Drake was driving more slowly now, negotiating the treacherous shallow water. McKenzie was carefully watching their route on the map, telling Drake which way to go. "Another two miles and we'll be at the floatplane. Then we'll be out of here," McKenzie said.
The lake was gone, hidden behind a wall of trees and the sky overhead was crisscrossed with branches. McKenzie knew they were safe.
"What about the others?" Johnson asked. "The guys at the LCC?"
"We'll give them thirty minutes," McKenzie said. "If they aren't there by then, we take off and they have to use the alternate plan."
A mile away on the lake, Thorpe and Tommy were pulled into the cargo bay of the chopper.
The clock went down to 8:00. Turned over to 7:59. Parker sat back in the chair and closed her eyes for a second as she furiously searched her mind for an answer to her predicament.
"Yes!" she yelled. "I see it." She leaned forward over the keyboard.
McKenzie did another map check, then picked up the bulky sniper rifle from the floorboards and put it across his lap. He slowly maneuvered the muzzle so that it pointed at Johnson, the third man in the boat. McKenzie pulled the trigger. The round blasted Johnson out of the boat and sent the body flying twenty feet, splashing down in a bloody mess in the swamp. Alligators immediately started sliding into the water for the meat.
Drake eyed McKenzie with a worried look.
"More money for each of us," McKenzie said. "Oh, don't look so concerned, Drake. I won't shoot you. You're my buddy. It's me and you the rest of the way. And remember, I need you to fly the plane."
Thorpe wrapped a poncho liner Dublowski had handed him around Tommy. The Blackhawk had gained altitude and was hovering over the lake at five hundred feet. Thorpe looked to the southwest where McKenzie and the Zodiac had disappeared.
"We'll never find him under all that foliage," Dublowski was at his side, looking in the same direction.
"He's got to have a way out," Thorpe said. "A plan to get away."
"He has a balloon, Dad," Tommy said from deep inside the poncho.
"What?" Thorpe asked.
"He has a balloon. I saw the helium and some rope under a blanket in the boat."
Thorpe looked across Tommy at Dublowski and their eyes locked. "Helium and rope?"
They both said it at the same time: "Fulton rig."
Thorpe keyed the radio. "Head southwest," he ordered the pilot.
"How far to the floatplane?" Drake asked as he turned a bend in the small creek he was navigating and entered a small pond. The money pod dragged behind them, half submerged, the contents dry.
McKenzie had the map on his knees, covering the barrel of the large sniper rifle. "This is far enough," he said. "How are our missiles doing?"
Drake stared at the computer screen. "Seven minutes until the LCC gets hit. Nine minutes for Tel Aviv. Thirteen for Washington."
"Excellent." McKenzie smiled. "Then it's time to say good-bye."
"What?" Drake's face was a mixture of confusion and growing awareness. The look was wiped off by the half-inch-diameter bullet hitting him in the jaw and taking most of his head off as it continued its trajectory. The body flipped overboard, the laptop computer going with it.
The clock in the LCC was now down to 6:00. It changed to 5:59.
"Goddamn!" Parker screamed as her computer screen went blank before she could finish reprogamming and regaining control. McKenzie must have done something to the system. She knew she would have to reboot the mainframe in the LCC and that would take about six minutes. "Oh, God," she muttered as she hit the reboot button.
McKenzie ripped open the tarp in the back of the Zodiac. He checked his watch and speeded up the pace of his action. First he threw a small anchor overboard, locking the Zodiac in place in the center of the pond. Then he popped open the top on a long tube as he turned the valve on the helium canister. A blimp-shaped balloon slowly slithered out of the tube. The blimp was eight feet long and four feet in diameter, connected at the bottom to the climbers' 12-mm rope in the bottom of the boat.
McKenzie didn't bother to watch as the blimp rose, reaching up above the height of the weathered trees surrounding the pond. He was buckling on a monkey harness, cinching down all the connections. He grabbed the free end of the 12-mm rope and connected the sewn-in loop to the front center of the harness with a locking snap link.
Then he turned and untied the money pod from the back of the boat. He tied that rope off to another snap link on the waistband of his harness. He reached into his vest and pulled out an FM radio headset, settling it on his head. It was already set to the right frequency.
Finally he looked up. The blimp was still rising, another fifty feet of slack in the boat before it would come to a halt. Still it was already over three hundred feet up.
McKenzie spoke into the voice-activated mouthpiece. "Alpha Two, this is Alpha Six. Over."
Forty miles above the surface, the ICBM was coming straight down. The nose cone was just beginning to glow red from contact with the atmosphere. Through a haze of clouds, the Gulf of Mexico lay in an arc far below.
"Six, this is Two, we are on course and one minute out. We have you in sight."
The C-130 was over twenty-five years old and had been bought fourth-hand from the Cambodian government. It had actually cost McKenzie more money than the plane's original price to add the special equipment that the plane now had. There was a specialized steel yoke that had been welded to the front of the plane like a pair of whiskers, along with a powerful winch and crane in the cargo bay that faced the rear ramp. There were also rubber fuel bladders in the front half of the cargo bay, bulging with enough JP-4 to take the C-130 to a country that didn't have an extradition law with the United States.
The pilot saw the orange blimp floating in the clear blue Louisiana sky and lined up the nose of his aircraft for the rope which he knew hung below the blimp.
Thorpe and the pilots of the Blackhawk also saw the blimp.
"What do you want to do?" the pilot asked.
The copilot was looking out the left window. "We've got a One-Thirty inbound!"
Thorpe saw both the C-130 and the blimp. "Put us at the bottom end of that rope below the blimp." He knew exactly what McKenzie was doing and he knew that unless they acted quickly, McKenzie would succeed.
Thorpe grabbed the only thing handy, a parachute harness from the firewall of the cargo bay, and strapped it on as the Blackhawk swooped down toward the pond. He looped a snap link through the chest strap, securing it in place. The pilots slowed as they approached the rope, afraid of fouling the blades. Thorpe tapped Dublowski on the shoulder and pointed at his ruck, yelling in his ear what he wanted. Dublowski pulled out a small green bag and looped it over Thorpe's head.
Thorpe could see McKenzie seated in the boat, the rope coming down to him. "Lower," Thorpe said. He turned to Tommy. "Stay with Sergeant Dublowski. I have something I have to do."
Tommy had seen the Zodiac also. "He's a bad man, Dad."
"I know." When the chopper was less than twenty feet from the pond surface, Thorpe jumped.
Inside the LCC the clock now read 3:20. Parker's hands were gripping the arms of her chair as the computer screen ran through its self-diagnostics as it powered back up. 3:19…3:18…