Chapter 32 - The Glass Shatters
The crack of the rifle shot split the roaring wind a fraction of a second after I hurled my body through the open door of the helicopter.
I collided with Ethan, wrapping my torso over his shoulders and pushing him down across the metal floor. Leo and Maya were already tucked beneath his chest, cocooned in heavy emergency fleece. The high-caliber round slammed into the reinforced cockpit glass right where Ethan’s temple had rested a heartbeat before. The bullet did not penetrate the ballistic composite completely, but it shattered the layer into a blinding web of white fractures, sending razor-sharp micro-shards showering over the instrument panel.
The pilot screamed, clutching his neck where a jagged flake of glass had sliced through skin.
"Sniper! East ridge! Two thousand yards!" Marcus’s voice bellowed through the storm.
Automatic fire erupted behind us as Marcus and three federal marshals laid down a frantic suppressing barrage toward the jagged granite bluffs overlooking the helipad. Thick, chemical-white smoke grenades popped on the tarmac, hissing violent plumes of sulfur and chalk that instantly swallowed the helicopter in an impenetrable white veil.
"Stay down!" I hissed into Ethan’s ear, my fingers digging into the rough wool of his blanket. I could feel the violent, jackhammering rhythm of his heart against my ribs. Six months of agony, six months of being told my husband was rotting in an unmarked grave, and now his breath was hot and real against my collarbone.
"Claire..." he gasped, his voice cracked and raw from months of disuse and torture. "The kids... are they—"
"They’re safe. We’re together. Don't move."
Another heavy round punched clean through the helicopter’s tail rotor assembly with a sickening metallic clang. The aircraft shuddered violently on its skids.
"Engines are dead! We can’t lift!" the co-pilot yelled over the wail of emergency alarms. "Out! Out of the bird now!"
Marcus appeared through the blinding smoke, his silhouette broad and lethal against the gray dawn. He grabbed Ethan under the armpits, hauling him upright while keeping his own body between Ethan and the direction of the bluffs. I scooped Maya into my left arm and gripped Leo’s wrist with my right. My little boy didn't cry; his eyes were wide, dilated with pure terror, clinging to my arm with a desperate strength no five-year-old should ever possess.
"The radio call," I shouted at Marcus through the deafening roar of rotor blades winding down. "They said Arthur was just a custodian. They called themselves the Syndicate!"
Marcus’s jaw hardened, his eyes cold flint behind his tactical goggles. "Then Arthur wasn’t the end of the chain. He was just the dog on the leash. Move! Tunnels beneath the boathouse! It’s the only subterranean route off this damn rock!"
May you like
We plunged off the helipad, sliding down the wet, grassy embankment into the shadow of the coastal cliffs, while the fog of Heron Island swirled with cordite and blood.
***
