Chapter 53 - Iron Wings over Florence
The whine of incoming radar lock screamed through our headsets.
"Brace!" Julian roared, diving across the cabin to secure the insulated case against my chest.
A stinger missile tore through the night sky, detonating fifty yards off our starboard wing. The shockwave flipped the helicopter into a sickening thirty-degree roll. Metal groaned, alarms blared in deafening discord, and the scent of burned ozone flooded the cabin.
"Deploy chaff and flares! Go nap-of-the-earth!" I shouted to the pilot.
Below us, the rolling olive groves and terracotta rooftops of Florence blurred into a dizzying streak of shadow and light. Our pilot, a former naval aviator hardened by a dozen black-ops campaigns, pulled the collective back, dropping the chopper into the narrow river valley of the Arno.
Behind us, Eleanor’s black gunships pursued like hungry vultures, their heavy autocannons chewing up the ancient cypress trees along the ridges. Bullets tore through our tail boom, shearing away half the stabilizer.
"We won't make the safe-house helipad!" the pilot coughed through rising smoke. "I have to put her down in the lower vineyard!"
"Julian, get ready!" I yelled, tightening the harness of the tactical rig around my torso. The sapphire vial was locked in an armored syringe inside my chest pocket.
The chopper skimmed the canopy of the vineyard, rotors slicing through branches before the belly slammed into the wet Tuscan earth with a bone-jarring crash. We skidded two hundred feet through mud, stone walls, and splintered vines before coming to a violent stop.
Julian kicked the mangled side door open. "Out! Move, move, move!"
We tumbled out into the mud just as Eleanor’s lead gunship circled overhead, its nose-mounted machine gun raining heavy caliber rounds into our downed aircraft. The fuel tanks erupted into an orange ball of fire, casting our silhouettes across the vineyard.
Without looking back, Julian and I sprinted up the terraced hillside toward the perimeter wall of the safe-house. Through the darkness, the staccato rhythm of automatic gunfire was already echoing from the villa. Eleanor’s ground mercenaries had breached the outer courtyard.
We cleared the stone wall in a single leap. Two heavily armored commandos were advancing toward the villa's reinforced iron doors, setting breaching charges.
I drew my suppressed sidearm, firing three rapid rounds into the first commando's neck seam before he could turn. Julian tackled the second into the marble fountain, snapping his neck with ruthless efficiency.
I kicked open the heavy oak door. "Sarah! Marcus! It's Clara!"
The interior of the villa was a battleground. Smoke hung thick in the air, paintings were shredded by buckshot, and spent brass casings littered the Persian carpets.
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Marcus was slumped behind the grand piano, bleeding heavily from his shoulder, his rifle still smoking. "Upstairs... master bedroom... Sarah barricaded the door, but they're using thermal lances!"
My heart stopped. I took the marble stairs four at a time, Julian covering my rear as two more enemy operatives burst through the terrace doors below.
