CHAPTER 18
Ethan opened his eyes.
His head leaned against a window and he was staring down at mountainous terrain scrolling past at a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Cruising, if he had to guess, at twenty-five hundred feet AGL. He’d flown an air ambulance for six months after returning from Iraq and before applying to the Secret Service, and he recognized not only the voice of the Lycoming turbines roaring above his head but the dimensions of the BK117 airframe. He’d flown this model with Flight for Life.
Raising his head off the glass, he moved to scratch an itch on the side of his nose, but found his hands cuffed behind his back.
The passenger cabin had been arranged in a standard configuration—four seats divided between two facing rows, and a cargo space in the rear of the fuselage, hidden behind a curtain.
Jenkins and Sheriff Pope sat across, and Ethan felt pleased to see the lawman’s nose still bandaged.
Nurse Pam—having traded her classic nurse’s uniform for black cargo pants, a long-sleeved black T, BDUs, and an H&K tactical shotgun—sat beside him, a half-moon trail of sutures curving from a shaved portion of her skull, across her temple, and midway down her cheek. Beverly had been responsible for that, and Ethan noted a flicker of rage at the memory of what had been done to that poor woman.
Jenkins’ voice crackled through the headset. “How you feeling, Ethan?”
Though he felt groggy from the meds, his head had already begun to clear.
But he didn’t answer.
Just stared.
“Apologies for the shock yesterday, but we couldn’t take any chances. You’ve proven you’re more than capable at handling yourself, and I didn’t want to risk any further loss of life. Yours or my men.”
“Loss of life, huh? That’s what you’re so worried about now?”
“We also took the liberty of rehydrating you, giving you some nourishment, new clothes. Seeing to your injuries. I have to say...you look much better.”
Ethan glanced out the window—endless pine forests streaming through valleys and over hills that occasionally climbed above the timberline into sheer rock escarpments.
“Where are you taking me?” Ethan asked.
“I’m keeping my word.”
“To whom?”
“You. I’m showing you what this is all about.”
“I don’t under—”
“You will. How much longer, Roger?”
The pilot broke in over the headset. “Have you on the ground in fifteen.”
* * *
It was a jaw-dropping sweep of backcountry.
No roads, no houses as far as Ethan could see.
Just forested hills and the occasional squiggle of water through the trees—glimpses of stream and river.
Soon, the pine forest fell away behind them and Ethan could tell by the pitch change of the twin-turbine that the pilot had initiated their descent.
* * *
They flew over brown, arid-looking foothills, which over the course of ten miles flowed down into a vast hardwood-conifer forest.
At two hundred feet AGL, the helicopter banked and circled the same square mile of real estate for several minutes while Pope studied the terrain through a pair of binoculars.
He finally spoke into his mike. “We’re looking good.”