by S. S. Segran
A sharp crack reached his ears as a bullet buried itself in the fender of his SUV. One of the two hostage-takers leaned out of the back right window, firing at the Sentry’s tires. Gareth swung his vehicle to the assailants’ other side, but the gunner followed to the left window. The Welshman kept a hand on the gearshift and maneuvered instinctively, dodging a few projectiles while others skinned the body of his vehicle.
The Sentry assessed the situation; it would either end with his tires shot or the gunner running out of ammunition. There has got to be a way to beat this, he seethed.
He narrowed in on the two tailpipes by the SUV’s rear right tire. A memory flickered amidst his thoughts: He saw himself and his brother, thirteen years old—experimenters, troublemakers. Gareth had a potato in hand and Deverell held the keys to their father’s car. Swapping mischievous grins, Deverell jumped behind the steering wheel, ready to turn the ignition. Gareth shoved the potato into the tailpipe, somersaulted to a safe spot and waited eagerly to hear some kind of boom. To the brothers’ disappointment, the car only stalled.
The memory winked away. Gareth leaned on the gas as he avoided the bullets, knowing it barely brought him closer to the SUV ahead. He focused on the first of the vehicle’s tailpipes. The metal began to glow from red to orange, to bright yellow. Before it hit white-hot, the pipe melted in on itself, closing the opening.
The SUV jerked and sputtered, slowing but stubbornly pushing on. Gareth concentrated on the second tailpipe as he drew closer. As soon as the metal had fused closed, a dull boom reverberated across the empty freeway. Smoke rolled out from under the abductors’ vehicle as it came to a rough stop.
Gareth barely had a second to revel in his success. The two abductors leapt out, growing brighter under the headlights of his SUV, their rifles spitting. Gareth knew he’d lost his front tires when the car started to swerve and kick without his permission. In a split-second decision he grabbed his radio, shoved the door open and threw himself onto the road. His tumble was wild and reckless. He scraped his jeans, hands and head but his leather jacket protected him from more damage. Adrenaline was his friend, keeping him from gaging just how badly he was hurt.
With shaky arms, he pushed himself up and watched his ride skid at an angle before flipping onto its side. The Sentry leapt toward the overturned vehicle for cover. The reek of burned rubber permeated the scene.
Peeking past the vehicle’s hood, he found the leading commando with an eyepatch and an imposing stature coming from the left. Gareth shrank away just as two bullets raced past his ear. He couldn’t hide forever. It needed to end, one way or another.
He took a second to steady his pulse, then launched himself into the ditch beside the road. Keeping low, he zoomed in on the leading commando’s rifle. The weapon heated in moments. The man dropped the gun, hissing, and ripped off his blistering tactical gloves.
Gareth saw the second commando in his peripherals putting the Sentry in his sights. Before he could act, a silhouette appeared behind the abductor and delivered a blow to the back of his head. The commando stumbled and spun to face his attacker but was promptly met with an elbow to the face. He buckled. The silhouette tore the rifle away and slammed it against the fallen man’s head. The commando fell sideways.
Realizing he’d been distracted, Gareth shifted his attention back to the man with the eyepatch but was too slow. The commando had pulled out his pistol, firing rapidly. Three bullets missed and the fourth clipped the side of the Sentry’s abdomen, but Gareth barely felt it. He stretched his hand out, using it to bring his ability to bear.
The commando shuddered involuntarily, skin paling in the darkness. He fell to the road as though his legs were ice blocks smashed by a pickaxe. He shivered, each judder shaking his body. “W-what’s hap . . . happening?” he gasped.
Gareth straggled over to the man, towering over him. The commando could barely look up at the Sentry.
“What’s happening?” Gareth repeated, kneeling so he was at eye-level. “Instant cold shock response, mate. You’re freezing too fast and your heart is working overtime to pump enough blood to keep your body warm.”
“Make it s-stop,” the commando groaned. “I c-can’t . . . I can’t f-feel . . .”
Gareth despised imparting threats, but his emotions did a wondrous job chasing the sentiment away. “If I keep this up,” he said, “you’ll get colder. More confused. Your heart will stop working. So, that being said, if you come after any of us again, I will not hesitate to end you. Don’t test me.”
The silhouette of Gareth’s savior appeared by his side. Samuel Tyler gave the Sentry a hand up. “Thank you,” the former Air Force pilot said. “Thank you for coming for us.”
Gareth couldn’t bring himself to say anything. All he could think was that he’d been too late. The teenagers were already in the chopper that would take them right to Reyor.
64
The friends sat on fold-away canvas seats attached to the side of the chopper’s hot, musty-smelling cargo hold. Mariah, Aari and Tegan were near the cockpit, and Kody was closest to the sealed ramp. Across from them, Ajajdif held the box of seeds, his square face set in a cautious smile. A branded white dress shirt and black slacks covered his mesomorph form, and a handgun glinted in his thigh holster.
Mariah had trouble discerning his age but decided to pin him in his mid-forties. His face, marred by faint scars, carried the intensity of a man who’d seen and experienced his fair share of life’s struggles. His accent proved his Russian heritage, but there was something about his appearance that bespoke another ethnicity as well.
“So, we found our missing men in a lava chute up the mountain,” Ajajdif said, almost conversationally. “Well done overpowering them. It’s a good thing I had a lock on their positions before we lost connection. They’re waiting for our arrival now, with a plane that will take us out of Africa. I’m sure they’d love to see you again.”
He pointed at Mariah. “I remember you. You and that woman. One of you sent me through the roof of my office back in the Canadian mining site. I was in a neck brace for weeks.” He called to one of the four mercenaries riding with them. “Sedate her first.”
“You said if we came quietly—” Tegan started.
“All I said was I’d spare lives. The sedatives are to make the ride smoother for us. I’d let my men shoot you with their darts, but at this range it would hurt. A lot. Still, if you don’t cooperate, I will give them the order to fire. I can be nice, see?”
Three of the mercenaries hefted their pistols at Mariah. The girl worked down the lump in her throat. The fourth mercenary readied a syringe and knelt in front of her. She clenched her hands but Tegan lightly tapped a knee against hers, cautioning her not to act impulsively. The needle had barely touched her skin when Kody stomped his feet and thrashed.
“He’s sick!” Ajajdif glanced at the box of seeds in his hands, then at Kody. “Never mind the girl. Sedate him first!”
Kody’s mouth had adopted a foul vocabulary distressingly unlike him. It alarmed Mariah as she listened to the sickness toying with his mind. He shouted and screeched, fighting against the safety belt around his waist as the mercenaries turned to him.
Tegan, they’re gonna sedate him! Mariah thought. We need to do something!
Stand down, Tegan warned. If we try anything, we’ll be risking our families.
So we just let them put Kody under?!
I think the stress is accelerating the infection. Listen to him. He’s yelling that he’s burning up. The fever’s getting worse. It’s best to let them sedate him. That way he won’t hurt anyone. And more importantly, he won’t hurt himself.
Mariah dug her heels into the floor, forcing herself to listen to Tegan’s wisdom, then twisted to look out the oval window behind her. They were a hundred feet in the air; on either flank at ground level, the other two helicopters were lifting off. Beside her, Aari leaned into her shoulder and she pressed back against him, both searching for some comfort to shore themsel
ves up.
A presence like the sun melting away a cold winter knocked on Mariah’s mind. She recognized Dominique instantly and opened up. Domi, we—
The Sentry didn’t let her finish. Your families are safe! You can fight, Mariah! Fight!
She didn’t need to be told twice. From Tegan’s expression, Mariah knew she’d gotten the news from Marshall. The girls coughed, grabbing Aari’s attention. He noticed the change in their demeanor and nodded. To the man who finally managed to slide the syringe into Kody’s neck, he goaded, “You know he’s contagious, right? We all are. And you’re stuck in here with us.”
The mercenaries backed away from the teenagers as Kody slumped, unconscious. Ajajdif snarled. “What are you doing? Sedate them!”
As the man with the syringe reluctantly prepped another dose for Aari, Mariah looked out the window again and located the large log the friends had sat on. She tunneled her energy toward it and the log took off like a mortar, striking the tail rotor of a chopper below them. The aircraft went into an uncontrollable spin before plummeting to the ground. Mercenaries scrambled out from the back of the broken but still upright chopper, some injured, but Mariah didn’t see any fatalities.
A shout came from the cockpit as the pilot relayed the crash to a dismayed Ajajdif.
Emboldened by her feat, Mariah aimed the remnant of the log at the second helicopter’s tail. Realizing belatedly that the chopper fifty feet in the air had begun to turn, she couldn’t adjust the log’s trajectory. It slammed into the front of the aircraft, embedding half of its ten-foot length in the cockpit. She stifled a horrified shriek. The chopper tilted perilously to its right, its controls most likely jammed. It floundered, scraping the ground before smashing into the thorny foliage of an acacia tree. The collision didn’t result in an explosion but the helicopter landed hard on its underside. Mercenaries lurched out of the aircraft, dazed.
With two choppers down, Ajajdif swore wildly, the four mercenaries taken aback by his oaths. Aari unbuckled himself and charged, throwing one of them down. Mariah disarmed the men with a flick of her fingers and Tegan grabbed a dislodged weapon as Aari grabbed another. Muffled pops preceded two men dropping to the floor.
Outmaneuvered and now outnumbered, Ajajdif grabbed Tegan around her neck and pulled the gun from his holster, pressing it against her temple. “I will end her right here, right now!” he growled. “I think I’ll be forgiven if I return with just three of you alive.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Aari hissed.
“You want to test that theory? You have uncanny talents, yes. But you never should have tried this.”
“You don’t have our families anymore,” Mariah fumed.
“How did you know—” Ajajdif struck out with his leg, kneeing Mariah in her abdomen and throwing her back into her seat. “Forget it. Poshel ty. Screw you kids and your witchcraft. We may no longer have your families, but we have you. That was all we needed.”
“You won’t have us,” Tegan leered. “You have my word.”
Ajajdif snapped an order at the remaining Tanzanian. The mercenary picked up a fresh syringe from a compartment under Kody’s seat and loaded the sedative.
“One slight move,” Ajajdif said, “any inkling of your magic, the slightest hint, and my trigger-happy finger will blow a hole in her head.”
Mariah yelled a thought. Teegs!
Don’t do anything, Tegan said. Just wait.
“Mr. Ajajdif,” the Tanzanian pilot called uneasily, his accent slathered on every syllable. “You might want to see this.”
“What is it?” Ajajdif shouted, glaring into the cockpit.
“Please, sir, come here.”
Ajajdif dragged Tegan along as he ducked past the bulkhead. There was a moment of quiet. Then he asked hoarsely, “Is that a swarm?”
“Yes, sir. And it’s coming right for us.”
Mariah pulled against her safety belt to see what the men were talking about. Ajajdif shifted to the side and she felt her mouth drop open. Her reaction caused the remaining mercenary to peer into the cockpit as well. His face mirrored hers.
A black-white-and-red cloud of birds spanning a hundred yards soared toward the helicopter, slightly above the aircraft’s flight path. Ajajdif gestured irascibly at the blockade. “Just go higher!”
“I can’t, Mr. Ajajdif,” the pilot said. “The birds are too close. If I bring us higher, they’ll fly right into us, hit our rotors and get ingested by the engines.”
“Fine. Fine! Wait until they pass, then.” Ajajdif looked at Mariah and Aari suspiciously, pressing the gun against Tegan’s head. They stared back, wearing masks of innocence.
The birds were on top of them in seconds. They all strained to look out the windows, gawking. The chopper hung in the eye of the storm as the creatures trapped them in a tornado of feathers and wings. Mariah reached out to Tegan. This is you, Teegs?
Her friend was the picture of defiance and smugness. Yep. Remember that tree full of birds Marshall saw? Turns out that hornbills can play follow-the-leader quite well.
Mariah felt the chopper start to lose altitude. Ajajdif, thrown off by the motion, demanded, “What are you doing?”
“They’re forcing us to land!” the pilot shouted.
“Fly through them!” Ajajdif demanded.
“I can’t! We’ll destroy the helicopter and crash!”
As the birds formed an enormous umbrella over the helicopter, now just forty feet off the ground, Ajajdif returned to the cargo hold with his arm still around Tegan’s neck. “I know one of you is doing this,” he accused the teenagers, then cocked his chin at the mercenary. “Put them under. Right now.”
Without warning, Tegan clamped her teeth into Ajajdif’s arm. He yowled and crushed his gun-wielding fist into her temple. Mariah saw her chance and telekinetically jerked the pistol out of his hand, pointing it at his head.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t touch her again.”
Ajajdif scowled down the barrel of his gun but didn’t make a move, allowing Tegan to squirm free. The friends unbuckled themselves just as the chopper touched down. Aari hurled himself at the lever at the back of the aircraft and the ramp dropped. Mariah undid Kody’s seatbelt and pulled him up. Aari helped, and together they half-carried, half-dragged the unconscious teenager down the ramp. Tegan grabbed the box of seeds from Ajajdif, snatched the levitating gun and smashed it over the man’s head. Ajajdif dropped with an unceremonious thunk, and Tegan hastened to catch up to Mariah and Aari.
Kody’s head lolled against Mariah. She could feel the fever coming off him in waves. Hang on, Kody.
On either side of the aircraft, two groups of twenty or so mercenaries advanced in the direction of their helicopter. A breakaway group of half a dozen mercenaries on the teenagers’ right was firing at a rocky outcrop a hundred yards away. Mariah saw Marshall returning fire but the Sentries were plainly pinned.
Ajajdif’s groggy voice suddenly blasted on a loudspeaker. “We have four runners!”
“Ugh!” Tegan groaned. “Should’ve hit him harder!”
As the friends raced, Mariah pinpointed the log she’d used to take down the other choppers, then launched it at the last aircraft standing. It rocketed across the golden grass, over the mercenaries, and hit the main rotor. The blades snapped off, one wheeling past the friends. The smell of smoke filled the air but dissipated as the pilot shut down the engine.
“Thanks, ’Riah!” Tegan said. “Don’t need the birds now!”
“Shut up and don’t get hit by the tranqs!” Aari yelled.
Darts hailed around them, all missing the friends by some stroke of luck. Mariah’s eyes flicked to where the Sentries were pinned. The breakaway mercenaries were working their way toward the rocky outcrop.
“I can help them!” Mariah cried.
“NO!” Tegan thundered, and Aari added, “Just get to safety first! Fifty yards to go!”
Marshall couldn’t believe his eyes. Somehow the teenagers had managed to bring d
own the helicopter and were halfway across the battlefield, nearing the Sentries. But why were they dragging Kody?
Dominique used her strength to hold him against the outcrop. “Might I suggest that you not turn kamikaze?” she said sternly.
“The kids—”
“I know, but it won’t do for you to get gunned down when they’ve made it this far.”
Marshall pushed her arm, more to tell her to let go than actually putting up a fight against her abilities, and she complied. Bits from the top of the rock blew out as bullets struck. Marshall leaned out to get another look. The teenagers were so close, he could almost see the features of their faces. He hollered encouragements and they waved wildly, yelling his name.
One form suddenly dropped, followed by another, and another, then the last one.
Marshall’s mind blanked from every logical thought. He ran into the open, not getting more than a few feet before Dominique walloped the back of his legs with her walking stick and dragged him into the safety of the outcrop. Marshall, stomach-down on the dirt, tried to get away but Dominique pressed her good knee into his back.
“You think I don’t want to help?” she hissed. “You don’t think I’m angry, like you? That I don’t feel useless, too? The bullet in my leg stops me from being at full capacity! But we cannot make martyrs of ourselves, not now when no good can come of it!”
Marshall knew she was right, and he knew he was in a precarious place in his mind. He couldn’t think straight anymore and emotions drove his decisions but he didn’t care. He squirmed free and tore toward the teenagers. A bullet struck him somewhere, then another, and another. He fell, yards from the unconscious friends. Hot blood clotted his throat, but he pulled himself toward them.
Not my kids, you bastards. Not my kids.
He was within arm’s reach of the teenagers when his strength gave out and he collapsed. His body worked against his short, rapid breaths that seemed to make the very earth shake. Slight spasms made his fingers and the muscles in his torso and back twitch.