Chapter 6
Our Mi-24 Hind screamed over the Nevada desert, the ground a dark brown blur beneath us. The pilot’s area was separated from the passenger compartment, so I had no way of looking at Skippy’s instrumentation to guess just how stupidly fast we were flying, but I could tell you this: we were going really fast. All orcs were supernaturally good at something. Skippy’s particular gift was breaking the laws of physics with a helicopter.
Those of us on Harbinger’s team had spent a lot of hours in the Hind, but none of us had ever been aboard with Skippy pushing it like this before. Earl had told Skippy that there was a race, and it was very important that we win this particular race, so Skippy had cranked the stereo to eleven, put on some heavy metal, and kicked our chopper in the butt, dedicated to not bring dishonor to MHI.
“Is it supposed to rattle like that?” Trip asked through clenched teeth.
“Washing machines don’t rattle this much. What do you think?”
Milo was sitting across from me and must have caught the look of distress on my face. “Impressive, huh? There’s no way this baby is supposed to go like this. Maximum speed is only around two hundred. We’re beating that by a good bit. Not too shabby, considering she’s older than some of you guys.” Milo patted the bulkhead tenderly. “And to think, it wasn’t that long ago that she was in two pieces!”
Skippy had put a lot of hours into fixing up his beloved steed after the Arbmunep had knocked it out of the sky. He’d tested it around Cazador and assured us that everything was fine, or as he put it, the engine spirits were pleased. Though we’d all been nervous riding in it, the helicopter had seemed to run okay on our most recent case, but we hadn’t been racing with it, either.
“Not helping, Milo. Not helping at all.” Holly’s voice didn’t sound happy over the headset. Since the gunner’s seat was rather cramped, she was the thinnest one here, and had expressed interest in learning how to fly, Holly was riding forward. She had the best view, but I imagined that it was a lot like having the front seat of a roller coaster.
“Are you kidding? When an orc fixes something, it stays fixed. They’re like wizards with duct tape. Magical duct tape wizards, right, Ed?” Milo reached over and thumped Edward on the shoulder. The orc tilted his goggled head, apparently confused by the red-bearded human touching him. After a moment, Ed went back to looking at the window and listening to the talk radio streaming on his earphones. “Well, Ed is more of a duct tape samurai, but you get the idea.”
All of our rivals were racing for the same place, but as far as I knew, we were the only Hunters with a helicopter. It was still almost three hundred miles to the site, and our pace wasn’t exactly set for fuel efficiency, so we needed to stop and refuel once along the way. MHI owned a decent-sized airplane, but it was parked uselessly in Alabama. We were also the only company with Hunters stationed in Salt Lake City, which was the closest metro area, but unfortunately all of them had been attending ICMHP too.
Earl Harbinger had decided to cover all the bases, so he had paid a ridiculous sum to hire a Gulfstream on short notice. It is amazing how fast you can get flight plans altered when you carry a suitcase full of money everywhere you go. Interestingly enough, another prop plane had taken off on an emergency flight a few minutes before we’d gotten to the airport, hired by someone they had described as a businesslike German man.
The group on the Gulfstream would beat us there by a good margin, but we wouldn’t be too far behind. We had no idea how hard the creature was going to be to track, so the air cover could potentially come in handy. Behind us was a convoy of vehicles, MHI-owned for some, and rentals for our Hunters that had flown in. Obviously, most of us at the conference were travelling light, but Eddings, the Las Vegas team lead, had one hell of a well-stocked armory in their office that was hidden in the basement of a pizza place.
Nearly thirty members of MHI and an unknown number of our rivals were on their way to northeastern Nevada. “This many Hunters will be overkill.” I tried to lighten the mood. “It’s probably just a troll angry that he lost his internet connection.”
Holly wasn’t buying it. “That kind of PUFF money, Z, it’s more likely Godzilla.”
“Or Dracula riding Godzilla,” Trip said.
Since we had a race to win, Skippy had requested that we travel light. Milo had been bummed when he hadn’t been able to take his heavy free samples from the show, but Skippy had said they could load them up for the ride home. Milo was simply too excited to play with them to wait for UPS to ship them back to Alabama. So we had two orcs, four humans, and a small load-out of weapons and ammo, with me being the biggest piece of cargo. It was hard to tell when Skippy was unhappy, what with the mask and all, but he had grumbled something about me being “big, like ox make us slow,” but how that evened out because “blood of great war chief bring good luck.” That was the sort of thing that replaced complex aviation calculations when you were an orc. Because I was related to a rock star, it meant we could go faster.
Thinking about my brother gave me a twinge of guilt, and I promised myself again that I’d go visit him before the conference was over. With the blow his career had taken, he was reduced to working in Vegas, playing shows that would’ve been far below him a couple of years ago. The whole thing was my fault, and Mosh had been avoiding my calls. I was worried about him.
There was a sudden bang. I grabbed onto the overhead straps as the chopper lurched.
“What was that?” Holly asked, alarmed.
“No problem. No problem,” Skippy’s gravelly voice came over the intercom. “Tail rotor break.” He pronounced it row-tor.
“Break? What do you mean break?”
“No…is good break. Skip mean…break in.”
“That sounds bad, Skippy!”
“No…The spirits that live in tail rotor…happy together now.”
“You said the spirits were happy before we flew last time!” Trip exclaimed.
“No. Engine spirits happy. Tail rotor spirits…not so much. Very angry tail rotor.”
“Last time I checked, you need a functioning tail rotor to fly a helicopter.”
“No. Not to fly. Only not to spin around. Like circle…Until hit ground. Explode!” Skippy made the horrible wheezing noise that passed for orc laughter. “But rotor happy now! Yay!”
“We’re so gonna die,” I muttered.
“No. No,” Skippy insisted. “Gretchen sacrifice chicken for us. Skip knew. Rotor spirits come ’round.”