Chapter 25: Aerial Pursuit
"You're still thinking about Chuck, aren't you."
It wasn't quite a question. Meg said it the way she said things she already knew the answer to — not to get information, but to give the other person permission to admit it.
Simon kept his eyes on the city below. "Something felt off when they went into that warehouse. Three people against however many were in there, in the dark, in an unfamiliar building." He adjusted their heading slightly. "I just want to know they're clear."
"We could call the police," Meg said.
"Sarah and Casey are federal agents. Bringing in local law enforcement without their authorization would either blow their cover or create a jurisdictional disaster, and either way it probably makes things worse for Chuck." He glanced at her. "I want to, though. You're not wrong to suggest it."
He'd kept the helicopter within a loose perimeter of the harbor rather than flying north toward the city — a decision he'd made without fully acknowledging he'd made it. Just in case.
Meg's phone rang.
She looked at the screen. "It's Sarah."
Simon turned. "Why do you have Sarah's number?"
"We exchanged numbers after the restaurant thing." Meg shrugged at his expression. "Women do that. We don't need a reason, we just do."
"I genuinely don't understand how that works."
"I know." She answered and put it on speaker, one ear of her headset pulled aside.
The call lasted about forty seconds. Simon heard enough.
Meg held the phone out. "She wants to talk to you."
He took it, pressed it to his ear. "Sarah."
"Simon." Her voice was stripped down to function — no social padding, no warmth, just information moving as fast as possible. "Someone took Chuck. We need aerial support. How fast can you get back to the waterfront?"
Simon was already adjusting the collective. "I'm three minutes out. I never left."
A pause. "Of course you didn't."
"I'll be on the ground in two and a half. Have everyone ready to move."
He ended the call and looked at Meg. "I need to set down."
"I know." She was already unbuckling.
The Bell 47G touched down on the harbor helipad with about forty seconds to spare before Sarah and Casey came across the tarmac at a controlled jog — controlled because running would draw attention, but with the compression of people who needed to be somewhere else immediately.
The rotors were still spinning when Casey reached the door.
Simon leaned toward Meg. "You need to get out."
Meg nodded once — no argument, which he noted — and stepped down onto the pad, moving clear of the rotor arc without being told to.
Casey pulled the passenger door open and looked at Simon with the expression he used when he was deciding something quickly.
"I have a commercial helicopter license," Simon said. "Do either of you?"
Casey said nothing, which was an answer.
"Then I'm flying," Simon said. "Get in."
Casey climbed into the passenger side with the resigned efficiency of a man accepting the least bad option. Sarah moved to the door behind the pilot's seat.
"One second," Simon said.
He leaned out toward Meg, who was standing eight feet away on the tarmac.
"Stay with the car," he said. "Don't call anyone yet — if this goes sideways I'll call you and you can make the decision then."
Meg looked at him steadily. "Come back."
"Working on it."
He pulled the door closed and brought the helicopter up.
"Which direction did they go?" Simon said into his mic as soon as they cleared the pad.
"Northwest initially," Sarah said from behind him. "They had about a four-minute head start."
Simon pushed the throttle. The Bell wasn't built for pursuit — it was a sightseeing aircraft with a light frame and a relatively modest powerplant — but it was responsive, and Simon knew how to ask things of machines that weren't on the spec sheet.
Casey, in the passenger seat, was gripping the door handle with the specific stillness of a man who had decided to commit to something and was seeing it through.
The airframe shuddered as Simon pushed past its comfortable cruise speed.
"You alright?" Simon said.
"I'm fine," Casey said, in the tone of a man for whom admitting he was not fine would be a form of personal failure.
"Sarah," Simon said, "what am I looking for?"
"Bell JetRanger. Dark blue or black. No visible markings." She leaned forward between the seats. "They'll be running low to stay off radar."
Simon scanned the horizon. Low-altitude helicopter traffic at night in the LA basin was common enough that the target wouldn't be trying to hide the aircraft itself — just blend with the pattern.
There.
Five hundred meters ahead and slightly below his altitude — a dark helicopter moving north with the purposeful pace of something that had somewhere to be.
"I have them," Simon said.
Casey and Sarah both leaned to see.
"That's them," Sarah said.
Simon closed the distance steadily — not charging, not announcing himself. Just reducing the gap while the target's pilot was focused on his route rather than his mirrors.
At two hundred meters, the other pilot noticed.
The JetRanger adjusted course — a subtle deviation, probing.
Simon matched it.
The other pilot tried a more aggressive course change — banking hard right, gaining altitude.
Simon stayed with it.
"He's good," Simon said. Not critically, just noting.
"Better than average," Casey agreed, which from Casey was practically a compliment.
Sarah was already thinking. "We need to get close enough to board. Can you match his altitude and speed long enough for us to transfer?"
"If he cooperates, yes. If he doesn't want to be boarded—" Simon tracked the other aircraft as it tried another deviation. "The rotor arcs are the problem. Two helicopters trying to hold formation close enough for a transfer, one of them actively trying to prevent it — the math gets bad fast."
"What's the alternative?"
Simon thought about it for three seconds while simultaneously keeping the target in his windscreen.
"I push him back to the coast," he said. "Get below him, use rotor wash and proximity to make his altitude uncomfortable, steer him toward a forced landing. If I can get him low enough over the harbor, you shoot out his engine — not the fuel tank, just the engine — and he has to put it down."
Sarah and Casey exchanged a look over his shoulder.
"You can do that?" Casey said. "Keep him controlled at low altitude without collision?"
"I can keep him moving where I want him to move," Simon said. "Whether he cooperates with the landing is his decision."
Another beat.
"Do it," Sarah said.
Simon ran the geometry in his head — the relationship between the two aircraft, the wind direction, the geography of the harbor below. Then he opened up the throttle.
The Bell surged forward, overtaking the JetRanger on the left side and pulling ahead, then banking hard across its nose — forcing the other pilot to either climb or descend to avoid collision.
The other pilot chose to descend, which was what Simon wanted.
He pulled around behind the JetRanger and repeated the maneuver from above — pushing down with rotor wash, closing the gap until the turbulence from his rotors was making the other aircraft unstable.
The JetRanger tried to break right. Simon was already there.
It tried to climb. Simon matched from below, controlling the ceiling.
Slowly, incrementally, the JetRanger was moving back toward the coast — not because its pilot wanted to go there, but because every other direction was closed.
"Casey," Simon said. "When I get him low enough — passenger window, engine housing, right side. You'll have a clean angle."
Casey already had his weapon out. He cracked the window and positioned himself.
The harbor lights came up below them. Simon pushed the JetRanger lower — fifty feet, thirty, the other pilot running out of room and options simultaneously.
"Now," Simon said.
Three shots. Fast, measured, the sound thin and sharp through the open window.
The JetRanger's engine began trailing smoke immediately — not fire, just the specific grey-white of a turbine losing pressure. The sound changed. The rotor speed dropped.
The other pilot had no choice. He put it down on the harbor apron in a controlled autorotation that Simon had to admit was well-executed given the circumstances.
Simon brought the Bell down fifty meters away, smooth and level.
He was still settling the skids when both passenger doors opened — Casey and Sarah were on the tarmac before the rotors finished spooling down, moving toward the grounded JetRanger with the focused efficiency of people who had trained for exactly this.
Simon shut down the engine and climbed out.
By the time he reached the other aircraft, it was over.
Chuck was out — standing, unhurt, looking slightly stunned in the way he often looked after things happened to him. Sarah had a hand on his arm, checking him over with the practiced speed of someone whose concern was genuine and whose expression had momentarily let that show.
Casey had a man face-down on the tarmac — middle-aged, dark jacket, the look of someone who had made a career choice that was currently resolving in a direction he hadn't planned for. Zip cuffs were already on his wrists.
Chuck looked up and saw Simon.
"You were in the helicopter," Chuck said.
"I was in the helicopter," Simon confirmed.
"You flew the helicopter."
"I did."
Chuck processed this. "The one that was flying directly at us and pushing us around the sky."
"That was me, yes."
Chuck opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "Simon — that was — I mean — you—"
"You can express your feelings about it later," Simon said. "Are you hurt?"
"No. I'm — no, I'm fine." Chuck looked at the downed JetRanger, then at the harbor around them, then at the sky. "How are you fine? How is this fine to you?"
"I try to solve one problem at a time," Simon said. "Right now everyone's standing up and breathing, which means this problem is solved."
Casey hauled the man on the ground to his feet without ceremony. Sarah was already on a phone, running the kind of brief, coded conversation that Simon recognized as a report being made to someone who wasn't in the field.
She hung up and looked at Simon.
"We'll handle cleanup," she said. "You should go."
"Understood." He turned back toward his helicopter.
"Simon."
He stopped.
Sarah held his eyes for a moment with the specific look of someone recalibrating a previous assessment. "You're good at this," she said. Not warmly. But factually, which from Sarah Walker carried its own weight.
"I had a good teacher," Simon said.
He didn't elaborate.
He walked back to the Bell, ran the shutdown checklist, and called Meg.
She answered on the first ring. "Everyone okay?"
"Everyone's okay. Chuck's fine. Come pick me up — I need to return the helicopter and I'd rather not do it alone."
A pause.
"Simon," Meg said.
"Yeah."
"When you said tonight would have a better view—"
"I know."
"—I assumed you meant the city lights."
"The city lights were great," Simon said. "The rest was unplanned."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "I'm on my way."
He sat on the helipad and waited for her, listening to the harbor settle back into its ordinary nighttime frequency — water, distant engines, the specific quiet of a city that had no idea what had just happened above it and wouldn't have believed it if anyone had tried to explain.
[500 Power Stones → +1 Bonus Chapter]
[10 Reviews → +1 Bonus Chapter]
Enjoyed the chapter? A review helps a lot.
P1treon: Soulforger (20+advance chapters)