Chasing Fire Read online

  “Go!” she yelled, dropping a gun, grabbing his hand, then jumping off the dam.

  “Noooo!” Chase screamed, gulping air as his feet found nothing.

  Twenty-Nine

  Lenny woke up again, feeling as if he’d been run over by a truck. His legs were tangled and cramped against a car door. Worn and split upholstery and the smell of stale cigarettes were fairly good clues as to his whereabouts. As he pulled himself up, it took a moment for him to quiet the knocking vibrations in his head.

  “He’s alive,” Skrunch said in an eerie, horror movie voice.

  “What the hell am I doing back in your garbage car?” Lenny asked, looking out the window, trying to get a sense of where they were.

  “I rescued you. You’re welcome.”

  “Rescued? You really are a crazy freak, you know that? My head may be a mess, but the way I remember it, you sold us out, almost got me killed, and . . . where the hell is Bull?”

  “Those guys are Russian mafia. I didn’t call them. I would never call those monsters. They were watching me—I had no idea.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Then why did I rescue you?”

  “Stop saying you rescued me. Are you taking me to the hospital?”

  “No. We’re going to a doctor who owes me a favor. I hacked all his records and sold them back to him.”

  “Why is that a favor?”

  “He doesn’t know I hacked them. He just thinks I got them from another hacker and, out of the goodness of my heart, decided not to destroy his practice.”

  “And you want me to trust you?”

  “I don’t care one way or the other. But you and I want the same thing—to save Bull.”

  “And, by coincidence, you know where they have her?” Lenny asked sarcastically.

  “I wish. But I have a phone number, and as soon as we have the money, I’ll call them and set up the trade.”

  “What money?”

  “We’re going to sell the data you and Bull found. I sure hope it’s worth half a million dollars because that’s what they’re asking to give Bull back.”

  “But I don’t even have access to it,” Lenny said.

  “You’d better figure out a way to get it.” Skrunch pulled into a fancy campus of medical buildings. “Otherwise, they’ll kill Bull, then come looking for us.”

  Chase was certain these were the last precious seconds of his life. The thundering roar of water plummeting hundreds of feet to the newly deep and churning river below made it impossible to hear his own screams. His legs continued running, as if in a cartoon, unaware there was no longer solid ground beneath them. With his left arm flailing wildly, it took a moment to realize that Wen still had a hold of his right hand and was pulling it hard. Chase looked over at her, surprised by her calm and concentrating expression, while sure his own was of pure panic.

  Her mouth moved. It seemed like she was saying, “Water,” which seemed ridiculous, since they were both about to be smashed to bits and buried by a force of liquid angrier than he’d ever witnessed. Wen pointed at the openings on the sloped face of the dam from which the pent-up, raging flow was being released.

  Chase knew from his time working with his brother on the skyscrapers around San Francisco that a human body in free-fall accelerates at thirty-two feet per second while plummeting to the earth. Somehow, in what he was sure would be the final fleeting moment of his life, his brilliant mind crunched down another calculation, estimating that they would smash down in less than five seconds.

  Wen pulled hard again. And continued to point at the jetting water.

  He suddenly got it. The angle of the dam—it meant that they were about to land on those jets. They weren’t going to fall all the way. And what would those jets do? Could they actually ride those currents of propulsion down to the river?

  Before an answer came, they dropped into the jets. It was as if someone had opened a thousand fire hoses on them. It felt as if the powerful streams of water cut him in half, and he was no longer sure if he was upside down, heading sideways, or falling at all anymore. For an instant, Chase thought he might already be in the river below, swirling in the rapids, whirlpools, and eddies caused by the massive waterfalls coming from the dam.

  The rolling water suddenly slammed them into the dam, his knees taking the brunt of the impact, but he didn’t care about that. He needed air. The millions of gallons and incalculable weight of the water was drowning him in a force he could not fight.

  Wen’s idea had been good, but I’m going to die anyway. Where is Wen? Is she already at the bottom? How many seconds have passed? Am I already dead?

  Thirty

  The first IT-Squad began dropping on the dam mere seconds after Chase and Wen went over. The gusting winds and heavy smoke made maneuvering challenging. Two Sikorsky Black Hawk choppers accompanied by a modified Bell AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter hovered above the dam. Normally the Viper would have sent a couple Hellfire missiles to vaporize the armed men who were mostly looking over the edge of the dam, trying to figure out if there was any way Chase and Wen could live through their insane jump. However, there would be no way to avoid catastrophic structural damage to the dam, and the area didn’t need a second major disaster in one day.

  The IT-Squad leader had just gotten through to Tess at Mission Control, and didn’t know how long the connection would hold. “No sign of targets,” he began. “More than a dozen hostiles. Should we engage?”

  “Are there casualties?” Tess asked from on board a military plane.

  “Looks like three down.”

  “Are you certain they are not our targets?”

  “Negative,” the leader said. “Targets are not present, repeat not present.”

  “We need to know who the hell those hostiles are.”

  “We are under fire, and are now engaging the hostiles.”

  Travis muted the mic and spoke firmly to Tess. “I don’t like the fact that we’re now in the middle of a firefight with an unknown force, in broad daylight, atop a critical-strategic dam, on US soil.”

  “Neither do I, but we stumbled into this storm. We can’t just pretend they aren’t there shooting as us.”

  “I don’t want to get dragged before the Senate Select Committee,” Travis said as the second IT-Squad arrived.

  “You know this is beyond the Committee’s reach.” Tess turned back to the screen and watched as the IT-Squads cleared the dam in short order. “There, now this is nothing more than another mess to clean up.”

  “Not that easy. With the fire, I don’t think we can safely get a scrub crew in there.”

  “Then the IT-Squads will have to handle it.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather have them trying to locate Chase and Wen?”

  “Dammit, Travis, split them up. These are the best-trained and experienced operatives in the world—they can do it all. I am confident of that.”

  Travis nodded and gave the command to the Squad leader. “Scour the area for Chase and Wen and remove all trace of hostiles.”

  Immediately, the leader had one of the Black Hawks begin to ferry dead bodies to a secure location while the Viper and other Black Hawk continued the search. The two IT-Squads, totaling nineteen operatives, diverged on each side of the dam.

  With horrible visibility from the smoke storm and raging fire even before the IT-Squads arrived, the reconnaissance had never been solid. Now, with conditions deteriorating further, they were not aware of the fact that one of the hostiles had escaped, undetected, back into the smoldering forest.

  Westfield took the call like an alcoholic takes a drink. “Cox, what the hell took you so long?” His gaze was on his fraternity ring as he turned it slowly on his finger.

  “This isn’t Cox,” the man said. “Cox is dead.”

  “Good God! Then who in the hell is this, and who killed Cox?” He focused on a picture hanging on the wall opposite his desk of a younger version of himself standing with Dick Cheney.

  “I’m Tarsoni
, one of Cox’s men. I don’t know who killed him. We had just lost Chase Malone and—”

  “Wait, you lost Malone?” Westfield wanted to reach through his phone and shake this guy to death.

  “After he and the girl took our SUV, we—”

  “What? You mean they escaped in your vehicle?” Westfield looked at his phone as if it had suddenly changed into one of those crying baby dolls. This can’t be happening.

  “There’s this massive fire, the whole damned forest is burning, smoke everywhere . . . ”

  “Where did Malone go?” Westfield said slowly.

  “He and the girl jumped off the dam. They couldn’t have survived. I think it’s five or six hundred feet down to the river. Normally it’s pretty shallow, but they’re releasing a lot of water from the dam, and I guess it’s possible . . . but no, I’m sure they’re dead. They just flew off like—”

  Westfield couldn’t believe the story continued to get worse, but at least it sounded like Chase was most likely dead.

  Still, with no body . . .

  “Tell me exactly where you are.”

  “This death squad dropped in from the sky and killed everybody,” Tarsoni said in a desperate and vacant tone.

  “Who were they?”

  “I have no idea. Trained pros. Armed. Efficient. Killed everybody,” he repeated.

  “Tell me your exact location. The GPS is not reliable right now, for some reason.”

  “I’m less than half a click from the south side of the dam.”

  “Sit tight,” Westfield said. “I’ll have a couple of guys to you in about . . . ” he plugged in coordinates into his program and saw how close Damon and Ryker were, “fifteen minutes.”

  Tarsoni looked at the still burning forest, thought of the killers on the dam, the sound of their choppers still echoing through the smoke. “I’m not sure I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  Thirty-One

  Chase’s nostrils and mouth were seared by the intense smell of vaporized water as he plunged into the river so hard, he no longer had any doubt that he was alive. But for how long? The force of the jets unloading tons of water into the river pushed him into the depths of a cold, churning, torture chamber. The smoke and endless rolling layers of water obscured all but the faintest traces of light, and Chase lost himself in the opaque. He fought with dwindling strength to find the surface, but even if he had known which direction that was, the constant pounding kept knocking him sideways, thrusting him deeper, harder, over and over again.

  He tumbled in a dream, the one where your legs won’t move and it doesn’t matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to get anywhere. The thundering echoes, simultaneously muffled and amplified by the exploding water, betrayed his senses. Dizziness overtook him, his mind collapsing in confusion.

  I must pick a direction, he thought, moving his arms, looking for any way out.

  The pull of the current took over and sucked him downriver. Suddenly, the murky, muddy water seemed to lighten.

  Daylight! Air!

  He kicked to the rolling surface, gulping air in a convulsive coughing fit. The river was carrying him fast. He spun around, searching for Wen. Gasping, he tried to call her name, but only a weak wheeze escaped. A moment later, she was there, thirty feet ahead. Alive and looking back, scanning the river for him. He tried to wave, but couldn’t get his arm high enough. It didn’t matter because his part of the river was still moving faster than hers, and soon she was less than fifteen feet beyond. She finally spotted Chase.

  He could see the elation on her face. Seconds later, they were embracing in the cold flow.

  The current slowed as they came around the bend in the river, and the water grew shallow enough that they could make their way to the shore. But this was not a place they wanted to go. The Hellish landscape of orange and black, twisting flames, billowing and drifting smoke, offset against gnarled silhouetted trees in a devastated forest from some evil planet, seemed to offer nothing except the distorted realization that they were alive.

  They exchanged a glance, each hoping the other had an answer, a solution that didn’t exist.

  “I need to get out of the water,” Wen said.

  “Maybe we can walk along the bank,” Chase said, trying to stand, surprised by how much effort it took, his body refusing to cooperate.

  “We have to get as far away from the dam as possible,” Wen said, stumbling toward the shore. “They’ll still be looking for us.”

  He realized his leg had been injured in the jump. “No one could think for a minute that we survived that fall.”

  “But we did, and as long as there’s a chance that we did, they’ll keep coming.” She coughed up water, holding her knees and bending over, her body convulsing while more water came out of her.

  Chase nodded. “You okay?”

  “I’ll make it. I’m not thirsty anymore!”

  The riverbank was blackened. The fire had been through there not too long ago, glowing coals and embers still littering the area. The hotspots made picking their way treacherous.

  “At least we’ve still got the smoke protecting us,” Wen said.

  “How did you know we could make that jump?”

  “I didn’t. But I did know that we had less than a second to live if we stayed on the dam.”

  “Why didn’t they just shoot us?” Chase asked.

  “They wanted to be close enough not to destroy the antimatter machine.”

  “You think so?”

  “It’s the only explanation.”

  “Unless they wanted to take us into custody.”

  “Custody? Why?” She shivered in the heat.

  “To find out what we’ve learned. They needed to know if we found out who the Fire Bombers are.”

  “Then who were they working for?”

  “I don’t know,” Chase said, suddenly realizing the Antimatter Machine had gone into the pressured depths under the dam. “What about the Antimatter Machine?”

  “The case the Astronaut included is shockproof and waterproof, but I don’t know if it was built to withstand that kind of . . . ”

  “We survived,” Chase said, still amazed and almost giddy with the realization, but limping.

  “Your leg is hurt?”

  “It’ll be fine. How did we make that jump?”

  She stared at his leg for a moment, then continued the conversation. “In China, we have many dams, and they are a matter of national security.”

  “Part of espionage?” Chase asked as they walked past a burning tree.

  “Yes. The MSS is involved in taking trade secrets from Western companies to use in the manufacture design of our projects. And also for military planning purposes. China is an important infrastructure expert. They know America, and American vulnerabilities.”

  “So you know dams?”

  “They train us. I know what it sounds like when the jets on the spill ways are open.”

  Chased held out his arm to stop her as a large glowing branch fell into their path.

  Wen smiled a thank you and continued talking. “Normally they never would let water out this time of year, but they must be doing it for the fires. Once I heard, I remembered seeing in China how far out the water goes and thought we might have a chance to land on the wave from the jets. It would cut our fall from five or six hundred feet to less than fifty. We might survive that. Then I hoped the wave would carry us all the way down to the river and soften our impact.”

  “All of that in a split second from the sound of rushing water,” Chase said, stopping and taking Wen’s hands. “You’re amazing.”

  They kissed until their blissful moment was interrupted by a different sound. The whop-whop-whop of an approaching helicopter.

  Thirty-Two

  The IT-Squad Leader, still on the dam, couldn’t believe what he was looking at.

  “Targets are gone,” he said to Tess after a long silence. “One of the hostiles had a chest cam. We’ve got film. Targets jumped off the dam.”
/>   “How big is that dam?” Tess asked, everyone listening, her heart sinking.

  A technician on the plane with her, working a computer, answered first. “Six hundred and two feet, eighth largest dam in America.”

  “Any chance the jump was survivable?” Tess asked, knowing the answer.

  “Even the best trained cliff divers in the world have never done more than two hundred feet,” the same technician answered.

  “Looks like suicide,” the IT-Squad leader said, transmitting the footage to Tess. “They were surrounded and—”

  “Who are they working for?” Tess broke in angrily, referring to the hostiles, already wondering how she was going to explain this to Flint. Worse, she was no closer to finding the Fire Bomber.

  “The first facial IDs are just coming in,” Travis said, watching the data feed into his laptop. At the same time the IT-Squad leader was uploading more data. “Classified.”

  “What?” Tess asked, knowing that meant US Government personnel or contractors. “Un-classify it!”

  “I can’t,” Travis said. “It won’t let me.”

  Tess pulled up her own laptop and began tapping the keys as if they were enemy agents. After several frustrating minutes, she grabbed her phone. “Get me the president.”

  Gunner hated technology, but begrudgingly utilized it whenever necessary. “You can’t win the machine wars without using machines,” he often said. “That would be like sending soldiers on horseback armed with muskets out to fight a brigade of tanks.”

  He kicked at a groove in the dirt as he waited for this particular gizmo, known as a Hatchet-680, to connect him to Powder. The relay device encrypted two-way communications through an eight-step process involving four satellites. What he would hear would not actually be Powder. Instead, it would be a computer-generated simulated voice that sounded completely human-like. Powder would hear the same technical translation on his end.