Chapter 14
Z
The stairwell spiraled downward through two hundred feet of solid granite, echoing with the sound of my heavy tactical boots and the distant, muffled rumbles of incoming jet engines echoing through the mountain range outside.
Vance wasn't lying about the carpet-bombing.
The syndicate was cutting its losses. They were going to bury the compound, the servers, Diane, and me under a million tons of Alpine rock to ensure the Department of Defense never traced the cyber-breach back to Ramstein.
I burst out of the bottom of the stairwell into a massive, subterranean hangar carved into the cliffside.
Cold mountain air rushed into the space through a pair of giant, open steel hangar doors that looked out over the sheer drop of the valley. Sitting on the concrete helipad in the center of the room was a sleek, black Eurocopter EC135, its main rotors already spinning, whistling louder and louder as the engine spooled up.
Through the clear bubble canopy of the helicopter, I saw Diane in the co-pilot seat, rapidly toggling flight switches while a pilot in a black helmet brought the throttles forward.
"Diane!" I roared over the deafening scream of the turbine engine.
She looked out the side window. For a fraction of a second, shock registered across her face. She hadn't expected me to make it through three armed guards and down two hundred steps in ninety seconds.
She yelled something to the pilot and pointed frantically at me.
The helicopter lifted off the concrete pad, hovering ten feet in the air, its nose dipping forward as it prepared to bank out of the open cliffside hangar into the storm outside.
I didn't have a clear shot at the pilot through the reinforced ballistic glass.
I didn't stop running.
I sprinted across the concrete floor at maximum speed, throwing my rifle aside to shed weight, diving off the edge of the helipad just as the skids of the Eurocopter cleared the threshold of the hangar.
My hands reached out in mid-air, wrapping around the cold tubular steel of the helicopter's left landing skid.
The sudden addition of my hundred-and-forty-pound weight jerked the aircraft violently to the left. The pilot swore loudly over the engine roar, struggling to stabilize the hovering chopper as we swung out into the open abyss of the valley, three thousand feet above the jagged rocks below.
The freezing wind screamed past us, blinding me with swirling snow. My fingers were instantly numbing against the slick steel of the skid.
I swung my legs up, hooking my boots over the skid, fighting the hurricane force of the rotor wash. I pulled myself up inch by agonizing inch until I was level with the rear passenger door.
I drew my SIG Sauer from my side holster with my right hand, using my left arm to lock myself against the frame.
I smashed the butt of the pistol into the door glass.
CRACK.
The reinforced glass spider-webbed. I struck it again, harder, shattering the window panel. I reached inside, grabbed the internal emergency latch, and yanked it up.
The heavy side door slid open with a violent metallic screech, exposing the interior cabin.
Diane turned in her seat, pulling a small silver revolver from her coat, pointing it directly at my face through the open gap.
"Let go, Claire!" she screamed over the roar of the wind and the rotors. "If you don't let go, we both die!"
"Then we die!" I shouted back, my eyes burning with tears frozen by the wind.
She fired.
The round grazed my left shoulder, tearing through my tactical jacket and burning hot against my skin. The impact nearly knocked my grip loose from the doorframe, my legs slipping off the skid, dangling over the three-thousand-foot drop.
I gritted my teeth, ignoring the searing pain in my shoulder, and pulled myself back up into the doorway.
I didn't aim at her.
I aimed at the main flight control console sitting between her and the pilot.
I pulled the trigger three times.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
9mm hollow-point rounds shattered the primary avionics display, severing the hydraulic flight control lines in a spray of red fluid and blinding electrical sparks.
The helicopter’s engine squealed in mechanical agony. The main rotors lost pitch control, and the aircraft went into a violent, uncontrolled spin, plummeting out of the sky toward the snow-covered forest below.
"You crazy bitch!" the pilot screamed as the horizon spun wildly through the windshield.
Diane lost her grip on her revolver as the centrifugal force slammed her against the doorframe. She looked at me, her eyes wide with absolute, primal terror as the mountain treeline rushed up to meet us at over a hundred miles an hour.
I grabbed Diane by the collar of her cashmere sweater with my left hand, pulling her out of her seat.
"Hold on!" I screamed.
TREES!
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The main rotors clipped the tops of the massive Alpine pines, snapping thick wooden trunks like toothpicks in a series of deafening explosions. The helicopter rolled violently onto its side, the tail boom snapping off as the fuselage crashed into thirty feet of deep, soft snowdrifts at the base of the ridge.
The world exploded into a cloud of white, metal, and darkness.
