Nasira operated the controls, bringing the rail back inside, but only a fraction. Under each end was a single grenade, its spoon pressed firmly against the rail, pin removed. As the rails retracted, the grenades rolled onto their sides, releasing their spoons. They detonated, shattering the ends of the rail into tiny pieces.
Immediately, Nasira reversed the rail movement so the jagged edges extended out again, right to the edge of the cliff. Now there was nothing on the ends of the rails to stop the platform flying off completely.
Sophia realized what Nasira had in mind.
Benito was on the platform alongside Sophia. Lucia stepped on after him. She placed her PEP rifle at her feet and lay on top of it to keep it dry from the sprinklers.
Nasira called out to them: ‘Hold onto the rope!’
Sophia lay down between Benito and Lucia and gripped the rope with her one good hand, tightly enough that her fingernails dug into her palm. She looked over her shoulder at the tunnel. Four Elohim were running towards them. She felt the on-board motor hum to life underneath her.
‘Are you insane?’ she yelled as Nasira leaped onto the platform.
Nasira slid onto her back and grabbed the rope with both hands. ‘All signs point to yes.’
Sophia’s neck jolted. The back of her head smacked the platform as it shuttled them out of the base. This was a bad idea. She held the rope with her good hand. The rails, then the ground itself, disappeared underneath her. They were sliding down a mountain on nothing more than a metal plate.
Two seconds of eternity. The platform floated through the air, then dropped and bounced against a rocky mountainside. She could see the glistening canopy of the Belizean jungle waiting to consume her.
The rocky cliffside scraped violently against the platform’s underbelly. Then, abruptly, the rock ended. They slid over the precipice. She held her breath as their platform plunged sideways. All they could do was hang on as the platform grated against treetops.
Before it hit the ground, it jarred to a halt, tearing the rope from her grasp. She fell through ferns and hit the ground. When she opened her eyes, Benito was lying beside her. Lucia had dropped into a neat roll. High above, Nasira was still hanging from the rope.
The platform dropped an inch, and then another. Nasira let go, landing next to Sophia and rolling onto her feet.
Above them, branches snapped. The platform dropped again, slicing through the foliage, one corner bearing down on Sophia. Benito seized her wrist and pulled hard. The platform hit the ground, its corner plunging into the damp undergrowth. Ignoring the pain that racked her body, Sophia forced herself onto her feet. From the corner of her vision, she noticed the platform sway. Jesus, it was going to tip right onto them.
It was her turn to take Benito by the arm. She wrenched him across the undergrowth, staggering, then rolling as the platform fell flat right behind them. Lucia and Nasira were there in an instant to pull them to their feet.
‘Where’s your transport?’ Sophia asked.
‘The pyramids,’ Nasira said.
‘Great.’
But the Mayan ruins weren’t too far. They could make it on foot if they were lucky.
* * *
All Sophia could focus on as they swam the Belize River was trying to stay conscious.
Lucia’s and Nasira’s pistols ended up submerged in water, and their PEP rifles endured a great deal of splashing. It would be too dangerous to attempt firing either of them. They were defenseless, Sophia realized, as she emerged with her own pistol missing. She’d lost it in the river.
They followed Nasira up a slight incline, penetrated a line of thick jungle and found the ruins. Sophia spotted the Speedhawk resting on a temple roof. The roof was on top of a step pyramid located on the far side of the plaza.
There was movement behind them. Splashing. She heard the tearing of palm leaves as the Elohim reached the edge of the river and pushed through the jungle strip. That wasn’t the work of a knife. She remembered the rack of rapiers in Cecilia’s quarters. If Sophia knew how to use them, then the Elohim would too. They’d had the same martial arts training in Project GATE. With their PEP rifles ruined by the sprinklers, the Elohim would’ve armed themselves with seventeenth-century Spanish rapiers instead.
Benito had one arm over Sophia’s shoulder, helping her towards the plaza. He didn’t say a word. All she could hear was his heavy breathing. They were still 600 feet from the pyramid; Nasira and Lucia were 100 feet ahead. A pair of Elohim cut between their two groups. Sophia halted, slowing Benito. He saw it too. Nasira and Lucia were far enough ahead to make it to the Speedhawk, but they weren’t.
Sophia tried to formulate a plan, but her brain refused to cooperate. Every thought was sluggish and painful.
Benito pulled her to the left. There was a 200-foot step pyramid right next to them. There was no helicopter on this one, but, as he helped her up the limestone steps, she realized what he was thinking. The only way out of here was up.
It didn’t help that the steps were three times larger than those in an ordinary flight of stairs. The Mayan rulers preferred their loyal patriots to struggle in their servitude, she supposed. It was nice to know some things on this planet never changed.
She looked back to see how far they’d climbed and was surprised to find an Elohim already at the base of the pyramid, rapier in hand. They had scaled two-thirds of the pyramid, but the Elohim was closing in. Benito must have figured they’d never make it, because he yanked her around to another pyramid face. She looked down, disappointed to see another Elohim, rapier in hand, moving up this face as well.
‘Well, that didn’t work,’ Benito said, between breaths.
Sophia forced herself up the stairs, one hand clinging to each step. She could hear rotor blades throbbing. Nasira had the bird in the air. She looked over her shoulder. The second Elohim was already halfway up. The first would be just as close, if not closer. She didn’t need to run to another pyramid face to know there would be an Elohim ascending there too. If she were coordinating the pursuit, that’s what she’d do.
They’d almost reached the top when her body was seized by more flavors of pain than she cared to catalogue. It was hard even to process her thoughts. Her vision reduced itself to a smear with patches of blurred color. Just trying to focus on the next step gave her a headache.
Benito was beside her, slowing to match her pace. She didn’t want to look behind but knew she had to. The Elohim was three-quarters up. In less than ten seconds, he’d be in range with his rapier.
The Speedhawk thundered overhead. Shunting all remaining energy to her legs and arms, Sophia scrambled the last dozen steps. She could hear the Elohim’s nimble footsteps. She could hear several footsteps. Rapier blades whistled through the damp air.
The Speedhawk reached them. She was two steps from the top. Benito was only a step behind her. And behind him, the Elohim. Rapier poised to thrust.
She pulled at the Elohim’s wrist and wrenched him sideways. The rapier sliced through a gap of air between Benito’s stomach and arm. He saw the blade for the first time and sprang forward. They’d made it to the top.
Ten feet away, another Elohim crawled to the top. On their left, yet another. One behind them, two in front, and fuck-all room to move.
Benito dropped his hands to his sides in exhaustion, facing the Elohim. ‘No,’ he said.
The Speedhawk came in dangerously low, pedaling sideways towards them. Lucia was in the back, secured in a harness, one arm outstretched.
Sophia pulled Benito with her, away from the pursuing rapier seeking his flesh. She crouched low, then jumped up to the Speedhawk. Her hand clamped over Lucia’s wrist. Lucia’s hand clamped over hers. She waited for Benito to wrap his arms around her legs. But it didn’t happen.
Lucia hoisted her up so she could grab the Speedhawk’s lifting wing. She looked down at Benito. He was still on the pyramid. What the hell was he doing?
‘Shit! Get Benito!’ she yelled.
She
held on with her good arm as the Speedhawk tilted dangerously. The top of the pyramid came into view. The Speedhawk rolled sharply to one side, rotor blades whipping down, creating a deadly barrier that separated two Elohim from Benito. Great idea. But it left him defenseless against the third.
Lucia aimed her PEP rifle at the two Elohim. She hadn’t seen the third.
‘You’re aiming at the wrong one!’ Sophia yelled.
Lucia couldn’t hear over the noise of the blades. Her rifle blast knocked one Elohim clean off the pyramid. The sound of the shockwave echoed over the Belizean jungle, sending flocks of birds into the sky.
Sophia clenched her teeth. She held onto one wing as the other dipped past Benito. He wrapped his arms around it. A rapier slithered through the air towards him, skewered his leg.
The Speedhawk leveled out. Benito was still holding on. But he wasn’t the only one.
An Elohim climbed on top of the wing and, ignoring Benito, crawled across it. With a knife in one hand, he jumped into the Speedhawk. Lucia, strapped into her harness, moved to shoot him. With one clean motion, he sliced through her jugular. Lucia collapsed in her harness, blood pouring from her neck.
The Elohim stood before Sophia. She was next.
A thin blade punctured the front of his neck. A rapier. He dropped face-first before her. The end of the rapier protruded from the back of his neck. At the very end, the bell handle wobbled.
Sophia realized Benito had pulled the rapier from his own leg and used it to stab the Elohim. She hadn't known he had it in him. Well, he didn’t now; the rapier was in the Elohim’s neck.
She lost her grip on the wing. Benito dropped to his stomach just in time to wrap his hand tightly around her wrist. He was sliding towards her. And she was pulling him out onto the wing.
His gaze shifted over her head and she followed it over her own shoulder. A fleet of helicopters encircled them, each manned with Blue Berets. They were surrounded.
‘Don’t let me go!’ she yelled.
Chapter Fifty
‘Rise and shine, boys.’
Denton’s voice crackled in Damien’s ears. He opened his eyes. He had learned early on in his training to snatch sleep wherever possible.
The thrumming of the rotor blades was muffled but still loud. He remembered only one pit stop. The Speedhawk was packing auxiliary fuel tanks that would’ve kept it in the air for a good 1600 nautical miles.
On his left, the reflection of the sun caught his eye. He turned to see a forest of apartment blocks and skyscrapers that glistened into infinity. Judging by the look of the city, Denton had throttled them at 250 miles per hour across the North Pacific in a single stretch. Damien checked his watch. It was nearly midday. He’d slept through at least four hours of what was so far a six-hour flight.
He didn’t envy Denton having had to pilot the Speedhawk for so long. At least it hadn’t been through the night. Flying a helicopter with night-vision over a featureless ocean was a nice way to mess with your depth perception. Denton had been trained extensively — as had a large percentage of operatives, himself not included — but was by no means a seasoned pilot. So Damien was pleased to see they hadn’t plunged into the ocean on the way here. Wherever here was.
‘Where are we?’ he said.
He could barely hear himself speak, but the noise-cancelling headset seemed to do its job as Denton replied instantly.
‘First Avenue, Manhattan. And by the looks of the police and military presence, we’ll have to land on a rooftop.’
‘What rooftop?’ Jay had stirred beside him.
‘UN headquarters,’ Denton said.
Jay looked out the little square window on his side. ‘The OpCenter is here?’
‘Negative,’ Denton said. ‘The OpCenter is on the other side of the country. But our administrative branch is directly under the UN complex. Unofficially.’
Damien moved closer to the window. ‘And officially?’
‘Officially, there’s nothing under the UN complex.’
Damien looked past the Speedhawk’s wing. First Avenue was filled to bursting point with protesters, some pouring from the underground tunnel in the center of the street. From above they looked like a sea of multicolored candy.
He moved forward into the cockpit. Denton pointed out the window.
‘We’ll land there, on the library roof.’
Damien could see a long, squat building on the edge of the UN complex. Beyond the library were clusters of UN vehicles and soldiers, their signature pale blue helmets making them look like a special type of candy, and a Chinook sitting idle at the front of the plaza. Outside the complex, police had set up a barricade across the nearby four-lane intersection, stifling the flow of protesters. Further uptown, he could see another police barricade keeping back yet another mass of protesters, and smaller groups of police at minor intersections in-between. Not a single protester was allowed anywhere near the north and southwest security checkpoints at the United Nations headquarters. But just in case, there was yet another cluster of police officers posted outside the checkpoints.
‘What are they protesting against?’ Jay asked, entering the cockpit behind Damien.
‘Just to hazard a guess,’ Denton said, ‘I’d say our pre-emptive strikes on the Iranian uranium enrichment facilities.’
‘Oh good,’ Damien said.
The Speedhawk slowed as Denton prepared to hover above the library roof. Damien could see the protesters pushing at the barricades, only to be met with snap responses of pepper spray and rubber bullets.
‘They don’t look happy,’ he said.
Jay was looking over Damien’s shoulder with his enhanced vision. ‘One of the signs says You killed my brother.’
‘My guess is the police killed a protester,’ Damien said. ‘They look really pissed.’
‘They’ve breached the barricade on First Avenue and East Forty-Second,’ Denton said, glancing out his side window.
‘Let’s buckle up,’ Damien said, shuffling Jay out of the cockpit.
A loud explosion, enough to drown out the rotor blades and rear fan, shuddered the Speedhawk. It sounded like something had detonated right behind them. Damien fell into his seat.
‘What the hell was that?’ Jay yelled, hurting Damien’s ears.
He buckled himself into the four-point harness, facing Jay. The Speedhawk lurched to one side. He couldn’t see much of the cockpit window from here, but he watched anyway, clutching his harness as the helicopter began to spin over the library, over the surge of protesters. Denton was swearing as he tried to slow the spin. Damien felt dizzy as the four lanes of First Avenue loomed closer, empty except for the police officers running to get clear.
‘Oh fuck,’ Jay said. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’
Damien shut his mouth firmly so his teeth wouldn’t smash together on impact. The Speedhawk’s belly smacked the asphalt. His brain shuddered inside his skull.
The Speedhawk bounced, spinning wildly. There was a moment of inertia where he felt as though he were floating. Through the window next to Jay, he saw a molten steel ball of distorted blades fly past. What was left of the Speedhawk’s tail fan, torn free.
That can’t be good, he thought.
He locked gazes with Jay. Jay looked genuinely scared. Damien’s short fingernails dug into his palms.
The Speedhawk hit the ground again. Tipped over. Damien felt his body press into the harness. He was hanging from it. Jay shuddered in his troop seat as the Speedhawk skidded onto its side. The rotor blades chopped into the asphalt, wearing themselves down to a nub. The helicopter slammed into something, hard.
Spots of light danced in the corners of Damien’s vision. He shifted in his harness to see through the window on his side. The sky was concealed behind dust and debris. Bits of rotor blades fell to the ground like metal confetti.
Jay lay there, eyes closed. No visible injuries. Damien was worried about broken bones. How long would it take a bone to heal with both Chimera vectors activated?
What if Jay had broken his neck and damaged the spinal cord? Would the Chimera vectors mend that? Was that even possible?
‘Jay!’ he said, trying not to speak too loudly through the headset.
He unstrapped his helmet, but accidentally dropped it. It landed on Jay’s stomach.
He grunted and opened his eyes. ‘What the fuck?’
Damien exhaled. At least he was alive. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Yeah.’ Jay winced. ‘In the stomach.’
‘Look out.’
Damien unbuckled himself and hung from one of the straps. He swung and landed beside Jay.
Jay groaned. ‘I hate heights. And now I hate helicopters.’
There was a popping sound in the distance. Could’ve been rubber bullets or real ones, he wasn’t sure. Pulling Jay to his feet, he tested his own balance. Nothing serious, but he felt like he’d been slapped through a dozen military interrogations.
In the cockpit, he found Denton still secured in his seat, unconscious. The cockpit windows were intact.
‘What are you doing?’ Jay whispered from behind him.
‘I didn’t come all the way here to leave him strapped in a helicopter,’ Damien said.
‘Neither did I, but it works for me.’
‘We can’t just leave him here. And besides, we need him.’
Damien looked through the cockpit window. Three hundred yards ahead, police were firing tear-gas canisters at protesters. One of the protesters’ signs read, 2nd time I’ve fought for my country, 1st time I’ve known my enemy.
Jay pushed past Damien, climbed over the co-pilot’s seat. He slapped Denton. ‘Wake up!’
Denton didn’t stir.
‘Wake up!’ Jay said. ‘Fuck you!’
Damien continued watching the battle on First Avenue. A few protesters were firing back with pistols, and they weren’t police issue. He could tell from the way these protesters moved that they were trained.
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