Manning eyed the lid, then glanced back at the fire. It was a long shot, but he figured if he could pry to lid off and heave it far enough, it might be able to snuff out the fire, or at least divert it away from the chopper.
The lid was nailed shut, but Manning had opened a wide enough gap for his fingers, and he tugged upward, ignoring the pain in his back, as well as the bullets slamming into the far side of the ATV. After a few agonizing seconds, the lid finally came free.
Manning glanced into the container, then whistled low and muttered, “I’ll be damned.”
ENCIZO WAS as mindful of the creeping flames as Manning, and when bullets began zipping past his head, he finally let go of the rotor blade and dropped down onto the burning tree. He tore at his blood-soaked shirt, ripping it from his back and then using it to slap at the flames. It worked at first, putting out the part of the fire closest to the fuel spill. He couldn’t get any other of the burning branches without putting himself back into the line of fire, however, and soon it became clear that he was fighting a losing battle.
Pressing the shirt against the gash in his shoulder, Encizo made his way back toward the chopper, half climbing, half stepping over the brittle branches of the pine. Finally he reached the Sikorsky’s ladder and climbed up to the cockpit. Peering in, he saw McCarter struggling to get to his feet, still bleeding from his scalp wound.
“Over here!” Encizo called out.
McCarter glanced up, a quizzical expression on his face.
“Come on!” Encizo jerked the door open and reached out to McCarter. “We’ve got to get out of this firetrap, quick!”
McCarter hesitated, then took Encizo’s hand. The Cuban pulled hard, helping the Briton to the doorway.
“They really pulled the rug out from under you that time, didn’t they?” he wisecracked.
“Rug?” McCarter said dully.
“Let’s go,” Encizo told him. “Gary’s waiting in the ATV.”
“Gary,” McCarter repeated.
Encizo climbed back down the ladder, then dropped to the ground. He was waiting for McCarter to catch up when he heard a loud crash behind him. Turning, he saw the wooden crate tumble over the side of the ATV, spilling its contents onto the ground. Instead of the missiles and warheads the men had been concerned about, the crate had been filled with weapons: LAW rocket launchers, assault rifles, submachine guns and boxes filled with ammo clips. As for Manning, he was beside the vehicle’s rear cargo bay, in the process of setting up a Barrett .50-caliber machine gun on its tripod stand.
“Thought I’d lighten our load,” he called out as Encizo and McCarter made their way to the ATV. “Let’s get the hell out of here before we get toasted!”
“I’ll drive,” Manning told McCarter, pausing to snatch up one of the assault rifles. He handed the gun to McCarter. “You can ride shotgun.”
McCarter stared at the rifle, entranced, as Encizo bounded into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
“Come on, David, dammit!”
McCarter looked up, then moved around the ATV and took a seat next to Encizo.
“Glad to see you in one piece, David,” Manning called out from the rear of the vehicle.
As soon as McCarter climbed in, Encizo geared the ATV and popped the clutch. The vehicle lunged forward, still listing to one side as it raced clear of the downed Sikorsky. Moments later, there was a resounding explosion and shards of flaming shrapnel erupted in all directions. Manning ducked low in the vehicle, aiming the Barrett into the hills. Triggering the gun, he sent an autoburst streaming at their attackers. He couldn’t see if he’d hit anyone, but there was yet another lull in the gunfire coming their way.
Encizo veered the ATV sharply to the right, heading up a slope that led back to the trail it had strayed from earlier. Just as they reached the path, a pair of fleeting shadows passed over the ATV. Glancing up, Encizo and Manning spotted a pair of Cobra gunships heading toward the enemy positions in the hills.
“Hot damn!” Encizo said. “It’s about time we got some help!”
Once he reached the trail, Encizo quickly realized the ATV’s front wheels were so misaligned he was in danger of crashing into the rocks flanking either side of the path. After a few yards he gave up trying and brought the vehicle to a stop.
“Stay put,” he told Manning. “David and I’ll go help mop up, then we’ll come back to get you.”
Manning nodded.
Encizo was halfway out of the ATV when he noticed that McCarter was still in his seat.
“David?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
McCarter stared at Encizo. He looked confused. “David,” he said. “Is that my name?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
“Amnesia?” Carmen Delahunt was floored by the news Akira Tokaido had just delivered after a briefing with Aaron Kurtzman. “David has amnesia?”
Tokaido nodded. “All these times we’ve accused him of being out of his mind, who’d have thought we’d wind up being right?”
“Not funny,” Delahunt snapped. Anger flushed her cheeks just a shade lighter than her fiery red hair.
“Hey, just a little gallows humor, all right?” Tokaido countered.
“I repeat,” Delahunt said. “It’s not funny. What’s next? Are you going to start making wisecracks about Calvin being a holey man because he took three bullets?”
“Okay, I got it.”
Tokaido shrugged and pitched his bubble gum into a trash receptacle as he made his way to the far corner of the Annex Computer Room, where steam rose from Kurtzman’s legendary coffeepot.
Along with Tokaido and Huntington Wethers, who was due to arrive any moment, Delahunt rounded out Kurtzman’s cybernetics team. The members of the group had never joined Able Team or Phoenix Force on the battlefield, yet within the confines of the Computer Room they played an equally important role in helping to stem the tide of global terrorism and high crime both at home and abroad.
Both Tokaido and Delahunt had been on duty for the past ten hours. Carmen had planned to go on break as soon as Wethers arrived, but in light of recent developments, she figured her usual midday catnap would have to wait. Stifling a yawn, she cursored across her screen, calling up a messaging program that would allow her to stay on top of any communications coming in from the field teams. There was one new message, from Rafael Encizo, under the heading “Med Update.” Delahunt was opening up the message when a cup of coffee suddenly materialized at the edge of her desk.
“Peace offering,” Tokaido said when she glanced up. “You were right. I shouldn’t have been smarting off like that.”
Delahunt picked up the cup and offered a tentative smile. “If this stuff’s fresh, you’re forgiven.”
“The spoon didn’t get stuck when I was stirring the cream,” Tokaido said.
“Close enough.”
Delahunt was taking a sip when the doors behind them opened and in walked a tall, crisply dressed black man with traces of gray in his short-cropped hair.
Huntington Wethers, a former cybernetics professor at Berkeley, had the most analytic mind of anyone working at the Farm, and when it came to sorting through the constant stream of information filtering into the Computer Room, Wethers was more often than not the first to glean the patterns and connections that transformed raw data into useable intelligence.
“I