Page 49 of Following Their Heart

“Cut the lights,” Grim says. He waves a frantic hand in the direction of the shack but never takes his gaze off that chopper.

Ecstatic, I run inside and kill the lights. I’m still wearing the elastic-band headlamp that lets me see what’s what in dark mode, so I flick it on low. The computers are coming online, providing some ambient light as they go through their start-up routines.

“It’s gonna take time to get the programs up and running,” I say. “Until they do, we’re blind up here.”

“We don’t have time,” Cora says. She’s holding my hand again. “The guys are in trouble.” I don’t bother asking how she knows. I can hear the truth of it in her panicked tone.

“Nothin’ for it,” I say, gritting my teeth with frustration. “They need to go through their internal checks.”

Cora’s hair whips around her head as she shakes it. “There’s no time.” She points out the window.

Down by the camp, the first chopper is rising into the air. It had been on the ground doing who knows what. Letting men out to fight? Looking for Cora? Even more frightening, I don’t hear any shots being fired. I can’t see the other chopper out the window, but I hear it off to our right. It’s loud, telling me it’s closer to us than the other.

“Our guys are in trouble,” Cora says. “You have to get the missiles online and take down those choppers.”

“I can’t make the programs load any faster.”

“Try,” she says with a squeeze of my hand. I stare at her. Has she lost her mind? “Just think about what you want to happen and push it out of you like this light.” She taps my headlamp.

I frown at her.

“Justtry,Scrap! You’re stronger than you think. Your Gift doesn’t just happen. You can control it. You canmakethe computers go faster.” She nods and turns her gaze onto the computer monitors that control the radar and the missiles.

I don’t know where she’s getting this sudden burst of confidence in my Gift, but I do what she says. I close my eyes and think about the programs popping up, ready to work. Holding that image in my head, I think about pushing it out like a bubble of light moving in all directions to fill the cabin.

When I open my eyes, the goddamned programs are open, waiting for me to give them commands.

“Jesus Christ,” I say.

“The Working,” Cora says. I hear the smile in her voice, but I don’t turn to appreciate the view. I’ve got missiles ready to fire. I’m not wasting another second.

This is military equipment. Launching is done by entering commands on the keyboard and then hitting a switch for each missile on a panel networked to the trucks. I need both hands to type the commands, but Cora won’t be separated from me.

She moves behind me and hugs around my waist while I bend over the keyboard and work.

“I’m locked on.” Relying on the missile program’s video feed, I watch the crosshairs track the movements of the chopper higher up the mountain.I picked it rather than the one down by camp because it’s closest to the first truck we parked, at least for now. The missiles in that truck have a clear shot,and now that I’ve programmed the target, I won’t miss. Once I launch, the only way the chopper can avoid being hit is to launch a counter-missile, which they won’t have time to do since it’s flying so low and close to the truck.

“Do it,” Cora says. She’s watching the video feed over my shoulder. “Take it down.”

I enter the command for launch and, with a steady hand, I flick the go switch.

The video feed shows a smoky trail shoot into the sky from the missile truck. The crosshairs blink red. Less than a second later, the screen flashes white. An explosion rocks the cabin. Out the shack’s window, a fireball lights up the sky, and the ground shakes beneath our feet.

“Got ’em!” Grim’s shout, coming from outside, is followed by a“Whoop!”

The video feed pixelates until the flash clears. Then, in seemingly slow motion, it shows a flaming husk of metal lit up against the night sky. What used to be a chopper lists to one side and gets dragged by gravity to the forest below.

Cora squeezes me. “I knew you could do it.”

Hot damn! I’m glad as hell she knew, because I sure didn’t.

Grim’s voice is closer when he says, “Now the other one.” He’s inside the cramped cabin, but Cora is a safe buffer between me and literal death.

Nodding, determined, I use the missile software to search the skies for the other chopper. There. It’s much farther away than the other and hauling ass away from us. Looks like they’re returning to their base in Billings. There’s no time to lose.

My fingers fly through the commands as I bring up the window for the second truck, which is parked more easterly. The tech works magnificently, even faster than I remember it working during my initial setup.

“Locked on,” I say, and I launch the missile before the chopper can make it out of range.

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