Page 21

CHAPTER 21

Costa cursed. If the plane and anyone in it were focused on the wreckage and the SOS, it was possible he and Diana hadn’t been seen yet. But he wasn’t going to bet their lives on it.

“We need to get the gun,” he said, gripping Diana’s arm and pulling her into the shadow of a boulder. “If we’re separated, it’s in a crevice in the rocks a few dozen yards higher on the hill from where we hid our clothes last night. The cleft looks a bit like a V.”

Diana moved closer to him as the plane banked over the wreck. “They might think we’re dead,” she said softly. “If I saw that, I might think there were no survivors.”

“Not with enormous letters reading SOS next to it.”

Diana started to answer, but just then there was shouting from up the hill. They looked up and saw Farley’s small figure at the top of the slope that led to the spring, naked to the waist and waving wildly with his uninjured arm.

“Damn it,” Costa muttered. “I knew we shouldn’t have helped that guy.”

“He wants to be rescued worse than we do,” Diana pointed out. “He might not realize who they are, either.”

The plane roared over them so low that they could make out every detail. It tilted a wing slightly, and Costa caught a glimpse of a sunglasses-wearing person looking down through the window.

“No way they didn’t see us that time,” he murmured. “You want my boots?”

“They’ll just swim around on my feet, worse than nothing. Actually, I think it makes more sense for me to shift. You can carry my clothes, and I can get up to the gun faster than you can.”

“Yeah, that’s a good?—”

The engine noise of the plane dropped abruptly to a different register. It was circling, coming back, flying slowly. As it all but coasted over them, the side door opened and someone leaned out.

“Down!” Costa barked before he even saw whether the figure had a gun, but he wasn’t wrong. A spray of bullets raised puffs of dust and scattered rock chips around them. Diana screamed and threw her arms over her head. Costa pulled her close to him, arms around her as the hail of bullets died away and the plane sped off to bank wide across the sand.

“You okay?” they gasped out at the same time.

“I’m fine!” Diana said. “What do I?—”

“I’m fine too.” Costa gave her a little push. “You’re right! Shift and go for the gun!”

“What will you do?” she asked, hesitating in the act of stripping her jeans off.

“I’ll go a different way. Meet me at the spring.”

Diana nodded and her clothes dropped to the ground. The heap jerked around as the roadrunner extracted itself from the borrowed shirt, and then she sped off up the hill, low to the ground and moving fast.

Costa scooped her clothes up and tied them hastily around his waist so he had his hands free and wouldn’t lose them. Without anything to wear at all, she would be stuck as a roadrunner permanently, unless she was willing to risk the hazards of walking around in the desert completely naked.

Meanwhile the plane was coming back around in a big circle. He was terribly exposed here. Shifting would be no good to him; he would just make a boar-sized target of himself.

Trying to stay low, he ran up the hill, dodging and jinking and ducking among the boulders. Another shot chipped some rock close enough that the flying shards stung his face and arm.

Then the plane was over and rising sharply to avoid hitting the cliffs along the edge of the valley. Gotta get up to those, he thought, that’ll give them something to think about.

He scrambled over the top of the hill and saw Farley some fifty yards away, barefoot and wearing nothing but jeans.

“I didn’t know they were going to do that!” Farley yelled. “I swear!”

“Sure you didn’t!”

“I’m serious! You guys helped me, I want to help you, but I don’t know what to do. Where’d your girlfriend go? Is she okay?”

Costa decided to believe him—but not too far. “We got separated, so I’m not sure. What are they going to do next?”

The plane made a wide circle and then came in low over the sand, raising a trail of dust.

“I think they’re landing,” Farley said. “They haven’t been able to get you from above, so they’ll go on foot. I can lie to them, tell them they hit you.”

Costa shook his head. “They’d want to see the body. I’m not that good of an actor, especially if they decide to make sure the dead guy isn’t getting up again.”

Farley winced.

The plane landed near the wreck. Three guys piled out, all of them carrying guns. As soon as the last guy was out, the plane immediately spun up its engines and turned around with the clear intent of leaving.

“Going back for reinforcements?” Costa murmured.

The plane was having trouble. It slewed around in the sand, trying to take off, laboring to avoid getting stuck. Meanwhile, the three guys spread out among the rocks. It was clear they had a fix on the location of the fugitives as seen from the air and were trying to outflank them, but with only three guys, it was going to be hard.

Costa’s thoughtful gaze fixed on the plane, which was still struggling to take off. “Want to try to hijack a plane?”

“ What ?” Farley said.

“You can fly it.”

Farley gestured feebly. “Not with one arm!”

“Good thing we have another pilot, then.”

* * *

Diana had encountered a minor but, in retrospect, predictable problem.

She found the gun where Costa said it would be, although she had to hunt around a little; roadrunners weren’t extremely strong in their sense of smell. Once she found it, she shifted human and pulled it out.

And there she was. Bare of ass and sandy of feet, crouching beside a boulder with a gun in one hand, all too aware of the breeze on her skin.

Roadrunners couldn’t carry guns.

She wondered if she might be able to hold it in her beak—but, although she was large for a bird (a full-grown roadrunner was about two feet long counting the tail), she wasn’t that big. Like all birds, she was extremely light, under a pound in spite of her size. The gun probably weighed more than she did. There was a good chance she’d fall flat on her face if she tried to carry it as a bird.

“I feel like a pin-up in the Playboy version of Gun she had also lost sight of the gunmen in the boulder-strewn wasteland, glimpsing them only now and then as they made their way through the brush and rocks.

She returned her anxious gaze to the plane. If it got off the ground, they’d had it. She wondered if it was possible to shoot at it from where she was, but she doubted that even a crack shot could have done it from this far away with such a small gun. And she definitely was not that.

“Where’s Quinn when I need him?” she muttered, knowing it was completely petty—but he was the one with a grounding in field tactics. She had no idea what made the most sense to do now, or even what she could do.

The sound of crunching footsteps on gravel announced someone behind her, and Diana spun around, half rising from her crouch and aiming the gun. She found Farley in the act of wildly raising his good hand to cover his eyes.

“Jeez! I’m not looking at you! Don’t point that at me, I’m on your side.” All of this came out in a rapid-fire whisper. Farley crouched down, keeping his eyes covered, and whispered, “Are you still pointing the gun at me?”

“Yes! Where’s Quinn?”

“Costa? He sent me to find you, told me where you’d be. He’s trying to get to the plane.”

“He’s what ?”

Even as he said it, the pilot finally managed to find some purchase on the loose surface, and the plane turned and straightened out.

There was movement behind the burnt-out hulk of the wreck. Diana rose again, peering over the boulders. She was greeted by the sight of Costa’s great, humped, ursine shift shape, running flat out across the sandy valley bottom toward the plane that was even now gathering speed to take off.

“What is he planning on doing ?” She tried to keep her voice low, but the noise of the plane gearing up for a takeoff helped cover it anyway.

Costa couldn’t have provided a better distraction if he’d tried—and perhaps that was part of what he intended. Among the rocks, on the hillside and a ways off to her left, the gunmen were straightening up and frantically turning around. Someone snapped off a wild shot at the running boar, but as far as Diana could tell, it didn’t come even close to hitting him.

There was a majestic quality to a running boar, especially a huge one like Costa. He was nothing like the javelinas Diana occasionally saw in the hills around Tucson, roly-poly piglike animals that bounced across the ground in an almost comical way. There was nothing funny about Costa at full gallop. His legs were much longer for his size than a domestic pig, his shoulder high and humped; it was almost more like watching a charging buffalo than anything that might deserve to be grouped in the same category as a pig.

The pilot probably didn’t see him at first, but when the plane began to swing around into the wind for takeoff, the charging boar came into the visible field of view from the cockpit. Diana guessed the moment when the pilot saw him because the plane abruptly slammed into high acceleration, wheels churning up great rooster tails of sand, and the nose jerked up sharply in preparation for takeoff.

“Too soon, you fool,” Diana murmured with professional scorn.

The plane wasn’t going fast enough to take off yet. Instead the wings partly caught the air, the entire machine lifted off the ground for a moment in a bunny hop and then slammed back down, hitting harder on one side than the other. The wing dipped almost to the sand, and the machine went into a wide-swinging skid.

The change of direction and delay was the only thing that allowed Costa to catch up. A boar at a hard gallop couldn’t outrace a motor vehicle running under full throttle. But he was able to gain enough advantage to come alongside the plane.

Diana realized she was holding her breath.

The boar leaped and slammed into the side of the plane, not headfirst, as Diana was half expecting, but rather striking it a powerful glancing blow with his shoulder. Airplanes were built similarly to cars but were lighter for their size, especially a smaller machine like this one, with an aluminum airframe and lightweight metals and plastics used throughout. A car would be better able to withstand a collision with rampaging wildlife, but they were meant to. There weren’t a lot of charging wild animals at 20,000 feet.

The collision with Costa literally spun the plane around. It rotated like a top, and Diana discovered a sudden new source of terror as Costa (who apparently hadn’t expected that either) came within a shaggy whisker of being grazed by the lethal, spinning propeller.

He missed it, and as the plane turned an entire revolution, Diana could see a great dent in the side where the boar had hit it. The pilot must be having fits.

The engine revved and the plane sped away. Costa lurched into motion again. However, now the gunmen had reached the edge of the sandy area and were shooting at him from considerably closer.

“We have to help him,” Diana said breathlessly.

She started down the hill, mincing painfully in her bare feet over the rocks and thorns. She felt something stab her big toe, a sharp agonizing jolt, but didn’t dare stop.

“Wait!” Farley stayed with her. “Those guys have bigger guns than yours—er, mine. Do you really think you can win?”

“I’m not letting Quinn fight them alone. I?—”

She didn’t see it coming. She had completely let her guard down. So when Farley grabbed the gun, she was too shocked to do anything for the instant that it took him to turn the gun on her.

“Hey!” he yelled, backing away, gun pointed at Diana. “Hey, guys! She’s up here!”

“You—you cad .” Diana gauged the distance between herself and him. With his broken arm and other injuries, she thought she could probably beat him in a fight. But she didn’t like the odds of jumping on him when he was holding a gun on her. “We helped you! We could have just left you to die.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” Farley looked agonized—but the gun didn’t waver. “I’ve got my family to think of.”

“Costa can protect your family, you idiot!”

“You don’t know how well connected these guys are. I can’t afford to take the chance.”

* * *

Costa was not exactly having the time of his life, but there was something satisfying, after the kidnapping and the helplessness of their situation, about finally having a target on which to vent his fury—even if it was many times bigger than he was.

And, he hardly could believe it, he was winning. The pilot was managing to avoid him for the most part, veering around in the sand like a rally driver, but couldn’t get up a good enough speed to get off the ground. Every time the airplane started to straighten out for a run at takeoff, Costa charged again.

He was aware that he was being shot at, but so far no one had even come close. They had pistols, not guns meant for distance shooting. And absolutely nobody wanted to get anywhere near a boar-vs-airplane duel. The tremendous dust cloud further confused their aim.

It was a standoff, though. The pilot couldn’t take off, but Costa also wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to capture the plane this way. He needed to get close enough to shift and grab a door or handle so he could board it, and he’d be extremely vulnerable as soon as he did that.

He became aware that the shooting had stopped. A minute later, there was a shout from the edge of the sandy area which had become churned up with tire tracks and boar hooves.

“Hey! Hey, pig boy! We’ve got your girl!”

Costa spun around, snorting furiously.

It was true. Diana was walking out of the rocks at gunpoint, head down and fists clenched, looking furious. She was flanked by one of the gunmen and Farley, both holding guns on her. Someone had chivalrously given her a jacket, but she was otherwise naked and limping.

For an instant Costa’s vision turned scarlet with rage. It was all he could do not to let his boar side take over completely, rampaging through the enemy and grinding their bones to a sticky paste beneath his hooves.

But the human side of him knew perfectly well that he would just get himself shot. And worse, Diana.

“Shift and surrender!” the gunman shouted.

Costa looked around at a sudden revving of the airplane’s engine. The pilot had taken advantage of his distraction to get a good run at a takeoff, and Costa didn’t think he could catch him now.

Well, he had given it his best. And there was no way in any universe that he was prepared to let them hurt Diana.

He shifted, and barefoot and naked, walked across the sand toward them.

“Sorry,” Diana said when he was close enough that they could speak without having to shout. “You were magnificent out there, by the way. I didn’t mean to be the weak link.”

“You’re not, and you have nothing to be sorry for.” Costa turned his furious stare on Farley. “ Him , on the other hand ...”

Farley winced. “Look, I appreciate that you helped me, and I really am sorry. But I’m not risking my family.” He glanced at Diana. “Just like you’re not going to risk her.”

Costa hated that Farley was right. If he’d been in Farley’s position and Diana’s life was the one at stake .... well, he already knew how he’d handle it, because he had just done it.

The airplane’s high-pitched engine whine turned into the drone of takeoff and it flew over their heads, a couple hundred feet up. Costa looked up at it and, unable to help himself, gave it the finger.

The man who appeared to be the gunmen’s leader, a big guy with sunglasses and a scar across the side of his face, barked a sharp laugh. “Okay, whoever’s got the radio, let him know that they’re under control and it’s safe to land.”

Diana moved closer to Costa until the gunmen stopped her. She wasn’t close enough to touch. But, however precarious their position, having her near at all gave him strength.

“Planning to kill us?” he asked. He wondered how far Diana could get as a roadrunner if he shifted and threw himself at the men. She could survive out here for a long time, and the SCB would send someone eventually—in fact, they were probably already looking. But he had a bad feeling she was no more likely to leave him than he had proven himself willing to leave her.

“No,” Sunglasses said. “You’re a lot more valuable alive than dead. In fact, after seeing you fight an entire airplane out there, I know exactly who would be interested in paying big bucks for you.”

“Paying—” Costa began.

He only glimpsed the gun swinging in from the side as one of the others moved in swiftly and struck him. Sparks exploded in his vision. The last thing he heard was Diana furiously yelling his name, and then darkness swallowed him.