The Rescue(112)

“What’s wrong?” said Decker.

“Front tire is shot out. It was the only one with a key.”

“Stop for a second. We need to take out the rest of the ATVs.”

It was unlikely they’d find the other keys in the tangle of limbs and guts left behind, but he didn’t want to take the chance. Their ATV barely moved faster than a golf cart at this point. They fired until all of the ATVs sat on at least two flats, then resumed their agonizingly slow trip to the pond near the southeastern corner of the estate.





CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

The moment Pierce turned off the ATV’s engine, the steady hum of an aircraft washed over the clearing. Decker jumped off the ATV and glanced back in the direction of the house. Powerful headlights bounced up and down somewhere beyond the trees. The ATV path had narrowed significantly about a hundred yards back, preventing the Suburbans from driving straight to the clearing, but he wanted to be long gone before they got that close. One hundred yards of forest was hardly a buffer for a patient shooter.

“I got the package,” said Pierce. “You contact Bernie. We need to move fast.”

Decker took out his satellite phone and dialed the pilot circling above as he followed Pierce to the Pelican transport case in the middle of the clearing.

“Which one of you was driving? My mother drives faster than that,” answered Bernie.

“Talk to Pierce about it,” said Decker.

“What are we looking at?” said the pilot.

Decker glanced at the headlights again. “Pickup in thirty seconds.”

“That’s pushing it,” said Pierce, already unsnapping the oversize crate.

“Dammit, Decker! You could have given me a heads-up,” said Bernie. “That’s cutting it really close.”

“We made a lot of new friends down here.”

“I bet you did. Be there in around thirty seconds. This isn’t a performance jet, you know.”

“See you shortly,” said Decker, pocketing the phone.

Pierce opened the crate, and they started separating the components. Bernie had promised no assembly required, and he’d kept his word. His version of the Fulton Recovery ground package consisted of a three-man harness connected by a braided nylon rope to a large suitcase-size sack inside the case. The hardest part would be figuring out the harness within the next twenty seconds or so. The rest was up to Bernie.

Decker cracked two chem lights and dropped them on the ground next to the harness, relieved to see that Bernie had upgraded his design. Decker and Pierce stepped into the side-by-side leg holes and simultaneously yanked the harness snug between their legs before pulling the shoulder straps over their arms. With the sound of the C-123 bearing down on them, they methodically snapped and tightened each strap, starting from the waist and working their way up. Missing a single strap, on either harness, could be catastrophic for both of them.

Normally, they would inspect each other’s harnesses, but they didn’t have time. The headlights had stopped moving, their beams poking into the clearing through the trees, and the pickup was imminent. They sat on the ground, and Pierce pulled the yellow rip cord on the side of the nylon bag, activating a compressed helium bottle and launching an SUV-size balloon. The near-instantaneously filled balloon raced skyward, a strobe light flashing beneath it.

The same nylon line connected to their harness rapidly unraveled from the bag, pulled tight by the balloon, until its four-hundred-foot journey ended, tugging on their harness.

“I hate this part,” said Decker.

“I hate all of it,” said Pierce.

The C-123’s massive dark shape appeared over the eastern edge of the clearing, passing directly overhead a few seconds later, the balloon’s strobe light vanishing above it. Without warning, they were yanked off the ground, rising smoothly above the clearing. For a few more seconds, they continued straight up like a rocket, until the aircraft had flown far enough to start pulling them sideways. The trip up was surprisingly gentle until they steadied behind the aircraft about a hundred feet off the ground. The lights from Harcourt’s mansion rapidly faded into the distance as the crew started to winch them toward the plane.

They started to spin until they extended their arms and legs, stabilizing their 125-mile-per-hour flight through the darkness as they edged closer to the ramp underneath the aircraft’s tail. After five minutes of “flying” behind the C-123, they reached the edge of the ramp, where the flight crew yanked them inside. When the ramp sealed shut, the plane banked sharply to the right and climbed to a normal altitude for an aircraft this size.

When they leveled off, Decker and Pierce removed the Fulton harness and sat down on the bench lining the cargo compartment, both of them staring into space for a few minutes. Decker felt exhausted, more emotionally than physically. Leaving Harcourt and Frist behind had been the hardest promise he’d ever kept. The two of them were responsible for murdering his wife and son, among countless others. Leaving them to the system—or “the wolves,” as Harlow had put it—didn’t sit well with him.

“Deep thoughts?”

Decker shrugged. “No. Just zoning out.”

“If anyone’s earned the right, it’s you.”

“I guess.”

“No guessing about it,” said Pierce. “Those two would still be walking around like Godzilla, stomping on the little people, if it wasn’t for you.”