and Book II had separated from Brainiac. Indeed, as he now saw, he and Book weren't far from the fork in the canyon where they had split up from Brainiac.
Schofield revved the engine, started to swing around, to continue his pursuit of the rogue South African bipod, when suddenly he heard a strange thumping noise to his right.
He snapped around.
And saw another helicopter — a fourth helicopter — half-obscured by the vertical wall of the canyon, hovering fifty feet above the water at the fork of the two subcanyons.
One thing about this helicopter struck him straight away.
It wasn't a Penetrator. It was far too chunky, not nearly sleek enough.
As he saw it swing around in midair, Schofield recognized the chopper to be a CH-53E Super Stallion, a powerful heavy-lift transport bird like the two that usually accompanied Marine One. The Super Stallion was renowned for its toughness and strength — with its lowerable rear loading ramp, it could hold fifty-five fully equipped men and carry them into hell and back.
The Air Force men must have brought this Super Stallion along to carry the boy back in, as the attack- configured Penetrators only had room for three crew members.
Judging by the way it hovered at the fork of the two canyons, however, slowly turning laterally, Schofield figured that this chopper was more than just a prisoner transport — it was providing support of some kind.
Schofield spun his bipod around, headed slowly and cautiously toward the Super Stallion.
'What are you doing?' Book II asked. 'The kid is that way.'
'I know,' Schofield said, 'but the way I see it, we're not going to catch that boy on the water.
It's time we got into the air.'
The three 7th Squadron commandos inside the Super Stallion all wore headsets. One flew the chopper while the other two spoke into microphones, speaking quickly amid the roar of the helicopter's rotor noise.
They, too, were searching for the rogue South African bipod that had slipped away after the near collision in the X-intersection.
'…Penetrator One, this is Looking Glass,' one of them said. 'There's a canyon coming up on your right, take that. It might have gone down that way…'
The other radioman said, 'Penetrator Two. Cut back to the north and check that slot canyon on your left…'
A map of the canyon system glowed green on each of the men's computer screens.
REAL TIME GEOSAT IMAGE
SATELLITE: xs-0356-070
TARGET AREA: Powell (lake) ct.
GPS GRID: 114°U' I2'W; 23*>45'11'N
OVERLAY: KILE usavsa (u)?>Wv
The three illuminated dots on the left — P-1, P-2 and P-3 — indicated the three Penetrators prowling the canyons for the rogue bipod. The stationary dot near the mesa crater, 'L-G,' depicted the Super Stallion, call-sign 'Looking Glass.' The black line indicated the path of the chase so far.
While the two radiomen continued to issue instructions, the pilot peered forward through the bubblelike canopy of the helicopter, his eyes searching the canyon in front of them.
Amid the roar of the rotor blades and the sound of their own voices in their headsets, none of the crew heard the dull thunk! of a Maghook hitting the underside of their mighty chopper.
Schofield's bipod sat in the water directly beneath the Super Stallion — bucking and bouncing on the churning wash generated by the helicopter's downdraft — having approached the big transport bird from behind.
A thin threadlike rope connected the bipod to the underside of the Super Stallion fifty feet above it — the black Kevlar fiber rope of Schofield's Maghook.
And then suddenly a tiny figure whizzed up into the air toward the chopper, reeled upward by the Maghook's internal spooler.
Schofield.
In a second, he was hanging from the Super Stallion's underbelly — fifty feet above the water's surface, right next to an emergency access hatch built into the big helicopter's floor — gripping the Maghook as it clung to the helicopter's underside by virtue of its bulbous magnetic head.
The noise was shocking up here, deafening. The wind blast from the rotors made his 7th Squadron clothes press against his skin, made the Football hanging from his webbing twist and flap wildly.
Super Stallions have fully retractable landing gear, so Schofield grabbed a fat cable eyehole as a handhold. Then he hit a button on the Maghook, allowing it to unspool down to Book.
Within seconds, Book II was beside him, hanging from the Maghook on the underside of the Super Stallion.
Schofield grabbed the access hatch's pressure-release handle. 'You ready?' he yelled.
Book II nodded.
Then, with a firm twist, Schofield turned the handle and the emergency hatch above them dropped out of its slot.
The men inside the Super Stallion felt the blast of wind first.
A gale of fast-moving air rushed into the rear cabin of the Super Stallion a second before Schofield swung up through the hatch in its floor, closely followed by Book II.
They came up inside the chopper's rear troop compartment, a wide cargo hold separated from the cockpit by a small steel doorway.
The two radiomen in the cockpit both spun at once, looking back into the hold. They went for their guns.
But Schofield and Book II were already moving fast, guns up, mirroring each other's movements perfectly. One shot from Schofield and the first radioman went down. Another from Book and the second guy was history.
The chopper's pilot saw what was happening, and realized quickly that a gun wasn't his best way out of this situation.
He pushed forward on the Super Stallion's control stick, causing the entire helicopter to lurch dramatically.
Book II lost his balance immediately, and fell.
Schofield, already dancing quickly toward the cockpit, dived to the floor and slid — forward, fast, on his chest — toward the open cockpit door.
The pilot tried to kick the door shut and seal off the cockpit, but Schofield was too quick.
He slid head-first — rolling onto his back as he did so — sliding in through the doorway, into the cockpit, and jolting to a perfect halt inside the threshold — one hand propping open the door, the other gripping his.44 caliber Desert Eagle, aimed directly up at the bridge of the pilot's nose.
'Don't make me do it,' he said from the floor, his eyes looking up the barrel of his gun, his finger poised on the trigger.
The pilot was stunned, his mouth open. He just glared down at Schofield — on the floor, with his gun held unwaveringly in the firing position.
'Don't make me,' Schofield said again.
The pilot went for the Glock in his shoulder holster.
Blam! Schofield put a bullet in his brain.
'Damn it,' he said, shoving the dead pilot out of his seat and taking the controls. 'I told you, you asshole.'
Schofield and Book's Super Stallion roared down the narrow canyonway, banking with each bend, heading for the X-intersection where all the rivercraft had nearly collided earlier.
In his mind's eye, Schofield remembered seeing the rogue bipod sneaking off down the western branch of that intersection and then disappearing off to the right, into a narrow slot canyon at the far end.
With the help of the Super Stallion's map of the canyon system, he now saw that slot canyon — it snaked its way to the north, opening onto another lakelike crater with a small mesa in it.
