Dauntless (Lawless Saga Book 4)

by Tarah Benner

  The second missile grazed the side of the chopper, and Lark felt the force of the blow like a charging elephant. It ripped into the sides of the fuselage, and Lark saw a flash of light in her periphery.

  The missile had torn several small holes in the side of the aircraft — pinging off the steel in a pattern like Morse code. They wavered in the air for a moment, and Lark tightened her grip on the edge of her seat.

  Conrad was saying something, but Lark couldn’t hear a word over the whirring of the engine. Then he let out a strained yell, and the chopper plummeted toward the earth.

  Lark gritted her teeth and hunched over in her seat. A half-remembered illustration of the best position for surviving a plane crash flashed through her mind, but in that moment it was all she could do to avoid being sick.

  The rush of wind grew deafening in her ears, and she squeezed her eyes shut so that she wouldn’t have to see the blur of trees in her periphery just before the crash. But then the chopper seemed to level out, and Conrad pulled them into a controlled glide.

  “Brace yourselves!” he yelled over the din.

  Lark opened her eyes just in time to see him pull the aircraft out of the dive. The scenery outside the chopper was a tangled blur of color, and Lark realized that they were much closer to the ground. She glimpsed the sprawling fields of sage and junipers off in the distance, but just below them lay a steep gorge.

  Lark glanced to her right and saw Soren staring wide-eyed out the window. They seemed to drop a few feet, and then Lark saw the glimmer of water rushing beneath them.

  Conrad was attempting the water landing.

  There was another loud bang in the distance, and Lark saw a burst of flame whoosh past the helicopter. Bernie let out a horrified scream, but the fiery missile never made contact.

  The helicopter jolted to the side, and Lark’s head banged violently against the side of her headrest. The engine rumbled, and the entire aircraft seemed to shudder.

  Lark’s stomach flew into her throat as they plummeted toward the river. She gripped the edge of her seat so hard that she thought part of it might snap off in her fingers. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. They were glued straight ahead as she braced herself for impact.

  The next thing she heard was the rush of water along the sides of the chopper. They shot forward like a missile skimming along the surface, and Lark’s head whipped forward as they came to a sudden halt.

  Denali slammed into the wall with a panicked yelp. There was a harsh burp like metal being flexed and bent, followed by a horrible screech of ripping steel as part of the fuselage separated from the chopper.

  A calming whoosh filled Lark’s ears as air surged into the helicopter, and Lark heard water pouring in as they began to sink beneath the surface.

  2

  Lark

  Soren was the first to jump out of his seat. Lark heard the click of his restraints, and a second later, his face appeared in front of hers. His mouth was moving, but it was taking a long time for his words to travel from Lark’s ears to her brain.

  She saw everything that happened next unfold through the stilted, jerky lens of a stop-motion film. Soren helped her out of her restraints, and Lark noticed a certain stiffness to his movements. Her feet hit the floor of the helicopter with a slap of water, and Soren reached out to steady her.

  Lark hadn’t noticed before, but the chopper was tilted at a steep angle, bobbing like a cork in the water. They were floating downriver, and the forward momentum only added to Lark’s off-kilter feeling.

  She moved numbly toward Denali, who was plodding anxiously through the water with a lost look in his eyes. There was a commotion all around her as bodies moved inside the chopper, and Axel splashed forward to heave the door wide open.

  A fresh deluge of water rushed into the fuselage, and the entire aircraft pitched to the side. Portia yelled something that sounded like “Moron!” and Bernie gripped her by the arm to help her toward the door. Conrad was still struggling to get out of his seat, and Simjay was faintly green around the gills.

  Axel didn’t wait to see if any of them needed help. He draped the straps of two assault rifles around his middle and dived into the water. Bernie gripped the inside of the door and crouched down to help Portia lower herself over the side, and Simjay jumped out in a clumsy pencil dive in his haste to help Bernie disembark. Bernie didn’t know how to swim — a condition made infinitely worse by her injured leg — so Simjay wrapped one of her arms around his neck and kicked off toward the shore.

  Lark heard Soren call her name. He too had a rifle draped over his shoulder and was beckoning her toward the door. Lark moved clumsily through the rising water, reaching down twice to make sure Denali was still with her.

  Soren jumped in, and Lark braced herself against the side of the door, staring down into the churning water. She jumped in with a sharp intake of air, gasping as the frigid water engulfed her body and ingesting several mouthfuls of water.

  Lark fought to break the surface, retching and choking as she beat her legs against the current. Denali was still standing inside the chopper, his tail tucked between his legs as he fought to keep his balance.

  “Come on, boy!” Lark coughed as the current pulled her along with the chopper.

  Denali didn’t move. He just stared at her with his ears pinned back against the top of his head, whining pitifully as the current carried him farther downstream.

  Lark glanced ahead, and her entire body seized with dread. The wrecked chopper was headed toward a sharp bend in the river, where a cluster of rocks was sticking out of the water some thirty or forty feet downstream.

  Lark called to him again, and Denali whined louder. The chopper was moving faster than she was, and Lark was close to losing him completely.

  This time, when she called his name, her voice came out as a scream.

  Hysteria was bubbling up inside of her. Denali wasn’t going to jump. After everything they’d been through together, his animal instincts were overriding his trust in Lark the moment when it mattered most.

  A horrible vision of Denali drowning inside the chopper flashed through her mind. Tears stuck in Lark’s throat, and she looked back at Soren, Simjay, and Bernie, who were yelling at her to turn around as they fought their way to shore.

  A scream of anguish ripped through Lark’s body, and a large cold wave smacked her in the side of the face. She coughed and kicked to keep Denali in her sights, fighting the sudden deluge of tears that were streaming down her cheeks.

  But then Lark saw a strange set of arms swoop down and snatch Denali from the chopper. Denali flew through the air in a blur of black-and-gray fur and hit the water with a splash and a whine. A second later, Conrad leapt from the chopper in a neat dive and disappeared beneath the tumultuous water.

  Denali’s head broke the surface, and Lark let out a cry of relief. He immediately began to paddle toward shore, and Lark turned to follow.

  The plane that had been pursuing them was nowhere in sight, but Lark knew better than to feel relief. She knew that it was circling like a vulture somewhere above them, just waiting to see if they had survived the landing.

  Lark’s muscles screamed in protest as she pulled herself through the water. She had swum in the Rio Grande before, but never like this. Her body was exhausted from fighting off Bianca in the wake of Mercy’s death, and she was wearing all of her clothes. Her pants, her boots, and her sweatshirt were completely soaked, and she could feel the extra weight dragging her beneath the surface.

  Finally, Lark’s toes brushed the rugged river bottom. Her feet skidded over the wet, slimy rocks and snagged in clumps of grass and algae. Unfortunately, the river bank was more rock than mud, and she managed to stub a toe and scrape her knee on the way out.

  An abrupt chill swamped her body as she dragged herself from the river. She collapsed in the dirt on her hands and knees, still retching from her surprise intake of water.

  Her head was throbbing. When she brushed her fingers ov
er the back of her head, the dried blood caked in her hair reminded her of Mercy’s beating. She suspected that she had a concussion, but there was nothing she could do.

  Bernie was already shivering beside Simjay on the bank. She was drenched and pale and wearing the wide-eyed look of someone whose life had just flashed before her eyes. They were hunkered beneath a large cottonwood tree near the bank, and Lark hastened to take cover away from the exposed edges of the water.

  Denali shook himself off and followed at a crouch, glancing back at Conrad with his tail tucked between his legs. Conrad was dressed in khaki pants and a polo shirt, and he had an army-green rucksack slung over his shoulder.

  Lark felt a surge of gratitude that he’d had the presence of mind to grab some supplies. None of them had managed to take anything with them on their way out, apart from three assault rifles and a few extra magazines.

  “Thank you,” Lark choked. “You saved him.”

  Conrad’s mouth twitched as if he were trying to smile. “Don’t mention it. I’m a dog lover myself.”

  Lark smiled back, feeling a fresh tingle of curiosity about the eccentric pilot. Simjay and Bernie had chosen him to help with her extraction, but where they had found him or why he’d agreed to help, Lark still didn’t know.

  “Conrad!” Bernie exclaimed. “What about Cordelia, Ophelia, and Desdemona?”

  “I have a neighbor who will look in on them while I’m away,” he said. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure that I would be back tonight, so I made the arrangements.”

  Lark opened her mouth to ask whom they were talking about, but Axel interrupted them with an irate shout.

  “Hey! In case ya’ll forgot, we still got those stinkin’ assholes after us!”

  “He’s right,” said Conrad. “We need to find cover.”

  Lark hauled herself to her feet and followed Soren and Conrad deeper into the tree line, a fresh wave of unease creeping through her momentary relief.

  Surely the Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t abandon its search just because they had landed in the river. Reuben wouldn’t be satisfied to assume that they’d all been killed on impact; she was sure that he would insist on investigating the site of the crash.

  “They’ll probably have men on the ground searching the area,” said Conrad. “I say we keep moving as long as we can before we make camp.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Carson National Forest is over one and a half million acres. They can’t possibly cover it all. We just need them to lose our trail.”

  Lark nodded, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was too busy scanning their sad little group and wondering how far they could possibly get before dark. Bernie was leaning heavily on her crutches, which kept getting caught in the underbrush. Soren’s shirt was still bloodied from the injury he had sustained, though Lark had no idea how serious it was. Simjay looked all right, but Lark knew he was still healing from a stab wound he’d gotten in Texas, and she was fighting the searing pain in her head. Portia was pregnant, but she was the only one besides Axel and Conrad who was not recovering from some kind of injury.

  “Better get moving,” said Soren as if he’d read her mind.

  They tromped through the woods until they were a good fifty yards inside the trees. At one point, a plane whooshed overhead, and Lark’s heart shot into her throat. The canopy was thinner the farther they got from the river, and she just hoped that nobody in the plane had spotted a member of their party.

  They all stood there for several minutes, listening intently for the shriek of a missile pelting toward them, but it never came. After the plane had passed, the forest fell quiet. The birds had stopped singing, and the little animals that normally scurried along the forest floor seemed to sense their ominous mood.

  They continued their hike for several hours, stopping every thirty or forty minutes to rest. Bernie was having the toughest time of all maneuvering her crutches over the uneven ground. The forest floor was littered with twisted tree roots, rocks, and even the odd cluster of cacti. It would have been easier to piggyback her through the woods, but with her leg still wrapped in its thick cocoon of bandages, she couldn’t bend it enough to be carried.

  Finally, they reached an area where an offshoot of the river had carved a steep canyon into the rugged landscape. The lush green trees winding up the embankment on either side created the illusion of safety, and the canyon walls rose so high that they blocked out the sun.

  They could no longer hear the plane circling overhead, but two narrow creeks meandered through the canyon, disappearing and reappearing at rocky intervals where people and animals could cross. Lark could hear birds chirping once again and the flutter of wildlife in the trees, but apart from the animals and the trickle of water, the forest was quiet.

  “I think this is as good a place as any,” said Conrad.

  “Praise Jesus,” huffed Bernie, throwing down her crutches and collapsing onto a fallen log.

  Conrad laid his rucksack purposefully on the ground and strolled a few feet farther up the embankment, searching the little nooks and crannies for a good place to make camp.

  They ended up choosing a small clearing above the creek where two large clusters of boulders offered an extra layer of protection from prying eyes. Since they were all cold and wet, they needed to build a fire, but Lark worried that the smoke would draw attention to their location.

  Luckily, everything in the canyon was as dry as a bone. Dry wood would create less smoke, but it did little to diminish Lark’s nerves as she peeled off her damp sweatshirt and joined Soren and Axel gathering wood.

  Simjay opened Conrad’s rucksack to survey their supplies, and Portia sat down to rest beside Bernie. She looked exhausted from their trek through the woods, but her coloring was better than it had been back in Kingsville.

  As it turned out, there were a number of useful items in Conrad’s rucksack. There was a thin plastic tarp, a couple of foil blankets, several ready-to-eat meals, a tube of waterproof matches, a first-aid kit, a plastic pouch for collecting water, and a packet of iodine tablets.

  While the guys argued over the best way to build a fire, Lark went down to the creek to collect some water. Denali ran off to hunt chipmunks — a favorite pastime back at San Judas — and the seven of them split four of the ready-to-eat meals.

  Lark devoured her portion in less than a minute, but even though her stomach was still growling when she finished, she had no craving for any more of the lentil-potato mush. Bernie’s chicken noodle stew looked slightly better, but there was no doubt that the meals were designed to be eaten when there was literally no other option.

  Lark watched Soren out of the corner of her eye as he peeled off his wet sweatshirt with a pained expression. He grimaced as he shrugged it off his left shoulder, and Lark felt a jolt of alarm.

  “What happened?” she asked, moving closer so that she could examine the wound. His T-shirt was torn at the sleeve and caked with blood, and she could see a thick layer of dirty gauze protruding from the fabric.

  “I’m fine,” Soren croaked.

  “You’re not fine.”

  “Yes, I am,” he said, his voice rising ever so slightly.

  “You’re still bleeding!” said Lark.

  “I’m fine.”

  “He’s not fine,” said Simjay, tossing the empty meal package into the crackling fire. “He got shot as we were leaving Cheyenne Mountain. I patched him up, but —”

  “What?”

  “It’s just a scratch,” said Soren, throwing Simjay a dirty look.

  “Let me look at it,” Lark pressed.

  “I said I’m fine, Lark!”

  Lark recoiled, and the rest of the group fell silent. They were all staring at her and Soren, and Lark felt her face flush with embarrassment.

  Soren’s mouth had hardened into a thin line, but when he saw everyone looking at them, he cleared his throat and seemed to soften.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “I just . . .”

  “Sit down,” said Lark, s
peaking in a low, even tone to show that she would not be put off by his brusque attitude.

  Soren drew in a deep breath and sat. His jaw was still stiff with pain, but Lark could see that he was also stewing in emotional anguish.

  Soren was reeling from the loss of his brother, and Lark had no idea what to say. She knew from experience that there was nothing she could say. He just had to feel whatever he was feeling and let the grief run its course.

  Soren’s harsh gaze softened a little as Lark swung a leg over the log. She ripped his T-shirt all the way up to the neck and slid it off his shoulders so she could examine the wound.

  Simjay had done an okay job of bandaging Soren’s arm on the fly, but there was still a thick layer of coagulated blood caked around the laceration, and it had never been properly cleaned. It was still oozing blood mixed with a yellowish discharge, and Lark saw that a chunk of flesh had been ripped away from his bicep.

  Lark used both of the antiseptic wipes from the first-aid kit to clean the wound as best she could. Soren’s jaw tightened as the alcohol worked its way into the gash, but he sat there in silence as Lark cleaned the jagged crater and packed it with combat gauze. She covered the whole thing in a thick layer of dressing and taped it all the way around.

  “You really need stitches,” she said matter-of-factly, handing him an antibiotic tablet from the kit. “I think it will heal, but we need to keep an eye on it. It was starting to get infected.”

  “Thanks,” Soren mumbled, tossing back the pill and following it up with a glug of water from the pouch.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lark, just loud enough for Soren to hear.

  “Don’t apologize,” said Soren. “I’m the one who should —”

  “You don’t have to,” said Lark. “I get it.”

  “It’s not you,” he said, finally meeting her gaze.

  “I know.”

  They fell into thoughtful silence, Lark no longer searching for what to say. The weight of Micah’s death hung in the air between them, making words completely unnecessary.