The hallway had largely cleared out.  It seemed most of the remaining rooms were empty, and aside from the soldiers, you and the three plainclothes were the last people remaining in the corridor.  However, the guard at the front made no effort to lead you out of the windtunnel, and in fact seemed to be blocking the only available exits, so enraptured she was by whatever she was listening to.<br/><br/>The other soldiers were scattered up and down the hallway, leaning on walls or wedged into doorways to keep themselves from falling over.  Some had their guns raised, others bobbed as they manipulated the controls within their helmets.  The plane held the bank, leaving the doors on the tight little rooms to roll restlessly on their hinges as gravity and angular momentum tugged at them unevenly.<br/><br/>An order must have gone out over the intercom, because the five soldiers scattered along the hallway suddenly turned in unison and pointed their weapons toward the rear of the plane.  None of them paid Alec or Zoey any attention as the two ran back to Zoey's room.<br/><br/>The rising din of the engines was abruptly overwritten by a sudden roar of gunfire, only slightly muffled by the interior structure of the plane.  It sounded like an assault rifle being fired on full auto, spewing high caliber bullets by the sound of it.  The gunfire guttered, devolving from a continuous stream into a series of short bursts, and then went silent.  It had sounded much closer than the twin gunshots earlier.<br/><br/>The bitter reek of ozone was suddenly joined by a new smell: burning rubber and charred meat.