She rolled her eyes.
After he and Harv changed into their MARPATs, General Mansfield took them out to Nathan’s chopper and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want any backup out there?”
“Positive, General,” Nathan said. “We prefer to work alone.”
“Monitor the frequency we gave you. We’ll keep you apprised of any activity at the coordinates. And I’ll keep a squad standing by just in case you give us a nine-one-one call.”
Ten miles southeast of Dupuyer, Nathan dropped the helicopter down to one hundred feet. “Watch for power lines,” Nathan told Harv. “Did you find an LZ on the photos?”
“I think so, we’ll have to check it out. It’s about a mile-and-a-half northwest from ground zero. It’s an island of trees in our canyon and kinda horseshoe-shaped. It screens the chopper from three directions.”
“I’m dropping down to fifty feet. Keep your eyes peeled.” Nathan lowered the nose. Ten seconds later they were skimming the grassy landscape at nearly 140 miles an hour. The ground rush was intoxicating. As dangerous as it was, Nathan loved flying low and fast.
Harv worked the NavCom screen. “Adjust heading to three-four-five.”
“Three-four-five,” Nathan echoed.
“Guys?” Grangeland asked.
Harv pivoted toward the rear seats. “You okay back there?”
“I hate to be the weak link, but do we have to fly this low? I don’t feel so good.”
“Sorry, but yeah, we do,” Harvey said. “Look straight ahead, don’t look out your window, okay?”
She grunted an acknowledgement.
A small herd of elk dashed underneath them. The animals tried to stay in a group, but several peeled off in different directions.
“Keep an eye out for birds, Harv. Striking an eagle at this speed will definitely ruin our day.” Nathan’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Do you see any transmission or antenna towers?”
“Negative. We’re good to go.”
“Let’s call Malmstrom and ask for an update.”
General Mansfield himself answered the radio and reported all was quiet except for the thermal image of their exhaust. He informed them in ten minutes, they’d experience a thirty-minute blackout as the current surveillance satellite dropped below the horizon.
Harv had the 500-meter-per-inch photo in his lap. “I seriously doubt Leonard’s arrived yet. To get here before us, he’d have to drive eighty miles an hour the entire way, straight through. There’s no way he could do it and he certainly wouldn’t risk getting pulled over.”
“Agreed,” Nathan said, though he shared Harv’s apprehension. “If what Ernie said is true, then we’re beating him here by at least one hour, possibly as many as three.”
“What’s your gut on what Ernie told us?” Harv asked.
“Obviously we can’t know for sure, but I don’t think he was lying about the second set of coordinates.”
“We assume nothing,” Harv said.
“Right.”
“Think Leonard will have an RF detector?”
“Hard to say, but I doubt it. If he does, he’ll pick up our handhelds for sure, but unless it’s a contemporary device, he won’t have signal strength or direction, he’ll just know there’s radio chatter in the area. There’s not much we can do about it unless you want to skip the radios. Since our handhelds can’t interface with the helicopter’s NavCom, I’m thinking we keep Grangeland and Ernie at the chopper. We’ll need her to relay anything Mansfield sees from the surveillance birds. I’d say using the radios outweighs being blind out here. Lesser of two evils.”
“Booby traps?” asked Harv.
“I’ve thought about that too. I think it’s unlikely they’d have any kind of long-term trip wires or pressure-triggered devices because of all the wildlife in the area. They wouldn’t want a random accident to call attention to their cache. They might have something at the actual location of the buried money, though. If he does, it’ll be a bomb-disposal job. Can your people handle it, Grangeland?” Nathan already knew the answer, he just wanted to distract her from her airsickness.
No answer.
“Grangeland?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she said tightly.
“You okay back there?”
“I’m feeling really woozy.”
“There’re barf bags in the seat pockets. Harv, how far to Dutch Creek Road?”
“Maybe four thousand yards.” He looked down at the satellite image. “Adjust heading to three-four-zero. That should take us pretty close to the LZ.”
Nathan pushed the cyclic slightly to the left and watched the LCD screen’s digital compass rotate. “Copy.… Three-four-zero.” He snuck a look out the port window. The snowcapped peaks of the Flathead Range were a damned beautiful sight. Where the mountainsmeet the prairies, he thought. Buffalo and Blackfeet Indian territory.
“Should we risk a visual pass down the canyon to the money drop and back?” Harv asked.
“It won’t help us that much. For the kind of detail we’d need, we’d have to move slightly faster than a hover. Let’s set her down right away.”
“You’ll have my undying gratitude,” Grangeland said.
“Reduce speed to sixty knots,” Harv said.
“Sixty knots.” Nathan lowered the collective, pressed the right anti-torque pedal, and pulled back on the cyclic control. Maintaining its altitude, the helicopter flared and rapidly bled off air speed.
“Oh shit,” Grangeland moaned.
“Hang in there,” Harvey encouraged her.
“I’m gonna be sick.”
“We’re ninety seconds from being on the ground.”
She didn’t make it.
Nathan heard violent retching sounds as Grangeland leaned forward and vomited into a barf bag. The distinctive odor filled the cabin.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nathan told her. “Happens to all of us. Keep track of your weapon, Ernie might try something.” She didn’t respond. “Harv, what’s happening?”
Harv whipped around.
“She’s okay,” Harv said. “Crossing Dutch Creek Road. Slow to thirty knots.”
A dirt track passed beneath them, no more than twenty feet below their skids. Sixty seconds later, the landscape suddenly dropped off as they cleared the canyon’s southern ridgeline.
“Set her down inside that copse of trees at two o’clock,” Harv said.
“Power lines?” Nathan asked.
Harv scanned the area. “Clear.”
Twenty seconds later, leaves cartwheeled away from the LZ as Nathan set the chopper down. “Shutting down,” he said. “Any bullet holes in us yet?”
Harv grinned. “The afternoon’s still young.”
Grangeland heartily agreed with being delegated to guard duty. The nausea left her weak and in no condition for physical exertion. With Harvey covering, she handcuffed Ernie to the skid support just below the rear door and sat down in the sand facing him. The cord was stretched tight, but her headset was still plugged into the ceiling consule.
Dressed exactly as they were at Freedom’s Echo in their ghillie suits, they parted company with Grangeland and headed east along the northern edge of the canyon’s streambed. Nathan estimated the canyon’s width at three hundred yards, tighter in places, wider in others. Because the north wall of the canyon caught more sunlight, the underbrush was thicker with more trees present. In the middle of the canyon, a small stream flowed toward the east. The canyon’s seventy-foot limestone walls were steep in places and shallow in others, where smaller streams fed the main creek. In hundreds of places, striated layers of rock were exposed in a series of ten- and twenty-foot ledges like giant steps. Dark recesses in the rock formations created ideal shooting positions for a potential sniper.
They moved quickly along the tree-lined bank of the sandy wash, stopping every three minutes or so to scan the area in front and behind them with their field glasses.