Attack Fitzgerald now
Chapter 5
Asby opened the hatch slowly and turned his gaze toward the rear of the aircraft. Fitzgerald was sitting down, headphones on and a sleep mask covering his eyes. Two of his bodyguards stood on his left, tirelessly scrubbing what appeared to be an expansive splatter of blood off the wall of the plane. Asby raised an eyebrow and began looking for the third bodyguard. Soon though he was able to put two and two together, connecting the conspicuous absence of the bodyguard with the conspicuous bloodstain on the wall.
“The boss is sure good with a bat,” one of the men was saying as he dipped a fluffy sponge into a bucket of suds.
“Apparently too good,” the other man said exasperatedly.
“I wish we coulda given Joe a proper funeral, though.”
“Eh, he’s lucky he even got buried. True it coulda been in a nicer part of the country but whatever.”
Trusting that the two bodyguards were properly engrossed in their menial task and conversation, Asby edged out of the armory and toward the bathroom on his right. He slid through the partly open door and closed it behind him. He hauled himself up onto the tiny counter and squeezed himself against the mirror, making his presence as unnoticeable as possible, and began to wait.
About fifteen minutes later he heard a muffled voice from just beyond the bathroom door and it opened. One of the bodyguards backed into the lavatory and shut the door. As he turned toward the toilet Asby flung one foot out, connecting squarely with the bottom of his jaw. The bodyguard’s head snapped back and collided with a metal plate on the wall; his eyes rolled and he crumpled silently to the floor of the bathroom. Asby lowered himself into the spaces allowed by the bodyguard’s collapsed mass and crouched ready by the door, surreptitiously unlocking it as he waited. Another ten or fifteen minutes passed before someone knocked on the door.
“Vinny are you okay?” came the voice of the other bodyguard. “That’s weird, boss, it’s unlocked. Vinny?”
The door opened a sliver and Asby burst through it, colliding with the third bodyguard and tumbling with him into the far wall.
BOOM.
The sound of the gun firing was magnified in the small interior of the aircraft, the sound waves ricocheting off the walls and amplifying on top of each other. Asby staggered to his feet with the bodyguard in a stranglehold and faced down Fitzgerald, who had a handgun leveled in the pair’s direction; his first shot had missed and blown a hole in the wall of the cockpit.
“Drop the gun, Fitzgerald!” Asby shouted. “There’s no point in bringing down the whole plane.”
“If you intend to kill me, secret agent man,” Fitzgerald said maliciously, “I intend to kill you as well.”
“So be–”
The cockpit door behind Asby was flung open; the secret agent turned in alarm to see the co-pilot standing in the doorway with a wild look about him. Fitzgerald’s next shot whizzed by Asby’s turning face, and Asby saw the co-pilot’s head snap back before falling to the ground. Before Asby’s eyes could swivel back to Fitzgerald he felt the struggling bodyguard buck and then go limp in his arms. He looked down to see a gaping hole where the bodyguard’s left eye used to be, looked up to see Fitzgerald raising the barrel of the gun, and began charging toward the dwarf with his human shield held in front of him.
With a heave he threw the body at Fitzgerald, who couldn’t get out of the way fast enough and was bowled over by a mass twice that of him. Asby leapt over the lifeless body and grabbed Fitzgerald by the neck; with a triumphant roar he lifted him into the air and began strangling him. Fitzgerald began to turn purple, a color that clashed horribly with his orange puff of hair, before he extended a tiny arm and jabbed a finger into Asby’s left eye.
“ARGH!” Asby dropped the dwarf and grasped his face in agony.
Fitzgerald began kicking Asby’s shins, sending the secret agent to the ground with his eye and legs throbbing. He pulled his gun from its shoulder holster but with one kick Fitzgerald sent it hurtling under a row of seats. Asby reached up and grabbed Fitzgerald by the waist; struggling to his knees he launched the dwarf through the air. Fitzgerald smacked headlong into the plane’s door, wrapping himself around the giant handle to avoid falling to the ground. However little Fitzgerald weighed though, he apparently weighed just enough to open airplane doors with the entirety of his weight. Like the hand of a clock the handle went from three to six, and the door swung out into the open expanse of the sky.
The small aircraft shuddered violently as cabin pressure was lost, Fitzgerald was whipped free from the door and out into the wild blue yonder, and Asby was swept toward the deadly opening. As he slid across the floor the armory door swung open in front of him, and in a last ditch attempt he grabbed wildly at the handle. He made contact and held on for dear life as the blue ocean of the sky tried to rip him from his last lifeline.
A few moments later the pressure had stabilized and Asby lay gasping for air. All was not well though, as the plane was tilting treacherously back and forth; Asby was pretty sure the pilot was dead. He had to abandon ship fast, but he needed a parachute first. But he might not have time. Should he get a parachute, or just jump?
What should Thomas Asby do next?
- Try to find a parachute before jumping from the plane
- Jump from the plane without a parachute
Vote for your choice in the poll on the right, and check in next Monday for the next installment of Thomas Asby and the Minimal Mastermind!
Hmmm..."small" plane? 747? Shouldn't super secret agents know how to fly? Fitzi had on belt a descent rate deploying canister parachute designed for his lowly plunging profile? Asby should jump for certainly Fitz has a remote detonator to make plane go "Poof!"
ReplyDelete