Chapter 6 - The Ascent through the Storm
The service elevator shaft at the rear of the hospital was cold, dark, and smelled of hydraulic oil and wet dust.
Miles walked alongside the heavy metal gurney, holding Emily’s IV bag high above his head with one hand, while Ross and three guards pushed the heavy bed through the narrow corridor toward the roof access doors.
Dr. Miller walked on the other side, holding the manual oxygen resuscitation bag, squeezing it in a slow, rhythmic pattern: Squeeze... release... squeeze... release...
Sophie walked right beside Miles, her little hand tucked into his jacket pocket, holding on tight as her small shoes stepped carefully over the heavy electrical cables running along the concrete floor.
"Uncle Miles?" she whispered, looking up as the cold wind whistled through the elevator shaft doors above. "Are the bad men going to come up here?"
Miles looked down at her, his face illuminated by the dim red emergency lights of the stairwell.
"No, Sophie," Miles said, his voice filled with a quiet, absolute authority. "Nobody touches you again. Ever."
They reached the heavy steel roof door.
Ross threw his weight against the panic bar, kicking the door wide open.
A wall of freezing wind, rain, and blinding white light hit them instantly.
On the helipad sixty feet away, a massive, twin-engine Sikorsky S-76 helicopter painted in sleek black and gold was idling, its heavy rotor blades spinning through the driving snow with a deafening, rhythmic roar: THRUP-THRUP-THRUP-THRUP!
Two flight paramedics in red suits ran out across the rain-swept asphalt, pulling the gurney toward the open side door of the aircraft.
Down below in the hospital courtyard, eight stories down, sirens screamed through the night as four dark sedans smashed through the police barricades at the main gate. Armed men in black coats poured out onto the wet pavement, shouting into radios, pointing up toward the roof.
A spotlight mounted on the lead sedan flickered to life, its bright, blinding white beam sweeping across the brick facade of the building until it locked directly onto the helipad.
Through the storm, over a megaphone, a loud, distorted voice echoed up against the glass towers:
"HECTOR WILSON! STAND DOWN! THIS IS THE CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT! YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF A FEDERAL COURT ORDER! LAND THE AIRCRAFT IMMEDIATELY!"
Miles didn't even look down.
He lifted Sophie into the warm, illuminated cabin of the Sikorsky, buckling her securely into a leather passenger seat before turning to help the paramedics load Emily’s heavy gurney onto the central locking tracks.
Dr. Miller jumped back onto the roof, wiping rain from his face, looking terrified. "I've transferred her vital monitoring to the flight team, Mr. Wilson! She’s stable for the flight!"
"Thank you, Doctor," Miles said, shaking his hand firmly. "Your hospital will receive a fifty-million-dollar endowment tomorrow morning."
Miles stepped into the cabin, pulled the heavy door shut, and locked the steel latch with a heavy CLICK.
He walked to the cockpit door, tapping the pilot on the shoulder. "Get us airborne now."
"Mr. Wilson," the pilot called back over his headset. "The wind is gusting at forty-five knots, and air traffic control hasn't cleared our flight plan!"
"I don't care about air traffic control," Miles said, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat and pulling on a dark headset. "Take us to my private estate in Winnetka. Now."
The pilot pulled back on the collective lever.
The massive Sikorsky lifted off the roof, its nose pitching down into the dark, swirling snowstorm, sweeping up over the glittering, rain-slicked skyscrapers of Chicago, leaving the sirens, the spotlights, and the shadows far behind in the dark below.
Miles looked back into the cabin.
May you like
Sophie was leaning against her mother’s gurney, holding Emily’s limp hand, her little voice singing a quiet, nonsense lullaby she had made up herself.
Miles pulled off his headset, walked back into the cabin, and sat down on the floor beside her, wrapping his arm around her small shoulders, watching the steady, green line of his sister’s heart monitor pulse in the warm, quiet dark.
