by Dees, Cindy
It was a calculated risk to sit here in the thwocking helicopter. He could only hope that Piper would understand how vital it was to figure out what these guys were up to. The first shoe—the virus outbreak—would go active in Las Vegas any time, now. And these guys were the other shoe. What in the hell did El Noor have up his sleeve?
He glanced out the window in the helo’s sliding cargo door and oriented himself based on the sun. They were headed south. Maybe a little to the east. Not toward Las Vegas? What the hell?
Granville shouted over the engine and rotor noise, “This won’t take long. A few minutes to get there and ten or fifteen minutes to set the charges.”
Set the charges? That didn’t sound good.
Piper yelled, “What are you going to blow? The Hoover Dam?”
Christ. She was right. They were headed straight for the gigantic structure.
“Nah. It would take all the dynamite in the West to blow up that puppy. We’re after something better. The power lines running from the dam to Vegas.”
Mother of God. He slammed backward against the bulkhead behind him. Of course. Blowing up high power lines, if done correctly, would create a massive power surge down the lines sure to fry everything connected to the electric grid. From toasters to light bulbs, generators to air conditioners, everything on the grid would be destroyed. An electro-magnetic pulse would not only knock everything off line, but would melt the internal workings of all things electrical that happened to be plugged in. Land line telephones with their internal electric power would fail; and when the cell phone towers lost power, all cellular and wi-fi devices would fail.
He was probably not successful at fully masking his horror. These guys were going to make an unholy mess of Las Vegas.
The virus. Oh. Shit. These guys were timing their attack for just when the virus finished incubating and people started to get sick. It would be 120 degrees in the shade, and a whole bunch of people were about to come down with a deadly infection. In a town completely without power. God, it was brilliant.
At least cars and airplanes would continue to work. People could drive out of town. That was a small blessing.
Piper moaned under her breath beside him. She’d put it all together, too, apparently.
“Gentlemen,” he asked calmly, “are you aware that about a week ago another terrorist attack was launched on Las Vegas?”
Jimmy leaned forward aggressively. “We ain’t terrorists!”
“My mistake,” he corrected. “Nonetheless, last week, a Palestinian terrorist released a deadly virus in Las Vegas. Any minute now, thousands of people are going to become violently sick and commence dying.”
“So?” Jimmy retorted belligerently.
“You’re about to cut off power to the whole damned town,” Mike explained. “Whoever paid you to launch this attack is using you. You’re only one part of a much larger terrorist attack on Las Vegas.”
Granville had the decency to look worried. But ole’ Jimmy just leaned back and smiled a little. “Guess all them folks in Vegas shouldn’ta got so dependent on technology, now, should they?”
Piper cried, “They’re tourists, Jim. And families. Lots and lots of regular people live in Las Vegas. Families. Children. And they’re all going to die!”
Easy, Piper. Undersell the threat. Let them arrive at the understanding on their own of how devastating their power outage was going to be. He sent her a warning glance and hoped she caught his underlying message to take it slow and gentle.
She subsided, leaning against his shoulder. Granville had not tied her wrists together, and one of her hands crept behind his back as she cuddled up to him. Her fingers started groping at the knots. After a few seconds, she started to pluck at the ropes.
Even if she did get his hands free, he probably couldn’t overpower both guys back here and point a gun at the pilot before the bastard turned around and shot him and Piper with his sidearm. Not to mention, the helo could crash in the maneuver to overpower the pilot. If they were a few thousand feet up in the air, he’d be more inclined to try it. But the ’copter was barely skimming over the weeds and rocks of the southern Nevada desert. There was no margin whatsoever for error.
Not to mention, Piper could get shot. It was a damned inconvenient moment to reach the realization that he did not want to see her get killed, even if it was in the line of duty. He must have felt this way for a long time…since before he went into that burning building to save her and let the Scientist slip away. Well, crap. That made this whole mess just that much messier.
The helicopter slowed, its tail lifting up as it decelerated. “We’re here,” Granville announced. “The lines are below us.”
The third guy, who’d been silent until now, stood up. “You’re on the winch, Jimmy. Granville, you’re on the stairs. Just like we practiced.”
Mike swore silently. The bastard sounded like a trained para-rescue jumper. Which meant he couldn’t expect any mistakes out of the guy. Mike had to give Piper’s father credit. The bastard ran a tight terrorist attack.
Piper continued to pick at his knots while the helicopter established a hover, the cargo door was opened, and a winch arm swung out the door into position. Harness guy hooked onto a safety line of some kind. Mike noticed it was not the usual steel cable, however. It looked like some sort of nylon climbing line, instead. Frowning, he watched Granville lie down on the floor of the helo and lean out, releasing hooks and flipping down the extra steps. What in the hell were they planning to do with four steps down to thin air?
“Ready back here!” Granville shouted to the pilot as he heaved himself back into the copter and upright. “Bring her down easy, ten feet.”
The helicopter commenced descending slowly. All Mike saw was desert, but from her vantage point, Piper had a better view.
She leaned close to his ear to breathe, “High tension power lines.”
Harness guy hefted a heavy backpack over one shoulder, checked the safety line one last time, and stepped out onto the aluminum stairs.
In about ten seconds, the plan became clear. Harness guy stood on the lowest step and was able to lean out and reach the actual power line. A faint smell of ozone permeated the air, and Mike fancied that he felt the electro-magnetic field of the high power line crackling across his skin.
Harness guy knelt on the bottom step and carefully attached what looked like an explosive cutting charge with a sophisticated trigger device to the power line itself. Theoretically, without being grounded, neither the helicopter nor its occupants could be electrocuted. But it was still as scary as hell to watch Harness Guy work on the high power lines. The chopper hovered over each of the half-dozen lines in turn.
“Next spot. About 250 feet down the line!” Harness Guy yelled.
Yup. If a big chunk of the line were blown out all at once, that would make for a massive EMP—electromagnetic pulse. Timers would cause the charges to blow with the exact synchronicity required.
One by one, the second set of charges was set on each of the huge power lines that were the energetic lifeblood of Las Vegas. It took nearly a full, nerve-wracking hour to set them all. But finally, Harness guy stepped back into the helicopter.
The steps were secured, the winch pulled in, and the door shut in under a minute. The helicopter lifted away from the power lines, and when it had another fifty feet or so of clearance, banked hard off to the north and accelerated fast.
Granville commented helpfully, “We gotta get away from the line when it blows so it won’t knock us out of the sky.”
Gee. That was generous of them not to stick around and suffer the fate of their victims.
“When we get a good ways out into the desert, we’ll put you two out. If you’re smart and remember what your daddy taught you, Piper, you two should be able to make it to the nearest town.”
“What will you guys do?” she asked.
“After the second charge blows, the rest of us will go home.”
“What ‘rest’ of us?�
�� she asked sharply.
“Aww, honey. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you. Your daddy insisted on flying the second plane.”
She frowned, not understanding. But in Mike’s gut, a foreboding took root. Granville didn’t answer and she repeated more urgently, “What’s my dad going to do with the second plane?”
Mike answered gently. “The small fixed wing plane has a bomb in it. He’s planning to blow it up.”
She frowned for a second more, and then it hit her. “With himself in it?” she gasped.
Granville looked grief-stricken.
“No!” she shouted. She started to surge up out of her position on the floor, but Mike leaned back hard, trapping her arm between his back and the bulkhead.
“Stop, Piper,” he said low and urgent. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“But he’s going to die!”
Jimmy interjected, “Someone has to take out the city’s back-up generators when they kick online. And the cars and airplanes. Have to stop those, too.”
Aww, hell. The bastards.
The EMP burst down these power lines would take out all the primary systems in town. Piper’s father would no doubt wait a little while after the power line explosion and then take off in the small plane, giving hospitals and hotels plenty of time to bring online all their emergency generators. Then Brothers would fly over downtown Las Vegas and blow up himself and his bomb, creating a second, air-bursted EMP that would take out everything that the line burst had missed.
God. The thoroughness of this attack was breathtaking. And in conjunction with the viral attack…genuinely evil. He’d done his best to disable the bomb, but there was no guarantee that his hasty rewiring job had a) not been discovered or b) worked.
He and Piper had to get out of this helicopter alive. Had to find a way to warn the authorities. They had to stop these paired attacks.
“Timers are activated. They’ll blow in one minute,” Harness Guy shouted forward to the pilot.
On cue, the bird slowed and descended. Getting below the horizon, no doubt, so the line of sight wave of electromagnetic energy wouldn’t kill its electrical systems. An urge to do serious harm to these guys nearly overcame Mike. Only the desperate urgency of needing to save the people of Las Vegas stopped him from attacking everyone in this bird, consequences be damned.
Piper was back to picking at his knots with her hidden hand. And the urgency with which she did it indicated that she felt the same way he did.
“Okay, kids. Time for you to go,” Granville announced. He threw open the cargo door and lowered the steps quickly.
The tug of the ropes around his wrists was less. Piper had the knots loosened, but not completely released. Jimmy and Harness Guy hauled him to his feet while Granville helped Piper to hers.
“Out you go,” Granville said kindly. “Watch that last step. It’s a bitch.”
Piper laughed unwillingly beside him. The helicopter was still a good twenty feet up in the air. She looked over at him in distress.
“Just give it a good parachute landing fall roll when you hit the ground,” Mike said encouragingly. “You go first. I’ll be right on your heels.”
“We’ll go together,” she declared.
He followed her down onto the step. The rotor wash made her stagger and he used his shoulder to steady her while he frantically yanked at his ropes. He had to have his arms free to fall safely. They needed to control their landings carefully or they could die in this little maneuver. The bastard pilot wasn’t going any lower to increase their odds of survival, either.
“All right then. Down you go,” Granville ordered.
One last, desperate pull and Mike felt the rope start to fall off his wrists. Thank God. Pretending to keep his hands tied behind his back, he shouted, “On the count of three. One.” He shook off the rope. “Two.” His arm shot out and he snatched Harness Guy’s backpack up from its spot just inside the door. “Three!”
He jumped.
Nineteen
The impact when Piper hit the ground was incredible. It jarred her teeth in her head and it felt as if every bone in her body bent a little to absorb the violent blow. She hit feet first, then twisted and fell to impact her knee, hip, then shoulder. Her momentum was such that her feet flew over her head and she did a full back somersault before coming to a stop.
If she’d had any breath before she jumped, she darned well didn’t have any now. She lay there, gasping like a dying fish for what seemed like a long time. In reality, it was probably no more than a few seconds. Finally, she was able to pull in a painful breath.
Mike. Was he okay?
She sat up fast and looked around. Grit and sand flew everywhere as the helicopter accelerated away from them overhead. She threw her arm over her face until the sandblasting subsided.
Mike was just standing up. She half-ran, half-stumbled over to him and flung herself into his arms. He grunted in pain and his left arm did not come up to encircle her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.
Through clenched teeth, he ground out, “Think I dislocated my shoulder. When I grabbed for the bag, it threw me off balance and I came down funny.”
“What bag?”
“I grabbed Harness Guy’s pack on the way out the door. No idea what’s inside, but I figured there must be something useful for survival in it.”
She felt his shoulder gingerly, but every time her fingers moved to a new spot Mike winced. It must be hurting him like hell for him to show her any glimpse of weakness. It definitely felt like stuff was not in the right place inside the joint.
“I don’t know how to put it back in the socket,” she said regretfully.
“I’ll talk you through it. It takes a fair bit of strength, and I’m going to swear like a motherfucker and maybe pass out. But you have to do it anyway.”
She listened closely as he explained the relatively simple procedure. It was all about getting his arm bones properly positioned and then shoving like hell. The idea of doing it grossed her out completely, though. There was a reason she wasn’t in the medical profession.
“Got all that?” he asked.
She nodded and gulped. If she could run around Khartoum with a gun and jump in front of violent religious police, she could do this. In theory.
He sat down and she knelt beside him. Laying her hands on his arm as he helped her position the limb and then brace himself, she muttered, “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“On the count of three. One—” She shoved. No sense making the guy wait till three, and frankly, she thought she might lose her nerve if she waited two more counts.
The joint popped audibly, and as advertised, Mike swore up a blue storm. Sweat erupted on his brow and his entire body trembled. Lord, the pain he must be in. “I’m so sorry!” she cried.
“No prob,” he gritted out. “Gimme a sec.”
Out of respect for his fight to control the pain, she turned away. In her experience, men didn’t like to look like sissies in front of women. While he caught his breath, she occupied herself rummaging through the backpack he’d snagged. A variety of tools, including a large pocketknife could come in handy. There was a plastic tarp, which would definitely be handy if they had to collect water for themselves out here. And speaking of which…she pulled out a canteen that sloshed heavily. Yes.
“I found some water, Mike. Drink.”
He took a long slug from the canteen and passed it back to her, saying, “Finish it.”
She did as he suggested. Survival 101: it was better to carry water inside your body than outside of it.
The sun beat down on them mercilessly, and she was already starting to feel baked. She knew not to fight the heat mentally. There was nothing she could do about it, so she might as well just accept it and move on.
Mike climbed carefully to his feet. “Give me the pack.”
“I just put your shoulder back in joint. I don’t need the pack to pull it back out.”
&nbs
p; “I’ve got two shoulders. I’ll sling it over the other one. I’m stronger than you, and me carrying the bag will equalize out our speed and stamina a bit.”
“God, I hate it when you’re right,” she muttered.
He laughed a little. “Sorry, babe. You’re in my world, now. This is what I do.”
“And you would be crazy for doing it.”
“One man’s crazy is another man’s idea of a good time,” he retorted.
“I gather then, that you’re going to be all right?”
“Right as rain. I’ve done a lot worse to myself than that and kept going.”
“Okay, Mr. I’m-in-my-element. What’s the plan?”
“We’ve got to get word back to the authorities to shoot down your old man’s plane in case my modifications to the bomb don’t stop it from blowing up.”
“I think that ship has already sailed,” she replied soberly. A knife of pain stabbed her gut, and she forcibly set it aside. Not now. Not yet. First, they had to survive the killer desert they’d been dropped into. Then they had to stop Yusef Abahdi’s virus from killing thousands. Then…then, she could grieve her father and maybe unravel her complicated feelings about the man.
“Any idea where we are?” she asked.
“Assuming the helicopter made a forward speed of no more than, say a hundred miles per hour away from the power lines, we’re about twenty miles north of the power lines.”
She frowned. “Then we aren’t that far away from Overton. We should be able to head northwest and run into it.”
“Theoretically,” he replied. “Assuming we don’t die of exposure or dehydration, or miss it and end up heading past it into the desert.”
“We’re already in the desert, big guy.”
He smiled ruefully. “Is there anything made of cloth in the bag?”
“A t-shirt.” She pulled out the white cotton garment wadded in the bottom of the bag.
“That’ll work. Tear off pieces of it so we can cover our heads, faces, and necks.”
“There’s a knife in here, too,” she commented as she commenced sawing off big pieces of cotton from the front and back of the shirt. She tied the cotton square low over her forehead, covering as much skin as she could. Mike drew a corner forward and draped it loosely across her face, leaving only her eyes exposed.
