Page 112 of Dragon 7
Hiro and I pushed up behind them. My silver guns barked in both hands, shooting any target not too close to Reo and the twins. Each shot found center mass. Each man fell backward into the men behind him.
Then flames came.
Men kept pouring.
The engine kept rolling.
I roared, “We will not let them leave this fucking island tonight!”
Hiro fought beside me with his blade in one hand and his pistol in the other. He shot a man in the throat and slashed another across the chest in the same motion, and the Hannya mask never turned. His eyes stayed forward. His body moved like a deadly machine.
More men came from behind us on the ground. They hit our rear. My guards behind me turned to face them.
And then the Claws appeared through the smoke—Toma, Daisuke, Kaede—and crashed into the soldiers at the base of the stairs. The Fangs were there too—Kaoru, Satoshi, Yoichi, and Rin. Blood covered all of their masks.
The staircase became a vertical kill corridor.
Enemies above.
Us between.
Enemies below.
The metal steps slicked with blood and fuel. Shell casings bounced down the stairs in a brass cascade.
Men fell off the railing in both directions.
Then the plane shuddered.
Goddamn it!
The wheels lifted a foot from the grass, taking the staircase with it.
Shit!
The staircase lurched beneath my boots. The angle shifted—two degrees, three, five—and the railing vibrated so hard the bolts screamed.
OH FUCK!
The plane rolled forward and then desperately lifted three feet off the ground.
“Hurry!” Every step I took moved the metal under me.
The entire ramp swung sideways with the plane's slow rotation and the bodies of the men Reo and the twins had killed slid down the steps and fell off the edge into open air.
The plane was now five feet in the air, and so were we.
The staircase groaned at the connection point. The bolts that held it to the fuselage shrieked under the strain. The wind caught the ramp like a sail and threw it sideways, and I grabbed the railing with one hand and held my gun with the other and fired up at the men still pouring from the hatch.
“Akiro, you cowardly son of a bitch!” I shot some more. “Come out and finish this!”
The plane rose to six feet.
Hiro's boots slipped on a blood-slicked step. He dropped to one knee, caught the railing, and pulled himself up. The Hannya horns scraped the underside of the step above him.
I shivered. “Don’t you fucking fall!”
“Never.” Hiro tore his mask off and sneered.
