Trouble in the Pipeline Read Online Free PDF Page B

closer and closer. They were over a forest in the middle of a deep valley. Joe was already picking out their crash site as Virgil cranked the starter once again.
    "Do you have any chutes?" Frank asked.
    "Nope." Virgil had already considered the alternative of jumping and dismissed it.
    Then, with faint rumblings and stirrings, the engine suddenly began to turn over. "She's catching." Virgil smiled. "Feel her? There she goes!"
    Frank and Joe felt the sudden surge of power as the blades bit into the air and lifted the chopper out of her death plunge. They were down low enough to watch treetop branches wave in the sudden blast of air.
    "We'll have to put down real soon. There's not much in this little tank, and once it goes, that's it." Virgil scanned the area for a place to land in the dense forest below.
    Frank's mind was churning. How would they get out of this and get back to Prudhoe? They had to find Scott, bring him home if they could. Instead, they were in the middle of nowhere, on the run in a damaged helicopter, pursued by unknown thugs dead set on killing them. It was starting to make him mad.
    He looked up. "I've got an idea. Virgil — do you have any rope? Any tools aboard?"
    Virgil nodded. "In the back. There's a big coil of rope and a complete tool chest. Why?"
    "Find a clearing, a small clearing."
    Virgil and Joe looked over at him.
    "What are you talking about?" Joe burst out. "That's what we're doing!"
    "I mean a really small clearing, just big enough for two choppers—and one trap."
    "You'd better talk fast," Joe said.
    Quickly Frank described what he had in mind. Virgil and Joe listened intently. Then Virgil began to grin.
    "Sounds like it's worth a try. Let's go." He swung the chopper around and headed for what Joe pointed out as the only good place to land. The North Slope chopper was still following, but at a safe distance. Maybe its occupants feared some kind of trick.
    Virgil put the bird down as close to the trees as he could, the rotor blades whirling only inches from branches. To the left, only a slightly larger space remained. There was no place else for the other chopper to land.
    "Let's go," Frank called. "We don't have much time. Don't let them see what we're up to."
    He grabbed the tool chest, throwing his parka over it to conceal it from their enemies. Joe had the coil of rope under his jacket.
    "Come on, into the woods," Frank urged them. Virgil and Joe ducked into the cover of the trees.
    "What's first?" Virgil asked, peering up at the North Shore copter through the branches.
    "Pick a tree on the other side of the clearing and get a rope around the top of it. Then we make a cut in the trunk with the saw."
    "Right!" Joe burst out into the clearing.
    "Get back!" Frank yelled.
    Joe plunged back under the canopy of leaves. "What's the matter?"
    "Don't let them see you," Frank said as he started pushing his way around the perimeter of the clearing. "We want them to think we've made a run for it."
    "This looks like a good one," Virgil said, tapping a tall tree on the opposite side of the tiny meadow.
    "Too tall," Frank responded, staring up at the top. "It would land on our chopper, too."
    "How about this one?" Joe called out, standing next to a slender, dark-barked tree a few yards in from the edge of the clearing.
    "That's better," Frank said. "Looks just the right height. And the fact that it's in from the edge is good. Not so obvious. Can you climb it, Joe?"
    With the rope wrapped diagonally around his torso, he began to shinny up the tree trunk.
    "How high do you think we should put it?" he called down.
    "That's about right — right now," Frank yelled up.
    Joe slipped the rope off and tied it snugly around the trunk. He dropped the end of the rope to the ground and came down as easily as he'd gone up.
    "Okay. Now let's cut a V on the side opposite the direction of the fall," Frank said. Grabbing one end of the saw, he and Virgil removed a wedge from the back of the tree. The upper half of the