Adirondack Attack
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In the meadow, Brian Peters, the skinny seventeen-year-old who was here because his father wanted him away from his computers for a week, was now running for his life. She judged he’d clear the descending blade but feared the fuselage would crush him. Brian’s acne-scarred cheeks puffed as he bolted, lanky and loose limbed. Behind him Merle Levine, the oldest of her group, a square and solidly built woman in her late fifties, lay prone beside her cheery red tent with her arms folded over her head. Merle was a single biology teacher on summer vacation and directly in the path Erin feared the chopper would take as it hit the ground.
Erin squeezed her face between open palms as the propeller caught. Instead of plowing into the earth, the helicopter cartwheeled as the blades sheered and folded under the momentum of the crash.
Erin saw Carol Walton lift her arms and then fall as debris swept her off her feet. The timid woman had reminded Erin of a porcupine, with small close-set eyes and spiky bleached hair tufted with black. Erin’s scream mingled with Carol’s as the woman vanished from sight.
The chopper careened toward the escarpment, some twenty feet above the river just beyond the meadow. The entire craft slowed and then tipped before scraping across the rock with exquisite slowness.
Richard Franklin, a twentysomething craft beer brewer from Oklahoma, was already close to the edge and he stood, watching the chopper as it teetered. He reached out toward the ruined aircraft and Erin realized he could see whoever was aboard. Then he ran as if to catch the two-ton machine in his pale outstretched arms. The chopper fell over the cliff and Richard dropped to his posterior.
Erin scanned the ground for the flash of a pink bathing suit. “Where’s Alice?”
Not a bird chirped or squirrel scuttled. The wind had ceased and all insects stilled. The group rose, as one, staring and bug-eyed. The sudden quiet was deafening. They began to walk in slow zombie-like synchronicity toward the spot where the helicopter had vanished. All except for Dalton.
Dalton released Erin and charged toward the spot where Carol Walton knelt, folded in the middle and clutching her belly like an opera soprano in the final act. Only Erin knew the blood was real.
Alice Afton appeared beside her, having obviously been hiding in the woods.
“Alice, get my pack. There’s a med kit in there,” Erin said.
Alice trotted off and Erin moved on wooden legs toward Carol Walton, knowing from the amount of blood spilling from her wounds that she could not survive.
Dalton cradled Carol in his lap, and her head lay in the crook of his elbow. In different circumstances the hold would seem that of a lover. His short, dark brown hair, longer on top, fell forward over his broad forehead, covering his heavy brows and shielding the green eyes that she knew turned amber near the iris. She could see the nostrils of his broad nose flare as he spoke.
“I got you,” said Dalton. “Don’t you worry.”
“Tell my mom, I love her,” said Carol.
Erin realized then that Carol knew she was dying. But there was none of the wild panic she had expected. Carol stared up at Dalton as if knowing he would guide her to where she needed to go. The confidence he projected, the experience. How many of his fellow marines had he held just like this?
Army never leaves their wounded. Marines never leave their dead.
“Can I do anything?” asked Erin. She couldn’t. Nothing that would keep Carol with them.
“Take her hand,” he said in a voice that was part exasperation, part anguish. She knew he’d lost comrades in war and it bothered him deeply.
Erin did, and warm blood coated her palm.
Alice arrived, panting, and extended the pack.
“Just put it down for now,” said Dalton, his voice calm.
“Why doesn’t it hurt?” asked Carol, lowering her chin as if to look at the slicing belly wound. Something had torn her from one side to the other and the smell of her compromised bowels made Erin gag.
But not Dalton. He lifted Carol’s chin with two fingers and said. “Hey, look at me. Okay?”
Carol blinked up at him. “She’s a lucky woman, your wife. Does she know that?”
Dalton smiled, stroking her head. “Sometimes.”
Carol’s color changed from ashen to blue. She shivered and her eyes went out of focus. Then her breathing changed. She gasped and her body went slack.
Dalton checked the pulse at her throat as Erin’s vision blurred. He shook his head and whispered, “Gone.”
From the lip of the cliff, Brian Peters called. “I can see someone moving down there.”
Dalton slipped out from under Carol’s slack body and rose. He glanced down at Erin, and she pressed her lips together to keep from crying.
“Come on,” he said, and headed toward the rocky outcropping.
He tugged her to her feet and she hesitated, eyes still pinned on the savaged corpse that was Carol Walton just a few minutes ago.
“Erin. We have to see about the crew.” His voice held authority.
How was he so calm? she wondered, but merely nodded her head and allowed him to hurry her along, like an unwilling dog on a leash.
And then, there they were on the lip of rock that jutted out over the Hudson. Twenty feet below them the ruined helicopter lay, minus its blades. One of the runners was snagged over a logjam that held the ruined chopper as the bubble of clear plastic slowly filled with river water. Inside the pilot slumped in his seat, tethered in place by the shoulder restraints.
“Is he alone?” asked Merle, coming to stand beside Dalton, asking him the questions as he emerged as the clear leader of their party.
“Seems so,” said Dalton as he released Erin’s hand.
“He’s moving!” said Richard, pointing a finger at the river.
Erin craned her neck and saw the pilot’s head turn to one side. Alive, she realized.
“He’s sinking,” said Brian. “It’s at his feet now.”
“We have to get him out of there,” said Alice.
“He’ll drown,” added Richard.
“You have rope?” asked Dalton.
Erin roused from her waking nightmare, knowing exactly what her husband planned. He’d string some rope up and swing down there like Tarzan in a daring rescue attempt.
Except she was the better swimmer. Dalton was only an average swimmer at best and today he was four weeks post-surgery. His abdominal muscles could not handle this. He’d tear something loose, probably the artery that the surgeon had somehow managed to close. She squared her shoulders and faced him.
Erin regained control of her party.
“You are not going down there!” she said.
He ignored her and lifted a hand to snap his fingers before Richard’s face. “Rope?”
Richard startled, tore his gaze from the drama unfolding in the river and then hurried off.
“Dalton, I’m the party leader. I’m going,” she said.
He smiled at her. “Honey...”
Her eyes narrowed at the placating tone as she interrupted. “You might get down there, but you can’t climb back up. Who’s going to haul you back?”
He glanced at the drop and the chopper. The water now reached the pilot’s knees.
When Richard returned with the gear bag, Erin dropped to the ground and unzipped the duffel. As she removed the throw line and sash cord, she kept talking.
“I’m a better climber. More experienced.” She reached in the bag, removed a rope and dropped it at his feet. “Tie a bowline,” she said, requesting a simple beginner knot.
His eyes narrowed.
She held up an ascender used to make climbing up a single belay rope as easy as using a StairMaster. “What’s this for?” she asked, testing his knowledge of climbing.
His jaw tightened.
“Exactly. I’m going. That’s all.”
Erin showed Dalton the throw ball, a sand-filled pouch that looked like a cross between a hacky sack and a leather beanbag filled with lead shot. Its purpose was to carry the lighter sash cord up and over tree branches, or in this case, down and around the top of the chopper’s damaged rotor. Finished, she rose and offered the throw ball and towline to Dalton because he was better at throwing and because she needed him to leave her alone so she could work.
“Knock yourself out,” she said, leaving him to try to snag the helicopter as she slipped into her climbing harness and fastened the chin strap on her helmet.
“How deep is the river here?” asked Dalton.
“Twenty feet, maybe. The river is deeper and wider here, which is why there’s no white water. The gorges close back in farther down and the water gets interesting again.”
Twenty feet was deep enough to sink that fuselage, she thought.
Erin selected a gap in the top of the rocky outcropping for her chock. This was an aluminum wedge that would hold her climbing rope. The climbing rope, on which she would belay, or use to descend and then return, was strong and much thicker than the towrope, which was no wider than a clothesline. Belaying to the pilot meant using this stronger rope and the cliff wall to drop to his position and then return using two ascenders. The ascenders fixed to the rope and would move only in one direction—up. The ascenders included feet loops, so she could rest on one as she moved the other upward.
She set the wedge in place and then set up her belay system. Finally, she attached her harness to the rope with a carabiner and figure eight belay device. She liked old-school equipment. Simple was best.
By the time she finished collecting all her gear, a second harness and the pack with the first aid kit, Dalton had succeeded in snagging the chopper with the throw ball and pulled the cord tight.
“Got it.” He turned to her and grinned, showing her the tight towline.
“Fantastic,” she said, squatting at the lip of the cliff. Then she fell backward. She had the satisfaction of seeing the shock on Dalton’s face before he disappeared from her sight. Only momentarily, unfortunately. When she glanced up he was scowling down at her. Holding the towrope aloft.
“What’s this even for?” he shouted.
“It’s like those spinner things, only for grown men.”
She continued her descent, smoothly releasing the rope and slowing as she reached the river’s uneasy surface. As she approached the chopper, she realized the wreckage was moving, inching back as the rotor dragged along the branch anchoring it in place.
The pressure of the water splashed over the dome in front of the pilot, who turned his head to look up at her. She could see little of the man except that his headphones had fallen over his nose and there was blood, obscured from above by his dark clothing.
Her feet bumped the Plexiglas dome and she held herself in place, dancing sideways on her line to reach the door on the downriver side. It was partially submerged, but the other one took the full force of the current. She’d never be able to open it.
The pilot clutched his middle and turned to the empty seat beside him. He grabbed a red nylon cooler and laboriously moved it to his lap.
“I’m going to get you out,” said Erin, doubting that she really could.
Chapter Three
Dalton watched in horror as his wife opened the side compartment door and gave herself enough slack to enter the ruptured compartment of the wrecked chopper.
The pilot lifted his head toward her as she perched on the passenger’s seat, now pitched at an odd angle. Her added weight had caused the chopper’s runner to farther slip along the anchoring branch. When the chopper tore loose, it would sink and she might be snagged. Cold dread constricted Dalton’s chest as he watched helplessly from above.
If he had been the one down there, he was certain the chopper would already have broken loose. She’d been right to go, though he’d still rather switch places with her. She’d been so darn quick with those ropes. Erin knew he was capable of belaying down a rope. And he could climb back up on a good day, but he didn’t know how to use the gizmos she had in that pack on her back and jangling from her harness. And today was not a good day.
Beside him, the four surviving campers lay on their bellies and knelt on the rock, all eyes fixed on the drama unfolding below.
The pilot was pushing something toward Erin; it looked like a small red bag. Erin was unbuckling his restraints and shoving the harness behind his back.
The water foaming around the wreckage drowned out their words.
Erin succeeded in getting the waist buckle of the climbing harness clipped about him and was working on tugging the nylon straps of his harness under his legs as the pilot’s head lolled back. Erin glanced up at Dalton, a frown on her lips as she exited the compartment and retrieved the towline he had thrown. She was signaling to him with the rope. Pantomiming a knot.
“She wants you to tie a climbing rope to the line,” said the older woman. “I’m Merle, by the way. I used to do a lot of rock climbing before I got pins in my ankle.”
She lifted the coiled climbing rope, expertly connected it through an anchored pulley that she tied to a tree some five feet from the edge, and then tied the larger belay line to the towline. Finally, she signaled to Erin. A moment later Erin was hauling the towline back down, dragging the connected larger rope through the pulley. She continued this until she grasped the belay rope, at which point she quickly tied a loop through which she connected the belay rope to the pilot’s harness with a carabiner. Erin removed the pilot’s headphones and fitted her own helmet to his head.
Merle lifted the other end of the line, which ran through the pulley secured to the tree trunk, and returned to the rock ledge.
“Take this a minute.” Merle offered Dalton the rope. “I know I can’t haul that guy up.” She then motioned to the others. “Brian, Alice, Richard, come take hold. We’ll act like a mule team. Walk that way when I tell you. Slowly.” She folded the rope back on itself and tied a series of loops every few feet. Then the others took hold.
Dalton dragged his hand across his throat while simultaneously shaking his head. This, of course, had no effect on his wife who offered a thumbs-up and then used her strong legs to haul the pilot toward the open side door. For a moment the pilot tried again to get Erin to take the red squarish nylon bag. When Erin rejected his attempts to make her take it from him, he gripped the seat, foiling her attempts to remove him from the compartment. Finally, Erin looped the small container over her arm using the black nylon strap. Only then did the pilot assist in his extraction.
Merle extended an arm and pointed at the struggling pair.
“It’s moving!”
Dalton shifted his attention from his wife to the helicopter runner. He watched in horror as the twisted remains of one blade slipped free from the branch. In a single heartbeat, the compartment vanished beneath the surface, leaving the pilot, in Erin’s helmet, dangling from the rope, half in and half out of the water. With his legs submerged, the pilot was dragged downriver.
Erin’s rope went taut. Dalton’s breathing stopped as he gripped his wife’s rope from the surface of the rock before him and wrapped it behind his legs. He hadn’t done this since he was in active duty. He remembered how to anchor a climber, but he had never had to anchor a climber who was below him. Dalton sat into the rope and pulled.
Merle shouted from behind him. “Pull!”
The pilot began to rise, his legs clearing the churning torrent.
Dalton ignored the pain of his healing abdominal muscles as he succeeded in inching back from the edge. How long could Erin hold her breath? What if she was snagged on something in that compartment? The rope stretched tight as if tied down at the other end. He scanned the water for some sight of her, fearing the chopper had rolled onto her line or, worse, onto Erin.
The rope vibrated. Was the fuselage settling or was that his wife moving? Dalton smelled the fear on his perspiration. If the compartment tipped to that side, she would have no escape. She’d be pinned between the compartment and the bottom. Dalton considered his chances of moving upriver and jumping into the water. He made the calculation and came back with the answer. He had zero chance of succeeding. The river would whisk him past the wreck before he could reach her.
Just then he saw movement on the line. He stepped closer to the edge and a hand submerged again as the pilot rose closer to the lip of rock where he stood.
Dalton tugged and Erin’s hand appeared again. She clutched something; it looked like a metallic gold coffee mug handle. She slid the handle up the rope and her head emerged.
“She’s using an ascender,” called Merle. “Two! Holy cow, she set that up underwater? Your wife is magnificent. If I was ten years younger I’d steal that woman.”
He saw her then, first her arms, sliding the ascenders along the taut rope. One ascender slid upward and her head cleared the water. Wet hair clung to her red face as she gasped. Her opposite hand appeared, moving upward while gripping the second ascender. The device fixed to a carabiner and then to a sling that she had somehow clipped to her harness. In other words, Erin had released her original attachment to the line and then succeeded in attaching two ascenders and slings to the free portion of the rope all while underwater.
Magnificent was an understatement.
Her torso cleared the water and he saw that the red nylon bag still hung from her shoulder, clamped between her upper arm and side.
“Keep going,” called Merle to the pull team as the pilot appeared beside her and was dragged up onto the flat expanse of rock.
Fifteen feet below him, Erin made progress ascending as he leaned over the edge for a better look at her. This caused the rope to slacken and for Erin to drop several inches. Dalton straightened and sat into the rope. He lost his view of his wife, but Merle called the remaining distance to the top as the pilot’s pull team, having finished their job, abandoned their posts to run to the pilot who was struggling to move.
“Five feet,” called Merle, motioning him to hold position. Merle extended her hand and Erin gripped it, sliding the opposite ascender into Dalton’s line of sight. Then she scrambled up onto the rock, rising to stand before them.
She didn’t even look out of breath. He, on the other hand, had lost his wind. Seeing her disappear had broken something loose inside him, and his legs gave way. He collapsed onto the moss-covered rock as he struggled to keep down the contents of his stomach. The climbing rope fell about Erin’s feet, and she released the ascenders that clattered to the stone cliff top.
How had she escaped?
Merle was hugging his wife as Erin laughed. The men patted her on the back, and Alice got a hug as well, weeping loudly so that Erin had to comfort her.
“I’m getting you all wet,” said Erin, extracting herself from Alice’s embrace. She ignored Dalton as she turned to the pilot. “How is he?”
Dalton had a rudimentary field experience with triage and rallied to meet her beside the pilot.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, still not looking at him. “Thanks for your help.”
But she hadn’t needed it or him. All he had done was dunk her as she emerged and possibly speed her arrival slightly by keeping the rope tight.
“Did you get pinned?” he asked.
“Just the rope.”
“How did you get out?” he asked.
“Later,” she said, and set aside the bag that he now saw was a red nylon lunch cooler. Why had the pilot been so insistent that she retrieve it?
Illegal possibilities rose in his law-enforcement mind, but he turned his attention to the injured man, checking his pupils and pulse.
“Where’s your pack?” he asked her.
“Dumped it. Couldn’t fit out the side window.”
Erin dropped to her knees beside the pilot.
“Shock,” he said. At the very least. If he had to guess, and he did have to, because there was no medical help for miles, he’d say the man was bleeding internally. He took a knee beside her and pressed on the pilot’s stomach with his fingertips and found the man’s skin over the abdominal cavity was tight and the cavity rigid.
“His leg is broken,” said Merle, pointing at the pilot’s foot, which was facing in the wrong direction for a man lying on his back.
So is his spleen, thought Dalton.
Chapter Four
“I don’t like the sound of his breathing,” said Erin, her brow as wrinkled as her wet tank top.
The pilot wheezed now, struggling for breath. His eyes fluttered open.
“Captain Lewis, this is my husband. He’s a New York City detective. You wanted to speak to him?” The pilot had given them his name but little else.
The captain nodded. “Just you two,” he said, lifting his chin toward the curious faces surrounding him.
Erin pointed at Merle. “Please go find my pack and get my phone. Then call for help. Brian, go find something to cover Carol up with and, Alice and Richard, can you gather my climbing gear?”
The campers scurried away.
“Now, Captain Lewis,” said Erin. “What in this cooler is so important that you were willing to kill us both?”
Lewis turned to Dalton and spoke in a guttural whisper. “I work for the Department of Homeland Security. Orders to collect this and transfer same to a plane bound for the CDC in Virginia.”
Dalton felt the hairs on his neck lifting, as if his skin were electrified. The mention of the CDC or Centers for Disease Control indicated to him that whatever was inside was related to infection or disease.
“What’s in there?” he asked, aiming an index finger at the bag.
“Flash drive with intel on terrorist cells within the state. Siming’s Army, and those vials hold one of the three Deathbringers.”
“The what?” asked Dalton.
“I don’t know, exactly. Mission objective was to pick up a package, which contains an active virus—a deadly one—and the vaccine.”
Erin moved farther from the cooler that had been dangling recently from her arm.
“So it’s dangerous?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Deadly. You have to get it to DHS or the FBI. Don’t trust anyone else.”
“Who shot you down?” Dalton had seen the bullet holes in the fuselage.
“Foreign agents. Mercenaries. Don’t know. Whoever they are, they work for Siming’s Army. And more will be coming to recover that.” He pointed at the cooler.
“Where’d you get it?” asked Dalton.
“An operative. Agent Ryan Carr. Use his name. Get as far from here as possible.”
“But you’re injured,” said Erin.
“No, ma’am. I’m dying.” He glanced to Dalton, who nodded his agreement.
“Internal injuries,” said Dalton through gritted teeth. Two deaths, and he’d been unable to do a damned thing to save them.
“I thank you for pulling me out. You two have to complete my mission.”
“No,” said Erin at the same time Dalton said, “Yes.”
She stared at him. “I can’t leave these people out here and I’m not taking charge of a deadly anything.”
The captain spoke to her, slipping his hand into hers.
“It’s a dying man’s last request.”
She tried to pull back. “That’s not fair.”
He grinned and then wheezed. His breath smelled of blood. “All’s fair in love and war.”
He used the other hand to push the cooler toward Dalton, who accepted the package.
She pointed at the red nylon travel cooler. “Dalton, do not take that.”
But he already had.
“Get him a blanket, Erin. He’s shivering.”
She stood and glared at him, then hurried off.
Dalton stayed with the captain as he grew paler and his eyes went out of focus. He’d seen this before. Too many times, but this time the blood stayed politely inside his dying body. The pilot’s belly swelled with it and so did his thigh. The broken femur had cut some blood supply, Dalton was certain, from the lack of pulse at the pilot’s ankle and the way his left pant leg was now so tight.