“A relative term, that.”
“I don’t know how quickly we’ll get a reaction once the light goes out, so let’s be quick.”
Sam watched the Big Eyes on the roof until they moved toward the light pole. Remi stopped him. “Hold on, Sam.” Then to Yaotl and the others: “Turn around and face the helicopter.” The group complied. “Now look up and stare at the light.” Again the group complied. She said to Sam, “To ruin their night vision.”Sam smiled. “Yet another reason why I love you.”
Through his binoculars he watched the Big Eyes on the roof until they were pointed to the southwest, then strode forward, knelt beside the light pole, took a breath, and slammed the edge of the machete into the power line. There was a hissing pop and a shower of sparks. Sam jerked his hand back. The light went dark.Remi asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, but it got my attention. Okay, let’s go.”
They separated, walking clockwise and counterclockwise until they were facing the group. “Walk toward us,” Sam ordered.
Blinking and shaking their heads against the sudden loss of their night vision, Yaotl and the others started forward. With Remi in the lead and Sam walking backward, his H amp;K trained on the group, they began moving toward the helicopter.“Twenty feet away,” Remi told Sam. Then, “Ten feet.”
Sam stopped walking. “Stop. Spread out,” he ordered. To Remi: “I’m doing preflight.”
“I’ve got them covered.”
Sam tossed their packs into the cabin, then opened the pilot’s door and climbed inside. Using his penlight, he scanned the controls and panels, doing his best to ignore the Eurocopter’s dizzying array of options and concentrate on the essentials. After thirty seconds he’d found what he needed.
He flipped on the battery switch. The interior lamps and control panel glowed to life. Next he turned on the fuel pump, followed by the auxiliary power switch, which began the prestart of the turbine. After a few seconds of whining the turbine kicked in and began to spool up. The rotors begin turning, slowly at first but with increasing velocity as the rotor RPM gauge began climbing.Sam leaned out the window and said to Remi, “Collect their guns.”
Remi passed the order on to the group and, one at a time, each man stepped forward and tossed his weapon into the helicopter’s cargo cabin. Using hand signals, she backed them up until they were just outside the helicopter’s rotor radius.In the cockpit, Sam saw the rotor RPM hit a hundred percent. “Time to say good-bye,” he shouted to Remi.
“Gladly,” she yelled back and climbed aboard. With one eye trained on the group, she shoved the weapons into the safety webbing on the bulkhead.
“Grab ahold of something,” Sam called.
She wrapped her free hand around the webbing. “Done!”
Sam tested the helicopter’s cyclic control between his legs, then the collective stick at his side, gauging the blade pitch, then finally the antitorque foot pedals until he had a feel for them. He engaged the collective, and slowly the helicopter lifted off. He tested the cyclic, moving the helicopter first left, then right, then nose up and down.Remi yelled, “Sam, we’ve got a problem!”
“What?”
“Look right!”
Sam glanced out the side window. It took a few moments for him to register what he was seeing: Yaotl and the others were scattering across the pad as a dark rectangular shape bumped over the pad’s rock-lined perimeter and headed toward the helicopter. It was the Cushman. Sam caught a glimpse of Rivera in the moon’s pale glow hunched over the wheel.“Nap time’s over,” Remi called.
“I knew I’d forgotten something,” Sam shouted. “The keys!” He returned his attention to the controls, working the collective to gain altitude. In his haste he jerked the cyclic to the right and pressed the rudder pedal. The helicopter dipped right, and the tail spun around. He overcompensated. The helicopter dropped straight down, bounced off the pad, rose again. Sam risked another glance out the side window.The Cushman was thirty feet away and closing fast. To one side a figure-Nochtli, it looked like-dashed across the pad and threw himself into the Cushman’s cargo bed.
“Slow them down!” Sam called. “Aim for the engine! Bigger target!”
In the back, Remi opened up with one of the AK-74s, firing controlled three-round bursts into the ground ahead of the Cushman, but got no result. She switched targets. Bullets pounded into the cart’s front end, sparking off the bumper guards and shredding the fiberglass. Steam gushed from the engine compartment. The Cushman stuttered and began slowing, but not before it slid from view beneath the helicopter.Sam lifted the collective, trying to gain altitude.
“I can’t see them anymore,” Remi called.
Sam glanced out one side window, then the other. “Where-”
Suddenly the helicopter lurched sideways and down, the open side door facing the ground. Remi’s feet slid out from under her, and she skidded toward the opening. Instinctively, she released her grip on the AK-74 to latch onto the safety harness. The rifle slid down the deck, bounced off the bell’s crate, and disappeared out the door.
“We lost an AK!” Remi called. A moment later a hand appeared in the opening, clawing at the deck for a handhold. Nochtli’s head rose into view. “And we’ve got a passenger!” Remi shouted.Sam glanced over his shoulder. “Kick him!”
“What!”
“Smash his fingers!”
Remi coiled her leg and lashed out, slamming her heel into Nochtli’s pinkie finger. He screamed but held on. With a grunt, he heaved his upper torso onto the deck and reached for the tie-down straps attached to the crate. Remi curled her leg for a second strike.
From below came three overlapping cracks. Bullets thunked into the cabin’s doorway.“Sam!”
“I hear it! Hold tight, I’m going to try to shake him!”
Sam jerked the helicopter to the left and looked out both side windows, trying to locate the source of the gunfire. Below and to the right, Rivera stood in the cargo bed of the Cushman with Remi’s fallen AK-74 tucked into his shoulder. The muzzle flashed orange. Sam’s passenger’sside cockpit window spiderwebbed. He shifted the cyclic again, continuing to slide the helicopter left toward the trees at the edge of the pad. He pulled up on the collective to gain altitude.
In the cabin, Remi cocked her leg again and heel-kicked Nochtli in the thigh. Nochtli grunted and collapsed face-first onto the deck, shattering his nose. With one hand still entwined in the safety webbing, she reached over her head, groping for one of the weapons.
Sam looked left, saw the dark outline of the treetops looming before the window. A bullet tore through the passenger-seat headrest, zipped past Sam’s chin, and punched through the windshield. He grunted and lifted the collective, but it was too late. Tree limbs scraped the belly of the helicopter. “Come on, come on . . .” he grumbled. “Remi, can you-”“Little busy here!”
A branch snagged on the helicopter’s tail boom, and the craft spun clockwise like a top. Alarms began blaring in the cockpit. Red and orange lights flashed on the dashboard. Sam worked the cyclic and collective, trying to compensate. Tree limbs slapped at the cockpit window.
Remi’s hand touched the wooden butt of one of the AKs; she grabbed it, pulled hard, and it slid from the webbing. It stopped. She craned her neck back. The AK’s front side was snagged on a strap. In the doorway, Nochtli was pushing himself upright. He hooked one of his knees over the edge of the doorway and began dragging himself toward Remi. Her hand slipped off the AK’s butt; her fingers touched something metallic, tubular-a pistol barrel. She grabbed it, jerked it free of the webbing. Nochtli latched his free hand onto her ankle. Remi set her teeth and swung the pistol in a backhand. The butt caught Nochtli on the side of the chin. His head snapped sideways, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Still kneeling, he teetered for a moment, then tipped backward and disappeared through the doorway.
She called to Sam, “He’s gone!”“You okay?”
She gulped a few breaths and replied, “Shaken and stirred but still here!”
Bullets peppered the fuselage. Sam saw an opening in the canopy and worked the cyclic and rudder pedals, crabbing the nose around until it was pointed in the right direction, then nosed down and lifted the collective. With the shrieking of wood on aluminum, the helicopter lurched forward and into the clear. Now he lowered the collective
