Jon is depending on us.
She slid into the front seat and noticed two things at once: the chopper still had power and the passenger door was open. Careful not to break anything on the control panel, Collins climbed up and out of the open door. Outside the chopper, she could hear the distant roaring of angry Kaiju, unaffected by the blast, but the sounds of the city and the military had faded. Now other sounds filled the void.
“Sonuvabitch!”
Woodstock.
Collins slid herself over the chopper’s side, moving toward the voice, and leaned over the edge. Woodstock and Alessi were both below her, working on the chopper, but they didn’t look good. Woodstock had a visibly broken leg. Alessi yanked on a wrench with one arm while the other hung useless. Despite their injuries, they were trying to free the neural implant launcher mounted to the chopper’s underside.
“I can’t get it with one arm,” Alessi complained.
“Well, I can’t very well stand, now can I?” Woodstock said, “So you’re going to have to—”
“I think I can get it,” Collins said.
Alessi looked up, saw Collins and all but collapsed. “Thank God.”
Collins slid over the side and dropped to the macadam. She landed gracefully, despite the protests of her body and her head. She was in serious pain, but compared to Woodstock and Alessi, she was healthy.
Alessi held up the wrench. “There’s just one bolt left.”
“You should have woken me up,” Collins said, taking the wrench.
“Tried,” Woodstock says. “Your arms and legs might be working fine, but you need to take it easy. A concussion is nothing to screw around with.”
Collins went to work on the bolt with one arm while cradling the launcher in the other. “You’re just saying that so you can tell Jon you said it.”
Woodstock slid himself back against the tire of an abandoned car, wincing with the movement as his legs straightened. “Pretty much.”
“This thing will still launch?” Collins asked.
“I can trigger it remotely,” Alessi said. “But someone still needs to point it in the right direction.”
Collins felt the bolt about to fall away. “How much does it weigh?”
Alessi shrugged. “Hundred pounds.”
Collins tightened her hold on the launcher just as the bolt fell away. She dropped the wrench and got both hands beneath the cylinder. Felt like more than a hundred pounds, but she’d lifted—and carried—more than that in the past. Not with a concussion, but there was no time for whining.
“You sure you got that?” Woodstock asked.
Collins grunted, hefting the cylinder up and propping it against her shoulder. “My grandfather used to say ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.’”
“Spoken like a true woman of Maine,” Woodstock said with a smile. “You’re meltin’ my heart.”
“Your grandfather was quoting Mark Twain,” Alessi said, leaning against the chopper’s belly.
“Yeah, well, my grandfather was well read.” Collins looked up at the building behind which they’d taken shelter and crashed. It looked mostly intact. “You’re sure this will work?”
Alessi took a phone from her pocket and spoke the number twice. “Call me when you’re in position. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Collins had her personal phone in her pocket. She gave a nod and headed for the building’s open front doors, hoping the blast hadn’t destroyed local cell towers. Broken glass crunched beneath her feet as she moved into the building’s lobby. The reception desk looked more like a bunker. A metal detector led to the far side of the entryway where she could see a sign for the stairs. She didn’t know what the building was used for, but she assumed it contained overflow offices for House and Senate personnel.
The interior of the building was lit by emergency lights, glowing against a few of the walls. She could see, but just barely. She moved by sliding her feet forward, afraid of tripping over some unseen obstacle. But the path was clear, and she soon reached a row of elevator doors followed by the doorway to the stairs.
A wave of dizziness swept through her body. Stars danced in her vision. She carefully set the metal cylinder down and took several deep breaths, focusing on remaining upright. If she went over, she didn’t think she’d get back up for a while.
I’m never going to make it up the stairs, she thought, recalling the building’s fifteen-story height.