Alexander, Sagli, and Deonovich ran out into the rain. Deonovich threw himself onto Everett and brought the brief struggle to a stop, and Alexander ran to Jack and gave the colonel a sharp kick into his kidneys. He drew back to kick again, but was stopped by the brief flash of an explosion as the missile hit the Sikorsky at the very tip of the tail boom.
"Damn you, Jack, you're going to force me to kill every one of you. Stop interfering!" Alexander screamed, water and spittle running down his chin.
Deonovich had stood and was also using his boots to explain to Everett the price of interference. The captain was trying his best to roll away from the brutal kicks, but he just couldn't in the deepening mud.
Mendenhall and even Farbeaux started forward to assist Everett, but were stopped cold by four men who quickly showed them the price of foolishness. Will was struck in the stomach and Farbeaux in the back by butts of automatic weapons. They both went down into the mud to join Jack and Everett.
Sagli reached Deonovich before he could deliver his fifth kick into the back and stomach of Everett. He reached both arms around the larger man and held him in place. Deonovich was about to reach back and pull his smaller partner off when the sound from the sky stilled him.
As all looked skyward, the gleaming Sikorsky streaked overhead, barely missing the tree line at the back of the camp. Most of the men ducked and hit the ground, fearing an explosion when the Sikorsky hit. However, the pilot fought the torque created by the sheared-off tail rotors and managed to get the huge aircraft to hop over the initial assault of large pines until he plunged deeper into the woods. Expecting the giant aircraft to strike the trees at any moment, the chaotic assault on the Americans ceased as all eyes watched through the storm the death plunge of the foolish people who tried to come upriver at night and in a powerful storm.
"Your people brought this on themselves, Jack."
Collins rolled over and looked with killing eyes at his old friend. Alexander saw the look just as they all heard the Sikorsky slam into the forest no more than half a mile away.
"Do what's asked of you, Colonel, and those may be the last people you lose."
Collins didn't say anything, his eyes just moved away from Alexander to the smoke and flames now rising up through the falling rain.
Jack didn't know exactly who had been on the helicopter, but knew anyone who was, was now burning inside the crumpled hulk.
* * *
As Ryan fought the helicopter for control, the spin increased as the failed tail rotor could not stop the torque placed on the airframe as the four bladed main rotors turned the craft to the right at fantastic speed. Jason gritted his teeth to the point of shearing them off as he saw the trees coming at them in a spiraling nightmare. Beside him, Sarah was being pressed to the side window from the fantastic g-forces being placed on the Sikorsky. She could only close her eyes as the spin increased and pray.
In the passenger compartment, Marla hadn't had time to fasten the seatbelt upon returning. She was thrown hard against the opposite row of seats and was pinned there as the helicopter started settling for the trees.
The S-76 clipped the first tree, sending a spray of water outward and then Ryan felt the fuselage strike, bounce, and then hit again. The second time the main rotors caught in the treetops, sheering them away from the transmission hub. The spin stopped suddenly as the tail boom struck the trees in earnest, shearing it away in a microsecond. Air, water, and the smell of fuel coursed through the doomed Sikorsky as Ryan finally gave up and threw his arms over his face. Sarah bent at the waist as soon as the centrifugal force ceased, holding her against the bulkhead. She bent as low as her harness would allow. The move was just in time as a fifteen-foot piece of the main rotor slammed into the windscreen, passing between Jason and Sarah, and exiting the space where the tail boom had been seconds before.
The helicopter slammed into a large tree and then started its fall with ear-shattering noise. It hung for a moment on the thick upper branches of a huge pine and then started down again. Ryan was inundated with water, pine needles, and fuel as the lines under the engine cowling ruptured. The airframe hit another set of branches that were interlocked between two trees and the fall from the sky had stopped fifty feet from the ground.
At the sudden realization their fall had been arrested, Sarah reached over and tried to find Ryan with just her hands. She was disoriented and finally realized they were almost turned completely upside down. As she finally felt Ryan's head, she heard him moan. At that moment, time froze as Sarah heard a whump from somewhere below them and that was when she again realized the engine was now under them as they hung upside down. As the cockpit lit up with the bright flames, Sarah saw the reason Jason wasn't moving and why he was moaning. A large branch had been launched through the shattered windscreen and had embedded itself in Ryan's shoulder. Sarah reached out and pulled on the limb and Jason closed his eyes in pain. Sarah saw she didn't have enough power to pull it out from her position, so she unsnapped the seat harness that was holding her in place.
The movement of Sarah and the weight of the airframe was still trying to push the bird into the ground — it fell another ten feet and Sarah closed her eyes, thinking they would hit and the rest of the fuel would go up with them in it. Suddenly, the movement stopped as they hung up again, this time on their side. Sarah fought to climb over the center console and found she was stuck. As she screamed in frustration, small hands poked through and into the cockpit. It was Marla.
"Get out on your side. It's a long fall, but you should make it. I'll get Mr. Ryan!" she shouted as she pulled out a large knife and started sawing into the branch pinning Jason.
Sarah watched as she never felt more helpless in her life. The flames were now opposite of where they had been and they were now licking up the side of the cockpit where Jason was trapped.
"Go!" Marla shouted again as she tossed the knife away and started pulling on the branch for all she was worth. All the while, Ryan was silent as he fought back the sheer agony he was feeling.
Sarah raised up and pushed on the crumpled door on the copilot's side, sending the lightweight aluminum up and over. She squirmed until she found a handhold and then pulled herself up. Once out she felt the heat of the flames as they grew. She immediately saw the trunk of the tree they had hung up on. Not hesitating, Sarah jumped down the three feet and grabbed for all she was worth, but she missed. She hit the trunk and tried desperately to dig her nails in but the force of the jump only made her bounce off and then fall to the ground thirty feet below. She hit feet first on the soft forest floor but immediately fell on her back, knocking the wind out of her lungs. As she fought for breath she saw the burning Sikorsky thirty feet over her head.
Suddenly, there was a blur at the pilot's door opened and Jason Ryan fell from the cockpit. Sarah rolled out of the way as Ryan hit with a thud and a snap as his arm broke. While Sarah finally caught her breath, Marla jumped free of the helicopter, hitting with both feet planted firmly. Still, Sarah heard the girl scream as her ankles rolled and she fell.
Sarah rose up and started pulling on Ryan. The helicopter made a loud screeching sound and they all heard the snapping of branches as the flaming Sikorsky started its final plunge for the forest floor. Sarah knew they were had. She pulled but Ryan had passed out and he was far heavier than she thought. In another flash of motion, Marla dove for both of them and pushed them hard. They all fell six feet back into the trees as the helicopter hit. Fuel was forced though the ruptured tank and the woods around them lit up with a small explosion.
With rain pummeling them and their prone bodies illuminated by the roaring flames, Marla, Sarah, and Ryan lay where they had fallen. Sarah finally placed a hand on Ryan, using his shirt to pull herself up. She looked at his shoulder wound and saw that it was bad. Blood was oozing out at a good clip. She leaned over him and placed both hands onto the wound and pressed down as hard as she could. Marla, her ankles swelling, rolled over and tried to focus on Sarah's attempts at sav
ing Ryan. Tears had sprung up in her eyes as she realized Jason was close to bleeding out.
The woods around them were being protected from the fire by the fierce storm that was passing through the Stikine Valley. The heat produced by the fuel-fed fire felt odd in the downpour. Marla leaned over and started lightly slapping Ryan on the face.
"Please, oh, please, don't die, Mr. Ryan. Come on."
"I promise not to die, if one, you stop slapping me, and two, you get off of my broken arm."
Sarah couldn't help it, she smiled. Ryan looked up at her. She had a broken nose, a severe cut over her left eye, and a long scrape down the side of her face. She lifted her hands and saw that Ryan's flow of blood had slowed — not stopped, but she thought if she could get the wound plugged, he would make it.
Marla swiped at the tears that coursed down her face and moved away from Ryan and Sarah. She was so happy that Ryan was talking that she started to get the shakes. She backed away until her sprained ankles came into contact with something large and hard. She tripped backward and again landed on her back. As she rolled over she came face to face with a grinning skull. She screamed and tried to stand. She backed away as Sarah came to see what she had run into. McIntire saw the old ejection seat and the skeletal remains still strapped in it. As she held Marla, who was close to collapsing, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, and in that brief moment of illumination, that was when both Marla and Sarah saw it. The thunder roared as if announcing their find and then another zigzag pattern of light creased the sky above them. Sarah, dripping wet and bleeding, held Marla tighter.
The darkened mouth of a giant cave bid the two women welcome as they stared into what looked like a darkened maw of a huge animal.
The ancient home of the Chulimantan had been found once again.
* * *
Alexander turned away from Jack as the whump of the explosion flashed across the tree-riddled landscape. With one look back at Collins and his murderous glare, Punchy waved over his partners to the communications tent. The guards allowed a bruised Everett, Farbeaux, and Mendenhall to assist Collins to his feet, and they were unceremoniously shoved back underneath their tarpaulin.
Jack spit blood out of his mouth as he stared at the Spetsnaz until they smiled at him and turned away. He winced as he tried to get comfortable with at least one broken rib.
"For my part, Colonel, if indeed little Sarah was on that helicopter, I…"
"Now's not a good time," Everett said, cutting short Farbeaux's sympathy for Jack's loss.
Instead of being angry at the Frenchman, Collins leaned into Mendenhall to support his rib cage and after he felt he could take a deep breath, he looked over at Farbeaux.
"Henri, tell me the French government has a backup plan to your incursion into Canada."
Farbeaux was silent after Jack had asked the question. He slowly turned his head as lightning flashed, illuminating the stunned look on his face. He shook his head and then caught the looks on the faces of Everett and Mendenhall.
"I think it's time you come clean with us, Henri. We've lost too much to continue to keep secrets."
Henri looked up at the black sky and the pouring rain, he waited until a thick roll of thunder echoed in the valley and then he turned and nodded his head at the American.
"Your perception and intelligence is something that I failed to get my friends at DGSE to take into account. I knew my charade would only last so long."
Everett twisted his head and looked at the drenched Frenchman. He knew the bastard had been up to something but leave it to Jack to have confirmed it somewhere along the way.
"The DGSE?" Mendenhall asked.
"Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure — The Directorate-General for External Security," Collins said.
"Are you saying that you're back in the spying business, Henri?" Carl asked, amazed and confounded that anyone could talk Farbeaux out of his lucrative retirement.
Another flash of lightning lit up the sky, and Jack could see Alexander looking at them from the large tent across the clearing. He was giving Sagli and Deonovich instructions about something and through the downpour Jack could see that the new orders made Deonovich smile while looking their way. It wasn't good.
"I'm afraid I had little choice in the matter, Captain. It seems my recent activities attracted the wrong sort of attention, and with pressure from your president, and with endorsements I'm sure from your little bald boss at the Event Group, I was… let's say, drafted."
"Niles Compton thought you were dead, Henri, lost at sea. Remember?" Jack reminded him.
"Regardless, here I am," he said as he noticed Deonovich gathering a few of his men together. "I must explain to you, time, I fear, is growing short for some of us."
Everett and Mendenhall saw what was coming as the guards made ready their pistols.
"The DGSE has uncovered an extreme terrorist cell operating in Montreal. They know it was being operated by someone immune to discovery because there was just too much information not being passed back through DGSE contacts. Many agents were found murdered, indicating someone was getting identifications out to the cell. Either we had a traitor in our midst, or the Canadian government had one in theirs. Obviously, being French, my superiors ruled out any DGSE failures, so they concentrated on the Canadian side."
Jack watched as Alexander looked his way and then turned back inside of the tent. Sagli gave the group of captives one last look and then he also turned away. Deonovich was explaining something to the three Spetsnaz he had pulled aside. They all looked their way as he explained something to them.
"Cut to the chase, Henri, our time is running out," Jack said as he took a shallow breath.
"DGSE suspected someone at the top of the Canadian food chain, but soon it was confirmed by the traitor himself. Back in 1962, during your governments' little spat with the Kremlin over the Cuban inclusion into the world of Soviet nuclear weapons, something went wrong. I know this will disturb you to no end, being Americans are thought of as the good guys, but I'm afraid your government was looking at the darker outcome of that battle of wills. Your President Kennedy had issued orders for a preemptive strike against the high command of the civilian and military heads of the Soviet regime. The mission was called Operation Solar Flare. Alexander was caught snooping where he shouldn't have been. However, my former superiors didn't know how far Alexander's treason went, thus, when they learned of this assault in Los Angeles, they sent me."
"Another coincidence, Henri?" Jack persisted.
"Not at all. I know of the importance of the Lattimer Notes and the journal, that's why I had them stolen. It is, as you say, a small world. My associates leaked this information to waiting ears, thus, I was volunteered by my old employers to find out what your Mr. Alexander was up to. I guess my government credentials had yet to expire."
"I don't believe it," Everett said. "If that had been an actual plan, our Group, above anyone in the country, would have the information — secret information to be sure — but we would have access to it."
"You still insist that your nation is morally superior to everyone else, Captain Everett; that is not being a true historian. Oh, Operation Solar Flare was approved by France, Great Britain, and Germany, so you weren't alone in hiding your heads in the sand. But my government made the dropping of the most powerful weapon in human history possible by disclosing the secret location where the hierarchy of the Soviet government would be bunkered. Thus, Operation Solar Flare was taken from fantasy to reality."
"What happened? I mean the mission was obviously canceled since history doesn't show any mushroom-cloud footage springing up in Moscow," Mendenhall said, not believing what he and his commanding officers were hearing.
"Now, Colonel Collins, it's your turn to come clean."
Will looked at Jack, but Everett knew what his boss was about to say as the memory of that brief moment on the boat came back to Mendenhall. The long talk Collins had with the captain.
"Punchy
and I were on one of the last attempts to recover the downed weapon. The F-4 Phantom carrying Solar Flare went down somewhere north of the border. The air force never found its transponder beacon back in '62. The mission was a bust; we never found it. Higher-ups then figured that somehow the mission terminated over water."
"I'm afraid the Western democracies don't get let off the hook that easy, Colonel. The aircraft failed to even reach its fail-safe point. It went down either in Canada or in Alaska, and as the colonel just said, they never found the wreckage even though the most massive recovery operation the world had ever seen took place for close to fifty years."
"What was the megatonnage of the weapon and its type?" Mendenhall asked.
"That was a secret your government kept well. But the DGSE suspected it was what's known as a doomsday device, for lack of a better term, maybe as much as five hundred megatons — powerful enough to destroy any bunker in the world, no matter its depth in the earth. The fact that it was an advanced cruise missile designed for supersonic flight in a straight nose-down attitude, and equipped with a solid tungsten nose cone, it would bury itself so deep into the ground that no bunker ever made could survive."
"Jesus, the world really had gone mad," Will said.
"So, Alexander is after the weapon — and now he's found it, so what now?" Everett asked.
"I suspect he has found the Hyper Glide, as the weapon was known, or Solar Flare," Henri said. "The gold and diamonds was actually a ruse. Your Professor Ellenshaw, without knowing it, of course, pinpointed the location for Mr. Alexander in his report to Stanford University and to the next of kin of L. T. Lattimer."
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