Countdown (3 page)

Just then the chopper blew through a brief black cloud. Everything went dark outside the windows. For a second, Amy had the feeling she was suffocating. But the black cloud — the ash Dan had just been talking about — disappeared quickly.

The chopper swerved to the right, then veered sharply to the left. It lurched up and down.

“What's going on?” Jake asked.

Another lurch, and Amy felt her stomach drop to her knees.

“Whoa!” Atticus shouted.

“This is better than a roller coaster!” Dan said.

“This isn't good.” They were far from Guatemala City now, flying over mountains and jungle that looked like the middle of nowhere. Amy opened the partition dividing the cockpit from the passenger seats and caught the pilot quickly sitting down.

“What's going on?” she asked.

The pilot didn't look at her. “No English.”

No English?
Hadn't he told her to sit down and buckle her seat belt? She noticed his coat on the seat next to him. She leaned farther into the cockpit and immediately realized why the pilot had looked like he had a lump under his coat. He had a parachute strapped to his back.

A wave of anxious nausea washed over Amy. “What do you think you're doing?” she demanded. The pilot refused to meet her eye. The chopper lurched again, just missing the side of a mountain.

“He's wearing a parachute!” she told the others. “I think he's going to jump!”

“Pierce must have gotten to him,” Dan said.

The pilot jerked on the handle of the cockpit door to his left, trying to open it and throw himself out. “Grab him!” Jake shouted.

Amy ducked out of the way. Jake dove through the partition and grabbed the pilot before he could open the outside door. “Dan, help me!”

Dan reached through the partition door and helped Jake drag the pilot into the passenger area. The chopper immediately began to drop.

“Amy — take the controls!” Jake barked.

Amy crawled over Dan and Jake, who were wrestling the pilot, into the front seat and grabbed the controls. She panicked. Now what?

“Steady this thing!” Jake shouted.

“How?” Amy shrieked back at him.

“I don't know!” Jake called back.

The chopper nosed down toward the trees. She pulled on the control stick in front of her and the nose tilted up. The chopper didn't rise, but it stopped falling. It leveled and moved forward — straight for the side of a volcano.

“AMY!” Dan screamed.

“I'm trying!” She found a lever on the floor to her left. She hadn't tried that one yet. She yanked on it, praying it would do something good.

The chopper rose. It lifted over the volcano. Amy looked down into the dark abyss at the top and thought she saw a puff of smoke.

The pilot escaped from Jake's hold and threw his upper body into the cockpit, trying to knock her hand away from the controls. “Get him out of here!” she shouted.

Jake, Dan, and Atticus dragged the pilot back to the second row of seats. The chopper dropped fast, down toward a green valley. “Pull up! Up!” Jake shouted.

“I know!” Amy yanked on the lever again with all her might. The chopper rose up toward the sky, pulling out of the valley and almost shaving off the top of a hill. It wobbled. She straightened out and the chopper steadied, but then it started spinning, circling around in the air. Amy frantically tugged at the control stick again, and the chopper nosed forward.

The boys struggled to subdue the pilot, but he wasn't going down without a fight. He managed to unlatch the passenger door. Amy felt the change in pressure. She looked back to see what was happening, and the chopper swerved a deep left. Everyone tumbled over to that side.

“Amy, watch it!” Dan shouted.

Amy concentrated on keeping the chopper steady. The pilot had grabbed Atticus by the arms as a kind of hostage.

“Let him go!” Jake yelled.

Amy didn't dare turn away from the controls — one slip and the chopper would crash, or tip and knock Atticus out. Behind her she heard thumping, grunting, and shouting. But when Jake cried out desperately, “No! No!” she had to turn to see what was happening.

The pilot was leaning out of the helicopter with Atticus clutched in one arm. He was going to jump and take Atticus with him. But the pilot had a parachute, and Atticus didn't.

Dan threw all his weight on one of the pilot's legs, and Jake tugged on his arm, trying to reel him back into the chopper. Suddenly, the pilot screamed.

Amy turned her attention to the front of the chopper. She was about to fly straight into a cliff. She pulled the cyclic up and the chopper rose over the cliff, nearly scraping off its landing skids. Sweat broke out on her forehead. It dripped into her eyes, but she didn't dare release the controls to wipe it away.

“We'll handle this, Amy!” Jake yelled. “Just fly this thing!”

Amy concentrated on the control panel and tried not to look back to see what was happening behind her. But it was hard. The sounds coming from the backseat — grunts, groans of pain, heavy thuds — terrified her. She couldn't see, but she felt each thud like a punch in the stomach.

Dan felt every muscle in his body exert itself, from his straining eyeballs to the toes that curled around the leg of a seat. The pilot hung out the cabin door, bent at the waist, head dangling, still clutching Atticus. Jake was tugging on the pilot's legs and Dan held Att's feet, bracing his legs against a seat. Atticus's eyes were huge with terror as he strained to grab Dan's hand. He was panting, his breath fast and shallow like a terrified rabbit's.

The pilot gave Jake a mighty kick in the chin, knocking him backward. “Ugh!” Jake's grip loosened, and the pilot tumbled out the door.

“Att!” Dan screamed. Atticus's little body seemed to float out into the air over the jungle below. Dan clutched Att's foot, but his sneaker slipped off in his hand. Jake lunged for his brother and caught him by the torso. With a huge effort he heaved his body back into the cabin, Atticus in his arms. They collapsed on the floor.

Dan looked down just before yanking the cabin door shut. The pilot's chute opened as he floated into the jungle and disappeared among the treetops.

The chopper was flying a little steadier now that no one was dangling out the open door, but it swerved left and right. Amy had no idea how to keep it going straight.

“Is everyone all right back there?” she screamed.

Atticus rubbed his legs as if they hurt, but he swallowed and nodded. “I'm okay.”

“Amy, can you fly this thing?” Dan asked.

“No!” She scanned the control board in a panic. She knew they were supposed to head north toward Tikal. But which way was north? “Which one of these things is the compass?”

Jake jumped into the copilot's seat. “That's it. I think.”

“Maybe we can talk to a control tower or something?” Amy said. “And they could tell me what to do?”

Jake strapped on the pilot's mic and headphones and toyed with the controls until he made radio contact with someone speaking Spanish.

“It's the control tower at Tikal!” said Jake. He fired off something in Spanish to them. They answered back with something that sounded like a question, and disbelief. Jake replied. Over the radio came shouts of shock and horror.

“What are they saying?” Amy asked Jake.

“They keep asking to speak to the pilot, and when I told them he bailed and a teenage girl was trying to fly to Tikal, they kind of lost it.”

“Okay, but what should I DO?”

Jake spoke over the radio in Spanish again. A tidal wave of panicky Spanish flooded back. “Keep your sights about half a mile ahead if you can,” Jake translated. He showed her what each of the controls did and how to work the two pedals on the floor. “Head north-northwest, so keep the compass pointed at this number 33.” He pointed to the spot where the compass should point.

“What?! How do I do that?”

After another exchange in Spanish, Jake told her how to adjust the cyclic and collective controls and the throttle. She pushed on the cyclic too hard and the chopper started to nosedive.

Dan and Atticus screamed. “Not so hard!” Jake shouted. “Light pressure!”

“Okay, okay!” She could hardly think. Spread out below them was nothing but smoking volcanoes and the thick cover of jungle. No place to land that she could see. And if she couldn't keep this chopper in the air, they'd crash. Their lives were in her hands, and her hands felt about as useful as two bricks.

“Steady,” Jake said. “A little more pressure on the right pedal. Now just keep us going like this . . . .”

She pressed too hard on the pedal and the chopper lurched again.
No, stop it, stop it!

“Whoa!” Dan shouted.

“Ease up! Ease up!” Jake cried.

She snapped her foot off the pedal as if it had suddenly become burning hot, causing another lurch. She tried touching it lightly, and the chopper steadied again. Her heart raced, her hands shook, but she willed herself to focus on the controls. She felt as if she were wrestling with a shark, a big, uncontrollable, dangerous creature; one false move and it could chew you to bits. She glanced at Dan and Atticus in the seats behind her, clutching each other.
I won't let them die
, she told herself.
We won't crash, we won't crash . . . .

A strong hand gripped her shoulder. She knew without looking that it was Jake's. She didn't say anything, didn't have time to think about it, but it calmed her just a little.

The radio barked Spanish. “The tower's got you on their radar. They'll guide us in,” Jake said. “We're almost over the Tikal National Park now. If you can find a clearing, they'll tell you how to land this thing. Head due west.”

“A clearing?” Amy scanned the land for an opening in the jungle. She saw nothing but thick vegetation for miles around. But then the trees began to get patchier, as the ruins of temples became visible.

“Lower your altitude to three hundred feet,” Jake translated.
“Slowly.”

Amy lowered the collective lever slowly. The front of her forehead throbbed with tension. The three lives in her care — Dan, Jake, Atticus — weighed on her heart so heavily she was afraid it would pull the helicopter down. But the strong hand still gripped her shoulder. That helped.

“Good. Now slow down. Thirty knots. Twenty knots.” Amy eyed the speedometer. “Ease the cyclic back and keep your nose up. UP!” Jake added as the nose began to point downward. Amy's heart was in her throat, but she swallowed it down —
Think! Think! —
and pulled the nose up. They were skimming over the tops of the trees. Amy spotted a Mayan pyramid near a strange rectangular clearing — a narrow field of grass stretched between two stone structures. It almost looked like a landing strip, but it wasn't very big.

“I'm going to land there,” she told Jake. Biting her lip, she slowed the chopper to a hover over the grass. She pulled the collective lever slowly to lower it. They dropped down even with the tops of the trees, then below the canopy of leaves, until she could practically see each blade of grass. There wasn't much room for error.

The hand on her shoulder did not let go.

The control tower gave more instructions. “Arm the parking brake,” Jake translated.

“What does that mean?” Her head was spinning. Everything was strange — the controls, trying to fly, the orders in Spanish, the jolting pain in her belly. . . .

More Spanish. “I think it's this!” Jake pulled a lever. The chopper's forward momentum stopped and it began to drop fast. They were thirty feet in the air, falling out of the sky straight down to the ground.

“Crash positions!” Amy shouted. Dan and Atticus bent forward in their seats, Atticus covering his eyes. Amy frantically pulled the nose up to slow their descent, but it didn't help. The ground zoomed up into her face. She let go of the controls and covered her head.