They had just finished loading up when a new sound made them all freeze, a whirring from over the trees. Another damn helicopter. McKenna drew a gun and glanced at Nebraska.
“Traeger coming back?” Nebraska asked.
If it is, McKenna thought, then this time there will be a firefight. All three of them hurried out of the RV and into the soft light of daybreak. They stared into the dawn sky and McKenna’s jaw dropped.
“Is that… pink?” Nebraska asked in a strained voice.
It was. And what was more, it had the Victoria’s Secret logo emblazoned proudly on the side.
“Jesus tap-dancing Christ,” McKenna said slowly.
“That what you asked for?” Nebraska asked, as Casey laughed.
McKenna shrugged. “It’ll do.”
By now the chopper had descended enough that McKenna could make out Nettles in the pilot’s seat, and Coyle waving merrily at them from the side hatch. Despite himself, a grin spread across his face as he hurried toward the helicopter. He heard Nebraska whooping behind him as the rotors slowed. The tall grass in the field bent and waved, and the door popped open and now McKenna could see Baxley and Lynch in there with Nettles and Coyle. If he’d thought these bastards were crazy before they’d somehow managed to steal a Victoria’s Secret helicopter, he thought they were twice as crazy now, but he loved the hell out of them for it.
Yes, they needed transport. But they also needed to be inconspicuous. Flying around in this thing in broad daylight was a terrible idea, but it was still better than sitting on their asses in the middle of a grassy field without any way of going after Rory.
Carrying backpacks full of weaponry, McKenna, Casey, and Nebraska climbed into the helicopter, enduring the welcoming cheers and the cocky grins of the Loonies, and moments later they were lifting off. McKenna looked down at the RV and the field and the barn that had been the last place he’d seen Rory. He promised himself it would not be his final memory of his son.
“Very inconspicuous,” he yelled, over the roar of the chopper.
“We had to kill seven Victoria’s Secret models,” Coyle said proudly.
Casey’s face went white. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m joking,” Coyle replied, horrified that she’d taken him seriously. “I’d sooner piss on the Mona Lisa.”
Nettles throttled up and the chopper took on speed, careening across the sky. The landscape rushed past below as McKenna turned to Nettles.
“Anything on board we can use?”
Nettles shrugged. “We got some low-grade pyro and about three dozen promotional tote bags.”
Nebraska held up a tube of exfoliating gel. “Yeah, Predators hate this shit.”
Baxley edged over to McKenna. Almost matter-of-factly, as if he was asking where they were going to stop for lunch, he said, “Cap, we gonna die, you think? Just curious.”
Hearing him, Nettles chipped in from the pilot’s seat. “Yeah, we’re dealing with a hybrid…”
“That thing,” Coyle called. “It’s a fucking survival machine.”
Despite their casual bravado, McKenna could tell that the men were jittery, nervous, that they needed a pep talk. Looking at Baxley, but addressing them all, he said, “You. Yesterday you were on a prison bus, barking to yourself. Now you got a gun in your hand. Who’s the fucking survivor? Huh?”
Baxley nodded enthusiastically: Hell, yeah.
Glancing at Nebraska, McKenna continued, “We put bullets in our head and walk to the fucking hospital. That’s who we are.”
Nebraska grinned.
“So, when it comes to standing on the right side of the dirt?” Now McKenna looked at each of them in turn. “That motherfucker ain’t got shit on us.”
The Loonies whooped, punched the air. When the sound had died down, McKenna turned back to Baxley.
“And yes,” he said decisively. “We may die.”
The men laughed and cheered all over again. Baxley grinned. “Thanks. Just checking.”
“Nettles,” McKenna said. “We got a twenty?”
“I can follow their chopper,” Nettles replied. “I just need to lock in on its frequency.”
Casey’s brow furrowed. McKenna followed her gaze as she leaned over to look out the window.
“Or,” she said, “we can just follow that thing.”
Far below the chopper, they could all see the Predator dog hauling ass across country roads and farmland.
The forest pressed in on all sides. The only light came from the headlamps of the military jeep, which seemed to give the looming vegetation a jolting, shadowy life as the vehicle lurched in and out of ruts in the makeshift road.
Rory had been dozing, but now he was awake. Sitting in the back of the jeep, he alternated his gaze between the back of Traeger’s head, poking above the seat in front, and the chiaroscuro of white, pitted tree trunks and flat, pale, spade-shaped leaves embedded within a blackness so profound it was like a vacuum.
Beside Rory sat Sapir, Traeger’s aide, who hadn’t acknowledged him once throughout the entire day-long journey. Rory wondered where they were, and where they were going, but he didn’t ask—he wasn’t that sort of kid. He shifted his position slightly when the jeep slowed, so he could peer between the two front seats.
He saw temporary floodlights on metal tripods illuminating a row of sawhorses, beyond which a couple of lowboy tractor trailers were parked nose to tail at the side of the road. The temporary barricade was guarded by soldiers in black, like the ones at the barn. Rory counted four of them, their weapons leveled. A fifth approached them. Traeger wound down his window and brandished his ID.
“You mind telling the Wild Bunch to chill out?” he barked.
Rory’s mom had once referred to his dad as an alpha male, and so Rory had read up about them. He had learned enough to know that Traeger was one too—or at least, that he tried to be. Rory wasn’t sure, though, whether it was the CIA man himself or just his job that made the soldier cower a little, and nod, and scurry away to obey his superior’s orders.
After a moment, the sawhorses were pulled aside and the jeep drove through, and at a command from Traeger pulled into the side of the dirt road, just in front of the tractor trailers.
Traeger got out and motioned that Rory should do so too. The vegetation was pressing so close to the door on Rory’s side, though, that he had to wait until Sapir had vacated the jeep before he could scramble across the seat and exit on the same side.
The air smelled green and hot and damp. Rory saw Sapir wipe sweat from his brow with a handkerchief that he produced from his pocket. Traeger, on the other hand, looked as cool as ever. He marched off, indicating that they should follow him.
Rory was surprised when they left the road and plunged into the jungle. A route had been marked with arc lamps, but it was still a little tricky picking their way down the side of a ravine thick with undergrowth and dotted with dark rocks that pushed up out of the carpet of verdant green like the humped backs of whales.
Soon they came to an area where the ground was a sea of black mud, which formed a track as wide as a highway through the surrounding vegetation. There was a strange smell, like the ghost of an oil drum fire, and although it was hard to tell in the dark, Rory thought the vegetation on either side of them looked scorched, blackened. He imagined men coming through here armed with flamethrowers, using fire to blast a route through the jungle. But when, after another five minutes of walking, they came to a clearing, surrounded by temporary stadium lights, he saw that what had burned its way through the jungle was nothing so mundane as a few flamethrowers.