“Maybe not,” Adam said, his breath warm on her neck. “And the more difficult it looks, the less they’ll expect us to try something like that. I think a helicopter could come in over that bluff on the Nevada side of the dam, using the intake tower lights as a guide.”
“What’s an intake tower?” Loren asked. “All of us aren’t engineers around here.”
“Those four turrets that look as if they belong on a medieval castle,” Adam said. “Two are in the water on the Nevada side of the lake and two are on the Arizona side.”
Loren looked below her as Walt banked the plane to the right. The four structures squatted just behind the dam like concrete frogs. “Intake towers. Check.”
“Okay, Walt,” Adam continued, “when we come around again, look at the bluff right behind the Nevada intake towers. See that break in the power lines?”
“Sure do. I could bring a small chopper in there easy.”
“So what?” Loren asked, focusing her camera on the two-lane road bordered by pedestrian walkways crossing the dam. “There’s a steady stream of traffic down there where I’m supposed to meet the kidnappers. Where would you land to pick us up?”
“Traffic won’t be as heavy at midnight,” Walt reminded her.
“It doesn’t have to be. One car can louse up the whole plan.”
“That’s where I come in,” Adam said. “I’ll rent an eighteen-wheeler in Vegas. At five minutes to midnight, when you’re approaching the rendezvous point at the middle of the dam, I’ll drive down from the Nevada side. I’ll pull alongside you at the midway point, going slow. When you hand over the pictures, I’ll stop, blocking traffic in that lane. Walt will land right in front of the truck and take all three of you out of there.”
“I see what you have in mind,” Walt said. “If they have any sharpshooters stationed on the Nevada side like you think they might, the truck will keep them from getting a clear shot while we load.”
Loren’s stomach became queasy. Sharpshooters with high-powered rifles hadn’t been part of the scenario she’d imagined when she’d agreed to deliver the prints and negatives. But Adam seemed to think they might be there, ready to cut her and the kids down once the pictures were safely in the hands of the crooks. “Won’t the noise of the helicopter alert them?” she asked.
“The wind blows up the canyon and will carry some of the noise away,” Adam replied. “And the dam itself is noisy. I’ll make sure I gun the motor of that big truck a lot, and maybe sound the horn a few times. If it’s a small helicopter and it comes over the bluff just before the exchange, I don’t think anyone will hear it until it’s too late.”
“Probably not,” Walt agreed.
“Make that pass coming in from the west one more time, Walt,” Adam said, “so Loren can get a good shot of it. Then we can head home, get those pictures processed and developed and plan our strategy.”
“Will do,” Walt said. “The whole thing’s crazy as hell, but it just might work.”
“Are you confident enough to leave the police out of it?” Adam asked Walt.
Loren held her breath. If her father said no, she and Adam had a problem on their hands. They couldn’t pull off the rescue without Walt, so if her father really wanted the police, Adam had agreed to call them. Loren rebelled at the thought of handing her son’s fate over to strangers, no matter how highly qualified they might be.
“Hell, I can fly a chopper as well as anybody, I guess,” Walt said, and Loren sagged with relief. “If we call in the cops, they won’t let me do a thing to rescue my grandson,” he continued. “And if they loused it up, I’d never forgive myself.”
Loren turned in her seat and caught the slight curve of Adam’s mouth. She gave him a subtle thumbs-up.
“This plan of yours has real imagination, Adam,” Walt said. “I’ll bet you were a damn fine soldier.”
Adam glanced at Loren, his expression unreadable behind the aviator sunglasses. “Most of us were,” he said quietly. “We had no choice.”
* * *
THE IRONY of the situation taunted Loren as she drove the lonely stretch of road leading to Hoover Dam that night. Twenty-three years ago she hadn’t wanted Adam to know anything about war and its strategies. Now she prayed he’d learned enough in the jungles of Vietnam to see them all safely through the rescue operation.
The night they’d spent together in Laughlin he’d told her he wouldn’t have been the same man if he’d stayed, and now she had to agree he was right. Certainly nothing in her civilian experience had prepared her for this sort of confrontation.
She’d been alone since midafternoon, when Adam and Walt had left for Vegas to rent the truck and the helicopter. The hours had seemed endless, with not much to do but think. She’d done a lot of thinking.
She’d begun by trying to blame Adam for dragging her and Josh into the whole mess, but he hadn’t intended that, and she couldn’t in good conscience make him the scapegoat. The truth was she’d led a sheltered life, and so had Josh. Perhaps too sheltered, she’d realized sometime during the long hours of waiting.
As if repeating her action of twenty-three years ago, she’d fought to keep Josh out of the military, yet his life was in danger, anyway. While pretending to have some control over Josh’s safety, she’d had virtually none. Adam was right about that, too. Josh needed to make his own choices and his own mistakes. She’d have to learn to live with the uncertainty and the risks. She’d have to let him go.
At six that evening, she’d left Sedona in Adam’s rented Geo, anxiety and adrenaline overcoming exhaustion as she drove to Flagstaff and headed west to Kingman. She’d been treated to a spectacular sunset that had nearly made her cry. By the time she’d turned north toward Hoover Dam, darkness had surrounded her.
Now she pushed the Geo over the speed limit as she crossed a broad valley on Highway 93, passing lighted billboards advertising cut-rate rooms in Vegas. Adam had called from there at five that afternoon and described the truck he’d rented. He’d settled on a white cab as being most visible in the dark. The truck had a long nose and no windfoil. The silver trailer would be unmarked.
He and Walt had bought and tested a communications system that would allow them to coordinate Adam’s arrival with Walt’s. She was to park in a lot above the dam on the Arizona side and begin walking toward the midpoint of the dam at exactly five minutes before midnight.
“Are you okay?” Adam had asked her finally, concern in his voice.
“I’m okay,” she’d replied, although she felt as if a skateboarder were living in her stomach.
“Remember, three blasts of the air horn means to dive behind the nearest obstacle.”
“I’ll remember.”
“If anything pops near you, run for cover. It means they’re shooting.”
“Is this what it was like, getting ready to go into the jungle?”
“It was far too much like this. I’d give anything if you didn’t have to”
“Hey,” she’d chided. “Up to this point, you’ve treated me like a member of the team. You wouldn’t demote me before I have a chance to show what I can do, would you?”
“Never.”
“Okay, then. We can do this.”
“Yes, we can. And Lor...thanks for trusting me. It means a lot.”
“I do trust you.” Trust. Was that the word they’d meant to say, or the word they were using because another one was too dangerous?
There’d been a pause, and the sound of a long, shaky breath. “God, Loren, be careful. I...” Then another silence had hummed along the line.
“What, Adam?” she’d murmured, wishing she could see him, reach out to him.
“Just be careful,” he’d said, his voice husky. “See you soon.”
“Very soon,” she’d whispered, and lowered the receiver into its cradle.
Loren glanced at the Geo’s dashboard clock as Adam’s last words echoed in her mind. “Very soon,” she said into the darkness.
The valley crumpled into
hills, and the four-lane road constricted to two as the descent to the dam began. Two sedans preceded her onto the narrowed pavement, and a motor home followed. Loren’s heartbeat quickened as the road snaked deeper into the canyon. A flashing yellow light illuminated a sign posting a speed limit of fifteen miles an hour, and red lights popped on in the rear of both sedans. Loren tapped her brake pedal and gripped the wheel tighter as her fingers began to tremble.
One more curve and the dam appeared, glowing in the night. Blue lights winked atop the intake towers and recessed white lights illuminated the rock walls on either side of the road crossing the dam. Fifteen minutes before midnight. Josh and Daphne would be waiting across the canyon for the appointed time. Loren drew comfort from the fact that Adam was over there somewhere waiting, too, and while Josh and Daphne walked toward her, he’d be cruising his truck beside them, ready to act if anything went wrong.
She parked in a deserted lot overlooking the dam, took the envelope containing the prints and negatives from the seat beside her, locked the car and started walking. She held the envelope with both hands, afraid it might slip out of fingers that felt as if they’d been dipped in snow.
Across the canyon on the Nevada side, gray stone buildings housed the administration offices of the dam. Nearby stood a giant flagpole, its stars and stripes spotlighted and billowing in the wind. Loren noticed that the wind blew up the canyon, just as Adam had said.
Vehicles moved slowly across the dam a few at a time, but Loren saw no pedestrians on the sidewalks. Someone would have to appear soon. She’d almost reached level ground, and a glance at her watch showed the time: two minutes before midnight. No white truck appeared on the switchbacks across the canyon. Her blood pounded in her ears.
He’d said he’d be there. He would be there. But what if he’d been discovered somehow? What if the kidnappers driving to the site had become suspicious about an eighteen-wheeler parked in a turnoff and investigated?
Then Loren heard a blast on an air horn. Adam! Her gaze flew to the curving road across from her, where a white semi eased down. He was late. Ahead of him an enormous motor home inched along at no more than five miles an hour. Loren slowed her steps just as she caught a movement near the sidewalk on the opposite side of the dam.
She looked more closely, and her chest constricted so forcefully she could barely breathe. Josh and Daphne were walking slowly across the dam ahead of...Barnaby Haskett.
She hadn’t expected him to be the deliveryman. He’d said he’d be out of the country by now. Why had the kidnappers wanted a picture of her if they’d intended to send Haskett? Maybe they’d asked him to deliver the picture so he couldn’t run away. She glanced up at the cliffs on the far side of the dam and her stomach heaved.
Wanting to put an end to the uncertainty, she walked faster. The fast walk threatened to turn into a run toward the kids. But Adam wasn’t there yet. It took all her willpower to slow down again. She didn’t dare look up at the truck or over at the bluff where Walt would be coming with the helicopter.
She clutched the envelope to her chest like a shield, and walked along the sidewalk on the river side of the dam toward Josh and Daphne. Her heart wrenched at how young they both looked, how vulnerable and afraid. What monsters would threaten such beautiful children?
They’d had a rough time of it. She wanted to believe they looked tattered because they’d been to a boisterous rock concert. But she doubted it. Josh’s Cardinals football jersey and the knees of his jeans were stained as if he’d been rolling on the ground. Daphne’s silver lam;aae cat suit was ripped, and her jeweled vest hung crookedly across her shoulders. Her hair, which she’d once tossed with such arrogance, hung in matted clumps. Loren bit her lip to keep from calling out to them.
As she drew nearer, she looked into their faces, rigid with fear. Sweat dampened her armpits and trickled down her spine, and her mouth tasted as if she’d been sucking on pennies, but she forced her lips into a smile. Josh acknowledged her smile with the faintest nod of his head, but Daphne remained stiff, her lips almost white.
Another blast of the air horn sounded, closer this time, but Loren couldn’t be sure how close as echoes filled the canyon. Then the engine roared, and Loren knew the helicopter had been summoned. She strained to hear it over the hum of the dam’s huge generators, the rush of water below them and the rumbling of the truck. She couldn’t.
She judged herself to be about a hundred yards from Josh and Daphne, when her peripheral vision picked up the motor home coming toward her. And behind the motor home was Adam.
The motor home seemed to slow even more as the driver and his portly wife craned their necks to take in the lake to their left and the dam to their right. Loren felt hysteria bubbling in her. Rubbernecking tourists at midnight!
Adam laid on the horn again, and the motor home driver stuck his hand out the window and threw him a rude gesture.
Haskett glanced in the direction of the motor home as it rumbled past, then looked at Loren. He lifted his eyebrows and shrugged, as if sharing a dark joke with her.
The moment was unreal, but then, the whole episode was unreal, a nightmare from which she’d surely awake. Impulse almost had her smiling back at Haskett—until she remembered he was one of the people responsible for kidnapping her child and holding him for ransom. Then ice enshrouded her heart and she stepped resolutely forward as the white semi cruised toward her.
Her timing and Adam’s had to be perfect. She moved toward Josh and Daphne, but her concentration was all on the man in the driver’s seat of the truck. She had to sense the exact moment to hand the envelope over and grab the kids.
Ten feet away, Haskett moved between Josh and Daphne. Loren looked into his eyes and saw fear. Suddenly, she knew he’d been forced to make the delivery and was terrified something would go wrong. The knowledge did nothing to calm her.
She was within arm’s length of him when she sensed that Adam was going to stop the truck. She thrust the envelope forward and felt the tug of an answering grasp a second before the air brakes sighed and a helicopter clattered overhead.
“Now!” she shouted, not sparing even a glance at Haskett as she grabbed Josh by one hand and Daphne by another.
They shot forward, almost knocking her down, but Josh steadied her before they raced for the open door of the helicopter. The wind from the whirling blades ripped at them and drowned out any noise except the frantic battering of the air. Daphne hurtled to a back seat and Josh shoved Loren in behind her. He was only halfway into the copilot’s seat, when Walt lifted off.
“Close the door!” Walt yelled at Josh.
Josh obeyed, and Walt arched the helicopter over the dark surface of the lake, under the power lines and up, up to safety.
“Who was in that truck?” screamed Daphne, her fingernails digging into Loren’s arm.
“Your father!” Loren yelled back, panting. “He’s meeting us down the road at the first lookout point!”
Daphne craned her neck to look back through the helicopter’s side window. “He’s not!” she cried, and began to sob. “No, he’s not!”
Loren’s heart slammed against her chest. “Turn this thing so we can see back there!” she shouted to her father.
Walt came around to the right, giving Loren a perfect view of the road across the dam. She clutched her stomach and cried out.
The truck hadn’t moved.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ADAM HAD KEPT the last part of his plan to himself, knowing Walt and Loren would never agree to it. But he had learned one immutable truth in the jungle; if you had the enemy in your sights, you never let him escape.
The moment he slammed the truck to a stop, he threw himself across the truck seat and out the passenger door. Haskett had a head start by the time Adam leaped to the sidewalk, but it didn’t matter. Adam had been the fastest running back in Flagstaff High’s history. Foot races exhilarated him.
He tackled Haskett from behind, knocking the wind from both of them as they h
it the sidewalk. From the corner of his eye, Adam saw the envelope shoot across the concrete and stop against the rock wall bordering the dam. His moment of attention to the envelope cost him dearly as Haskett kicked him in the face, dazzling him with pain as his nose crunched and warm blood rushed from his nostrils and into his mouth.
He spat it away and relaunched himself at Haskett as he scrambled for the envelope. A split second before Adam made contact, Haskett grabbed the envelope and crouched against the wall. Adam tried to pin him there, but desperation seemed to give Haskett strength he hadn’t displayed before. With one mighty shove he pushed Adam backward.
Adam shook his head and started forward. “Don’t be stupid,” he gasped. “They’ll kill you, anyway. Give yourself up.”
“Screw you, Riordan,” he sneered. Then he turned and hurled the envelope over the dam.
Adam tackled him low, pinning him against the waist-high wall.
“Now you give up,” Haskett said through clenched teeth. “Your evidence is gone, man.”
“Then I’ll have to make do with you.” Grunting with the effort, Adam forced him backward, until Haskett’s head hung out over the seven-hundred-foot drop. “Who told you about those pictures?”
Haskett strained against him. “A little...birdie,” he panted.
“It’s a long way down.”
“That’s...right!” He jackknifed against Adam, temporarily breaking the hold enough to leap away from the wall. As they circled each other, Adam recognized the stance of a doomed man. Haskett knew he’d gambled with the wrong crowd. He had nothing to lose, which made him the most dangerous kind of opponent.
Haskett closed in, locking his body with Adam’s and wrestling him toward the wall. They gasped and writhed, each trying for supremacy.
“One of us...is going over,” Haskett said between heaving breaths.
“I vote for you.” Adam braced himself against the wall and tried to bend Haskett over it again. The level of fear in Haskett’s eyes escalated to panic as he began to slip.
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