The movement of Sarah and the weight of the airframe was still trying to push the bird into the ground—it fell another ten feet and Sarah closed her eyes, thinking they would hit and the rest of the fuel would go up with them in it. Suddenly, the movement stopped as they hung up again, this time on their side. Sarah fought to climb over the center console and found she was stuck. As she screamed in frustration, small hands poked through and into the cockpit. It was Marla.
“Get out on your side. It’s a long fall, but you should make it. I’ll get Mr. Ryan!” she shouted as she pulled out a large knife and started sawing into the branch pinning Jason.
Sarah watched as she never felt more helpless in her life. The flames were now opposite of where they had been and they were now licking up the side of the cockpit where Jason was trapped.
“Go!” Marla shouted again as she tossed the knife away and started pulling on the branch for all she was worth. All the while, Ryan was silent as he fought back the sheer agony he was feeling.
Sarah raised up and pushed on the crumpled door on the copilot’s side, sending the lightweight aluminum up and over. She squirmed until she found a handhold and then pulled herself up. Once out she felt the heat of the flames as they grew. She immediately saw the trunk of the tree they had hung up on. Not hesitating, Sarah jumped down the three feet and grabbed for all she was worth, but she missed. She hit the trunk and tried desperately to dig her nails in but the force of the jump only made her bounce off and then fall to the ground thirty feet below. She hit feet first on the soft forest floor but immediately fell on her back, knocking the wind out of her lungs. As she fought for breath she saw the burning Sikorsky thirty feet over her head.
Suddenly, there was a blur at the pilot’s door opened and Jason Ryan fell from the cockpit. Sarah rolled out of the way as Ryan hit with a thud and a snap as his arm broke. While Sarah finally caught her breath, Marla jumped free of the helicopter, hitting with both feet planted firmly. Still, Sarah heard the girl scream as her ankles rolled and she fell.
Sarah rose up and started pulling on Ryan. The helicopter made a loud screeching sound and they all heard the snapping of branches as the flaming Sikorsky started its final plunge for the forest floor. Sarah knew they were had. She pulled but Ryan had passed out and he was far heavier than she thought. In another flash of motion, Marla dove for both of them and pushed them hard. They all fell six feet back into the trees as the helicopter hit. Fuel was forced though the ruptured tank and the woods around them lit up with a small explosion.
With rain pummeling them and their prone bodies illuminated by the roaring flames, Marla, Sarah, and Ryan lay where they had fallen. Sarah finally placed a hand on Ryan, using his shirt to pull herself up. She looked at his shoulder wound and saw that it was bad. Blood was oozing out at a good clip. She leaned over him and placed both hands onto the wound and pressed down as hard as she could. Marla, her ankles swelling, rolled over and tried to focus on Sarah’s attempts at saving Ryan. Tears had sprung up in her eyes as she realized Jason was close to bleeding out.
The woods around them were being protected from the fire by the fierce storm that was passing through the Stikine Valley. The heat produced by the fuel-fed fire felt odd in the downpour. Marla leaned over and started lightly slapping Ryan on the face.
“Please, oh, please, don’t die, Mr. Ryan. Come on.”
“I promise not to die, if one, you stop slapping me, and two, you get off of my broken arm.”
Sarah couldn’t help it, she smiled. Ryan looked up at her. She had a broken nose, a severe cut over her left eye, and a long scrape down the side of her face. She lifted her hands and saw that Ryan’s flow of blood had slowed—not stopped, but she thought if she could get the wound plugged, he would make it.
Marla swiped at the tears that coursed down her face and moved away from Ryan and Sarah. She was so happy that Ryan was talking that she started to get the shakes. She backed away until her sprained ankles came into contact with something large and hard. She tripped backward and again landed on her back. As she rolled over she came face to face with a grinning skull. She screamed and tried to stand. She backed away as Sarah came to see what she had run into. McIntire saw the old ejection seat and the skeletal remains still strapped in it. As she held Marla, who was close to collapsing, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, and in that brief moment of illumination, that was when both Marla and Sarah saw it. The thunder roared as if announcing their find and then another zigzag pattern of light creased the sky above them. Sarah, dripping wet and bleeding, held Marla tighter.
The darkened mouth of a giant cave bid the two women welcome as they stared into what looked like a darkened maw of a huge animal.
The ancient home of the Chulimantan had been found once again.
Alexander turned away from Jack as the whump of the explosion flashed across the tree-riddled landscape. With one look back at Collins and his murderous glare, Punchy waved over his partners to the communications tent. The guards allowed a bruised Everett, Farbeaux, and Mendenhall to assist Collins to his feet, and they were unceremoniously shoved back underneath their tarpaulin.
Jack spit blood out of his mouth as he stared at the Spetsnaz until they smiled at him and turned away. He winced as he tried to get comfortable with at least one broken rib.
“For my part, Colonel, if indeed little Sarah was on that helicopter, I . . .”
“Now’s not a good time,” Everett said, cutting short Farbeaux’s sympathy for Jack’s loss.
Instead of being angry at the Frenchman, Collins leaned into Mendenhall to support his rib cage and after he felt he could take a deep breath, he looked over at Farbeaux.
“Henri, tell me the French government has a backup plan to your incursion into Canada.”
Farbeaux was silent after Jack had asked the question. He slowly turned his head as lightning flashed, illuminating the stunned look on his face. He shook his head and then caught the looks on the faces of Everett and Mendenhall.
“I think it’s time you come clean with us, Henri. We’ve lost too much to continue to keep secrets.”
Henri looked up at the black sky and the pouring rain, he waited until a thick roll of thunder echoed in the valley and then he turned and nodded his head at the American.
“Your perception and intelligence is something that I failed to get my friends at DGSE to take into account. I knew my charade would only last so long.”
Everett twisted his head and looked at the drenched Frenchman. He knew the bastard had been up to something but leave it to Jack to have confirmed it somewhere along the way.
“The DGSE?” Mendenhall asked.
“Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure—The Directorate-General for External Security,” Collins said.
“Are you saying that you’re back in the spying business, Henri?” Carl asked, amazed and confounded that anyone could talk Farbeaux out of his lucrative retirement.
Another flash of lightning lit up the sky, and Jack could see Alexander looking at them from the large tent across the clearing. He was giving Sagli and Deonovich instructions about something and through the downpour Jack could see that the new orders made Deonovich smile while looking their way. It wasn’t good.
“I’m afraid I had little choice in the matter, Captain. It seems my recent activities attracted the wrong sort of attention, and with pressure from your president, and with endorsements I’m sure from your little bald boss at the Event Group, I was . . . let’s say, drafted.”
“Niles Compton thought you were dead, Henri, lost at sea. Remember?” Jack reminded him.
“Regardless, here I am,” he said as he noticed Deonovich gathering a few of his men together. “I must explain to you, time, I fear, is growing short for some of us.”
Everett and Mendenhall saw what was coming as the guards made ready their pistols.
“The DGSE has uncovered an extreme terrorist cell operating in Montreal. They know it was being operated by someone
immune to discovery because there was just too much information not being passed back through DGSE contacts. Many agents were found murdered, indicating someone was getting identifications out to the cell. Either we had a traitor in our midst, or the Canadian government had one in theirs. Obviously, being French, my superiors ruled out any DGSE failures, so they concentrated on the Canadian side.”
Jack watched as Alexander looked his way and then turned back inside of the tent. Sagli gave the group of captives one last look and then he also turned away. Deonovich was explaining something to the three Spetsnaz he had pulled aside. They all looked their way as he explained something to them.
“Cut to the chase, Henri, our time is running out,” Jack said as he took a shallow breath.
“DGSE suspected someone at the top of the Canadian food chain, but soon it was confirmed by the traitor himself. Back in 1962, during your governments’ little spat with the Kremlin over the Cuban inclusion into the world of Soviet nuclear weapons, something went wrong. I know this will disturb you to no end, being Americans are thought of as the good guys, but I’m afraid your government was looking at the darker outcome of that battle of wills. Your President Kennedy had issued orders for a preemptive strike against the high command of the civilian and military heads of the Soviet regime. The mission was called Operation Solar Flare. Alexander was caught snooping where he shouldn’t have been. However, my former superiors didn’t know how far Alexander’s treason went, thus, when they learned of this assault in Los Angeles, they sent me.”
“Another coincidence, Henri?” Jack persisted.
“Not at all. I know of the importance of the Lattimer Notes and the journal, that’s why I had them stolen. It is, as you say, a small world. My associates leaked this information to waiting ears, thus, I was volunteered by my old employers to find out what your Mr. Alexander was up to. I guess my government credentials had yet to expire.”
“I don’t believe it,” Everett said. “If that had been an actual plan, our Group, above anyone in the country, would have the information—secret information to be sure—but we would have access to it.”
“You still insist that your nation is morally superior to everyone else, Captain Everett; that is not being a true historian. Oh, Operation Solar Flare was approved by France, Great Britain, and Germany, so you weren’t alone in hiding your heads in the sand. But my government made the dropping of the most powerful weapon in human history possible by disclosing the secret location where the hierarchy of the Soviet government would be bunkered. Thus, Operation Solar Flare was taken from fantasy to reality.”
“What happened? I mean the mission was obviously canceled since history doesn’t show any mushroom-cloud footage springing up in Moscow,” Mendenhall said, not believing what he and his commanding officers were hearing.
“Now, Colonel Collins, it’s your turn to come clean.”
Will looked at Jack, but Everett knew what his boss was about to say as the memory of that brief moment on the boat came back to Mendenhall. The long talk Collins had with the captain.
“Punchy and I were on one of the last attempts to recover the downed weapon. The F-4 Phantom carrying Solar Flare went down somewhere north of the border. The air force never found its transponder beacon back in ’62. The mission was a bust; we never found it. Higher-ups then figured that somehow the mission terminated over water.”
“I’m afraid the Western democracies don’t get let off the hook that easy, Colonel. The aircraft failed to even reach its fail-safe point. It went down either in Canada or in Alaska, and as the colonel just said, they never found the wreckage even though the most massive recovery operation the world had ever seen took place for close to fifty years.”
“What was the megatonnage of the weapon and its type?” Mendenhall asked.
“That was a secret your government kept well. But the DGSE suspected it was what’s known as a doomsday device, for lack of a better term, maybe as much as five hundred megatons—powerful enough to destroy any bunker in the world, no matter its depth in the earth. The fact that it was an advanced cruise missile designed for supersonic flight in a straight nose-down attitude, and equipped with a solid tungsten nose cone, it would bury itself so deep into the ground that no bunker ever made could survive.”
“Jesus, the world really had gone mad,” Will said.
“So, Alexander is after the weapon—and now he’s found it, so what now?” Everett asked.
“I suspect he has found the Hyper Glide, as the weapon was known, or Solar Flare,” Henri said. “The gold and diamonds was actually a ruse. Your Professor Ellenshaw, without knowing it, of course, pinpointed the location for Mr. Alexander in his report to Stanford University and to the next of kin of L. T. Lattimer.”
“What are the DGSE’s suspicions on why that asshole wants it? To sell it?” Everett asked as he saw the three Spetsnaz coming toward their group.
“No, he wants it for blackmail.”
Farbeaux looked over at Collins, their eyes met and they both knew the reasons why blackmail was the obvious choice.
“Correct, Colonel, blackmail.”
“The ballsy bastard is trying for a coup in Quebec, that’s why Sagli and Deonovich were so quick to give up what they had going in Russia; a safe haven and their own country with Punchy at its head.”
“My country believes the weapon in question can be broken up into twenty devices and would all be the equivalent of any high-yield weapon in the modern arsenals of the world—”
“An instant superpower armed with nuclear weapons only a hundred miles from the American border. A power that would be able to dictate terms to Ottawa and to London,” Collins explained as he closed his eyes.
“Well, that may not happen. It is my understanding that this weapon can only be armed by a code particular to the Hyper Glide, and this code remains one of the most guarded secrets of your government. Only a few men in the world know how to activate it and disarm it, and these men are more of a secret than the code itself,” Henri said trying to make the others see a brighter side to their predicament.
As the guard detail were only feet away, Everett, Farbeaux, and Mendenhall looked to Jack. His silence told them that something was wrong. He was deep in thought and his lips were actually moving with the effort.
“Colonel?” Will said, trying to get him to say something.
“Please don’t tell me—”
Farbeaux knew in his heart and when Jack cut his question off in midsentence, he lowered his head and closed his eyes.
“The men who know the codes to the Hyper Guide weaponry may not be as guarded a secret as you think,” Collins said as they all instantly realized why Jack was led to the Canadian wilderness.
“Jack, is there something we should know before these assholes shoot us?” Everett asked as the three Spetsnaz stopped in front of their makeshift tarp.
“Punchy knows I can arm or disarm the weapon. That’s why as a captain I was a team leader in the search in ’89.”
“You see, what did I tell you? Everyone has these damn weapons just sitting on their back porch, and if I ever go on a field mission and not run into one, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself!” Mendenhall said as he slammed his booted feet on the ground as if he were throwing a fit.
Farbeaux leaned over as far as he could toward Jack as the first guard reached down to pull him off the ground.
“As I said, Colonel Collins, you never cease to amaze me.”
Jack knew he had to act and do so without getting everyone shot before he had a chance to say what he had to say to Alexander. Mendenhall, Farbeaux, and Everett were stood up and moved out into the falling rain. They were lined up by the three Spetsnaz and while they were occupied, Jack made a break for the large communications tent. Just three feet from the flap, he was caught and knocked to the ground by Deonovich. He stood over Collins, smiling. His one mistake was straddling Jack as he lay on his back. Evidently the man hadn’t learned about Jack’s very quick feet.
Collins reared his right leg up and brought it up toward the large Russians crotch—that was when Jack found out that, yes indeedy, the big man had learned—he caught Jack’s foot and twisted, throwing Collins over onto his stomach.
“I told you to execute his men, not torture the colonel!”
Deonovich looked up at the man standing just inside the tent. Alexander had a murderous scowl on his face. Even Sagli shook his head from the dryness of the tent.
“Punchy, you better listen to what I have to say!” Jack called out through the rain.
Deonovich, ignoring the warning from Alexander, raised his own right foot and slowly smashed Jack’s face into the rocky mud. The pressure was tremendous as the colonel’s features became totally submerged as he struggled to free his neck.
Alexander looked at Sagli and nodded his head angrily. The Russian stepped out and shoved his partner from Collins. Jack’s head popped up and he took a deep breath, shaking his head to free some of the mud. As lightning streaked across the sky, Alexander, without moving from the tent watched as Sagli moved the insane Deonovich away and tried to get him back to the executions he was ordered to perform.
“You have one minute, Jack.”
Jack rolled over onto his back and sat up. He looked up into the rain to wash some of the mud away and then he looked at Alexander.
“You kill them, and my sister and myself be damned. I know what you want me for, and I will never free up the weapon with the codes you need.”
Alexander was stunned. He stepped into the downpour and stood over Collins. He knelt beside Jack and looked him in the eyes. His large frame didn’t move as if he were searching for the lie in his old friend’s eye.
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 37