by Cherry Adair
"See the short black one right there on the left in back?"
"Cut it?"
Jesus. I think so. "Yes." Unless there's a sequence-delay firing relay—He'd tried to see if there was a dual firing system. He hadn't detected it before but… hampered by his Cyclops vision, he looked again.
4:01:45
How long would it take her to move each wire aside without triggering the firing mechanism to get to one, short, freaking wire near the back? More than—
Three minutes, forty seconds.
And, God help him, what if he was wrong?
"Okay. I'll do this," Lily told him as calmly as if she were cleaning one of her dogs' teeth. "You go check to see who's making all that noi—Holy crap!" A shot went directly over their heads, ricocheting off the wall and sending shards of cement in all directions.
3:08:32
"Are you su—"
"Go!"
He went. Guns blazing.
Blocking out the noise behind her, Lily focused on the mess of wires in front of her. She had nothing to draw on to help her, other than doing her own oil changes and tune-ups on her ancient truck twice a year. Somehow she didn't think that counted here. She took a moment to swipe both sweaty palms down the sides of her pants. She drew in a shuddering breath to calm her nerves, which were jumping like fleas on a barn cat. Oh, God. Oh. God. One more breath. In. Out. In.
The red numbers on the dark computer monitor beside her left knee blinked.
2:42:01
She used the tweezers to pick up and move another yellow wire. What would happen if she cut them all? It might work—if she could get them in one slice. She looked at the way-too-small wire cutters. Not a chance in hell.
Derek hadn't told her what kind of bomb this was. But any bomb was a bad bomb. She really, really didn't need the details.
"This," she whispered to herself, tuning out the grunts and thumps and flying bullets around her, "is a poor sick little puppy. If I don't immediately do this surgery, this sweet little guy is going to die, and the little girl who owns him will be heartbroken, and have to go into therapy for the rest of her life."
She took a breath.
"All I have to do is cut that black artery, and this sweet little puppy will live to romp another day."
Nothing but a fat-bellied little pup, Lily told herself.
Cut the damn wire.
01:09:00
"Let's go," Derek said, coming up behind her. Lily's head was bent over the bomb. Prayer or desperation? Didn't matter now. Her steady hand hovered above the device and he silently applauded her, but his heart squeezed with emotion. If he hadn't brought her here, she'd be safe. How much time did he have to regret his decision?
He leaned down to take the wire cutter out of her hand.
She muttered, "Na-ah," and snipped the wire, then bowed her head.
The silence was profound.
After several tense seconds, and when they didn't blow up as expected, Derek put a hand on her shoulder, and she turned to look up at him, pale-cheeked and bright-eyed. She put out a hand so he could haul her to her feet.
"I think I just defused a bomb," she whispered with awe as she stood beside him. "How amazing is that?"
"What?" He stared at her. Afraid to believe. Afraid not to. Damn it, he'd never been afraid before.
01:07:58
He looked at the computer clock, waiting for it to click over.
01:07:58
"You did it." He turned back to stare at her, impressed as hell—amazed she'd tackled a task he'd seen buckle the knees of most rookie T-FLAC agents.
She grinned and he recognized the thrill of victory shining in her eyes. "Well, duh! Wasn't that why you brought me down here?"
"Jesus, Lily." He laughed. "You'll probably get a commendation from the president."
Her grin widened. "Cool. I'll hang it in the barn. I'm sure all my patients will be impressed." For all her bravado she swayed on her feet, and her face was so pale he prayed to hell she wasn't about to pass out. He put his right arm around her. He couldn't feel her; the entire arm was a dead weight. But she leaned against him for a moment, before saying brightly, "Now what?"
"Now we split. I think there are more of these guys out there somewhere. I'd like to be gone before they get back."
"No argument from me ther—What's this?" she demanded, picking up his bloody right hand where it hung limply by his side. He couldn't feel her hands cupping his. "Where were you hit?"
"Upper arm. It looks worse than it is." And that was bad. The blood was bright red and fresh, which meant the wound was still bleeding. Not a good sign. "There'll be time to play doctor later, sweetheart. Let's get the hell out of Dodge before more outlaws show." If he'd thought she was pale before, it was nothing compared with the way the blood drained from her face now, leaving her freckles in sharp relief. "Blood bothers you?"
"Not usually. But seeing yours, and this amount concerns me a great deal," she told him worriedly. Her eyes rose to his face. "Are you squeamish?"
"No. But my sister Marnie loses consciousness at the sight of it."
"Good thing she isn't here then, isn't it," Lily said briskly. "She'd be in a coma seeing this. Can I—"
"No." He tugged the edge of his coat out of her frantically searching hands. "Stop trying to undress me, woman. You can look at it when we're somewhere safe. Come on." He dragged her to the stairs.
What if he had some sort of clotting problem? Lily thought, running beside him toward the shelter of the plane at the other end of the runway. Would he even realize how bad it was with all that adrenaline pumping through him? Probably not.
And if he was a bleeder, every running step he took would only pump the blood out of his body faster.
The second she could, she was going to rip off that coat and look for herself.
Dawn lightened the sky to a faint milky blue. The snow had stopped, and even though Lily knew where she'd left the plane, she couldn't see it. Cool camouflage.
It would make a great shelter until the cavalry arrived. She hoped that was damn soon. She wanted Derek in a sterile hospital room immediately. Mentally she went through what she had on hand in her own medical bag.
She pointed to the mini snow mountain about three hundred yards to their right. "Over there," she whispered, although they were out in the middle of nowhere and there was no one to hea—
A shot cracked and whooshed over their heads.
"Oh, for God's sake!" Lily said at the same time Derek shouted, "Run!"
She didn't need to be told twice. She ran. Heart pumping pure adrenaline, legs pistoning flat out. Bullets whizzed overhead in lightning flashes, and her breath sawed painfully in her lungs. Her boots kicked up clods of snow as they zigged and zagged between the trees.
Lily stumbled. Fell painfully to one knee, and was jerked up by her upper arm, and set back on her feet all in one motion. He gripped her arm, pushing, pulling. Helping her move faster. Faster. Faster.
He turned, still running flat out, to fire off a volley of shots behind him. The cordite smell stung her nostrils, and her eyes teared. She wanted to help, and turned slightly to get in a few shots of her own; her steps faltered, but Derek yanked her along with him, making her shot go wild.
"Go. Go. Go!" he shouted above the noise of weapon fire and the mechanical roar of vehicles fast approaching behind them.
The sounds filled Lily's consciousness from edge to edge. There was nothing but noise and terror. What was ahead—white snow, black trees—seemed to come at her as fast as a freight train, blurring endlessly as they ran.
Tree bark shattered with a reverberating crack, spraying sharp shards as they passed, racing through the bitter twilight of predawn.
The sound of the vehicles got louder and louder. Loud enough for Lily to hear clearly over the frantic beating of her own heart. She shot a glance to their right. Shit!
Several snowmobiles raced down the center of the wide swath, weapons firing.
Derek fired
off another round. Lily did the same. She was a good shot, although she'd never tried hitting a moving target while running for her life.
They reached the plane, and the dogs immediately started barking their heads off. "Grab—yes." She and Derek each grabbed a handful of tarp and tugged. Hard. It slid off the plane with a loud thwump. "Get in," he shouted.
Blood, black in the half-light, saturated his sleeve. Seeing he couldn't open the door and fire at the same time, Lily grasped the door handle and tugged it open. "Get in, I can hold them off."
Derek gave a quick but heavy glance. "You get in, for chrissake!"
Lily wasn't going to argue. She hauled herself into the plane. "Off, baby!" she told a sleepy Dingbat, giving him a rude shove to get him out of the other front seat. All the dogs started barking.
"Get in!" Lily yelled at Derek over the cacophony of barking and gunshots. She leaned over and grabbed his collar and pulled. She was so scared he'd get shot again she didn't realize she was throwing off his aim.
The shot went wild, missing the wing of the plane by mere inches. "Now!"
He scrambled in and over to fall into the seat next to her. Lily slammed and locked the door.
"What the hell do you think that's going to do?" he asked dryly, starting the plane.
Mouth dry, palms damp and heart in her throat, Lily shrugged. She couldn't take her eyes off the three snowmobiles coming straight for them. Explosions of light indicated the bad guys were still shooting. And the gap between safety and wetting her pants was closing rapidly.
The plane vibrated, then moved slowly forward. Lily's eyes went wide. Her head jerked around to face him. "No! No freaking way—"
"We're sitting ducks."
"We've got plenty of ammunition. Oh, God. Derek. Please, please, please don't—" Lily felt lightheaded with fear as the plane taxied down the snow-covered runway straight for the three vehicles bearing down on them.
Bile rose in the back of her throat as the nose went up and the ground dropped sickeningly away beneath them.
Lily went blind and deaf with sheer, unadulterated terror.
Didn't matter if she knew it was illogical. She'd just come from a building where she'd stepped over dead bodies and defused a bomb, for God's sake, but flying in a small aircraft plunged her into a quagmire of terror.
Her brain flashed a series of chilling pictures—her mother's broken, mangled body. And blood. All that blood. Her stomach lurched. Decades hadn't dulled the all-encompassing helplessness that had paralyzed her and haunted her for all these years.
"It's okay, sweetheart. It's okay," Derek assured her soothingly as he banked the plane.
"It's not okay, you bastard!" Lily said through the constriction in her throat, not capable of tearing her eyes from the nose of the plane and the rapidly lightening sky beyond. Her heart wasn't beating, and she'd lost all sensation in her body.
He put his hand on her thigh and gave her a reassuring squeeze.
"I know you're scared, sweetheart. I know. I wouldn't've done this to you if we had any choice at all. Nome is just a hop, skip and a jump away. We'll be landing before you know it."
"And when we land," Lily told him through stiff lips, "I'm going to make sure you're sewn up and healthy—and then I'm going to kill you." Ah. There was her heart. That galloping, racing wild animal charging around her chest so she couldn't breathe.
He had the nerve to laugh. "Jesus, honey. I know you're scared to fly. But you just defused a bomb, and outwitted some of the worst terrorists in the world. So a little plane ride shouldn't faze you one bit."
She wanted to turn around and punch him. Hard. And many, many, many times. But since Lily was positive that only her full concentration on the nose of the plane was keeping it airborne, she resisted. Her teeth ground together.
"The snow has stopped. Where are your little friends?" she asked sarcastically. So much for being saved by the cavalry.
He grabbed up the headset and put it on. "I'll call in and fin—"
Lily waited. She could almost feel the weight of the vast, open air beneath her. A big, deep blank. God, they were high up. Sick to her stomach, she tried to inhale and get herself centered. Derek wouldn't be flying the plane unless he believed it to be safe. And God only knew, this situation was completely different from the last time. He was injured, bleeding and must be in a great deal of pain. She wasn't helping matters by freaking out. He shouldn't have to worry about her.
She turned, leg tucked under her, to apologize—and almost fainted.
Derek was slumped against his door.
Unconscious.
"Oh, God. Don't even joke!" Lily whispered hoarsely, her voice a counterpart to the dogs howling and barking behind her. "That is so not funny." Even though she knew it wasn't a trick, her brain couldn't wrap around the ramifications that the only person in the plane capable of flying it was freaking unconscious.
Well, she'd just have to make him freaking conscious again.
Fast.
She grabbed Derek's shoulder and shook him. "That's it? After all we've been through?" She shook him harder. "After I survived the damn crash that killed my m-mother, we're going to die here in Alaska before I get my letter from the president? How is this fair?" Her chest squeezed painfully, as though she were having a heart attack, although she knew it was a manifestation of her fear.
"Derek!" Nothing. Not even a flicker of an eyelash.
"God, Derek. Please." She leaned over and slapped his cheek. "You have to wake up now. Really, you do." The poor dogs were going ballistic barking. "Lie down! Now!" she yelled at them. God. She knew her own fear was scaring them, but there wasn't anything she could do to calm them right now. Like a mother with a screaming child in the supermarket, she blocked out their alarm.
Oh, God. What to do? What the hell to do? She had nothing to bring Derek around. No sal volatile or ammonia.
She slid her eyes toward the dashboard, not wanting to move her head. Hell, not wanting to move, period. Like a rat in a maze her brain was screaming: helphelphelp!
"Shut up," she scolded herself. "Save the panicking for later. What do I do now?" The last time she'd been in a small plane was her dad's Cessna. Nineteen years ago. She'd been too young and carefree to pay attention to the instrument panel. As a child, it was simply magical to float among the clouds. Until the crash, when she learned there was no magic in tons of metal slamming into the ground.
This plane was probably just like her father's. As far as she knew, planes still flew based on the principles of stick and rudder. She couldn't begin to comprehend all the dials and knobs.
She looked down at the floor. Derek's large feet had fallen off the pedals. Accelerator? Brake? She vaguely remembered reading somewhere that a plane's foot pedals weren't like that of a car. Was that true? Oh, God. She imagined touching the wrong thing and the plane coming to a screeching halt midair, then dropping, at the speed of light, like a ton of bricks to the ground a million feet below.
She'd be more than happy to do something if she just had a freaking clue what that something was.
The first thing she needed to do was switch places with Derek. She couldn't fly the plane from where she was. Of course, she thought hysterically as she crouched between the two seats to tug and shove his large body, she couldn't fly the plane no matter where the hell she was sitting.
Gentle wasn't an option. Lily had no idea where or how she found the strength, but somehow or other she shoved, pushed and hauled Derek halfway into the space between the two seats as the plane continued to pitch forward. She couldn't drag him out of his seat completely. The angle and his weight made it impossible.
Breathless, Lily struggled out of her heavy coat, pulled her sweater over her head and tossed both behind her seat. Right now she'd welcome a cool breeze. She was sweating as though she were in a sauna. She shoved up her sleeves, took a shuddering breath and climbed over him, careful not to kick, bump or jiggle anything on the instrument panel as she did so.
; "The president should give me a freaking Medal of Honor for this," she muttered as she wedged herself between Derek's large body and the wall. It was a tight fit. She thought of all the movies she'd seen with just this scenario. Somehow or other, even dumb blondes were able to land 747s with just a little help from a cute air traffic controller on the radio.
Radio.
Okay. She took a deep breath and tried to remember where Derek's hand had been the last time she'd glanced at him. She rested her hands on the U-shaped steering wheel. Like this?
She screamed as the nose dipped below the horizon. "Move your hands, move your hands!" Oh, God, oh, God. She adjusted her hands and the nose came back up.
One-handed, she snatched the headset from Derek's head. Thank God. She heard a man talking in a monotone.
"Help—Shit! Mayday. Mayday!"
He continued talking. Oblivious.
She searched frantically on the dash for a button to press that wouldn't plunge them into oblivion. There, an unmarked button. She pressed it until her thumb went white. "Mayday? Hello?"
No answer.
Was everyone in Nome asleep?
"Wake up, people!" Lily shouted into the mic on the headset. "I'm a disaster about to happen. I need some help here!"
She scanned all the dials and lights and things on the dash. The black numbers meant absolutely nothing to her. If one of them told her how high she was off the ground, she really, really did not want that information. Nor did she want to know how close she was to the ground. She kept depressing the button and calling in the Mayday. Eventually someone had to wake up and hear her. She hoped to hell it wasn't after she'd crash-landed into their control tower. But if she had to crash then that's where she wanted to hit. "Serve the slackers right, huh, kids?"