The Loch Ness Legacy tl-4 Read online

  Never taking his eyes off the controls, he canted his head and gave her an amused grin. “I assumed you heard me on the radio. Got your text.”

  “I didn’t think it went through.” She thought about ten things to say but decided to keep it simple. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. We’ve got company.”

  Tyler glanced in the rearview mirror. Brielle swiveled in her seat and saw the helicopter diving toward them. Muzzle flashes blazed from its side door.

  “Better get your belt on,” Tyler said. “We’re expecting a bit of turbulence.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Tyler pulled back on the stick and the Icon A5 sport plane leaped off the water. He banked right and weaved as he aimed for the nearest valley, making it harder for the gunman in the pursuing helicopter to get a clean shot at them.

  Brielle hadn’t been able to strap herself into the four-point harness because of the nylon rope around her wrists. With one hand Tyler took the Leatherman multi-tool from his belt, opened the knife, and waved for her to hold out her arms. He steadied the plane with his knees on the stick and sawed through the rope until she was free and could belt herself in.

  As he put the Leatherman back, Tyler took a quick glance at her. Brielle was wearing an outfit that looked like a redneck cliché. If he hadn’t known her, he would have expected her to speak in a barely understandable drawl.

  “I’m glad I found you,” Tyler said.

  Brielle brushed strands of wet hair from her face and looped them behind her ears. The dodging back and forth didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. “Where did you come from?”

  “My plane was ready to go and Seattle is only fifty miles away. Your phone was still on, so we tracked the GPS signal. It was smart to use the radio’s emergency band.”

  A bullet thumped into the fuselage.

  Brielle looked back. “They’re getting closer.”

  “Not much I can do about that. The bad news is we can’t outrun them. This plane is maneuverable, but it’s not built for speed.”

  “And the good news?”

  “We’re not dead.”

  “Brilliant. How do we get away?”

  “We’ll try to lose them in the valleys. Once we’re out of sight, we can make for civilization.”

  “Do you have any weapons on board?”

  “Just a flare gun.”

  “Where?”

  “In the storage bin behind us.”

  Brielle reached back and removed an orange box. She opened it and loaded the shell into the gun without hesitating.

  “Only one flare,” she said.

  “You’re handy with a gun…Are you feeling recovered enough to make it count?”

  She nodded at her open window. “If you can get us close.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Getting closer to automatic weapon fire was not his favorite choice, but if the chopper’s pilot was any good, losing them in the valleys was iffy at best. Better to rely on offense.

  “Here we go,” he said, and pulled back on the stick until they were climbing at a forty-five degree angle. The A5 quickly bled speed as it gained altitude.

  The helicopter didn’t have any trouble gaining on them, but the radical pitch would make it difficult for the shooter to take aim. He’d wait until the helicopter was in a level position to finish them off.

  Tyler increased their climb rate even further, hoping to make it look like he was trying to escape but in reality letting the helicopter catch up more quickly.

  When the two aircraft were side by side, Tyler nosed over. The helicopter followed suit.

  “Now!” he yelled.

  In one fluid motion, Brielle lifted the gun, aimed down the sight, and fired.

  The flare rocketed toward the helicopter. Tyler was sure it would be a direct hit. The flare flew right through the open side door of the helicopter, barely missing the shooter, who threw himself backward to avoid the blazing shell.

  With luck, the flare would bounce around the cabin, filling it with smoke and making the pilot break off the attack.

  This time, however, luck went to the bad guys. The shot was too perfect. It passed through the cabin and out the other side, leaving only a wisp of smoke in its wake.

  Brielle tossed the flare gun to the floor in disgust. “Bloody hell!”

  Tyler didn’t waste time worrying about the lost opportunity. He rolled left, trying to put some distance between him and the helicopter. Maybe the pilot would be too spooked to continue the chase.

  He looked back and saw the shooter waving the pilot on. When the chopper didn’t change course, the gunman turned his weapon toward the cockpit in front of him. That must have gotten the pilot’s attention because the helicopter immediately turned toward them.

  “What do we do now?” Brielle asked.

  Without a way to defend themselves, they’d keep taking fire from the shooter until he hit one of them or the engine. Going down in the forest wouldn’t turn out well, and landing on water would make the phrase ‘sitting duck’ uncomfortably appropriate.

  Tyler had to take out the chopper. And he had only one weapon at his disposal.

  “We need to get them close again.” He put the plane into a turn that would take them back over Lake Shannon.

  Brielle gaped at him. “Why would you do that?”

  “A helicopter’s main rotor is delicate. If it takes any kind of damage, it’ll thrash itself to bits.”

  “So? Am I to throw the flare gun at it?”

  “No. I’m going to take it out with my wing.”

  “But won’t that destroy the wing?”

  “Believe me, I’m not happy about the idea. This is a brand-new plane.”

  “Can we fly without the wing?”

  “No.”

  Brielle shifted in her seat to face him. “Don’t you think destroying our plane to get away is daft?”

  “It would be if we didn’t have a parachute.”

  “Just one?”

  “It’s the only one we need.”

  “Oh, my God! Have you become a raving lunatic since I last saw you?”

  “I should point out that it’s a really big parachute.”

  “Where is it?”

  Before Tyler could answer, bullets raked the left wing. He could see the shooter sneer at him as he calmly reloaded.

  Now was his best chance.

  He put the A5 into a steep bank toward the chopper. The helicopter had two options, pull up to let the plane pass under it or dip down to avoid the apparently suicidal maneuver. Tyler was counting on the pilot to take the safer move and gain speed by diving, which is exactly what he did, exposing the main rotor.

  Tyler snapped the A5 into a barrel roll.

  “Are you insane?” Brielle screamed, but Tyler was concentrating too hard to answer. He had to make this work. If he missed, he would have tipped his hand.

  The A5 rolled up and over the helicopter, coming down so that the wing tip went through the rotor’s radial sweep. The blades savaged the carbon composite skin of the A5’s wing, but the damage to the helicopter was even greater. Chunks of aluminum whipped past them, bouncing off the plane.

  As the rotor tore itself apart and took the tail assembly with it, the helicopter plummeted toward the lake three thousand feet below.

  From the feedback on the stick, Tyler could tell the plane wouldn’t be airworthy much longer. He cut the engine throttle, and the hum behind their heads went silent.

  Brielle stared at him in shock. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

  He reached back and pulled a cardboard panel off a cutout in the bulkhead. “Pulling our ripcord.” He unfolded the red T-handle underneath. “Brace yourself.”

  Brielle, still confused, took her tiny Star of David from her pocket, put the necklace over her head, and gripped her seat’s armrests. “I’m never getting on a plane with you again.”

  “Never say never,” Tyler said, and yanked the handle.

&nbs
p; A rocket fired from above the center of the fuselage, eliciting another jump from Brielle. Nylon straps peeled away from the skin of the plane as an enormous blue parachute unfurled behind them. Tyler tried to relax, knowing what was coming next.

  As the parachute caught the air, they were thrown forward against their harnesses. The plane went from one hundred thirty miles per hour to zero in less than five seconds.

  The plane swayed back and forth in eerie silence as it floated toward the water. Tyler looked down and saw a roiling white eddy to the right, which had to be the helicopter’s impact point. By now it would be settling on the bottom of the 280-foot-deep lake.

  Brielle was huffing, her knuckles bone white. “You could have told me it was the plane that had the parachute.”

  “I thought it would become self-explanatory.”

  The A5 slapped the surface of the lake, and the parachute drifted down behind them. Tyler tilted the canopy forward and climbed out. He unfolded his Leatherman again, this time using the saw to cut through the thick straps. He shook his head as he surveyed the damage to the wing. The plane would never fly again, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t take them somewhere safe.

  He got back in and fired up the engine. A blip of the throttle sent them cruising toward the boat launch at the southern end of the lake.

  “Let’s hope someone at the put-in can give us a ride,” he said.

  “I have to tell you something,” Brielle said. “The men who abducted me. They were taking me to Victor Zim.”

  Tyler didn’t think he could be more surprised by the day’s events than he already was, but Brielle’s pronouncement that Zim was at Lake Shannon stunned him.

  “He’s here?”

  “He was on the beach where you picked me up. He must have escaped from prison.”

  “I know. I was at his escape yesterday. He’s targeting my sister, Alexa.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Zim’s men tried to kidnap her this afternoon. Grant radioed me on the flight up and said she’s all right, but Zim’s men got away with her colleague.”

  Brielle unbelted herself to face him. “Why does Victor want to abduct your sister?”

  “I think it’s about revenge for killing his brother. You know, an eye for an eye kind of thing. Alexa thinks it’s about something else.”

  “What could she have that he wants?”

  “She has a theory,” Tyler said, “but you won’t believe it.”

  “After my week with you, what could I possibly not believe?”

  Tyler sighed. She asked for it. “Her kidnapped colleague suspected that some men were after the files on his computer. Because of that, Alexa thinks Victor Zim wants her to help him find the Loch Ness monster.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The convoy of five vehicles from the destroyed compound carefully navigated back country roads to avoid any possible police blockades. Once they reached I-5, Zim knew they were safe. Luckily, they were far enough along in their planning that being forced to abandon their base hadn’t resulted in a setback. But he’d lost four men today, and even worse it was because of a Jew helped by Tyler Locke.

  At the thought of his brother’s killer, Zim dug his fingers into his fists so hard that his knuckles threatened to split. Zim had only gotten a brief glimpse of the float plane’s pilot, but he couldn’t mistake Locke’s face. Someday he would make sure both brother and sister would come to regret ever crossing paths with the Zims.

  As they approached I-5, Zim glanced at the passenger mirror and watched three vehicles behind him take the exit for the interstate headed north to the Canadian border. The twelve men inside would separate at Vancouver International Airport for their flights to London. The travel was expected to go without a hitch. There was no need to take weapons or other equipment, which would all be supplied once they reached Europe. That helped the evacuation go quickly.

  Hank Pryor, the driver next to Zim, followed the SUV in front of them onto the south exit ramp toward Everett, where they would take a motorboat to a small town on the Canadian coast. The two of them were alone in the pickup.

  “Looks like the cops were too late setting up any roadblocks,” Pryor said in a squeaky voice that matched his spindly arms and chicken legs. “Good for us.”

  Zim merely nodded.

  Pryor looked at him and cleared his throat, as if he knew what he was about to say wouldn’t be taken well. “I know what you’re thinking. You can’t go making this personal. We’ve got a job to do.”

  Zim slowly turned his head and stared at Pryor. If the man hadn’t been an indispensable piece of this operation, Zim would have punched a fist through his squirrely face.

  “Are you saying I can’t control myself?”

  Pryor nodded, so sure of his abilities that Zim wouldn’t touch him. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. We’re in this for the good of the white race. You want to put all that in jeopardy?”

  Zim turned away. “Do you know why I was in prison?”

  “Sure. You were convicted of sabotaging that plant.” Pryor recited the details as if he were recapping the football game from the night before. “You, of course, denied it.”

  “I should have gotten away with it. And that’s what I want you to know. Carl and I’d been working out how to do it for three months. We had it planned down to the last detail. No way they should have traced it back to me. I would have come out of it clean as a whistle.”

  “Then Locke screwed it up.”

  Zim nodded. “They offered me a plea bargain if I’d give up Carl, but I wouldn’t do it.”

  “And that’s why Carl agreed to this job?”

  Zim chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. “No, he believed in the cause. But he was also a good brother. He paid me back for not squealing. He agreed to carry out the Eiffel Tower mission with you only after he was promised that I’d be busted out of prison once the job was done. This new mission is for one reason: to make sure Carl didn’t die in vain.”

  Pryor pursed his lips. “You sure got a raw deal. I feel for you.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you feel. This operation is bigger than the two of us. After they wipe out Israel, those Muslims will become even more hated than they are now by the white countries. And that Jew-lover in the plane will be joining all of them in Hell.”

  “How did Tyler Locke find her?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

  “Do you think he knows how to find the monster?”

  “Dillman claims Alexa Locke doesn’t have the Nazi journal, so thanks to him, we have a head start. All we need to do is make sure her brother doesn’t catch up.”

  Pryor shook his head and laughed. “The Loch Ness monster. Who would have thought it was the source for designing a weapon?”

  “No one,” Zim said. “And no one ever will as long as this all goes by the numbers.”

  “At least we know the chemical works. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I’d seen it happen myself. It only took a few days to kill Plymouth with the dose we gave him. Shriveling up like that didn’t look like a fun way to go.”

  Zim agreed. He was astounded that such a powerful weapon had lain dormant for almost seventy years, forgotten in an underground lab destroyed during the Dresden air raid that incinerated fifty thousand good German citizens. Just a single container locked away in a storage room, protected from the firestorm that consumed the city and the scientists who’d developed it. The chaotic last days of the war ensured that any official record of the container’s contents and its companion notebook were destroyed.

  It wasn’t until after Laroche bought them from a clueless black market seller that he realized what he’d purchased. It was only by good fortune that the canister found a home with someone sympathetic to Hitler’s ultimate cause.

  The appropriateness of the situation made Zim smile, and he reassuringly touched the small metal vial in his pocket — the last drops of Altwaffe in existence, to be used as he saw fit. What better
way to rid the Aryan nations of the blight caused by the lower races than with a chemical weapon created for just such a purpose by the Nazis?

  NINETEEN

  It took several hours for the authorities to take statements from Brielle and Tyler, a process that was punctuated halfway through by a distant boom and a column of smoke rising northwest of Lake Shannon. They went through the events of the attack in excruciating detail with detectives who wanted to know exactly how the plane had come to be riddled with bullet holes. The two-hundred-foot depth of the water made it impossible for divers without special equipment to probe the wreckage of the helicopter and find their attacker.

  Brielle was frustrated because the police doubted her assertion that Victor Zim was the one behind the assault. Despite Tyler’s explanation that the helicopter used at the prison was sabotaged, they were operating under the official assumption that Victor had died in the escape attempt.

  As Brielle finished eating a protein bar provided by one of the policeman, Tyler showed the forensics team how to fold his plane’s wings so that it could be towed back to Seattle for analysis. She could see him cringe every time he glanced at the damaged section, which looked like it had been gnawed by a gigantic beaver.

  He patted the plane on the side and walked back toward her, shaking his head.

  “It’ll take me forever to get another one of these,” he said. “Do you know how long the waiting list is?”

  She shook her head. “We almost got killed and that’s what you’re worried about?”

  “I’m annoyed, not worried. But at least I know the parachute system works. Money well spent, I’d say.”

  Brielle crumpled up the wrapper and tossed it in the waste bin. “Can we go meet Alexa now? I have some questions for her. My car is back at the bar.”

  “Not quite yet. I’m expecting someone.” He looked past her and said, “There she is.”

  Brielle turned and saw a black SUV come to a stop behind her. A thin blonde woman stepped out wearing a neatly pressed suit. She might as well have had “I’m with the US government” written on a name tag.