Free Fever by Kailin Gow Page A

can only be a missile heading towards us. Yet a second later, it explodes as Jack presses a button on our helicopter’s controls.
                “Chaff countermeasures,” he explains, pulling the helicopter into a screeching climb as ahead of us, the canyon’s end wall looms large. For a moment, all I can see is the bright blue of the sky, while the sheer force of gravity presses me hard back into my seat until I can barely breathe.
                He levels out, and Hammond’s helicopter is still behind us. A little further back, but still behind us. Jack pushes the pace still further, skimming through a gap between two rock formations that barely looks big enough for our helicopter. He forces the chase on, drawing it out, obviously trying to test the fuel capacity of the helicopter behind us.
                Then suddenly, I spot another canyon. One that seems almost to cut a river in half. No, it’s two rivers, pouring into it so that dual waterfalls flow and foam down into the canyon valley below. I point to it. “There, Jack.”
                Jack nods, plunging us down towards it, heading for the waterfalls. For a moment, I think that he’s misjudged it. That it’s too much even for reflexes with his extra warning. For that moment, all I can see is the spray of the water, the mist from the waterfalls rising around us, their roar even louder than our helicopter.
                Then Jack jerks his controls sideways, pulls on them again, and we’re stationary. I try to make sense of it, looking around while beside me, Jack balances the helicopters controls in a constant dance with the air around us. Ahead, I can see a falling sheet of water, rainbows running through it as the light strikes it, while beside us, there is only rock.
                He’s pulled the helicopter in behind the waterfall. Behind it. He’s controlling it there, beneath a natural overhang he couldn’t have seen coming down. Only someone with his talents could possibly have done this, and even then, it’s a feat of flying that’s kind of hard to believe. Maybe that’s the point though, because I see something large and dark flash by beyond the wall of water. Even Hammond, it seems, can’t believe that we could possibly be here.
                Time passes. How much, I’m not sure, because things are too tense in the cockpit of the helicopter to risk checking. Jack is making constant small adjustments to the helicopter, holding it there beneath the overhang, but how long can he keep that up for? Worse, what if Hammond spots us? In a space like this, we’d be trapped. How long do we dare wait?
                Eventually, Jack eases the helicopt [ tht strier forward, out of the shelter of the waterfall. It gives me a good view of the valley beyond. It’s beautiful. Where the rest of the land around us is parched and dry, the combination of these two small rivers has made this canyon lush and green. It’s tree filled and wet, a lost oasis of greenery in the middle of otherwise empty lands.
                Jack takes the helicopter up to the level of the canyon lip, obviously looking around for Wilson Hammond’s attack chopper. There’s no sign of it. Obviously, it has either headed off in search of us elsewhere, or it ran out of fuel for the chase. Even so, we stay low, trying to keep from being easily identifiable on radar.
                That makes the journey back to Location Thirteen slow going. Especially when it starts to get darker. Jack has to take the helicopter up further when that happens, just to keep us from crashing. He flies on the instruments then, using them to plot our course heading and keeping us moving until I can see a strange, slightly eerie green light in the distance.
                “The Faders will have coated some of the rock floor near the base with luminous paint,” Jack explains. “It’s not enough to let