Rescue Me (28 page)

Praying also that timing and luck smiled down on them today.

Rocks. She was supposed to take down the chopper with rocks. She judged the weight of the stockpile of stones they'd gathered. The rocks were the only thing joining her on her solitary perch on a six-foot-by-three-foot ledge jutting out of a rock wall approximately twenty-five yards above the Canyon floor.

Precarious at best. But the vantage point was perfect. According to Seth.

"A log or two would be better," he had said as they'd scoured the shallow riverbed for weapons.

"A log?" She'd merely stared. "We both know that's not going to happen, right?"

He'd just grinned, selected several big stones, tucked them into his shirt, then helped Elena climb up the cliff face so she'd be positioned above the chopper as it came in for a landing.

"Okay, here's what's going to happen," he'd said, winded and panting, once they'd settled her in. "We're going to hope the rotor blade is made of somefiberglass composite."

"Do you know how often the words hope, luck and maybe have come up in the past twenty-four hours?"

He'd grinned again and went on. "Most rotor blades are made offiberglass ," he stated. "Some aren't. So we're
hoping
with the odds. To pull this off, you need to drop or throw the rocks from above the bird into the main rotor."

"Rocks. At the main
rotor
blade?"

"Yeah. Rotor blade. It's the big blade that lifts the bird."

That's when her heart actually jumped to her throat, making talking—not to mention breathing—damn near impossible. "For God's sake, I
know
what the main rotor blade is. What I
don't
know is how you think I can hit it. And even if I could, how you think I can take down a helicopter with a rock."

"Unless you've got a rocket-propelled grenade launcher tucked under your shirt, yeah. You can do it.

And yes, you can do it with a rock. Look. All you have to do is nick the blade, okay? Just nick it. It could crash even if you don't make a direct hit because the impact will still throw it off balance. That'll spook the pilot. Maybe he'll do something stupid—like crash all by himself."

Sweet Lord.

"Be safe," he said suddenly. Kissed her hard and took off.

So now here she was. Hugging the sun-warmed stone from toe to chin. Seth had scrambled back down the side of the cliff five minutes ago, leaving her here to contemplate the magnitude of what she had to do.

In silence she'd watched him as he'd sprinted across the sandbar, stopped abruptly when something

caught his eye. After some digging and fishing around, he dragged a long rope out of the sand.

He'd turned to give her a grinning thumb's up before wading to the other bank then scaling the opposite cliff.

At first she thought he was going to find a hiding place and wait, like her, but instead, he climbed over to a huge boulder, fussed around with some rocks and the rope, and then threw the loose end down the cliff face.

Before he was finished, he'd planted the remainder of the rope along the ground, then hidden his handiwork with sand and dried grass.

Laying a trap, she realized. Like she'd seen her brother lay for a poor unsuspecting rabbit once. Jake and Benny may be unsuspecting. But they weren't cute, fuzzy, harmless little forest creatures either.

And if she remembered right, her brother never had gotten that trap to work on a bunny. What were the odds, she wondered, that Seth's trap was going to work on two very ugly, very mean bottom feeders?

About the same as her odds of taking down a chopper.

With a rock.

And with
hope

… 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 a 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.

But 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 river-bank 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 hisLeatherman out of his boot, flipped out the blade and scanned the rock walls surrounding them for a likely dead fall 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'tyou 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 Danielfricking 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.

Nowabbit stew. But the experience had been just as fulfilling.

He didn't have fulfilling in mind today. He had survival. And 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 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.

And then he lay in wait. Sweat running into his eyes, stinging like hell. Head pounding like a jack-hammer.

He'd rested for all of a minute when he heard voices. Then the distant
whoop, whoop, whoop
of the chopper.

He glanced up the cliff where Elena lay hidden. And 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 wasshowtime . And 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 as 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.

But 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, 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.

And 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 river bed trying to get to the downed bird.

And suddenly survival, not guilt, 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. Only 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.

Chapter 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.

"Gawddamn," 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 inLake Mead .

No more than a second, maybe two had passed since the bird dropped when, on a shallow dive, he cut in to the river.

The icy shock on his system cleared his head. He rocketed a good ten yards under water before his head broke the surface and the current started washing him after the rifle.