Chasing Gold

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Speeding beyond Denver and higher up into the snow-capped mountains, the chasing helicopters raced for supremacy.

Their pilot inched closer, knowing something was coming. Their fuel tank was dangerously low, and it made sense that their adversaries would be in a similar state. No confrontation had been forced since St Louis, just this headlong helicopter chase across mid-America. The first bird threaded the gap between two knolls and then they were soaring through the mountain range.

“Prepare for turbulence,” the pilot said. “You can get some odd gusts up here.”

Austin moaned.

Racing at an angle, the choppers twisted and threaded their way through the peaks. Engines roared and rotor blades spun furiously. Alicia ignored the complaining grind of something inside their own aircraft, something probably broken or battered by the earlier battle.

“What’s your name?” She placed a hand on the pilot’s shoulder.

“Dave.”

“Well, Dave, you’re doing a great fucking job. Keep it going.”

The pilot looked grateful, refocusing on his quarry. They swooped along a mountain path, thundering alongside a vertical slope for a while before bursting out over a valley and seeing the ground suddenly drop away by hundreds of feet.

Austin gulped.

“If you’re gonna throw up, mate,” Alicia said, “you do it out of the window. All right?”

“But I could fall out!”

“That’s an acceptable risk,” Alicia confirmed.

As they flew, they passed towns and villages speckled about the mountains and the hills that bordered them. They saw a ski slope, and a cable car clinging to a rock face; even, what Alicia referred to as, “the rabid mad-bastards that travel in them.”

“You don’t like heights?” Russo checked.

Alicia shook her head. “Heights and spiders,” she said. “And the London Underground. Anything else — I’m cool.”

“But we’re a thousand feet up,” Austin whined. “Isn’t that high?”

Alicia turned in her seat. “Yes, mate, it is, but I possess two things that you seem to lack.”

Austin looked blank.

“Balls.”

Austin whimpered and turned away. The lead helo curved around a peak and disappeared for a few seconds. Then, when their own bird made the same maneuver, it was facing them.

“Crap!”

Dave pointed the nose downward, but their enemy was expecting it. He dove too, just as people leaned out of the doors, weapons aimed.

“Look out!”

Bullets split the freezing cold air, causing the chopper to buck and sway. Alicia had had enough of being shot at. She fired a shot through her own taped window, where the hole was, and then pushed the barrel of her gun through the remaining tape.

Dave pointed at his ears. Russo growled a complaint. Alicia shrugged. “Wanna live, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and with my hearing intact,” Russo said.

Caitlyn hung on to a strap with one hand and her laptop with the other. “Me too!”

“Just stick your fingers in your bloody ears,” Alicia growled. “I’m not arsing about anymore.”

Her return fire made the other pilot think twice. He maneuvered out of the way, pulling up and back and causing both shooters to completely miss their shots. She fired again, her bullet clunking off the other’s framework. Both choppers shifted and realigned, dogfighting in the air as they fought for supremacy. Bullets scathed both aircraft and almost smashed the enemy rotor. Once, Dave came so close to the mountainside Alicia saw a puff of rock dust fly off into the air. He’d left the thinnest of grooves behind.

She stayed silent.

Slowly, they spiraled, dropped or veered down and down, toward the ground. Men took potshots at them. Alicia didn’t breathe for an entire minute as both aircraft swung around so that their sides drifted closer and closer, the tips of their rotors almost touching for long seconds. At this point she fired at the nearest gunman, her bullet taking him in the side of the neck. Blood spouted out and fountained down to the earth below even as the man gripped the wound, lost consciousness and then tipped out of the aircraft.

She aimed again.

Nobody scrambled over to grab the discarded gun. The man on the other side couldn’t bring his weapon to bear. Alicia saw another merc and then — beside him — she saw Crouch and the two thieves. Crouch was leaning forward, staring over at her, eyes hard and face grim. She could see he wasn’t tied, but that another merc held a gun pointed at him. She glimpsed Terri and Cutler too, pushed against a window, a man with a knife to their throats.

It wasn’t good inside that helicopter.

Alicia fought her heart and then her head with the decision making. They had to force them to the floor, but without crashing. She aimed at the nearest merc once more. Just then the choppers parted as their enemy swooped down twenty feet and tried to come around. Dave swung theirs the other way and they faced off — the mountains all around them. Another realignment and the remaining shooter was able to line them up in his sights.

The bullet smashed into their side door, destroying whatever remained of the hinges after earlier shots and sending it tumbling down the rest of the mountain. Austin was huddled against that door and now fell without the slightest chance to reach out and save himself. One second the support was there, the next it was gone.

Caitlyn reached out, but missed grabbing his jacket. Austin screamed as he fell sideways, desperate and terrified as his vision opened up to show that the only thing between him and the ungiving earth below was vast quantities of thin air.

The seatbelt arrested his fall for a second, but he was overbalanced; the top half of his body falling out; the bottom half barely restrained as his legs slipped from under a poorly fastened belt. Caitlyn pounced with all her strength, fighting against her own belt, but landing on Austin’s legs with enough force to arrest the slide. Russo grabbed her.

Dave righted the chopper, still falling rapidly toward the ground, but making it as straight and true as he could.

Caitlyn hung on as Russo dragged them both. His hands were on her hips, pulling hard. Caitlyn cried out in pain. Alicia swatted Russo.

“Fuck’s sake, Rob, get off her ass. This is not time for a free grope.”

The big man roared in anger and with sheer effort as he hauled some more. This time Caitlyn came with her jeans and maintained her deathly grip on Austin, who slid back into the aircraft. One more pull and they were safe.

Panting. Sweating. Hurting.

Then Dave cried out, “Look out, get a grip! We’re going to crash this bastard!”

The ground had rushed up fast, giving Dave no time to slow or alter course as they fought to save Austin’s life. Now it was only meters way and they were rushing toward it almost out of control.

Alicia didn’t lose an ounce of focus though. Even as they fell she watched their enemy, saw the chopper gliding away; still heading steadily downward as if intending to land. The enemy pilot kept his momentum, clearing a row of house roofs and then aiming at some unseen patch of land. Alicia fired twice more during this period, but only succeeded in smashing the pilot’s window, so scared was she of hitting Crouch.

It disappeared as homes got in the way and their own chopper came down hard, skids first, on a wide patch of concrete. Something broke, the metal crunching and shattering with a sickening sound. The whole aircraft bounced about eight feet, finding the air again before once more crashing down. The passengers were thrown against the bulkhead, skulls and shoulders striking bruisingly hard. Dave wrestled with the controls. The chopper tipped first one way and then the other, took off once more and then came down again, this time mostly nose first. Shards of metal sheared off; one of the skids ripped away and then the helo was tilting once more as it came to rest, engine roaring, glass mostly shattered; the entire aircraft so battered it would never again take to the skies.

Alicia shrugged it off rapidly, but only because she had the life experience. Gritting her body and nervous system against all forms of pain and danger, she unbuckled her belt, threw open her door and reached across to check on Dave. The pilot was fine, so she climbed up into her doorframe, gripped the struts and jumped down to the asphalt below. She rolled, trying not to see the world spin as her eyes closed. Again, she compartmentalized, not letting it take control.

She gripped her gun, looked up for the others.

Russo’s big, worried face was staring over the top of the frame. “Are you all right? Where the hell did they go?”

Alicia indicated the ground. “Get down here fast. We have to move!”

Her tone was laden with infectious anger, galvanizing the others. Bleeding and still with their heads spinning, they jumped down and lumbered over to her. Austin was first, glad to be back on terra-firma. Dave was last, staring at two gashes in his right arm.

“Hold tightly on to that.” Alicia nodded at the blood. “We can’t stop here. If we lose them now we kill Crouch.”

“And lose everything else,” Caitlyn murmured.

Dave nodded gamely. “Go, just go. I’ll be right behind you.”

With the burning wreckage behind them, still ticking and shedding metal, glass and plastics, they pocketed their weapons and ran fast, dripping blood and nursing wounds as they went, chasing a deadly enemy and the life of someone they held dear, taking it straight to the enemy once more.