“Copy,” Patrick answered. “I’m going to have to go down the face of these gates, Hal. The way they’re designed, blowing the chains would prevent the gates from opening.”
“Roger that,” Hal acknowledged. He was rereading the computer printout as the MV-22 began to maneuver over the transmission lines. “According to this forensic report you got off the computer, when that gate let loose back in 1995, it was friction from one of the trunnion hinge pins on the sides of the gate that caused the strut braces to buckle. The braces hold the gate against the spillway opening. Once they bent, the water pressure and the weight of the gate just pushed the gate out. Check the struts on each gate. If I was going to blow anything, that’s where I’d set the charges.”
“Copy,” Patrick said. He looked over the edge of the catwalk. There was another catwalk forty feet below him, at the same level as the trunnion pins on which the Tainter gates pivoted. Patrick considered trying to jump down to the lower catwalk, but if he missed, it was a three-hundred-foot fall down the face of the dam to the river below. “Hal, come back to the top of the dam and pick me up,” Patrick radioed. “It’s too far to jump to the lower catwalk.”
“On the way,” Hal replied.
Patrick hit the thrusters and jumped easily to the road above. He saw the MV-22 climb and start toward him, maneuvering easily over the transmission lines. With remarkable speed and agility for a bird its size, the huge tilt-rotor aircraft moved smoothly toward the road.
Then a streak of fire arced across the sky from the lower catwalk and plowed directly into the right engine. The engine disintegrated, a shaft of fire blowing downward from the right rotor as burning fuel streamed out and was caught in the rotor wash. The MV-22 dipped down below the rim of the dam. Patrick heard the left engine spool up to full military power, and the bird veered right, missing the lower catwalk by just a few feet.
“Will!” Patrick screamed into his helmet radio to the pilot. “Pull up!”
“We got it! We got it!” one of the pilots radioed back-Patrick couldn’t tell who it was because the voice was so high and squeaky. But it didn’t look as if he had control. As he watched, the aircraft slipped to the right, barely missing the power lines across the gorge in front of the dam, and dropped.
But the MV-22 had a crossover transmission system that allowed power from one engine to drive both rotors, and as it fell down into the gorge, power was coming up on both rotors. What started as a barely controlled crash quickly turned into a powered glide. It was still going down but the pilot was back in control. Just in time, the pilot pulled back on the control stick and flared the aircraft as it hit the water a few yards from the rocky shoreline. It skittered across the rocks, spun around facing upstream as the dead right-engine nacelle struck the water, and came to rest on the edge of the shore, with the right wing and right-engine nacelle dipping into the American River.
“We’re okay! We’re okay!” Hal radioed. “We’re evacuating the aircraft!”
Patrick’s relief gave way to a rage that rose up out of his chest and flooded his brain with hatred. He was past thought or calculation-he reacted. He used his helmet’s infrared scanner to pinpoint the location of the terrorists on the lower catwalk-one of them was still holding the red-hot rocket launcher so spotting them was easy-and he hit his thrusters. He bounded over the railing on the road and soared out into space, aiming for the terrorists in the darkness nearly a hundred feet below.
His aim was perfect. He landed on his chest and face right on top of the guy holding the spent rocket-launcher tube. He went down hard, but so did Patrick, who then crashed over onto the catwalk. The electrical surges coursing through the suit startled him with their force. Screaming in the effort to clear his head, he reached up to grab the handrail of the cat-walk…
… and the bullets struck him in a high-speed drumming on his back, then his helmet, then his chest. Within seconds, two terrorists, in front and behind him, emptied their thirty-round magazines of 9-millimeter automatic-weapon fire on him. The suit kept him safe but electrical pulses nearly overwhelmed him. He struggled to his feet as the gunmen reloaded fresh magazines and opened fire again. A warning flashed in his heads-up display-he was already at reserve power levels from the long fall from the road, followed by all the bullets at such close range. He ran forward and grabbed the gunman in front of him, head-butting him, crunching his jawbone, and knocking him out-and was hit square in the chest by a LAWS man-portable antitank rocket, fired from about fifty feet away down the catwalk. He was blown thirty feet back, up and over the catwalk’s safety railing, and onto the number five Tainter gate.
Patrick opened his eyes after several long moments and checked the systems in his armor. The check did not take long: The report on the heads-up display simply read EMERGENCY. That explained why he wasn’t feeling any feedback shocks from the suit: It no longer had enough power to electrocute him. The infrared-scanner visor was dead, so he retracted it. The environmental system was shut down, and he felt as if an elephant were standing on his chest. He managed to roll onto his hands and feet, desperately trying to get his balance back. But he was alive, goddammit, alive!
A hand grasped the bottom of his helmet and jerked his head up and back. He grabbed the hand, but found he didn’t have the strength to pull it free. Then he felt the point of a knife right under his sternum.
“Well, well, General McLanahan,” said a voice with a heavy German accent. “We meet at long last. I am Major Bruno Reingruber. I understand you have been looking for me for some time now. Unfortunately, our meeting will be shortlived. I am sorry I was unsuccessful in killing your brother or your friend Dr Jon Masters, but killing you will compensate for those previous failures.”
Patrick swung at Reingruber with his free arm, but the blows had no effect. “It seems your armor is no longer functioning,” Reingruber said. He slowly pressed the point of the knife against the suit and up toward Patrick’s chest, a fraction of an inch at a time. “If my man’s report is true,” Reingruber went on, “your suit will not activate if it is not struck. In that case, we will do this nice and slow…”
The knife pierced the fabric. Environmental-system-conditioning fluid gushed forth. “He said not to be fooled, that this is some kind of coolant in the suit and not blood, ja? But a little more, and the Tin Man will not disturb us ever again.” The knife point pierced the suit, the cotton undergarment, then pressed against his chest. Patrick cried out. “Auf Wiedersehen, General.”
Through the stars clouding his vision, Patrick activated the heads-up display in his helmet. He canceled the EMERGENCY readout and called up the status display. All systems were shut down. Everything was dead…
The knife penetrated the skin…
No, not every system was down. The thruster gas accumulators were fully charged. Patrick coughed inside the helmet as the pain intensified. Just as the knife started to pierce through the skin to muscle, Patrick summoned up the last volt of power left in the suit, braced his feet squarely against the number five Tainter gate, and activated the thrusters. They pushed Patrick, with Reingruber clutching him, up off the gate, over the lower catwalk, and out into space.
Reingruber screamed as they plummeted three hundred feet down the spillway and into the American River. In his terror, he kept a tight grasp on Patrick the entire way down, and it was his body that absorbed the brunt of the impact with the icy-cold water.
The strong current running from the hydroelectric power plant swept Patrick downstream. There was enough air in the helmet to breathe, although cold water was leaking into the suit through the knife puncture. The weight of the backpack power unit dragged him under, but scrabbling desperately, his fingers found the releases for the spent unit and he freed himself of it. His helmet burst above the surface. He kicked and paddled and found he was strong enough to keep his head above the water, so he unlatched the helmet and pulled it off. Cold, damp air never tasted so sweet. The cold water filling the suit was starting to numb his legs, but he was breathing, and he was alive.