Jack froze as the realization dawned on him: that was why he’d beaten the Captain in their race. The Guard Captain had taken a moment to grab a loose gun on the way up.
Aw, shit…Jack thought.Shit, shit, shit.
He stood there, frozen on the horizontal end section of the upturned carriage, the beating wind from the helicopter hammering his clothes. Without thinking, he raised his hands.
“You lose!” the Guard Captain spat in English, grinning, as Wizard’s face popped up over the edge behind Jack’s boots and saw the situation.
The Captain jammed back on the hammer of his gun.
“Wizard…” Jack said. “It’s time to fly.”
Then, just as Guard Captain pulled the trigger on his gun, quick as a flash, Jack’s raised hands grabbed the safety rod on the coupling above his head and disengaged it—
—causing their own carriage to drop away from the engine car, with them and the Guard Captain on it!
THE GUARD CAPTAIN’S eyes boggled. Jack had just condemned the mall to death.
The carriage fell fast. Down the side of the massive cliff.
The gray rock wall blurred with speed as the iron prison car fell past it.
But as the carriage fell, Jack was all action. He grabbed Wizard and pulled him into a bear hug, yelling “Hold on to me!” as he pressed something on his chest armor and suddenly his Gullwings sprang out from the compact unit on his back and instantly the two of them soared away from the falling armored carriage, at first flying downward at incredible speed before swooping up in a graceful glide, leaving the Guard Captain to fall the rest of the way by himself, screaming all the way to his death.
With Wizard hanging from his chest, Jack caught an upward thermal draft, and they glided away from the mountain railway and the twin mountain peaks that housed Xintan Prison.
“Astro?” West said into his mike. “We’re gonna need a pickup farther down the railway. How about near that farm we saw earlier?”
“Roger that, Huntsman,”came the reply.“Just gotta grab Stretch first. Then we’ll come get you.”
Stretch stood on solid ground, knee deep in snow, with the weary Tank beside him, alongside the engine car of the prison train, tilted on the edge of the precipice, the only carriage still remaining.
Unfortunately, hovering in the air in front of them was the Hind gunship, looming large.
A voice over its loud-hailer commanded in English:“You two! Remain where you are!”
“Whatever you say,” Stretch said.
The Hind landed on the snow plain, its rotors kicking up a miniblizzard.
Ten Chinese troops rushed out of its hold, dashing through the billowing snow, quickly forming a ring around Stretch and Tank.
Sitting in the chopper’s cockpit, the Hind’s two Chinese pilots saw Stretch raise his hands a moment before the miniblizzard shrouded the entire scene in white.
Which was why the pilots never saw the snow plain around their gunship come alive, three ghostlike figures rising from beneath it, dressed in white camouflage gear and bearing MP7 submachine guns: Astro, Scimitar, and Vulture.
The three white-clad men took the unguarded chopper easily and once they had it, Vulture aimed its huge six-barreled cannon at the ten-man Chinese team on the ground and demanded over the loud hailer that they drop their weapons. Needless to say, they complied.
Minutes later, the Hind’s crew and troops stood shivering on the snow plain, dressed only in their undergarments, their helicopter lifting off without them—flown by Astro and Scimitar, with Vulture manning the main cannon and Stretch and Tank safely in the hold.
It was the final piece of Jack’s plan: they’d needed the Hind to land here—so they could steal it for the next part of their mission in China.
THE SALISBURY PLAIN, ENGLAND
DECEMBER5, 2007, 3:05A.M.
THE RENTEDHonda Odyssey zoomed along the A303, alone in the night.
In the glare of a bright full moon, endless fields of Wiltshire farmland stretched away to the horizon on either side of the highway, bathed in eerie blue light.
Zoe drove, with Lily and Alby beside her.
In the back of the S.U.V. sat the two young men who had met her and the kids at Heathrow: the unique Adamson brothers, Lachlan and Julius.
Identical twins, they were both tall and lean, with friendly freckled faces, carrot orange hair, and thick Scottish accents.
Both wore simple T-shirts, one black, the other white. Lachlan’s black shirt read, somewhat enigmatically: “I HAVE SEEN THE COW LEVEL!” while Julius’s white one proclaimed “THERE IS NO COW LEVEL!”
They also had a habit of finishing each other’s sentences.
“Zoe!” Lachlan had exclaimed on seeing her.
“It’s great to see you again!” Julius said. “Hey, this sounds like a secret mission.”
“Is it a secret mission?” Lachlan asked.
