Chapter 4 - THE THUNDER OF THE SIKORSKYFor ten agonizing seconds, there was nothing but the quiet, rhythmic hiss-click-hiss of open radio frequency.
No voice. No static burst. No tiny footstep across a hardwood floor.
My heart sank into my stomach. It was past one o'clock in the morning. She was five years old. She was asleep in her bed, surrounded by her stuffed animals, completely unaware that the man who had rescued her sailboat was tied up in a dark shed twelve miles away waiting to be burned alive.
I pressed my forehead against the cold concrete floor, tears of pure frustration burning behind my closed eyelids.
Then, a tiny, sleep-thickened voice crackled softly through the tiny speaker.
"Captain Jack? Why are you talking so quiet? Is it a secret part of the mission?"
I nearly sobbed with relief.
"Becca," I whispered into the plastic, keeping my eyes glued to the crack beneath the rusted shed door to make sure no shadows were moving outside. "Listen to me very carefully. I need you to wake up your dad right now."
"Daddy’s asleep," she murmured through the radio, her voice trailing off with a small yawn. "Mrs. Higgins said I can't wake him up when he’s sleeping or he gets cross."
"Rebecca, listen to Captain Jack," I pleaded, my voice trembling with desperate urgency. "My boat didn't just get stuck. The bad men who stole your dad’s steel pipes have me locked in a box at the old train yard by the river. If you don't wake your dad up right now, Captain Jack isn't coming home."
A long silence stretched over the airwaves.
Through the radio, I heard the soft rustle of bedsheets, followed by the quiet thud of tiny feet hit the carpet.
"They locked you in a box?" she asked, her voice instantly losing all trace of sleepiness, replaced by sharp, fierce indignation.
"Yes, Becca. In a dark box at Blackwood Marsh. Go to your dad's room. Put the walkie-talkie right next to his ear and press the button."
"I'm running," she whispered.
I sat in the dark, holding my breath, counting every beat of my pulse.
Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds.
Through the walkie-talkie, I heard a heavy mahogany door being pushed open, followed by a sudden, startled gasp from a grown man.
"Rebecca?!" Arthur Whitfield’s deep voice boomed faintly through the mic. "What are you doing in here? What’s wrong?!"
"Daddy! Take the radio!" Rebecca’s voice screamed. "Captain Jack is in a box! The bad men locked him up!"
"What are you talking about—"
"GIVE ME THE RADIO!" I roared into the walkie-talkie with everything I had left, dropping all pretense of whispering. "WHITFIELD! THIS IS JACK MERCER!"
A sharp crackle of static echoed through the line as Whitfield grabbed the device from his daughter.
"Mercer?!" Whitfield’s voice came through the speaker like a thunderclap, instantly cold, sharp, and razor-focused. "Where the hell are you?! How do you have this frequency?!"
"Listen to me, Whitfield! I have three minutes before they set this place on fire!" I shouted into the mic, words tumbling out of my mouth in a desperate, rapid-fire torrent. "Your thirty million dollars of seamless steel isn't in Norfolk! It’s at the old Blackwood Marsh Railyard on River Road! Gordon Pierce and Vanguard Logistics are loading it onto a barge right now! They framed me, they crushed my camera, and they have me locked in a rusted tool shed near the river dock!"
Silence hung on the line for two agonizing seconds.
"Blackwood Marsh?" Whitfield repeated, his voice dropping an octave into pure, lethal authority. "Pierce told me the yard was abandoned six years ago."
"It’s not abandoned! They’re using a sixty-ton gantry crane to load twelve unmarked heavy-haul flatbeds onto a river barge heading for the bay! The barge clears the channel at two a.m.! If you don't get here now, your steel is gone, and I’m dead!"
Over the radio, I heard Whitfield bark a command to someone in his house. "Vance! Get the flight crew on the roof NOW! Spin up the Sikorsky! Call the State Police Commissioner on his direct line and tell him to seal every river outlet in the county!"
He brought the radio back to his mouth.
"Mercer," Whitfield said, his voice as solid as a mountain. "Can you hold out for eight minutes?"
"I don't have much choice," I gasped.
"Keep your head down," Whitfield ordered. "I’m coming."
The line went dead.
Outside the shed, heavy footsteps suddenly crunched across the gravel.
"Hey!" a voice barked from outside the door. "Who the hell are you talking to in there?!"
The iron padlock rattled violently. The heavy wooden bar holding the door shut was thrown back with a loud, wooden thwack.
The door swung open.
Standing in the doorway, framed by the yellow glare of the distant floodlights, was one of Gordon’s six-foot-four security guards. In his right hand, he held a heavy tactical flashlight. In his left, he held a five-gallon red plastic jug of gasoline.
His flashlight beam swept across the shed, pinning me against the back wall, illuminating my hands held in front of me and the glowing green light of the blue walkie-talkie.
The guard’s eyes went wide with realization.
"You sneak little bastard," he growled, dropping the flashlight and raising the gas can. "Gordon was right. We should have put a bullet in you an hour ago."
He unscrewed the cap of the gasoline jug and stepped into the shed, pouring the clear, foul-smelling liquid across the dry wooden floorboards.
"Stop!" I yelled, scrambling backward against the corrugated metal wall.
"Too late, Mercer," he sneered, pulling a silver Zippo lighter from his pocket with his free hand. He flicked the wheel. A bright, orange flame danced in the dark.
Then, from high above the river, the air began to vibrate.
It started as a low, deep, rhythmic thrum—a vibration so powerful it rattled the iron sheets of the shed wall against my back. Within three seconds, the thrum escalated into a deafening, chest-compressing roar that shook the entire marsh.
A blinding, ten-million-candlepower searchlight tore through the dark night sky, cutting through the river fog like a holy sword, bathing the railyard, the shed, and the gas-soaked guard in a light so bright it turned night into high noon.
The wind hit a fraction of a second later—a hundred-mile-an-hour downdraft from twin composite rotor blades that blew the guard’s cap right off his head and sent his gasoline jug tumbling across the floorboards.
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Through the open door, I looked up into the sky.
Hovering sixty feet above the railyard floor was a massive, pitch-black Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, its twin turbines screaming like enraged dragons, its side doors already slid wide open.
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