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It was a calculated risk to sit here in the thwocking helicopter.

He could only hope that Piper would understand how vital it was to figure out what these guys were up to.

The first shoe—the virus outbreak—would go active in Las Vegas any time, now.

And these guys were the other shoe. What in the hell did El Noor have up his sleeve?

He glanced out the window in the helo’s sliding cargo door and oriented himself based on the sun. They were headed south. Maybe a little to the east. Not toward Las Vegas? What the hell?

Granville shouted over the engine and rotor noise, “This won’t take long. A few minutes to get there and ten or fifteen minutes to set the charges.”

Set the charges? That didn’t sound good.

Piper yelled, “What are you going to blow? The Hoover Dam?”

Christ. She was right. They were headed straight for the gigantic structure.

“Nah. It would take all the dynamite in the West to blow up that puppy. We’re after something better. The power lines running from the dam to Vegas.”

Mother of God .

He slammed backward against the bulkhead behind him.

Of course. Blowing up high power lines, if done correctly, would create a massive power surge down the lines sure to fry everything connected to the electric grid.

From toasters to light bulbs, generators to air conditioners, everything on the grid would be destroyed.

An electro-magnetic pulse would not only knock everything off line, but would melt the internal workings of all things electrical that happened to be plugged in.

He was probably not successful at fully masking his horror. These guys were going to make an unholy mess of Las Vegas.

The virus. Oh. Shit . These guys were timing their attack for just when the virus finished incubating and people started to get sick.

It would be 120 degrees in the shade, and a whole bunch of people were about to come down with a deadly infection.

In a town completely without power. It was a brilliant—dastardly—plan.

At least cars and airplanes would continue to work. People could drive out of town. That was a small blessing.

Piper moaned under her breath beside him. She’d put it all together, too, apparently.

“Gentlemen,” he asked calmly, “are you aware that about a week ago another terrorist attack was launched on Las Vegas?”

Jimmy leaned forward aggressively. “We ain’t terrorists!”

“My mistake,” he corrected. “Nonetheless, last week, a Palestinian terrorist released a deadly virus in Las Vegas. Any minute now, thousands of people are going to become violently sick and commence dying.”

“So?” Jimmy retorted belligerently.

“You’re about to cut off power to the whole damned town,” Ian explained. “Whoever paid you to launch this attack is using you. You’re only one part of a much larger terrorist attack on Las Vegas.”

Granville had the decency to look worried. But ole’ Jimmy just leaned back and smiled a little. “Guess all them folks in Vegas shouldn’ta got so dependent on technology, now, should they?”

Piper cried, “They’re tourists, Jim. And families. Lots and lots of regular people live in Las Vegas. Families. Children. And they’re all going to die!”

Easy, Piper. Undersell the threat. Let them arrive at the understanding on their own of how devastating their power outage was going to be . He sent her a warning glance and hoped she caught his underlying message to take it slow and gentle.

She subsided, leaning against his shoulder. Granville had not tied her wrists together, and one of her hands crept behind his back as she cuddled up to him. Her fingers started groping at the knots. After a few seconds, she started to pluck at the ropes.

Even if she did get his hands free, he probably couldn’t overpower both guys back here and point a gun at the pilot before the bastard turned around and shot him and Piper with his sidearm.

Not to mention, the helo could crash in the maneuver to overpower the pilot.

If they were a few thousand feet up in the air, he’d be more inclined to try it.

But the ‘copter was barely skimming over the weeds and rocks of the southern Nevada desert.

There was no margin whatsoever for error.

Not to mention, Piper could get shot. It was a damned inconvenient moment to reach the realization that he did not want to see her get killed, even if it was in the line of duty.

He must have felt this way for a long time…

since before he went into that burning building to save her and let the Scientist slip away.

Well, crap. That made this whole mess just that much messier.

The helicopter slowed, its tail lifting up as it decelerated. “We’re here,” Granville announced. “The lines are below us.”

The third guy, who’d been silent until now, stood up. “You’re on the winch, Jimmy. Granville, you’re on the stairs. Just like we practiced.”

Ian swore silently. The bastard sounded like a trained para-rescue jumper. Which meant he couldn’t expect any mistakes out of the guy. Ian had to give Piper’s father credit. The bastard ran a tight terrorist attack.

Piper continued to pick at his knots while the helicopter established a hover, the cargo door was opened, and a winch arm swung out the door into position. The quiet guy in the harness guy hooked onto a safety line of some kind.

Ian noticed it was not the usual steel cable, however.

It looked like some sort of nylon climbing line, instead.

Frowning, he watched Granville lie down on the floor of the helo and lean out, releasing hooks and flipping down the extra steps.

What in the hell were they planning to do with four steps down to thin air?

“Ready back here!” Granville shouted to the pilot as he heaved himself back into the copter and upright. “Bring her down easy, ten feet.”

The helicopter commenced descending slowly. All Ian saw was desert, but from her vantage point, Piper had a better view.

She leaned close to his ear to breathe, “High tension power lines.”

Harness guy hefted a heavy backpack over one shoulder, checked the safety line one last time, and stepped out onto the aluminum stairs.

In about ten seconds, the plan became clear. Harness guy stood on the lowest step and was able to lean out and reach the actual power line. A faint smell of ozone permeated the air, and Ian fancied that he felt the electro-magnetic field of the high-power line crackling across his skin.

Harness guy knelt on the bottom step and carefully attached what looked like an explosive cutting charge with a sophisticated trigger device to the power line itself.

Theoretically, without being grounded, neither the helicopter nor its occupants could be electrocuted.

But it was still as scary as hell to watch Harness Guy work on the high-power lines.

The chopper hovered over each of the half-dozen lines in turn.

“Next spot. About 250 feet down the line!” Harness Guy yelled.

Yup. If a big chunk of the line were blown out all at once, that would make for a massive EMP—electromagnetic pulse. Timers would undoubtedly cause the charges to blow with the exact synchronicity required.

One by one, the second set of charges was set on each of the huge power lines that were the energetic lifeblood of Las Vegas. It took nearly a full, nerve-wracking hour to set them all. But finally, Harness guy stepped back into the helicopter.

The steps were secured, the winch pulled in, and the door shut in under a minute. The helicopter lifted away from the power lines, and when it had another fifty feet or so of clearance, banked hard off to the north and accelerated fast.

Granville commented helpfully, “We gotta get away from the line when it blows so it won’t knock us out of the sky.”

Gee. That was generous of them not to stick around and suffer the fate of their victims.

“When we get a good ways out into the desert, we’ll put you two out. If you’re smart and remember what your daddy taught you, Piper, you two should be able to make it to the nearest town.”

“What will you guys do?” she asked.

“After the second charge blows, the rest of us will go home.”

“What ‘rest’ of us?” she asked sharply.

“Aww, honey. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you. Your daddy insisted on flying the second plane.”

She frowned, not understanding. But in Ian’s gut, a foreboding took root. Granville didn’t answer and she repeated more urgently, “What’s my dad going to do with the second plane?”

Ian answered gently. “The fixed wing plane has a bomb in it. He’s planning to blow it up.”

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. They had to 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.