Chapter 37 - The Extraction Protocol
The bullets ricocheted off the reinforced steel riser with shrill, deafening whines.
"They're the cleanup crew!" Mia shouted, leaning out around the ventilation cowl and firing three controlled bursts toward the helicopter’s open cargo hatch. One of the masked gunmen slumped back, clutching his chest, while the other ducked behind the cabin armor.
Marcus curled into a ball on the iron grating, his hands over his head, screaming in terror. The ruthless warlord who had mocked Dylan’s worth was reduced to a trembling wreck beneath the guns of his own shadowy business partners.
"They're going to execute him to keep him from talking!" Mia said, slapping a fresh magazine into her rifle. "Dylan, our ammo is almost dry! I have twenty rounds left!"
Dylan looked at the sky. The heavy Sea Stallion was repositioning, sliding sideways to bring its pintle-mounted .50 caliber heavy machine gun to bear on their flimsy shelter. Behind them, the stern of the *Caspian Tide* was sinking lower into the swells, the scuttling charges blowing out internal watertight bulkheads with dull, catastrophic thuds.
"We have to make the helipad crane," Dylan yelled. "There's an emergency tow-cable winch mounted to the secondary davit!"
"And do what?!" Mia questioned.
"Take their bird!"
Before Mia could protest, Dylan broke cover. Moving with the sheer explosive speed that had once made him the top physical recruit in his battalion before his knee injury, Dylan bolted across the slippery, tilted deck. Bullets tore the wet metal at his heels, sparks spraying across his visor.
He reached the heavy pneumatic cargo crane, grabbed the release lever of the high-tensile steel tow-cable, and disengaged the magnetic brake. The heavy steel hook, weighing over two hundred pounds, swung out wildly into the void over the sea.
Dylan didn't hesitate. He grabbed the remote winch controller, keyed the manual tensioning thruster, and launched the cable’s grapnel launcher straight into the Sea Stallion’s undercarriage.
The heavy titanium grapnel hooked viciously into the helicopter's rear wheel well.
The sudden drag of thirty thousand tons of sinking ship caught the pilot completely off guard. The Sea Stallion banked violently, its tail rotor swinging dangerously close to the ship's superstructure as the heavy cable snapped taut with the sound of a pistol shot.
Inside the helicopter cockpit, the instruments blared warning sirens. The gunner at the side hatch lost his footing, tumbling outward into the surging black waves below.
"Cut the cable! Cut the cable!" the pilot's panicked voice echoed over the open emergency channel.
"Mia, now! Take the bird's tail rotor out!" Dylan shouted.
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Mia stepped out from behind the vent, rested her barrel on the cold railing, took a half-second breath, and fired five armor-piercing rounds directly into the Sea Stallion’s exposed tail gearbox.
Black smoke belched from the helicopter’s tail assembly. The aircraft spun wildly out of control, the pilot frantically cutting the winch line before ditching hard into the sea three hundred yards away, disappearing into an explosion of spray and wreckage.
