Antoine’s hand danced over switches and fumbled with the overhead circuit breakers. He started to shout, then realized how quiet it was. “We’ve lost power,” he said.
I didn’t need to hear that. Every setback put us further and further from saving Carmen.
“No shit, Orville Wright. What happened?” Jolie asked. Tendrils of worry whipped from her penumbra.
“You tell me.”
“Now what?”
“I pick a nice place to land and autorotate, baby.” Antoine shifted in his seat to peer down over the nose of the Blackhawk.
“Autorotate?” I asked.
Jolie answered, “Means gliding this helicopter to earth by windmilling the rotors.”
Somehow, gliding and helicopter didn’t belong in the same sentence. “You’ve done this before?”
“Not at night. And never in a Blackhawk.” Antoine hunched over the controls. “Hold tight kiddos, and enjoy the ride.”
Jolie cinched her harness and glanced at me. Her aura erupted with alarm.
Fear pulsed through Clayborn’s aura. He wiggled to get free. I kicked him in the ass to settle him down.
“There’s a road cutting through the marsh,” Antoine announced. “I’ll put us there.”
As we glided down, the serrated tree line rose to meet us.
The helicopter pitched upward and the whirling rotor blades bit the air with a whoosh, whoosh. A cloud of sand bellowed around us and swirled into the helicopter. My stomach sank against the bottom of my belly.
The tail wheel snagged the ground and the helicopter whipped forward. The main wheels slammed the ground. I knocked my head against my seat. Clayborn bounced against the floor.
For a moment, all of us, even Clayborn, remained still. I wiped the dust from my face and hands.
Antoine released his harness belts and flung them aside. “Safe.” He took off his headset and dropped it on the center console.
He and Jolie climbed out of the cockpit and came around to my side of the helicopter.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Hell if I know. I’m not going to fix the damn thing.” Antoine panned the sky as if to renew his bearings. “Hope you guys are up for a hike ’cause we’re freaking miles from Green Pond.”
“Why not call for a ride?” Jolie dug her cell phone from her pocket. Her expression blanched in surprise. “My phone’s dead.”
Antoine pulled his phone out and flipped it open. “Mine’s dead too.”
I noticed that the second hand on my watch had stopped. I pressed the stem to illuminate the face and it remained dark. This was too suspicious.
Clayborn wormed into a sitting position. His aura undulated in a low boil of despair. Tendrils of anxiety lashed from the penumbra.
Jolie grabbed a loose section of wire and used it to drag him out of the helicopter. Clayborn tipped over the edge of the cargo compartment and fell headfirst onto the ground. He balanced on his big head for an instant, then landed on his back, faceup in the dirt, and those dumbbell feet splayed apart. His pained expression screamed, man, that hurt.
Jolie reached down and jerked Clayborn to his feet. “Ask that little fucker what the hell’s going on.”
I unwound the wire but kept it cinched around his neck. I looped the free end around my wrist to keep him tethered.
Clayborn pulled the cloth gag from his mouth and tossed it on the ground. He stayed quiet.
I tapped my watch to see if it would start working again. It didn’t. “Seems all the electronics are toast.”
Antoine looked up the engine cowling. The rotor blades spun lazily as they slowed. “Could be from an EMP.”
“A what?” Jolie asked.
“Electromagnetic Pulse.”
“Where would that come from?”
“Usually, a nuclear blast,” I answered.
“I would’ve seen that,” she replied.
Clayborn’s big eyes turned upward to the twinkling stars.
I gave the leash a tug. “What are you looking for? Your friends?”
Clayborn’s aura sputtered like the fuse on dynamite. His black eyes fixed me with a glare of hatred. His toothless gape curled into a snarl. He mouthed the words “You’d better kill me because I’ll never forgive this.”
I brought my face close to his. “I don’t remember asking for forgiveness. What I want to know is, how do we get Carmen back?”
Clayborn narrowed his dark, wrinkled eyelids. “Then consider me dead because you can’t. Carmen and the others are gone for good.”
Rage pounded through me. I fought not to kill Clayborn. I froze my grip to keep my talons from ripping him apart. “How’d you move them?”
“Teleportation.”
Teleportation?
“Like Star Trek?”
Clayborn smirked. “Please.”
I wrapped both hands around his skinny neck and throttled him. “From where?”
He clutched my wrists. “The lab in the annex. That pedestal? It’s the transmitter. We transported them to an orbiting ship.”
“‘We’?”
“My comrades on the ship.” A veneer of triumphant smugness smoothed Clayborn’s aura. “The payment’s been made. You’ll be lucky to find where your friend Carmen will end up. Make it easy on yourself and forget trying to get her back.”
I punched his ugly face. “That’s not an option.”
Clayborn dropped to a knee.
A low hum echoed through the darkness. Clayborn struggled to his feet and his aura blazed with terror. He shrank toward the helicopter.
Jolie and Antoine gazed about. Their auras surged with confusion and alarm.
“I’ve heard that noise before.” My skin tingled with dread. “When another flying saucer came to take Odin’s body.”
“Flying saucer?” yelped Antoine. “Shit, first the power goes out on everything, then a flying saucer? Whenever one of those shows up in the movies, it’s never good news.”
“The last time they didn’t do anything to me,” I replied.
“Well pardon me if I don’t share your confidence.” Antoine’s aura and face lit up with distress.
Jolie pointed. “There it is.”
A black shape-a disk bisecting a spherical body-floated into view above the trees. This flying saucer was a smaller version of the one that had taken Odin’s body and the blaster.
Antoine backed away in the opposite direction. When his feet stepped off the sandy road and squished into the marsh, he bolted from us. His feet spanked the mud and his orange aura bounced over the saw grass like a burning ball.
Jolie shouted after him. “You goddamn coward, don’t you want to see what happens?”
“Post it on your blog.” Antoine’s voice ripped through the darkness.