… and with luck
… and a whole lot of maybe.
And to think … once her world had been so concrete.
SETH KNEW HE WAS running out of time, and just like a cat that had escaped half a dozen close calls, he was running out of lives. He hadn’t let on to Elena, but his head had started throbbing again. Double vision came and went like the sun that ducked under, then out from behind a scattering of puffy white clouds dotting a sky so brilliantly blue it hurt his eyes.
He couldn’t deal with any of that now. His gut told him the chopper would be setting in to roost soon, and that Jake and Benny wouldn’t be far behind.
He had to be ready for them when they came. He had to get the drop on them or he didn’t have a chance in hell of pulling this off.
And he had nothing but his experience to make it happen. Hands on his hips, he scanned the riverbank for something, anything that might help …
When his gaze snagged on something half-buried in the silt of the riverbed, he thought he might actually be hallucinating.
But he trotted toward it, waded knee deep into the water and reached down. And damn near collapsed with gratitude for someone else’s carelessness.
It was a rope. Probably lost by a kayaking party or a rafting crew, and it was the lifeline he needed.
“Sweet mother of God,” he muttered when he’d hauled in the full one hundred fifty-plus feet of it. He was in business.
He tugged his Leatherman out of his boot, flipped out the blade and scanned the rock walls surrounding them for a likely deadfall trap. Thought back to a time when he was ten and he and his dad were camping and he was determined to catch something wild for dinner.
He heard his dad’s voice in his head.
“Son, this is how it works. Imagine a brick, a six-inch long stick and a shoelace. Tie one end of the shoelace to one end of the stick. Point it up with the shoelace-end of the stick on the ground. Prop the brick up on the other end of the stick. When you yank the shoelace, the brick falls, trapping whatever is under it.
“Now improvise. No brick. No shoelace. But there are lots of sticks. Why don’t you see what you can come up with?”
He’d come up with a rope from the tent and a cage he’d constructed out of flexible willow twigs woven together with bark. Then he’d propped that sorry-looking sucker up, laid the rope on the forest floor, covered it with leaves and pine needles and hidden in the bushes and waited for his prey.
In his mind, he’d been Daniel fricking Boone. One of the last Mohicans. A trailblazing mountain man. And he’d waited. And waited. Only to fall asleep and wake up snug in his sleeping bag where his father had carried him into the tent several hours later.
No wabbit stew. But the experience had been just as fulfilling.
He didn’t have fulfilling in mind today. He had survival. Fortunately, he had the added advantage of Jake and Benny having IQs less than the combined wildlife population in the area. And he didn’t have trapping in mind. He was more of a mind for crushing.
He scanned the cliff face—and spotted exactly what he was looking for. A huge boulder, precariously perched on a ledge. Unstable as hell. At least it looked that way.
If he could manage to tie the rope around the base without dislodging it, control the trajectory of the fall by wedging some stones under it to help guide it—he was golden.
He was sweating like a butcher, dizzy and nauseated by the time he finished a series of loops and knots then climbed back down the cliff, dodging beaver tail and prickly pear cactus as he went. There was no way to camouflage the rope on the rock face, but since it could conceivably be mistaken for a long tree root or a vine, he figured he was safe. Once he reached the bottom, he covered the rope with sand and, using grass to cover his tracks, swept his way into the brush.
Then he lay in wait. Sweat running into his eyes, stinging like hell. Head pounding like a jackhammer.
He’d rested for all of a minute when he heard voices. Then the sound of the chopper.
He glanced up the cliff where Elena lay hidden. Felt his heart slam like a clean-up batter, bottom of the ninth, tying run on third and he was sitting with a three–two count.
If anything happened to her. If … Jesus, if she got hurt … or …
No.
He wasn’t going to think that way. She was steady. She was solid.
His vision blurred. He fought it. Fought the pain and the light-headedness.
It was showtime. The boys were just in time for the curtain to go up.
ELENA FELT THE VIBRATION of the chopper’s engine clear to her bones. It zoomed in from the west and hovered a hundred yards above the spot where Seth said it would land, and not more than twenty yards north of the cliff where she lay in wait.
The bird started its slow descent and the vibrations increased as dust kicked up by the rotor wash stung her face and her eyes.
Closer. It was getting closer.
She was bone-deep scared. So scared she just wanted to have this over. So close to panic she wanted to start hurling rocks right now! Wildly. Blindly. Just get it over with.
She made herself wait. Made herself lay there. Still as stone. Still except for the trembling in her limbs, her erratic breaths and the staccato beat of her heart in her chest and her ears and her throat.
“Hurry. Hurry. Hurry,” she whispered, willing the bird down, down below her.
An eternity passed as it slowly descended. Then an eon as the sound of the blades slammed into her ears and the dust swirled like a tornado stinging her eyes and peppering her skin with grit.
“Hurry!” she shouted aloud, her voice drowned out by the engine roar.
As if her edict actually held sway, the dust settled in an instant. Stunned, she lifted her head.
Below her. The chopper had finally dropped to hover below her, pushing the rotor wash with it, stilling the air above the blades, stirring up a circle of white caps directly below.
Now. She had to do this now!
Reacting with a pure adrenaline rush, she shot to her feet, grabbed the first stone and hurled with all her might.
And missed.
She didn’t hesitate. She picked up another. Threw another, another, another.
Missed again.
Yet again.
Roaring with frustration and fear, she dug deep, drew a steadying breath and made one final, powerful throw.
And made the hit.
The sound was unlike anything she’d ever heard. A crunch, followed by a wheezing, whining groan as the bird wobbled, spun, then dipped nose first and plummeted the rest of the way to the river.
Chest heaving, she raked the hair back from her eyes, squinted through the grit then sucked in a breath in horror and triumph and a little bit of despair. The chopper crashed onto the edge of the sandbar and rolled to its side, the rotor blades snapping to a skidding halt in the sand. Fire shot out of the engine cowling as the bird totally upended and lodged upside down, the cockpit half submerged in the river.
She’d done it! She’d dropped the chopper.
And in the process, she’d taken a life.
Two lives.
No reminders that the men in the helicopter had intended to kill her and Seth could stall the sudden nausea that hit her like a roundhouse punch.
She dropped to her knees—just as a bullet whizzed by her head and ricocheted with a sharp, twanging ping off the rock face above her.
“Jesus. Jesus,” she muttered, ducking for cover. Someone was shooting at her.
She chanced lifting her head—and saw two figures running along the cliff fifty feet above the opposite riverbank.
Fire flashed from the barrel of the pistol as Jake shot at her again, his aim wild as he half limped, half ran down the uneven path toward the riverbed trying to get to the downed bird.
Survival, not guilt, suddenly jumped to the top of her priority list again.
Seth. Seth was down there. Unarmed. Much less than one hundred percent. She’d noticed. Chosen
not to mention how pale he looked, or that his eyes looked a little glazed.
No food, the burning sun and consuming heat and, conversely, the icy dip they’d taken in the river had all taken a toll on him. He’d wanted her to forget that he was dealing with a concussion, though, so she’d let him think she had.
Only now, she couldn’t forget it. Now, he was down there trying to face off against two really bad men with really big guns.
She had to get to him, but knew she was as good as dead if she started down the cliff. She’d stand out like a stripper in church if she tried to scale the rock wall now. Jake or Benny would pick her off like one of those little metal ducks in a shooting gallery.
Frustrated, afraid for Seth, all she could do was hug the earth and wait. And hope and pray that maybe their luck would hold out just a little bit longer.
TEN
ONE SECOND SETH WAS certain the bird was going to make it down without a scratch and he was going to be facing not two but four men and the next the bird jerked, spun, belched out smoke and dropped from the sky like a meteor gone wild.
“Gawd damn,” he uttered under his breath and watched it fall, felt the earth shake and the spray of water as the blades chopped and slashed into the river and spat liquid ice in twenty directions.
She did it. Sonofabitch, she did it!
He wasn’t more than ten yards from the crash site, hiding in the brush, waiting and ready to spring his deadfall trap on the off chance Jake and Benny stumbled into it.
He rose from a crouch, fought a crippling wave of dizziness and steadied himself before heading for the downed bird to see if he could find a weapon when an M-16 rifle floated out of the upturned and half-submerged cockpit.
He didn’t think. He just reacted. He wanted that weapon and there was only one way to get it before it drifted downstream and their best chance of getting a jump on Jake and Benny ended up in Lake Mead.
No more than a second, maybe two had passed since the bird dropped when, on a shallow dive, he cut into the river.
The icy shock on his system cleared his head. He rocketed a good ten yards underwater before his head broke the surface and the current started washing him after the rifle.
It took another moment to get his bearings—then he spotted the weapon ahead of him, and thank the fates, the shoulder strap had snagged on a tree root bleached bone white and winter gray by time and sun. He snagged the same root as he floated past, and, fighting the current, freed the M-16. Then he dragged himself along the length of the tree to the shallows along the bank.
He figured no more than fifteen seconds had passed as, shaking from the physical effort, he slogged out of the river, panting and swaying … then frantically ducked for cover when he heard a gunshot.
He rolled to his back. Cradling the rifle over his chest, he checked the magazine and found it full. Then he fumbled with cold fingers to pour the water out of the gas system. It took a couple more minutes than he had to spare, but it couldn’t be helped. As confident as he could be that the rifle was functional, he rolled back to his stomach.
Jake and Benny, looking battered and bruised and horrified by the site of the downed chopper, scrambled down the far bank … and directly toward the deadfall trap Seth had set.
The only problem was, Seth wasn’t anywhere near the rope to trigger it.
Strike that. It wasn’t the only problem. Jake was firing wildly toward the spot on the cliff where Elena was as good as a sitting duck.
Seth didn’t hesitate. He sighted down the barrel—cursed when his vision went fuzzy—and did his damnedest to get a bead on Jake.
He squeezed off a round, then watched as the two men dove behind a boulder and started wildly firing their pistols.
“Not so brave when the odds even up a bit, are you, assholes?” he muttered and, rising, laid down another burst of fire to cover himself as he ran back toward the crash site with the hope of gaining a tactical advantage on the two men pinned down behind the boulder.
“Elena?” he yelled, for the first time close enough to check on her.
“I’m okay!” she yelled back.
If relief had been any sweeter, he’d have overdosed on it. Since he was already dizzy from the damn rap his head had taken, he couldn’t afford another hit to his equilibrium.
“Stay put,” he ordered. “Me and the boys will have this settled in no time, right, boys?” he yelled across the narrow expanse of river that was linked by the sandbar.
“Fuck you!”
Jake. He recognized the voice. Just like he recognized the sound of his ammo as .45s. Another few rounds flew past him.
“You boys need to work on your attitude,” Seth yelled, his tone scolding and intentionally irritating as hell. And, he hoped, not giving away that he felt himself fading.
“I’ll give you attitude, pig. You killed my old man!”
Jake wasn’t just mad, he was bawling. Any closer to the edge and he’d make a major mistake. Like charging Seth. Which was exactly what he wanted Jake to do. So he goaded him some more.
“Now see, you’re just not looking at this right, Jakie boy. I did you a favor. You can be the man now. The man he never let you be.”
“You shut up about him! You shut the fuck up about him! This is your fault! Yours! And you’re dead because of it! Dead, you hear me?”
“Now, Jake. You keep forgetting, we were minding our own business. You’re the ones who came looking for trouble. Well, you found it. In case you haven’t figured it out, you can’t hit shit with those handguns at this range. On the other hand, this M-16 can take you out like a bad prom date. Now, come on out, fellas, before you force me to do something I really don’t want to do—which is waste perfectly good ammo on the likes of you.”
Silence.
Spots before his eyes.
Shit.
Seth shook his head. Hurt like hell, but his vision cleared. Just in time to see a shadow move then loom over him from behind.
He spun around … and felt his jaw crack when a booted foot slammed into his face. Then all he saw was black.
WHEN SETH CAME TO, pain raged through his swollen jaw, stabbed him behind his eyes and at the back of his head. Clyde Devine stood over him, a 1911A pistol pointed dead center at his chest.
Devine was soaking wet, breathing hard; blood trickled down his temple. Murder fired in eyes as gray as the hair falling out of a gnarled ponytail. Pain furrowed brows etched deep with age and hard living.
On her knees in front of Devine, Elena was silent, her face grimacing in pain as Devine’s fist twisted in her hair and jerked her head back hard.
“She goes first,” Clyde said, a lethal calmness in his tone that echoed with evil. “She’s going slow and screaming. And you’re not goin’ to be able to do a damn thing about it but watch her beg and watch her bleed.”
SETH DIDN’T HAVE TO fake weakness. His ears rang. He fought back the urge to vomit, certain that if he did, he’d probably choke to death. His jaw was so swollen he couldn’t open his mouth. Broken, he suspected. Along with a couple of teeth.
But he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. Because if he let these bastards get him, then Elena was as good as dead too.
So he stayed on his feet, tripping and stumbling as Devine marched him toward Jake and Benny, who had come out from behind their hidey-hole and were carefully picking their way down the steep and craggy cliff face.
Hidey-hole … Seth thought. Which was in a direct line to his deadfall trap.
Forcing himself to focus through the weakness and pain, he scanned the ground at his feet.
Where the hell was it?
Where the hell was the rope?
He flinched when a snake slithered across the sand.
No. Not a snake.
He squinted. Fought to focus. Dropped to all fours. Then fell flat on his face. Brain fuzzy. Pain clawing at him with eagle talons.
Sand in his mouth. In his eyes. Rope. Not a snake. A rope beneath his hands.
Rope.
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He clutched it as Devine kicked him in the side.
Fire screamed through his ribs. He doubled over in agony. Heard himself groan.
“Get up! Get your sorry ass up or I’ll take the first slice out of her right now.”
“Wait … wait,” Seth slurred through ungodly pain, struggling to make the words come out. Digging with everything in him, he pushed himself to all fours … fought for a sustaining breath … then reared back, rope in hand, jerking with all his might.
He felt the rumble, heard the crunch and grind and bass vibrations as the boulder dislodged and roared down the cliff at warp speed times two.
A man screamed. Elena cried out. Devine cursed and kicked him again.
When Seth opened his eyes, the barrel of the M-16 was bearing down, aiming for the spot between his brows.
“You sonofabitch!” Devine roared.
Adrenaline shot through Seth’s blood like a fuel injection system pumped gas through a Formula 1 racer.
He grabbed the barrel, twisted and jerked. Heard the burst of fire as Devine pulled the trigger. Felt the burn on his fingers, wrapped in a death grip around the barrel. Jerked when the sharp, cutting sting of the bullet ripped into his body followed by Devine crashing down on him.
It was all muscle memory and blind, raging instinct from that instant on. He fought—not for his life but for Elena’s, aware of her screams on a peripheral level. Aware of the pain on an entirely different plane that he blocked as he wrestled Devine to his back, crashed his fist into the drug lord’s face with a crunch of bone and spurt of blood.
He hit him again. Straddling his supine body, he kept on hitting him as blood sprayed and Devine’s lifeless form lagged like a broken doll with every punch.
He heard his name from a distance. Heard the horror, the pleading to stop, the assurance that Devine was dead.
Still he kept swinging. Wildly now. With no control. No target, no focus … no strength.
No … light.
No … bearings.
Not even a vague idea of where he was, what he was doing, why each breath he took told him to deliver death.
Then he couldn’t swing any more. Winded, weak, sluggish with pain and fatigue, he stopped.