The Diamond Dragon (Kip Keene Book 4) (19 page)

The chopper chugged and tilted as it climbed higher. Keene could see the ruined rope bridge and the smoking embers of the melting temple on the horizon. He urged the craft forwards, and it followed his lead.

Up close, the wreckage seemed absolute—little more than chunks of rock and ice. No semblance of the magnificent architecture or namesake dragon sculpture remained. A fuel gauge popped on, drawing Keene’s attention to the dashboard.

A quarter tank. He needed to move.

His eyes flitted over the controls, scanning for anything that could help. Air-to-air missiles would be too risky. He was just as liable to blow Alessia to bits as he was to save her. Then again, that could be a last resort option—she just needed to be removed from the energy chain.

Keene rubbed a thin bead of sweat from his temple, keeping the craft steady over the wreckage. His gaze fell on a small red button to the right of the air-to-air missile controls. It had no label or explanation.

He tapped it, and a giant burst of flame shot out from the front of the craft. The fuel gauge dipped to twenty-four percent.

“I’ll be damned,” Keene said to the empty air. “Flamethrower.” But it might not be all that useful. Even with some clever air maneuvers, a quarter tank was barely enough to get back to the valley safely. Torch any more fuel on a rescue mission and the metal bird was liable to fall out of the sky well short of their destination.

He whipped the craft around and made another approach at the ruined temple. Screw it.

The steady jet of flame etched away at the ice. Small rivers rushed through the snow, down the peak. Keene jabbed at the red button with all the restraint he could muster. The clock was ticking down. Half an hour before the world imploded. Or exploded.

Goddamn quantum physics.

“Come on.” He held on too long, and a twenty foot tendril of flame shot out from the helicopter’s front, immolating a large block of ice. The fuel gauge dipped below twenty percent. “Son of a bitch.”

But he saw her, now, trapped behind a clear panel. The rocks hadn’t shattered her frozen prison. Prashant had probably known that before his men had set the charges. Keene paused for a moment, staring at the other faces staring out into nothingness.

He could only save Alessia.

Keene pulled the nose of the craft up and hovered above the half-melted ice and rock. There was no place he could land the chopper effectively. Things could never be easy. He got up from the pilot’s seat and headed towards the back. The copter rocked quietly in the thin air.

Hopefully it could stay relatively steady without him there to lead the way.

Keene tore through the supply chest. He pushed aside a rifle with a mean looking scope. Maybe that’d come in handy later. He found a wire harness that could clip into the chassis of the copter. This would beat his self-fashioned knife hook, but the descent would still be a thirty foot drop from an unmanned aircraft.

He clipped himself in, then returned to the controls. He righted the machine as best he could, flipped a few switches that would hopefully keep the craft steady, then stepped towards the open middle. Keene rested his feet on the metal bar just outside, then he jumped. Wind whistled at his ears as he tore headfirst through the air.

Keene slammed a button at his waist, and the wire stopped unspooling, halting his progress with a vicious jerk. Above, he felt the aircraft move slightly. He glanced up, saw the nose dipping. Keene struggled to unhook himself.

His boots splashed as they landed in the slush. Ignoring the pain around his waist, Keene limped towards Alessia’s resting place. Her brown eyes stared out into oblivion, but it was clear that she was still alive. Almost like she could sense everything, but react to nothing.

Keene pressed his hands against the clear material that imprisoned her. It was chilly, but it wasn’t made of ice—nor any material that he was familiar with. He banged his hands against the clear window, just inches from her face. But his efforts made no dent.

Then again, if a series of explosions and a couple avalanches hadn’t done the trick, then it wasn’t likely that his body would prove powerful enough to destroy this ancient mechanism.

Keene looked up. The helicopter still hovered, although it did so in a drunken, haphazard fashion. He figured he had no more than two minutes before the angle became too steep and the craft simply dive bombed into the mountain.

That wouldn’t kill him, but it would be a death sentence. It would leave him stranded up here, unable to stop Prashant’s plan.

If this ice prison wasn’t natural, then it had to be mechanical. Which meant a switch or a lever or some sort of machine that could free Alessia from her suspended state. Keene clambered past the row of frozen bodies, scraping his knees against jagged rocks, slush soaking his pants with a bitter cold.

The basic outline of a room—the main room of the temple, it seemed—remained, with these frozen bodies making up one of the walls. If he could just find the switch, then all would be right. But where was the switch? It wouldn’t be out in plain view, right next to these frozen husks.

No, then Strike and the rest of them would have found it, stopped this thing dead in its tracks already. It had to be hidden—but not
too
hidden.

The dragon sculpture.

Keene whipped his head around the rubble, back towards the chasm where the frayed remnants of the bridge fluttered in the wind. He launched himself into a dead run, hurtling towards the hole with an abandon that surprised even himself. After dangling from the tree, he figured he’d seen enough of the abyss up close for one lifetime.

But the sculpture would be nearby.

He launched himself over a ruined part of the second floor, landing near the edge of the canyon. Here, the debris was relatively sparse. The building had essentially imploded open itself, rather than spraying wreckage all over the mountaintop.

Keene turned around in a circle, searching the landscape for clues. He saw a shattered, half-melted sculpture crammed up against one of the surviving walls. Even with the icy burst of flame half-broken, it was still clear that this was the dragon Keene sought.

He scrambled towards the sculpture. He tried to pull it away from the wall, but even with much of it missing, the chunk of ice was too large for him to move. But the heat had revealed something near the ground, where it rested on its broken neck.

A familiar rainbow colored light reflected the moon back at him. Keene dove to the ground, snaking his arm beneath the ice sculpture to grasp the prism. He pulled it away, and the dragon fell down where his hand had just been, the sound echoing across the canyon with a loud boom.

But there was no time to be thankful.

Keene ran back to Alessia’s prison, searching for the slot which this key belonged to. It was unnecessary. The proximity of the prism had an instant effect, sending the clear windows rocketing up, freeing all of the captors.

It glowed with a strange energy in his hand, becoming warm to the touch. Keene blinked for a moment, then rushed over to Alessia.

She groaned and fell to her knees.

“We gotta go.”

“He said he loved me.”

“I know,” Keene said. “I know.”

“But why…did he do it?”

“There’s no right or wrong,” Keene said. “Only beliefs.” He slung the short woman over his shoulder and bounded towards the harness still dangling from the rope. Up above, the copter was starting to nose down towards the precarious angle of no return. Keene put the girl down and looped himself into the harness.

He’d have to hang on to her tight if they were both going to survive the trip up.

He lifted her body back over his shoulder, his hand hovering over the button that would send them shooting towards the sky.

“Ready?” Keene said.

“You’re better than I thought,” she said, her eyes looking sleepy, not totally with it, “Kip Keene.”

“That’s what they all say in the end,” Keene said, then pressed the button, sending them both rocketing towards the copter. It lurched slightly from the added weight and sudden movement, but Keene managed to steady himself on the metal footrest. He pulled himself and Alessia into the belly of the chopper.

It jerked and began to descend.

He shed the harness as quickly as he could and dove towards the pilot seat.

All the gauges were howling, red lights flashing all about the cockpit.

There was only one thing Keene could do to stop it.

He jerked back on the controls, so hard that he was afraid he’d pull them straight out of the console. The craft hurtled skyward, the fuel gauge dropping from the maneuver. A little over fifteen percent.

But for now, Keene was alive.

“You all right back there?”

“Been better.”

“You ready for what’s next?” Keene said.

“What’s next?”

“We’re going to blow this mountain up,” Keene said. “And save the world.”

He hung a hard left around the mountain, and began descending to the western cliff, where he expected Strike to be. His fingers played with the radio.

“Strike? Carmen? It’s Keene. Tell me you copy.”

There was an extended, static-filled silence, then a familiar voice. “Mr. Keene. A pleasure.”

“Prashant.”

“Yes,” the man said. “What you do next will dictate whether your friend lives or dies.”

“Not really a friend,” he heard Strike say in the background, “but he’s got Carmen.”

Keene banged his fist against the side of the bird before he answered. “I’m listening.”

“You will return the girl to her proper place,” Prashant said. “And you will deliver the prism to me. I should have brought it down here, but I suppose a certain amount of ceremony and tradition made me return it to its rightful spot. Foolish.”

Keene backed the chopper up so that he was staring at the western face of the mountain, maybe four hundred yards down from the peak.

“Kill her. See if I care.”

“What?” Prashant hadn’t anticipated this turn. “You would not allow that.”

“I just did,” Keene said. His thumb went towards the air-to-air missile button. “And Strike?”

“Yeah,” Strike said, screaming to be heard.

“The plan’s still on.”

And then Keene pressed down twice, sending two rockets screaming towards the frozen rock.

The mountain face exploded in a burst of orange light. Rocks tumbled through the smoke and the fire, skittering down the ancient cliffs. The force of the blast pushed the copter back slightly, but Keene, ever steady at the controls, compensated for the sudden shift and leveled out the bird.

The mountain belched great plumes of black smoke.

“Can you walk?” Keene called towards the back.

“Yeah, just don’t ask me to move quick,” Alessia said. “What do you need?”

“Check the supply chest for another harness. Latch it to the chopper’s chassis, then start reeling out the wire for both.”

“How many of them are down there?”

“Three,” Keene said.

He heard clamoring in the back as Alessia attended to that matter. He squinted through the windshield, waiting for the smoke to dissipate. His heart pounded, and his palms were sweaty. He was a damn good pilot, but this next maneuver was the riskiest stunt he’d pulled yet.

For a brief moment, doubt sank in. What if Prashant had slit Carmen’s throat before the missile launch could catch him off guard? She wasn’t Keene’s favorite person by any means, but gambling like that and losing didn’t sit well.

He banished the thought from his mind. She was there. They were all there, and he needed to save them.

The black smoke cleared enough for Keene to see the hole he’d created. About twenty feet tall, maybe fifteen wide. It’d be a tight squeeze, not clipping the rocks. But he could get close enough to them that they had a shot.

He edged the craft closer, talking on the radio.

“Strike, you there?” No response. “Answer me, Strike.”

A crackling voice came over the speakers. “Don’t tell me you’re coming inside.”

“Nothing like that,” Keene said, still pushing the chopper closer. Ten feet now. Five. “I’ll be right outside.”

He shifted the craft sideways, so that the opening in the belly lined up parallel with the still flaming puncture in the side of the mountain.

“Goddamn, that’s a far jump,” Strike said.

“Alessia will swing the harnesses your way,” Keene said. He nodded towards the back.

From the way the craft was situated, Keene felt helpless. He couldn’t avert his eyes to check on how the rescue was going. His sole focus had to be keeping the bird in the air and its rotors away from the cliff.

“Got one,” Strike said. “Strapping Linus in now.”

“All right, look out for the other one. Carmen down there?”

“Yeah, she survived. No sign of Prashant, though.”

“Okay, tell her to watch for it.”

Three quarters of a minute later, Strike said, “Ok, Linus is ready to go. Carmen just got the second one. She’s strapping in now.”

“You’re going up without one?”

“Send it back for me when the others are safe,” Strike said.

“No time and no fuel,” Keene said. “They’ll need to hold you.”

“You could’ve told me that before I let them go first,” Strike said.

“Ready?”

“Just about—shit!” Keene heard the radio clatter to the floor, the thin sound of a knife flying through the air. Strike moaning and cursing.

“Strike!”

“He cut my arm,” Strike said. “Pull them up. They’re all ready.” Her voice was faraway, almost inaudible.

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Pull them up, damnit. I can’t hold on. I can see the damn tendon in my arm.” There was a small yelp, more expletives from Strike. “He got my hand. Lost my damn rifle during the explosion.”

“Carmen, Linus,” Keene said, screaming into the radio, “help her.”

“Pull them up,” Strike said again. He heard footsteps pattering against the chilly rock. The sound of a punch being landed. No more cries of pain from Strike. That was good. She hadn’t been cut again. “Do it.”

Keene glanced back at Alessia, who was stationed next to the open door, her blonde hair flapping in the wind. She could pull them up—or Linus and Carmen could do so themselves by activating the harnesses—but no one had given up on Strike.

“Forget that,” Keene said. “I saw a rifle back in the supply chest. You think you can fire it?”

“Prashant taught me,” Alessia said, her voice quiet and small. “He said I was special, the only one who could use it.”

“You have a choice,” Keene said. His knuckles were white, his palms blistered from holding the controls so tight. “Make it.”

He heard clattering. A single bullet being loaded into the chamber.

“Come closer to the edge,” Keene said into the radio. “I’m coming in.”

“Don’t do that,” Strike said.

“Just get where I can see you.”

“You’ll kill everyone.”

“Either we all make it or no one does,” Keene said. He heard someone roll on the ground, a blade bash off rock. An angry tirade from Prashant. “You see him?”

“Too much smoke,” Alessia said. “I can’t—wait. Strike’s there. He’s chasing her.”

“Do it.” The fuel gauge blinked below ten percent. This effort could be all for nothing, a set-up to a cruel end. “Take the shot.”

“I might hit her. They’re only a couple feet apart.”

“Take the shot, damnit.”

“I can’t,” Alessia said.

Then a single gunshot rang out over the endless abyss.