He sprinted down the steep slope, dodging trees and boulders as best he could while fighting to keep his balance on the wet ground. Still, Skylar and Troy quickly raced past him like deer and hurdled the last ten feet down to the road beside the cars that were waiting to be allowed through the roadblock a hundred yards to the east. The bus was fifty feet away, and men and women were still spilling out of it and sprinting off in every direction as Jack’s boots hit the pavement.
For several strides he followed Skylar and Troy as they raced along the roadside toward the bus. But when a man who’d just jumped off fired at them, Jack ducked in front of a late-model sedan being driven by an elderly man with a terrified expression on the other side of the cracked windshield.
The mass exodus from the bus wasn’t innocent at all. The bus had been taking assassins to Washington.
Jack sprinted ahead on the driver’s side of the traffic line, past three vehicles immediately in front of the bus, just as someone burst out from behind the last one — a pickup — aiming a pistol at him.
Jack shot twice before the other guy could, lowered his shoulder, and crashed into the man hard. They tumbled to the pavement, with Jack ending up on the bottom. The man brought his pistol up to fire, but Jack knocked it away with a backhand left and then nailed the man flush on his bearded jaw with a crushing right, aided by the pistol he was still clasping tightly.
The man fell away and lay limp on the road facedown.
As Jack scrambled to his feet, he spotted a woman fifteen feet away aiming a weapon at him. Just as she pulled her trigger a gunshot exploded from the left, and the woman staggered back a few feet before falling over the guardrail and tumbling down the riverbank.
Jack’s gaze snapped left, but Skylar had already turned to fire at another target. She’d just saved his life, he realized in the middle of the chaos.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man not wearing a black shirt aiming at Skylar. Jack raised his gun smoothly, aimed at the chest, and fired just before the man could. As the man collapsed, Jack swung the barrel of his gun to the front of the bus and trained it on a woman who’d just jumped out of it and was about to fire at Skylar. Again he fired and put the woman down.
This time Skylar recoiled and hunched down, as if she’d been hit. But an instant later she whirled around, glared at Jack, and then nodded before sprinting out of sight around the bus.
Jack took a quick step after her, then stopped, horrified by the scene to the left. Another assassin was pointing his gun at Troy from close range. But Troy had his back to the shooter.
Jack fired and put the man down — but not before Troy fell.
Jack raced to Troy and knelt down, terrified. Blood was spreading across Troy’s shirt from a wound to his upper chest.
He took Troy’s hand tightly as Troy stared back up in desperation. It was the first time Jack had ever seen this kind of fear in his brother’s eyes.
As near as Sterling could tell, he’d sprinted at least a mile through the forest. He assumed that the people who’d ambushed them on Route 340 would have choppers in the air quickly. In fact, he was surprised he hadn’t already heard the thump-thump-thump of rotors. Still, the tree cover seemed thick enough to hide him, though he wasn’t sure about that. And it certainly wouldn’t protect him from the dogs that would certainly be let loose very soon.
All he knew for sure was that he needed to get as far away as possible from this place as fast as possible.
He jammed his hand into his pocket and grabbed the vial filled with amber liquid to make sure it was still there. This vial had suddenly become infinitely more crucial.
“The chopper will be here in less than a minute,” the trooper called to Jack, who was still kneeling beside Troy. “The pilot’s gonna put it down right here on the road, right out in front of you,” he said, gesturing. “It’s one of ours, not a big medevac, so it’s small enough to get down through the trees. The guy flying the bird’s a pro. He’ll have your brother to urgent care in Charles Town in five minutes. And they’ve got a surgeon on the way from Hagerstown who’ll meet him at the UC facility.”
Jack glanced up as the sound of rotors in the distance reached his ears. How the hell anyone could get a helicopter down through that small an opening was a mystery. But good for him, because this spot was the only flat surface anywhere close to Troy with an opening in the trees above it. And Jack didn’t want to move Troy until the helicopter got here.
Multiple ambulances were racing to the scene as well, but the EMTs wouldn’t be able to do much here on Route 340. Jack was no doctor, but the pool of blood on the wet road at his knees and the ashen color of Troy’s face told a bad story. Troy needed a skilled surgeon statim.
He squeezed Troy’s hand. “Hold on, brother,” he urged as his phone went off again. “Two minutes and you’re in the air, headed to help.”
By the time Jack could pull the phone out it had stopped ringing. This was the first chance he’d had to check calls since they’d sprinted down the hillside toward the assassins spilling from the bus. Now he saw that Cheryl had called from her cell phone six times in the last ten minutes. And she never left multiple messages unless something was really wrong.
He hit the “call back” button.
“Jack?” she answered loudly before the first ring ended.
“Yeah, it’s me.” His mother sounded awful, on the verge of tears. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s your father,” she said, sobs racking her. “He’s been hurt very badly.”
Jack grimaced in shock, as if he’d just taken a shot to the stomach himself. “What are you talking about?” he asked as his gaze flashed to Skylar, who was standing ten feet away, speaking to one of the men who’d come with her to Harpers Ferry. “What happened to him?” he asked hesitantly as the rotors grew louder.
“What’s going on?” Troy gasped, squeezing Jack’s hand hard.
“Easy, brother.”
“Is that Troy?” Cheryl asked quickly. “Is he all right? I’ve been trying to call him, too, but he doesn’t pick up.”
“Troy’s fine.”
“He doesn’t sound fine. He sounds—”
“Tell me what happened.”
“A few hours ago Bill was found in a cabin in western New York by two deer hunters. They got caught in this terrible storm we’re having, and they took cover inside the cabin.” She sobbed loudly. “They found Bill lying in a pool of blood in a back bedroom.”
Jack glanced at Skylar again. She’d claimed Bill was alive when she left that cabin. “But—”
“There was another man dead in the same bedroom from a bullet wound,” Cheryl continued, “but Bill had a… he had a terrible knife wound. He’d lost so much blood, Jack. Oh, God. I don’t know what I’m going to—”
A hurricane from above wiped out her words as the chopper began its descent straight down through the narrow opening in the treetops.
“What the—” Jack shouted as Troy grabbed him tightly by the front of his shirt. “Save your strength. What are you doing, Troy?”
“You’ve gotta take this chopper out of here,” Troy gasped with a wild look in his eyes as the blast of wind from the helicopter blew leaves and branches everywhere. “You’ve got to get to that cabin in New York.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard what Mom said. You’ve got to take this chopper out of here, get to a plane, and get to that cabin.”
“You’re taking this chopper,” Jack yelled above the wind and the roar as the craft neared the pavement. “You need a doctor immediately.”