He flashed me white teeth and a wink. “Anything for you.”
Clay pushed his hand through his hair. “You’re not going to fall, sugar. These things have doors, you know.”
“And anyway,” Lorcan agreed, shrugging his shoulders in his leather jacket. “Even if they didn’t, gravity still works in the up and down direction, not sideways. As long as the chopper doesn’t roll, you’re not going anywhere.”
“It’s the rolling I’m worried about.”
Clay jabbed me in the side playfully. “You can hold on to me if we roll.”
My eyes widened. “Is that likely to happen?”
Isaac stepped in. “No, it’s not, and like Clay says, this one has doors.”
The sound of the chopper grew louder, the thwacking of blades through the air. Then it appeared at the point where the trees met the horizon, and I instinctively ducked. The chopper was massive, far bigger than the one I’d seen before.
“This one is designed to take sixteen people,” Isaac yelled over the noise of the helicopter. “So it can easily take us and all the equipment.”
“How long will it take us to get to the first location?” I shouted back.
“It flies at around one hundred and sixty miles per hour, so maybe two or three hours, depending on the headwind.”
Two or three hours on that thing? I barely wanted to contemplate it. But it did mean we’d be reaching the first location within a few hours rather than half a day, which was how long it would have taken us by road. I knew Hollan had access to helicopters, too. If this was a race to get there first, we’d just evened the stakes a little.
We all stepped back as the huge machine hovered above us. The area was clear of trees, but there were still multiple items of rusting machinery dotted around from when this used to be an old logging facility. I knew the pilot of the chopper wouldn’t risk getting its blades caught in anything. At least there weren’t any overhead lines around here. The electricity and phone lines to the base had been run underground to prevent anyone wondering why so much access to technology would be needed all the way out here.
The wind caused by the blades sent my hair whipping from my face, and the front of my clothes appeared glued to my body. I didn’t miss the way Clay’s gaze slipped down every curve on view, and then gave me a smirk. The hit on the head didn’t seem to have affected his sex drive any. Not that I minded.
Leaves and twigs from the forest floor were lifted into the air and flung at us as the chopper descended. I raised my arm to shield my face and turned away slightly, trying to protect myself from the dirt and small stones pinging against any exposed skin, thankful for the jeans, boots, and jacket I wore. I noted the guys were all doing the same. Despite my fears about riding in the helicopter, I didn’t want to look like the weaker species in front of the others.
The helicopter landing skids finally made contact with the ground, and, as they did, the spinning of the blades began to slow. I was able to look around again.
The door opened, and the pilot jumped out. “You my team?” he called out over the still noisy helicopter.
Isaac nodded and stepped forward to shake his hand. “I’m Isaac.”
“Jonathan,” the pilot introduced himself.
Isaac pointed to each of the guys, and named them in turn. Then he ended with me. “And this is Darcy.”
I stepped forward to shake the pilot’s hand. I guessed we’d be spending a fair amount of time together if this was how we were going to get around to each of the bases.
“Good to meet you, Darcy.” He was in his late twenties, I guessed. Blue eyes and military short hair. I wondered what he thought of me with all these men.
With introductions done, we set about hauling the bags of weapons and equipment into the back of the helicopter. I helped, not wanting anyone to think I wasn’t capable of pulling my weight. I was relieved to see the aircraft did have doors, and, as we climbed in, one by one, my relief grew to see harness style seatbelts attached to each of the seats as well. They wouldn’t do us much good if the helicopter fell out of the sky in a ball of flames, but at least the falling out part could be put out of my mind. My legs still felt weak and shaky as I climbed on board and took a seat between Clay and Lorcan. The smell of diesel and heated metal filled my nostrils. There were three rows of seats, and Isaac took up position directly behind the pilot. Kingsley and Alex climbed into the row behind us. Each seat also had a set of noise canceling headphones behind it, and, once I’d strapped myself into the seat with the harness, I reached out and pulled the headphones over my ears.
Immediately, the noisy roar from the chopper was dulled. We had small mouthpieces attached where we could talk to each other.
Once everyone was inside, Jonathan shut the door, encasing us inside the helicopter’s body. He moved to the front of the aircraft and climbed back into the pilot’s seat. He pulled on his own headphones, and I jumped as his voice suddenly blared in my ears.
“Everyone strapped in and ready to go?”
We all nodded obediently.
Because the helicopter had only been idling while we’d climbed on board, it took seconds for the pilot to get the huge beast moving again. My stomach lurched as it lifted off the ground, then it tilted, and a small scream escaped my throat. I reached out and grabbed the hands of the two men on either side of me, anchoring myself down with them. I needed to pull myself together. How was I going to face things far worse if I was allowing a helicopter ride to freak me out? I didn’t want to look out of the window at the massive distance that continued to grow between us and the ground. I knew we were going to be up high, but it didn’t feel natural to be inside a little tin can in the middle of the air.
On either side of me, Clay and Lorcan exchanged a smirk. I jabbed the pair of them with an elbow each in the side, and then spoke into the mouthpiece attached to the headphones.
“Look, this is my first time, okay? I’m allowed to be a little nervous.”
Clay grinned. “I’m just glad to see the fearless one has something that unnerves her.”
“I’m not fearless!” I protested. There were times when I felt as though everything frightened me.
“No? Says the woman who hands herself over to an armed man who wants her dead, or thinks nothing about stabbing someone if they get in her way.”
“That was different,” I pointed out. “They were asking for it.”
My thoughts went to Otto. I wondered what had happened to him after we’d left him at the hospital. I prayed he’d survived his wounds. He’d seemed like a tough guy, and I felt sure he would have. Had he gone home to Sweden, or was he still somewhere in the country? Was he still on Hollan’s payroll, or had he cut himself off from that contract? I thought it would be pretty awkward for him to continue to work with Hollan considering he’d helped me escape.
The helicopter climbed higher into the sky, the force pushing me back into my seat, and then finally leveled off. I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t know why, but I felt better now we were heading forward rather than up.
I tried to relax. I had a good couple of hours ahead of me, and I’d be an anxious mess by the time we reached the first location. I tried not to think too hard about what might be waiting for us when we got there.
Chapter Four
Once my initial fear had abated, it was replaced with a kind of anxious boredom. There was nothing else to do except look out the window and watch the country go by far below. The threads of highways with tiny dots of cars. The squared clusters of buildings, and the sporadic blue oblongs of backyard pools. Occasionally, the windows of the chopper turned white as we passed through a cloud, but then the clear sky would be back again. Due to cloud cover, we hadn’t been able to get a decent satellite view of the area we were heading to. I hoped we didn’t get a turn in the weather the farther we traveled. I didn’t like the idea of being up here during a storm, and I figured any sign of lightning would ground us.
Isaac’s voice sounded in my ear.
“Only thirty minutes to go.”
I knew the others had heard, too. We exchanged glances, and from the sudden change in atmosphere, I got the impression they were also anxious about what we’d find. We would need to convince whoever was in charge of this place that the threat we perceived was both imminent and very real. We also needed their manpower to help warn the other bases. We’d cover more ground if there were more of us.
“When are we going to know we’re there?” I asked through the headset.
The pilot replied. “The helicopter’s GPS is pretty sophisticated. I just plugged in the coordinates you needed, and it takes us right there.” At the mention of the coordinates, the numbers flashed up in the airspace around me, some of them even appearing on the other side of the window of the helicopter, so they literally floated in midair. It was a strangely disorienting experience.
Beneath us, the patchwork of different shades of green—olives, limes, and emeralds—gave way to the expanse of a dark blue lake.
“We’re almost there.” Isaac twisted around to face us. “The cloud cover finally seems to have cleared from that area. Lorcan, you’ve got the thermal imaging equipment. I’m not sure we’re going to need it, but just in case.”
Lorcan leaned down to the bag at his feet and started to pull out the equipment.
I craned my neck to look out the window, down to the ground below. There didn’t seem to be anything around, but I reminded myself that our base would appear much the same way if someone was to view it from above. The whole point was that these places were secret and hard to find. It wasn’t as though they’d have a neon sign with an arrow pointing it out.
A white oblong stood out starkly against the dark green of the vegetation and the deep blue of the lake.
“What’s that?” I shouted, pointing down.
“I think that’s where we’re heading,” Clay called back.
It was right on the bank where the lake met the shore. As we got closer, I spotted a large dam built across the lake, and several electrical towers rose into the air. What I was looking at dawned on me. It was a hydropower station.
“Do you think that’s it? Does it line up with the coordinates?”
“Yeah, sure does,” the pilot called back. “You want me to put her down?”
It took me a moment to realize the ‘her’ he was talking about was the chopper.
“Let’s just fly over,” Isaac said. “Get an idea if there’s anything else we should be aware of.”
The pilot nodded. “There’s a lot of tree coverage, too. This baby’s got a rotor diameter of over fifty feet. I need to find a decent place to land.”
Isaac looked back to us. “And I want everyone armed and ready to go, just in case.”
We all immediately bent to the bags and cases containing the weapons. I’d upgraded myself to a sub-automatic Berretta—a handgun of a decent size for me to handle, but one that packed a bit more punch than I’d been using previously. The gun felt good to hold, a little insurance against what might happen next. We weren’t expecting the inhabitants of this base to give us any trouble, but it was always best to be prepared. I added a couple of magazines into my jacket pockets. I hoped I wouldn’t need to fire a single shot, never mind need to reload, but like Isaac said, it was for just in case.
Though there were no obvious signs of life down at the power station, Lorcan was already working the thermal surveillance equipment. It looked like a combination between a camera and a set of binoculars, but I knew it would be able to tell Lorcan if there was any sign of human habitation down there. He pressed the goggles to his eyes and peered at the area below us.
The pilot banked the chopper to the right, and I was thankful for both the doors and the harness belt as we leaned. We continued to fly, circling the perimeter of the building. I forced myself to look, despite my stomach lurching at the height. A single road led in and out of the power station, but I couldn’t see any signs of people or vehicles on the move.
“It may not look like there’s any life down there,” Lorcan said, removing the goggles from his eyes, “but the place is glowing up like an atomic bomb. Even if those aren’t heat signatures from people, there’s energy coming from somewhere.”
I reached out and took the equipment from him. Leaning over Lorcan’s lap so I could see out of the window, no longer caring about the height, I placed the goggles to my eyes. He was right. The whole of the building, which previously appeared like a white rectangle against all the blue and green, now glowed orange. I scanned the surrounding area, trying to pick up on any smaller dots of color, wondering if there might be people taking shelter among all the foliage, or perhaps even a couple of vehicles on the road which we weren’t able to spot from up here, but there was nothing.
I removed the goggles and handed them back to Lorcan. “Looks quiet, though.”
He nodded in agreement. “Hmm. Almost too quiet.”
“Our base would look quiet, too, if someone were to observe it from above,” Kingsley said from behind me, leaning forward against the back of my seat so his forearms brushed my shoulder.
“True,” I agreed.
“I can set her down on the dam,” Jonathan called out to us. “It looks pretty sturdy from here.”
It wasn’t some rickety wooden contraption. The dam appeared to be solid concrete. Because of its proximity to the water, there was no tree coverage to worry about, so it would make it safer for the helicopter to land.
Assuming we even had the right place, if this base was anything like ours, they’d have cameras and would see us coming. The noise of the chopper also gave us away. One advantage helicopters didn’t have was that they weren’t exactly stealth-like, and this was a big machine. They would have heard us coming from miles away.
The pilot began to descend, and the closer we got to landing, the greater my nerves increased. I didn’t like how quiet it was, despite telling myself it was what we’d expected. I kept reminding myself these were our allies, and we were there to help them, and warn them. They would be pleased to see us, and learn the locations of each of the training bases had been revealed again. Previously, the locations were kept as a top secret before they were leaked, but I figured that must be all out the window now. They needed to be able to coordinate with each other to take out the threat of Hollan and his men. What would happen afterward, however, I didn’t know. I assumed they’d make more of a backup plan, though, to prevent such a thing happening again.
The downward thrust of air from the chopper caused the water from the lake to spray out and up the closer we got, until it felt as though we were surrounded by a cloud of fine, white mist. I briefly wondered what would happen if the dam didn’t hold. Did these things land on water and float? I hoped I wasn’t going to find out.
Jonathan had landed so the side of the chopper faced the shore. This meant we were able to open the door on Lorcan’s side and climb out without trying to navigate the helicopter. Above us, the rotor began to slow.
“You wait here,” Isaac told the pilot. “Be ready to leave.”
Jonathan nodded. “I’ll keep her warmed up.”
We climbed out, each of us armed. Everyone was on high alert, but, despite the unsubtle arrival, no one had come out to greet us. Were people watching us from inside, wondering what we were doing, and trying to assess if we were a threat? We didn’t exactly look like a group of friends out on a pleasure ride. With the guys, there was no hiding the fact they were trained for combat.
Isaac led the way. As well as the weapon held in one hand, he had the bag containing his laptop strapped across his chest. Kingsley and Lorcan moved in front of me, Clay and Alex coming up from behind. I felt like I was the filling in a man sandwich, but I wasn’t going to complain.
“Stay in the middle, Darcy,” Isaac called out. “We’ve got you protected from every angle.”
Okay, maybe I did want to complain. That I was a member of the team now, and they didn’t need to protect me was what I wanted to complain
about, but now wasn’t the time. We needed to keep our wits about us, not start arguing, and I knew they would give me an argument.
The building looked a hell of a lot bigger from the ground than it had from above. I couldn’t hear the sound of any engines powering the station. In fact, other than the noise of the chopper, the place was eerily quiet. But, from the thermal imaging, we knew it was being used, so something was going on here. Just like at our base, there were numerous signs around warning people to stay out.
Lorcan rubbed his hand over his mouth as we crept forward. “Looks to me like someone built this place, but never got it up and running.”
“Maybe they were worried the water was going to dry up,” Clay threw in. Lorcan raised his eyebrows at him, and Clay shrugged. “Or maybe not.”
“You think it might have been built as a disguise for the base?” I suggested.
Isaac nodded. “Looks that way to me.”
Kingsley joined in with a nod, but his was slow and thoughtful. When he spoke, it was with admiration. “We used something that was no longer in use, and they used something that hadn’t started to be used yet. I like it.”
I wondered what the other places would be disguised as when we found them.
Ignoring the keep out signs, we moved deeper into the area surrounding the building for the hydropower plant. I was still surprised no one had come to ask us who we were and what we were doing yet, but maybe they were laying low until they could figure out what we wanted, and if we were friend or foe.
“The entrance is over here.” Isaac jerked his chin in the direction of large double doors set into the front of the building.
He got closer, us following behind, but staying alert.
Then he drew to a halt, his hand held aloft to tell us to wait.
I craned forward to see what had made him stop. The entrance was ajar.
Clay pulled a face. “Did anyone put out the welcome mat?”
“Move with caution,” Isaac said, ignoring his comment.
Merging Darkness Page 3