Wolf's Head Bay (eBook)

CHAPTER TWENTY–SIX

The Colonel had heard the entire radio exchange between his stolen helicopter and the black Scorpion. Anger was seething from every pore. Standing before the wall of monitors in room number ‘13’, the Auction/Control Center of the underground facility, the Colonel stared at the large main screen displaying a live feed from the Scorpion. He was so enraged he could barely mutter the words to himself through his clinched teeth. “First, the dossier. And now my painting!”

Seated behind him at the large control console, Shazuko looked up from her closed-circuit monitors and interrupted him. “Sir?”

Without looking away from the screen, he curtly addressed his new tech. “How much damage did it cause?”

“It was a computer Hantavirus--they are the worst, most virulent. Your system has been compromised. How badly will take several--”

“Were any specific files infiltrated or destroyed?” growled the Colonel, more annoyed than worried, confident his computer security protocols were more than adequate.

“I will need time to determine that,” Shazuko replied evenly. She then turned and briefly gazed up at the Colonel, enjoying his agitated state. “You do wish an accurate assessment?”

“Yes, yes--what about his communications--were they terminated?”

“Yes,” Shazuko replied tersely. With her baseball cap removed, her long black hair now fell voluptuously about her back. “As you can see we lost the image from the stolen bird after he shut down the avionics, but he did manage to land it safely in the river and you should be able to fly it back here with no problem. His radio communications and transponder signal were successfully blocked.”

“Well, Someone heard him--helicopter Zulu November Eight Five Four.”

“I have already done a computer search,” she replied sharply, handing the Colonel a handwritten notation. “Anyone you know?”

Snatching the paper from her hand, his eyes seemed to glow red from reading the name.

“This Richard Skyland, is he a problem we need to be concerned with?”

“No,” the Colonel lied. “What about the tracking transponders?”

Shazuko played along, aware he was avoiding the truth by quickly changing the subject. “If your young runaways should manage to evade your enforcer, there’s nowhere they can go that we cannot locate them. According to the log, Ryan had them installed immediately following their arrival, and as you can see, they’re all functioning properly.”

The Colonel finally turned and directly addressed his tech, whom he was quite certain he didn’t like. “I have every confidence Mr. Spear will capture them. Raise him on the radio; I wish to speak to him directly.”

“My advice would be that he not kill any of them.”

“As if I asked you for it,” he rebuked her sharply.

“Yes sir,” Shazuko replied, respectfully bowing her head to his authority, then turning her attention back to the bank of small monitors before her. “It appears your confidence may be well placed.” She then motioned with a wave of her slender hand toward the larger monitor. “Capture may be imminent.”

The Colonel turned his attention back to the main screen. “Punch up the Scorpion’s four feeds. I want see everything.”

Shazuko silently complied. The Scorpion, equipped with two interior, and two exterior cameras, provided a bird’s-eye view of all the action, now displayed in a split-screen on the large main monitor. The nose camera’s image in the upper left quadrant of the screen had a beat on the stranded Longranger in the middle of the river with someone standing off to the side and up to their knees in the surging water.

Donning a headset, Shazuko keyed the mike. “Base to Scorpion, come in.”

Jeremy lunged for Ian, snatching him down from the Longranger and into his arms. The two of them looked up into the face of the flying beast. Dropping Ian to his feet and grabbing his hand, the two scrambled for shore through the deep water.

“JEREMY!” Leslie cried out from behind a huge boulder alongside the others.

Making it only half way, the beating rotor blades on top of them, Jeremy abruptly spun around. The moment he spotted Spear strapped in the rear cabin, rifle in hand, Jeremy grabbed Ian and doggedly dragged him back to the Longranger. The Scorpion screamed right over their heads, flying up and over the top of the falls, then spun around and stopped on a dime in a hover over the water. Spear took aim at Jeremy and squeezed the trigger. Hunching beneath the tail boom Jeremy shoved Ian, weighted with his backpack, to the side as the bullet streaked through the churning water near their scrambling feet. Grabbing Ian by his pack, he nearly picked the boy up, pushing him as the enforcer cocked the rifle and fired again. The steel pointed shell pierced the soft aluminum skin of the Longranger, snaking through the fuselage embedding in an upholstered seat. Ian grimaced and screamed, stumbling to his knees, splashing through the streaming water, his hands flailed for something to grab onto. Jeremy gripped Ian’s pack, breaking the boy’s fall, his hand sensing something familiar through the fabric, something he saw earlier. Sloshing and staggering around to the nose of the helicopter, out of the line of fire, Jeremy hauled Ian back, sliding around in front of him.

“Stay, stay!” he sputtered reaching behind, clutching Ian’s shirt, keeping the boy close to his body.

“JEREMY!” Leslie screamed, the kids pressed in close behind her, their eyes anxiously darting from the trapped pair to the hovering Scorpion at the top of the falls.

“STAY DOWN!” he shouted to them.

Another shot rang out shattering one of the Plexiglas windows.

“STOP--MAKE ’EM STOP!” Ian burst hysterically. The boy suddenly bolting for the safety of the rocks where the others were crouching until Jeremy snagged his backpack, hauling him back. Spear had already cocked the rifle and took the shot.

Matthew saw what was about to happen and leaped to his feet atop the boulders screaming at the top of his lungs, “NOOOO!”

“--MATTHEW!” Leslie shrieked, clutching at his shirt and yanking him back down.

A trail of blood stained the water as Jeremy pulled Ian back. He staggered with the boy in tow through the pain in his upper left thigh. It felt like someone had shoved a red-hot poker through the skin to the muscle. Soaked and gasping in terror, Ian clamored to get away, but Jeremy held him tightly from behind, the backpack pressing into his chest. He felt it again, something hard inside the backpack. Forcing the boy down they both crouched on their knees beside the tail boom of the Longranger. Panting and out of breath, it was all Jeremy could do to ignore the pain, aided by the adrenalin surging through his body.

It was unnerving to see his blood in the water. He glanced down again at the torn fabric of his cargo shorts stained red. Stealing a quick glance inside the Longranger he saw the Glock in the side pocket, yet he was too scared to try and get it.

He turned back to Ian and his backpack. Glancing up through layers of Plexiglas; the windshield and one of the side windows, Jeremy could see a distorted Scorpion still hovering menacingly above the falls.

“Ian, turn around, buddy.”

When their eyes met, Jeremy ached at the fear in his small face. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Ian. All right?”

Quivering from fear and the cold river, the boy nodded solemnly as water droplets beaded down the sides of his cherub face.

“Let’s have a look,” Jeremy said, turning Ian slightly, unzipping the top of the pack and reaching his hand down inside to something familiar from his own boyhood. Grasping the object, he pulled it out and grinned widely. Jeremy read aloud the stamped lettering along the side of the solid steel frame slingshot. “The Bone Collector. Ian, you may have just saved all our lives.”

Jeremy quickly signaled the others on shore to lay low out of sight, and then turned to Ian. “Listen to me, take hold of my belt and stay behind me out of sight, okay?”

Ian quickly did as instructed, maneuvering around Jeremy through the water and grabbed onto his belt. Never so frightened in all his life, Ian trusted his friend. Suddenly his frightened eyes strayed overhead…the whine of the Scorpion’s turbine and the whoop of the rotor blades seemed to be coming closer.

Jeremy looked down and saw several large stones resting in the swirling sand near his feet. He kicked one of them with the toe of his tennis shoe and reached down picking up three of them. Judging the heaviest of the three to be the perfect size and figuring he’d have only one chance to pull it off, he let the other two slip through his fingers back into the river. He gripped the stone tightly in his hand along with the slingshot and looked up just as the Scorpion began its descent. A giant deadly beast, the black Longranger...