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She frowned for a second more, and then it hit her. “With himself in it?” she gasped.

Granville looked grief-stricken.

“No!” she shouted. She started to surge up out of her position on the floor, but Ian leaned back hard, trapping her arm between his back and the bulkhead.

“Stop, Piper,” he said low and urgent. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“But he’s going to die!”

Jimmy interjected, “Someone has to take out the city’s back-up generators when they kick online. And the cars and airplanes. Have to stop those, too.”

Aww, hell. The bastards.

The EMP burst down these power lines would take out all the primary systems in town. Piper’s father would no doubt wait a little while after the power line explosion and then take off in the small plane, giving hospitals and hotels plenty of time to bring online all their emergency generators. Then Brothers would fly over downtown Las Vegas and blow up himself and his bomb, creating a second, air-bursted EMP that would take out everything that the line burst had missed.

The thoroughness of this attack was breathtaking. And in conjunction with the viral attack…genuinely evil.

Ian frowned. He’d done his best to disable the bomb, but there was no guarantee that his hasty rewiring job had a) not been discovered or b) worked.

He and Piper had to get out of this helicopter alive. Had to find a way to warn the authorities. Theyhadto stop these paired attacks.

“The timers are activated. They’ll blow in one minute,” Harness Guy shouted forward to the pilot.

On cue, the bird slowed and descended. Getting below the horizon, no doubt, so the line-of-sight wave of electromagnetic energy wouldn’t kill its electrical systems. An urge to do serious harm to these guys nearly overcame Ian. Only the desperate urgency of needing to save the people of Las Vegas stopped him from attacking everyone in this bird, consequences be damned.

Piper was back to picking at his knots with her hidden hand. And the urgency with which she did it indicated that she felt the same way he did.

“Okay kids. Time for you to go,” Granville announced. He threw open the cargo door and lowered the steps quickly.

The tug of the ropes around his wrists was less. Piper had the knots loosened, but not completely released. Jimmy and Harness Guy hauled him to his feet while Granville helped Piper to hers.

“Out you go,” Granville said kindly. “Watch that last step. It’s a bitch.”

Piper laughed unwillingly beside him. The helicopter was still a good twenty feet up in the air. She looked over at him in distress.

“Just give it a good parachute landing fall roll when you hit the ground,” Ian said encouragingly. “You go first. I’ll be right on your heels.”

“We’ll go together,” she declared.

He followed her down onto the step. The rotor wash made her stagger and he used his shoulder to steady her while he frantically yanked at his ropes. He had to have his arms free to fall safely. They needed to control their landings carefully or they could get seriously hurt in this little maneuver. The bastard pilot wasn’t going any lower to increase their odds of survival, either.

“All right then. Down you go,” Granville ordered.

One last, desperate pull and Ian felt the rope start to fall off his wrists. Thank God. Pretending to keep his hands tied behind his back, he shouted, “On the count of three. One.” He shook off the rope. “Two.” His arm shot out and he snatched Harness Guy’s backpack up from its spot just inside the door. “Three!”

He jumped.

19

The impact when Piper hit the ground was incredible. It jarred her teeth in her head and it felt like every bone in her body bent a little to absorb the violent blow. She hit feet first, then twisted and fell to impact her knees, hips, then shoulder. Her momentum was such that her feet flew over her head and she did a full back somersault before coming to a stop.

If she’d had any breath before she jumped, she darned well didn’t have any now. She lay there, gasping like a dying fish for what seemed like a long time. In reality, it was probably no more than a few seconds. Finally, she was able to pull in a painful breath.

Ian. Was he okay?

She sat up and looked around. Grit and sand flew everywhere as the helicopter accelerated away from them overhead. She threw her arm over her face until the sandblasting subsided.

Ian was just standing up. She half-ran, half-stumbled over to him and flung herself into his arms. He grunted in pain and his left arm did not come up to encircle her.