going.”

“What about Hotak?” Niki’s tone left no room for doubt about what she thought.

“I haven’t forgotten him, not by a long stretch. But we’ve screwed up his operation by flooding his place with jet fuel. We’ve killed one of his operatives.” He ignored a squeak that came from Randall’s throat. “And we destroyed his primary way out. If he wants to leave now, it’ll be by a pickup truck, and seeing this setup, he’ll want revenge.”

Niki's jaw clenched. “He’ll know the meaning of revenge when I get to him.”

Mike gave her a curt shake of his head. “He’s not leaving here, ever.”