“You made her jump off a cliff. Some father you are.” Constantine shook his head. Gerard kept his face a stone. “They say a person has about two minutes once they hit the water.”
Gerard saw Constantine glance at Nina. Her dark eyes glinted with triumph, despite the dirt on her face and a bloody gash behind her ear. “Has it been two minutes already?”
“I wonder if her body will go over the falls, or if some grizzly will have her for lunch,” Juan added.
That. Was. Enough. Gerard spun and kicked Constantine hard in the gut. The air whooshed out of him, and he fell to his knees. Another kick across his temple sent him flying.
“Shoot him!” Constantine yelled as he fell to the ground.
But Gerard wasn’t stopping. Over a decade of waiting, of hiding, of praying that Constantine and his clan wouldn’t hunt him down unleashed in a blurry of frustration. “You cost me my daughter!” Gerard kicked Constantine a third time in the jaw.
A crack across the back of Gerard’s skull sent blinding sparks into his eyes, pain, and then the taste of blood in his mouth.
Constantine roared in triumph and launched himself at Gerard.
Gerard curled into a ball, trying to protect his chest, but by the ferocity of the attack, he doubted Constantine would leave him able to stand.
Constantine shouted. Gerard jerked his gaze up in time to see him land in the loam, thrashing under the grip of an apparition from the woods. A man wearing a dark Gore-Tex rain jacket, a black stocking cap, and mud smudged on his face pushed Constantine into the dirt and dug his fingers into his throat.
Gerard fought his way to his feet, breathing hard, brain fuzzy. He turned and saw Juan retreating into the woods.
No!
A shot zinged over their heads.
“Micah, get down!” Another man, with dirty blond hair and wearing a lethal expression, grabbed Gerard by the shirt. “Get down!”
The man pinning Constantine ducked, then hauled him up by the collar of his jacket.
Another shot sent him into the trees, dragging Constantine behind him. Constantine landed on the forest floor, Micah’s knee in his back.
Gerard followed the blond man and fell hard beside them. Constantine’s eyes were wild, staring at him in terror. About time.
“Sparks, just stay low,” Micah said, no emotion.
Gerard watched, his memory clicking into place with a smile. Micah and Conner? Andee’s pals?
Commando Micah leaned close to Constantine’s ear. “We’re looking for our friend, Andee MacLeod. You’d better hope she’s okay.”
Aye, Gerard thought as the blond man cut his bonds.
“Put her down!”
Mac curled Andee to his chest, ready to do battle with the man who advanced on him across their smoldering camp and sounded fresh off some cattle drive. Under his cowboy hat, the fierceness in his dark eyes matched how Mac felt. Especially with Andee unconscious in his embrace. He’d felt close to unconsciousness himself, shivering and numb, but he wasn’t about to put her in the hands of one of Nina’s terrorists.
“Get back,” Mac growled.
“Put ’er down,” the Texan returned in the same tone.
“He’s FBI, Hank.”
Mac heard Sarah’s voice from somewhere behind him and took in how her words registered with the man dressed in a blue jacket, wool pants, and hiking boots. He looked like someone Sarah and Andee might know, someone prepared for the outdoors. “You’re a friend of hers?” Mac asked him.
“Hank Billings. We’ve been looking for you guys for two days. Finally tracked down the GPS signal on your two-way yesterday. Couldn’t wait for the weather to clear so we came in on four-wheelers.”
We? Mac looked around the camp. He saw a woman with an auburn braid snaking out of her hat leaning over Sarah, who was still strapped to the backpack frame. “Who are you?”
“Lacey Micah. I’m a friend of Andee’s.”
Hank came to Mac and held out his arms. “Let’s get her warm.”
Mac hesitated, then released Andee into Hank’s grip. He noticed how the man gently laid her down, tried to rouse her. Lacey rose and joined him, taking Andee’s vitals.
Hank looked up at him. “You’d better get changed. What happened?”
Mac’s teeth chattered, and he folded his hands under his arms. “River. She jumped in the river.”
Hank nodded, like the news that Andee had jumped into a freezing river happened on a regular basis. Mac took a step toward her, stumbled, and fell.
Phillips grabbed him before he hit his head. “C’mon, pal; you need to get warm.” He dragged Mac over to a bag of supplies strapped to a four-wheeler. Mac watched Hank lean over Andee as Phillips handed him a fleece pullover, a pair of long johns, and wind pants.
“They’ve got her dad. They’re going to blow the pipeline.” Mac ducked into the brush, where he worked off his wet clothes. “We gotta stop them.”
“Do you know where they are?” Hank asked.
Mac shrugged on the thermal shirt. “Maybe three or four miles northeast of here. They must be parked on the Dalton. There’s nowhere else to take off from here. But I think they’re on foot.”
Hank spoke into a radio he took from his belt. “Micah, come in.”
Mac heard static, then a voice. “Roger, Hank, we’re here. We found him—and a few terrorists too.” In the background, Mac could hear popping, like gunfire.
“You okay?” Hank’s expression was tight.
“Getting there. MacLeod says they’re headed to the Dalton.”
Mac frowned at him, trying to get his bearings. Who were these guys? He pulled on the pants, then tugged on a pair of dry wool socks before shoving his feet into his wet boots.
“I need a life flight for Andee. She’s hypothermic.” Hank glanced at Mac, worry on his face.
“Roger that,” said the voice. More gunshots followed.
Hank stared at the radio for a second before he shoved it into his pocket. He flicked his gaze to Mac. “They’ll be fine. From where they’re broadcasting, they have a better chance of getting through.”
“Are they armed?” Mac pulled on the fleece and emerged from the woods. He tried to put a visual to the drama he’d just heard.
“No, well, aside from the fact they both spent about a decade in Special Forces.” Hank knelt beside Andee. “Lacey, get her out of these wet clothes and inside a sleeping bag. See if you can warm her up.”
Mac approached, studying Andee’s pale face, her shallow breaths. “Is she going to be okay?”
“I don’t know,” Lacey said, compassion evident in her green eyes. “I’m not sure she’d want you guys around for this.”
Right. Mac turned, saw Phillips on the rock, his head bent in prayer. His softly spoken words came back to Mac: “We expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.”
Mac felt his knees begin to give and reached out for a boulder for support. God had given him a second chance. Not to save the world . . . but to trust Him. Mac couldn’t stop Nina, and apparently he couldn’t save Andee. The thought took away his breath. He had no option but to trust God.
Please, God, don’t let her die. The plea filled his head, his heart, his soul. He’d always been the big-picture kind of guy. The many for the one. But when the one was Andee, that thought nearly crippled him. No. But God could do both, couldn’t He?
“Joyful are those . . . whose hope is in the Lord their God. He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. He keeps every promise forever.”
God was big enough to create the world and the people in it. Big enough to save Andee and the pipeline. Somehow. “God wants to come to our rescue,” Phillips had said.
Mac cupped his hand over his eyes, feeling himself shake. God, I know You got us this far. Please don’t let Andee die.
“Mac, you feel up to helping the guys?” Mac raised his eyes to Hank, who stood before him, holding out a two-w
ay. “Micah and Conner might need you to identify your terrorist. Take the four-wheeler. I need to stay here with Sarah and Lacey, and stabilize Andee.”
“I can’t leave her.”
Hank gave him a look, the same one Brody had given him, the one that reined in his thoughts and focused them. “I promise that we care about her as much as you do. And this part we do well.”
Mac took the radio, glancing at Andee.
“We’ll take care of her, I promise.”
Mac stood there, feeling ripped into two ragged halves.
“Go,” Phillips said.
Mac climbed on the four-wheeler and gunned it through the river and up the opposite shore. He didn’t look back.
The four-wheeler roared over the rocks as he rocketed down shore, looking for a place to climb. Obviously, if the terrorists had made it in on wheels, he’d find their way out. He discovered their path through the trees and floored it, barely hanging on as the machine bounced over the taiga forest due east toward Dalton Highway. He zagged around trees, praying.
Gerard McLeod was a legend at the bureau. As Mac had carried Andee in his arms to camp, he’d run through his memories about the ex-FBI agent. From his fuzzy recollection, Mac thought Gerard had been on the Fairbanks Drug Team, flushing out dealers on the North Slope. He wondered if he’d been a part of the Rubinov bust, sending an entire family of entrepreneurs to jail. A bust that had led to the killing of two of the involved agents and their families.
It occurred to Mac that perhaps Gerard’s choices had less to do with furthering his career and more to do with protecting his family. At any rate, he prayed that Gerard had given Andee her tough-as-a-grizzly demeanor out of his own resources. Don’t go down without a fight, Gerard!
Overhead, he heard a helicopter chewing its way toward Andee and Sarah and the others. Mac could nearly see Dalton Highway through the thinning of trees. Anticipation filled his veins.
Boom!
The ground shook, and an explosion nearly rocked him off the four-wheeler.
Mac slowed, wordless, as he watched black smoke plume above the treetops.
Chapter 20
ANDEE FELT THE warmth—a haze, really, of impressions— both of fear and of soothing voices. She fought to climb her way to the surface, to galvanize her energies to focus on waking up. In the distance she heard the low hum of something, like a mosquito or perhaps a bee. She raised her hand to swat it and found her hand trapped.
Panic seized her and she gasped. Her eyes opened; above her she saw a familiar face, fuzzy but recognizable.
“Andee, you’ll be okay. Just hang in there.”
Lacey? Andee opened her mouth to form words but nothing emerged. Lacey Micah was here in Alaska? But how? She felt so very tired, so numbingly cold, and pain crept into every pore in her body.
Her expression must have betrayed her confusion because Lacey smiled, her eyes warm. “I got you as warm as I could. The chopper is on its way.” She pulled the sleeping bag up around Andee’s face.
“How did you get here?” Andee looked around, saw the blue sky, the green pine, heard the river flowing nearby. It felt like Alaska, but Lacey lived in Kentucky.
Lacey smiled. “Your very worried friend Conner. And of course—” she glanced beyond Andee—“Hank expected Sarah’s call three days ago. When he heard your plane hadn’t checked in and that searchers couldn’t locate your ELT transmission, let’s just say that he doesn’t think anything of calling Micah at 3 a.m. Micah contacted his friends in the Alaska National Guard, and I think Conner and Micah and I were wheels up within four hours. Good thing Dani was around to watch Emily, or I would have missed all the fun.” Her gaze darted to Sarah. “You’d think Hank had a thing for Sarah or something.”
Andee cracked a slight grin despite the violent tremors that raked through her, followed by a wave of pain. She groaned, and the press of fatigue weighted her eyes.
Lacey wore concern on her face as Andee looked up again. “She’s in pain, Hank.”
Another face came into view—Hank’s. He looked like a Wild West hero in his cowboy hat and cockeyed grin. As Andee stared at him, suddenly it all came rushing back—Mac, the river, her father.
“Gerard!” Andee battled the waves of exhaustion, fear pushing at her as she struggled against the confines of the sleeping bag. “They’re going to bomb the pipeline!”
“Calm down, Andee.” Hank pushed her back down. “He’s okay. Micah and Conner found your dad, and Mac is on his way.”
On his way? To where? “What about the pipeline?”
Hank didn’t answer her, but he wore a stricken look.
“Nina did it.” The voice came from above her, and Andee turned her head to see Ishbane holding Mac’s radio. “She blew up the pipeline.”
Andee followed his gaze to a plume of black smoke in the far-off horizon. No. Oh no. She felt light-headed, and she sank back onto the ground and closed her eyes. “Mac was right about the pipeline all along. I should have listened to him.”
“You got us to safety, Andee.” She opened her eyes to the gentle voice, as Phillips crouched beside her. “You can’t do everything. You made the right choice, the only choice you could. You gotta believe that God has it all under control.”
It seemed that she’d heard that somewhere before. Phillips’s warm smile found her soul. “You’re going to do great as a fisher of men,” she said.
His eyes sparkled.
Andee looked at Lacey. “How’s Sarah?”
The drone in the sky grew louder and drowned out Lacey’s reply. The wind kicked up as a rescue helicopter flew over, then landed on the opposite side of the river. Two men jumped out, dressed in the garb of the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group.
Andee nearly leaped with joy, despite being trapped inside a sleeping bag.
She watched as they forded the river, carrying a Stokes litter. They loaded Sarah first, stabilizing her neck with a C-collar and administering an IV of desperately needed fluids. They carried her across the river, aided by Ishbane and Phillips. Then they returned with another litter for Andee. It felt eerie to be on the receiving end of search and rescue, especially with Lacey holding on to her litter, stabilizing her. It hadn’t been so long ago that it had been Andee helping Lacey through her pain.
They returned last for Flint, carrying him across the river and loading him into the chopper.
Flint sat down, his eyes betraying pain. But he sought Andee’s gaze. “You did it, Andee. You brought us home.” He nodded, giving her a wan smile. “Thank you.”
Andee didn’t know what to say. Not with Mac still out there, not with Nina and her gang victorious in their sabotage. She probably should have let Flint keep his shotgun.
Ishbane sidled next to Flint. He looked exhausted, but his dark eyes held a new hue. “I’m sorry,” he told Andee. “I should have believed in you.”
She shook her head, shaking. “No, you should have believed in us. We all did it. We believed we were dead, but God saved us, showing us that He could rescue us.” In so many, many ways.
“Are you going to Prudhoe Bay?” Flint asked Ishbane.
Ishbane braced himself as the chopper fired up, and with the engine roar, Andee barely heard his words. “No, I think I’ll go home. See if anyone might be waiting for me.”
Lacey settled beside Andee, Hank at Sarah’s head, as the helicopter lifted into the air. Andee wondered what might be waiting for her and where she might call home. Again, fatigue washed over her, dragging her deep. She fought the tug.
In the back of her thoughts she had a memory, something soft and sweet that filled her fuzzy brain and coaxed her back into slumber. I love you, Mac.
But what now? Would he blame her for the pipeline’s destruction? Or worse, blame himself for choosing to follow her into the river instead of tracking Nina and the other terrorists?
Everything that had passed between them might not matter anymore. Mac was FBI. So maybe he, like her father, would never have much room for her in h
is life. Despite any feelings between them, they might be headed for Gerard and Mary, Act II.
As the chopper veered south, Andee looked out the port window in time to spot black smoke spiraling into the sky.
Mac motored toward the pipeline and the fireball. Another explosion made him stop the four-wheeler and dive into the bush for cover. Smoke billowed into the sky—black, acrid, the oil fueling the inferno. The blaze seemed alive, growling as it ate its victim.
He couldn’t believe he’d failed. Or rather that God had failed them both. Especially after he’d made the agonizing decision to trust. What if he hadn’t gone after Andee?
He didn’t search for an answer because he couldn’t bear a glimpse at the what-ifs. Please, God, save Andee!
He climbed back onto the four-wheeler, wondering where Andee’s friends were. As if in answer to his thoughts he heard gunshots popping through the blaze. He angled toward the flames that topped the trees, cutting through the forest. Responsibility gnawed at him and dissected his options. Did he help Micah and Conner, or did he gun it for the nearest shutoff station?
What if this was only the first of many explosions?
Please, please let pipeline security notice the smoke from the line.
He debated for a moment before the sound of more gunshots galvanized him. Whoever was shooting—and he had a good guess that it was the terrorists because Hank had said that Micah and Conner didn’t have weapons—knew just how many bombs had been planted and where.
Mac slowed the four-wheeler, hopped off, and crept toward the Dalton. Hiding behind a bushy pine, he parted its branches and stared out onto the road.
Sitting in the middle of the gravel road was an old Cessna 185. The plane burned, flames shooting skyward, as if it had been loaded with gas or oil. The smell bit at his nose, but he nearly crumpled with relief as he looked beyond the plane to the pipeline.
The pristine, still-intact pipeline.
Intact for now.
More gunshots snapped Mac to attention. He scanned the forest for the shooters. He guessed one was Nina. She wouldn’t be hard to find in her red, fleece-lined jacket and cap. The others, well, he’d caught a glimpse of one across the river. Dark hair, green army jacket, bunny boots.
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