Hide and seek Read Online Free PDF

rotor shafts, just a quarter turn, until it faced the attackers on the roof of the house, presenting those unseen gunners with a slender target. She stopped it there and squeezed the triggers of the Gatling guns.
The noise was an ear-piercing howl. Blue fire–a hundred rounds in half a second–ate off the roof of the house.
    In the stark white beams from the chopper’s floodlights she saw her father’s body lying facedown in the grass. There were other bodies in the grass, not moving, those of the guards. She pushed the chopper’s nose down and the heavy craft stuttered forward, roaring and blowing, until it was hovering almost on top of her father, its steel skids bracketing him.
She spoke aloud to the helicopter. “Snark, this is L.N. 30851005, do you acknowledge?”
“I acknowledge your command,” the helicopter replied, confirming her voice pattern.
     
“Hold this position in three-dees,” she ordered. “Rotate to cover me if necessary. Return fire if fired upon.”
    A handful of bullets sprayed the chopper’s nose, crazing the armored cockpit glass–somewhere in the shadows to the right, there was another gunner. The Snark jerked right and its starboard Gatling gun screeched; the tree from which the bullets had been fired exploded in tatters.
There was no resumption of fire from beyond the disintegrated tree. “Order confirmed,” said the helicopter, with a machine’s satisfaction.
     
“Hold your fire,” she heard a man shout in the darkness, and she knew the voice: the gray man’s, Laird’s.
    She jumped out of the command seat, into the cabin. “Mother, help me.” Together she and her mother–a strong and slender woman, her hair as black as her husband’s–wrestled the limp bodies of the hijackerpilot and the gray woman and rolled them through the open door. The gray woman tumbled out after the man and bounced from the skid to lie motionless beside him in the grass.
    “Stay back. Inside,” Linda said to her mother, as she jumped out and landed lightly on both feet, flexing deeply, diving and rolling under the chopper in a continuous series of precise actions. The noise and the wind buffeted her ears, but she could separate the boom and shriek of the chopper from the shouted voices nearby.
Her father’s black hair was bright with blood from a scalp wound, but he was conscious. “Can you move?” she shouted.
     
“My leg is broken.”
     
“I’ll pull you.”
    The chopper suddenly shifted where it hung in midair, and she saw shapes running at the edge of the lawn. But no bullets came out of the dark, and the Snark, following its orders to the letter, did not fire. Crouched on her knees, she hauled her father by his shoulders, and he did what he could to help, pushing at the muddy lawn with his good right leg; she saw that he had lost his shoe. For fifteen seconds she was exposed as she pulled him under the skid.
She boosted her father by his shoulders and he hopped unsteadily onto the skid. Her mother took his hands and tugged as he bent and pushed off with his right leg. He landed heavily on the floor of the chopper.
    As Linda poised to jump after him she felt the blow to her hip. There was no pain, but it was as if someone had hit her and pushed her to the ground, and when she tried to jump up again, nothing happened. She felt nothing in her leg and could not move.
The Snark swiveled, but its Gatling gun stayed silent. It had not heard the bullet any more than Linda had.
     
Linda lay on her back, staring up into the meshing blades, seeing the white faces of her mother and father peering down at her only a meter away– “Linda! Linda!” –their hands outstretched.
     
Her mother started to climb out over edge of the door.
     
“Snark,” Linda shouted. “Immediate evasive action. Take all necessary measures to protect your passengers.”
     
The Snark heard her. Its searchlights went dark; its turbines instantly wrapped up to supersonic pitch and it rose screaming into the sky,