“If I don’t get out of here, I’m dead anyway. I damned sure don’t mind taking you with me.”
“I’m gonna do whatever you say, buddy. But you gotta—”
The radio’s crackle interrupted. “Eagle Two, you spot them?”
With another sideways glance at Alex, the pilot keyed the microphone. “Negative. I’ll make a sweep along the gully.”
“You do that,” said the radio voice. “We’re standing by.”
Mere seconds of flying brought them abreast of Pia. Still scurrying along the shallow gully and well away from the riflemen, she had almost reached the tree line. As they drew near, she crouched by a snowdrift and pointed her rifle at the helicopter.
“Set us down next to the gully,” Alex ordered. “Say, forty yards downhill.” When the helicopter’s skids settled onto the snow, he waved an arm to get Pia’s attention, craned his neck to let her see his face. She lowered the rifle, and he motioned her forward.
She raced to the helicopter, tossed her backpack into the cargo hold, and laid her rifle by it. Awkwardly with Frederick dangling in the sling on her chest, she clambered aboard.
Alex ordered the pilot to lift off. “Head south.” He found the helicopter’s radio and turned off its power. Nothing the men on the ground could say would affect his plan, and he didn’t want to risk having the pilot transmit a signal that might let a ground station fix their direction of flight. When they were well away from the riflemen, he instructed the pilot to turn east, directly into the mountains.
The climbing helicopter whined a protest. “This old crate can’t lift us over the Continental Divide,” the pilot said. “Anyway, we’re low on fuel.”
“Due east.” To show he knew whether his order was being followed, Alex tapped the helicopter’s magnetic compass.
“Where we gonna touch down? Nothing east of us but national forest.”
“East,” Alex said again. He wanted distance from Faust’s prowling gunmen before they realized the helicopter had been hijacked and called their base. Glancing into the back, he caught Pia’s attention. Exhaustion put shadows under her eyes, but they gleamed with excitement. Frederick looked too tired to worry about scary noise and vibration. He huddled against his mother’s breasts.
“We got maybe twenty minutes left,” the pilot warned. “When it quits, we autorotate straight down.”
Alex glanced down into a gorge whose bottom was obscured by deep shadows and up at mountain peaks towering above the helicopter. They had to get out of the gorge before they lost power. Otherwise, they would bounce off sheer rock walls and end in a twisted mass of metal and flesh. “You have a navigation map of this area?”
Controlling the helicopter with one hand, the pilot fumbled in his map case. With a flick of his wrist, he snapped open a folded map.
Alex steadied the map so the pilot could shift his gaze between it and his instruments. “Put your finger on our location.”
“Man, I don’t know.”
“Approximate.”
The pilot pointed, and Alex drew a check mark on the spot. “Are the national forest’s boundaries shown?”
“These lines.” The pilot touched a series of alternate long and short dashes.
Studying the map, Alex saw a railroad but no highways. The closest national forest boundary was to the south. “Turn south,” he ordered.
The helicopter’s low fuel warning light glowed bright orange. The pilot tapped the gauge. “She’s gonna quit. We ought to find a place to set down.”
They whisked along about six hundred feet above a forested shelf with high mountains to the east and a sheer drop-off to the west. Through his binoculars, Alex spotted a rooftop. “That way,” he said, and pointed.
Seconds later, the low-power warning light began flashing. A buzzer screeched. Frederick screamed.
“We’re going down,” the pilot shouted over the din.
“Looks flat over there.” Alex pointed to an area where a patch of snow revealed a break in the trees. “Seat belt,” he shouted to Pia.
The flat, open area loomed—they were going to make it. Then it felt as if a giant hand reached out and grabbed the helicopter.
A heavy thump, and it spun around sharply. Swirling snow, kicked up by the rotor blades, painted the windshield white. A still heavier thump, an abrupt jar. Faintly through the artificial snowstorm, Alex saw trees and rocks. The helicopter tilted as if it was going to flip over. The still-churning rotor blades dug into the snow and made the craft shift one last time, a dying animal trying to regain its feet. It came to rest on its side.
Sudden quiet. Unearthly stillness.
Alex braced his feet against the side of the cockpit and unsnapped his seat belt. He twisted to look into the passenger compartment. “You guys okay back there?”
“Yes.” Pia still clutched Frederick in her lap, her arms locked around his waist. “We cannot—”
Frederick started screaming again, drowning her words. She unbuckled her seat belt and planted one foot on the canted floor, the other on the wall by the cargo hatch. “We cannot get out through here,” she said, shouting over Frederick’s wails. “It is blocked.”
The pilot had been sitting with a dazed expression. He shook his head the way a wet dog might, unsnapped his seatbelt, and looked around. “This way.” With his back braced against the seat, he reached up to open an overhead escape hatch.
Alex scanned the cockpit for anything the pilot might use as a weapon. He tossed a fire extinguisher through the opened hatch, pushed a flare gun and a fire axe under his belt. Carrying his and Pia’s rifles, he climbed out.
The pilot lifted Frederick into Alex’s arms and hoisted Pia so she could climb through the hatch. He tossed out the helicopter’s survival kit, the backpacks and snowshoes, and Alex’s cross-country skis. Then he climbed out.
They stood for several moments beside the crippled machine, recovering their equilibrium and getting their bearings. The helicopter had dug its way into a snow bank, and the impact created a miniature avalanche from a rocky ledge they had barely missed. Only the cockpit and the twisted rotor assembly protruded from the white mass. Had they come in inches lower, trees would have entangled the landing skids. A few feet to the right and they would have slammed into the ledge.
Alex clapped his hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “You did all right.”
“Close call, though.” The pilot’s grin looked shaky. He pointed to Alex’s portable radio. “Better call in our position. If the weather closes in, we’ve had it.”
“No need. The homing beacon comes on automatically in a crash.” A quick blink of the pilot’s eyes, an overly casual expression, told Alex he had guessed right. “Show it to me.” The pilot stared, looking tense, and Alex braced for an attack.
With a shrug, the pilot crawled back into the cockpit and pointed to a gray panel with a blinking light.
“Stand back.” Alex attacked the panel with the fire axe. He kept banging and slashing even after the light went out, stopping only when the circuitry behind the panel was a ruined pile of electronic debris. “Let’s go.”
Back outside, he used the climbing rope from his backpack to bind the pilot’s hands behind him and fasten them to a sturdy evergreen. Then he waded through the snow to a nearby stand of trees and began hacking down small evergreens with the fire axe. While Pia watched the pilot and kept Frederick entertained, he dragged the downed saplings to the helicopter. The high altitude and numbing cold impeded his effort, but he worked until brush covered the helicopter so that it would be concealed from over-flying aircraft.
Breathing hard from exertion, he turned to Pia. “You up to some more hiking?”
She sat Frederick on her grounded backpack, stepped into her snowshoes, and reclaimed him. “Ready.”
Alex strapped on his cross-country skis and gave his snowshoes to the pilot, after adjusting the man’s wrist bindings so that his hands were loosely tethered before him. With the pilot out front, they set a course for the roo
ftop that had been visible before they crashed.
Distances were tricky, but Alex guessed three miles. If he had the direction right, they would find shelter before dark. Lousy planning, he thought as they trudged through the snow. Their only provisions were high-energy chocolate bars from the helicopter’s survival kit. The kit also contained first-aid supplies, a flashlight, and a panel of florescent-orange, plastic sheeting to use for shelter and as a signal.
Pia had learned her lesson when she insisted on carrying Frederick before. This time she and Alex alternated bearing the chubby load. The pilot lugged her backpack, so her only other burdens were the rifle they had taken from the watchman and the bag of disposable diapers Alex had snatched from the lodge.
Rugged terrain, deep washes, and rocky outcroppings made them detour time and again. In three hours, Alex guessed they had covered no more than two miles. Even with his careful compass references, he worried that they were off course. The sun disappeared, and the temperature plummeted. Should they press on, hoping to spot the cabin, or use the brief remaining daylight to gather firewood and set up camp?
Keep going, he decided. Minutes later, beyond a stand of Douglas fir, they found the shoreline of a frozen lake. “We’ve got it made,” he told his panting, dejected-looking fellow travelers. “The cabin will be on or near the water.”
The assurance seemed to help. Their hapless expressions brightened, their pace quickened. But what if he was wrong?
Another half hour of following the shoreline, and Pia shouted, “There. Over there!” In the twilight, a rooftop peeked through a break in the trees.
As Alex knew it would be this time of the year and this high up, the cabin was deserted. Well-constructed, it was tightly sealed with a deadbolt lock on the door and plywood sheets covering the windows. Under a heavy coating of snow, they found seasoned firewood stacked on a deck facing the lake. Slender logs not yet sawed to fireplace length lay half-covered in snow beside the stack. Using one of the logs as a battering ram, Alex forced the door by splintering the wooden door-jamb around the deadbolt’s latch plate.
The cabin had two bedrooms. It also had two fireplaces: one in the living room and another in the master bedroom.
In the living room, Alex tightened the knots binding the pilot’s wrists and tied his ankles as well. He ran the man’s belt through the wrist rope and buckled it at the back to secure the captive’s hands at his waist. Then he built a fire, and everyone collapsed on the living room floor. Even Frederick seemed worn out. He fretted for several minutes over the paucity of breast milk and fell asleep on Pia’s stomach. Alex realized that he too was dangerously near sleep. He roused himself and helped the tethered pilot stretch out on the couch. A loop of rope around the man’s neck secured him there. No blankets or sheets in the closets, so Alex covered the pilot with the sheets he and Pia had used for camouflage and the plastic tarp from the helicopter.
Pia insisted on cleaning the cuts on Alex’s face and daubing them with antiseptic from the helicopter’s first aid kit. Then they spread their sleeping bags in front of the fireplace. Alex lifted Frederick in with Pia, put fresh logs on the fire, and stretched out in the other bag. Wondering what morning would bring, worrying that his crew would perish in this desolate place, he drifted into an exhausted slumber.
Chapter 21
Theo Faust responded to a summons from Maximillian Koenig and found the financier in his ski chalet’s great room, relaxing in a wingback chair positioned to catch afternoon sun streaming through a skylight. The only nearby furniture was a circular table that held a silver tea service and a silver platter with a selection of pastries.
Faust stood at attention in the middle of the room and gave an account of the day’s action. “The fugitives turned off the radio equipment in the hijacked helicopter, so we couldn’t track it. All we know is, they headed east into the mountains.”
Reporting the loss of Frederick was the most difficult chore Faust had ever faced with the owner of Variant Corporation. The “accident” he had planned for the kid during that trip from Denver to the ski resort would not have been his fault, because Koenig had made the decision to send Pia and the boy ahead in the limousine instead of letting them accompany him and his wife in the resort’s helicopter. Pia’s initial kidnapping of the boy had been excusable on the same grounds. Her escape from the Silver Hill office building had been a non-issue; with Frederick eating solid food, Koenig no longer considered her important. But letting the old man’s putative heir be snatched from right under his nose was serious.
The scariest part of Koenig’s reaction was that there didn’t seem to be one. Faust could have handled a chewing out. He would have stood passively and accepted a physical assault. But Koenig just sat there, staring at a corn plant beside the fireplace. His expression was that of an expert poker player, betraying nothing. Faust realized that he wouldn’t know where he stood until it was too late to do anything about it.
After what seemed a long time, Koenig sipped from his teacup and set it back in its saucer. “What is the likelihood of recovering the boy?’
“Minimal, sir. They ran out of fuel somewhere in that national forest. Reporting a lost helicopter would call attention that we can’t afford now. And we don’t have the assets in place to mount an effective search.”
Koenig refilled his cup from the teapot. “If we don’t report the lost helicopter, what are their survival chances?”
“Pretty close to zero, sir.” That was the only upside Faust saw in this fiasco: being spared the necessity of engineering the kid’s death. “If they’re still alive and the weather doesn’t do them in, they’ll starve in a couple of weeks.”
An impassive nod. “This is a major setback in the succession project. But my health is stable, and we have viable sperm in reserve. I assume a backup breeder can still be contacted?”
“No problem, sir.” It amazed Faust that the old man seemed so emotionless. He did not have long to live, and his death would leave a multi-billion-dollar empire up for grabs. Yet his main concern was that the new owner would carry his genes. “I can have one at the clinic within twenty-four hours.”
Koenig added a dollop of cream to his tea. “Has there been any reaction by local law enforcement to these events?”
“Yes, sir, but the wrecked snowcat was good cover. I had one of our guys file an accident report. He claimed the brakes failed and he bailed out just before the cat went into the ravine. When all of our people have returned home, I’ll have local security report the helicopter stolen.”
A nod of approval. “A problem has arisen in Lima that requires my immediate attention. I will be departing tomorrow.”
Faust tried to think of a diplomatic way to object. This detour to deal with the kid had forced him to reschedule a meeting with his black-market technology vendors and made them as jumpy as barefoot kids on hot pavement. With another missed get-together, they’d probably cut and run. Worse, they might find another buyer.
“But Madam Koenig is returning to Denver,” Koenig said. “A problem involving something she has ordered from a shop. I want you to go with her, handle security arrangements, and escort her back to Lima.”
Faust relaxed. He should have known that Dominga would concoct a way for him to stay and complete the negotiation. That she was also staying, however, gave him pause. So far, she had been content to remain in the background and pull strings by remote control. Did this portend a more activist roll?
Koenig’s voice took on a sharper edge. “Do you have any questions?”
“No, sir. I understand the program.”
“Then I expect that you have a lot to do today.”
It was the old man’s unsubtle way of saying, get the hell out of my sight. Faust did a military about-face and marched out of the chalet. Sitting in his commandeered SUV, he called his lieutenant, Carlos Escobedo. “Let’s get together for an early dinner,” he ordered. “The lodge’s restaurant. See you there ASAP.”
An hour later, sit
ting with Escobedo in the dining room, he cut into a sirloin that had been cooked to his specifications. Though the steak was seared on the outside, blood gushed around the knife. “I’m not convinced the fugitive is dead,” he told Escobedo after swallowing his first bite. “Jake Stuber is the best helo pilot I know. I’m guessing he set that old crate down in the mountains like putting a baby to bed.”
“Even if you’re right,” Escobedo said, “the weather will get them.”
“There are summer places along the fringe of the national forest. Bryson might find one. He’s trained in cold weather survival, and he’s good. It’s a loose end.”
A nod. “What’s the program?”
“I want you to keep the assault team here for a few days. Monitor the radio in case Stuber calls in. Keep the team on four-hour alert at all times, ready to scramble if that happens.”
The Descent From Truth Page 17
