Hannah slumped back against the snow and looked to her rear. Neeley was skiing down, her pistol held with both hands leading the way. She halted just before the road with a swift turn to her left, spewing snow over the edge onto Hannah.
"Next time, don't do anything until we agree on a course of action," Neeley hissed.
"You never told me the course of action until it was too late," Hannah said, dusting snow off her sweater.
Neeley was trembling as she popped out of her bindings and joined Hannah on the road. "Damn, Hannah, that was close."
"Let's get out of here. Now." Hannah walked toward the pickup ignoring the body and Neeley followed.
Once they were in and driving back the way they had come, Hannah reached across the cab and poked a finger in Neeley's shoulder. "Next time you decide to set up an ambush, tell me, OK?"
"All right." Neeley sighed, and then looked over at Hannah. "Listen, I'm just not used to explaining—" she paused as Hannah yelled: "Watch out!"
The helicopter was astride the road in front of them, less than sixty feet away on a bend in the road. The pilot was just as startled by their appearance, looking out his door at the truck. Another man was standing in the cargo bay, a submachinegun in his hands.
Neeley automatically brought her foot off the gas toward the brake, and just as quickly slammed her foot down on the gas pedal. The V-8 engine roared and the truck accelerated.
The man with the submachinegun put the stock in his shoulder and was aiming. He was getting ready to pull the trigger when he realized the truck wasn't slowing down. He dropped the sub and turned to jump, just as the front grill of the truck smashed into the side of the chopper.
Neeley slammed on her brakes as they hit. The impact neatly bounced the lightweight chopper off the road and into the abyss on the far side of the turn. The gunman went flying out further, into open space.
Neeley and Hannah stepped out of the stopped truck and followed the course of the helicopter down. It was over a thousand feet to the valley floor below. Neeley blinked as she heard the whine of engines and the blades on the falling aircraft slowly started to turn.
"No way," she muttered. And there was no way the damaged engine could get up to speed in time. The chopper hit bottom in a blossom of flame.
"Let's go," Neeley said, getting back in the truck.
They peeled rubber around the turn.
"What about the money?" Hannah asked.
Neeley didn't say anything for fifteen minutes, until she pulled into a roadside parking area at Beaver Ponds, a nature walk area well away from the scene of their recent battle. She grabbed the PVC pipes with the money and got out of the truck.
"Stay here," she ordered Hannah. "I'll be right back."
Neeley had learned the art of caching from Gant who'd been taught it at the Special Forces Qualification course at Fort Bragg over two decades ago. He'd shown her that it was a much more complicated skill than simply digging a hole in the ground and chucking something in. The first concern was to make sure that whatever was cached would be recovered in useable condition.
The next priority was to find a good spot to put the item. Neeley looked about. Approximately fifty meters away she spotted a pine tree that towered over the other trees. Neeley shot an azimuth to the pine from the corner of the parking area. 47 degrees magnetic. She drew the parking lot on a piece of paper and an arrow, labeling the direction. She then stepped out the distance to the pine, using the pace count Gant had worked out with her — every seventy-two strikes of her right foot equaled one hundred meters. It was thirty-one right steps to the pine. Neeley labeled the arrow with forty-five meters.
From the base of the tree she looked about. The pine needle floor was perfect. Neeley put the pipe down. She stepped out four paces from the tree due south. She laid a garbage bag down on the ground and carefully began the hole. First she slid a piece of cardboard under the needles and scooped them up intact, putting it off to the side. Then she removed the topsoil and placed it on the plastic bag. Each different layer of earth was placed on the plastic in piles, to be put back in the same order it came out. Neeley dug a three foot round hole, down almost three feet. She put the tubes in. She replaced the dirt, making sure to put the top layer back on last and then slid the needles back on top. A bit of careful rearranging and it looked undisturbed.
Neeley put the dirt displaced by the PVC piping into the garbage bag and brought it back to the truck, tossing it in the back. She transcribed the map she had drawn into a Special Forces cache report format as Gant had taught her.
Neeley copied the report onto the lower part of the paper and then quickly tore it in half. "Here," she handed the scrawled copy to Hannah who had watched her in silence.
"What do I do with this?" Hannah asked in surprise.
"Isn't it obvious? If something happens to me, dig the money up."
Hannah shook her head. "Neeley, I'm touched, really, but you don't know me. We only met a few days ago."
Neeley held out the report. "I know you better than anyone on the planet. Besides, you knew your husband for years and what did that get you? I want you to have the report Hannah and that's all that matters."
Hannah took the report. "What now?" she asked.
"We go to the airport."
CHAPTER 21
Hannah and Neeley stepped out of the airport parking lot shuttle with a surprisingly light load. They couldn't very well haul everything with them so they had spent most of the past hour cleaning and oiling and carefully repacking the guns in the back of the truck.
They had then left the truck in long term parking at DIA where it would not be noticed for months at least, given the volume of vehicles that went through that lot. They didn't have enough clothes between them for one person to be out of style in France, much less two. Neeley had offered the limited contents of a back closet that she described as having a few things. It turned out to be skiing apparel, a wet suit, and some stuff Emma Peel would have loved. So now they were searching for their gate in the jumble of Denver International Airport wearing a lot of tight black clothing. Hannah noticed that when your butt was poured into black ski pants, men hardly noticed ragged nails. Neeley was wearing a one-piece cat suit with a wide black belt that she said she had only worn once before: to crawl through a long narrow pipe. Hannah believed her.
They had an hour before the flight so they stopped at the European Cafe on Concourse B and had a combination of the last five meals they had missed. For the first time in years, Hannah ate her fill without counting fat grams. She and Neeley looked fit and healthy, their tummies as flat as boards and their complexions glowing from exercise and the sheer stress of imminent death. Neeley spent most of the lunch in disbelief that Hannah wasn't sore from the climb and the incident in the Rocky Mountain National Park.
Neeley made all the flight arrangements at the counter. She knew she was on the right track, but she wondered if they would live long enough to find Gant's cache.
Then she excused herself from Neeley to make a phone call. She took a stack of quarters and sat down at a pay phone. She pulled out the 212 number that Gant had given her.
She dialed it and the operator told her how much she needed to pay. Neeley slid the coins in, then the phone rang. It was picked up on the third ring.
“Yo!” a voice boomed into Neeley’s ear.