“We’re doing this wrong,” Yasmine said in a harsh voice. “We should not be letting them land.”
With that she ran across the rocky landscape, back toward Base Camp, and aimed her handgun up at the undercarriages of the choppers. She let loose, bullets clanging off the steel, striking all three birds.
Cassidy said, “Damn,” and followed suit, joining Yasmine and pulling her trigger.
The choppers reacted, arresting their fall with a groan of rotors. The residents of Base Camp reacted too, first staring in disbelief and then running for shelter. Shouts went up all along the camp.
“Won’t we cause a fucking avalanche?” Jemma whispered.
Bodie stared. “I don’t know. I guess it’s possible, but if we don’t fight back we’re gonna die.”
He left Jemma with Lucie, and ran after the other two. The choppers were drifting south, directly above Base Camp now, adjusting their courses. Men leaned out of doors and targeted Yasmine and Cassidy.
“Down!” Bodie yelled.
The men opened fire an instant later. Bullets raked the ice and the rock, smashing particles into the air in thick flurries.
Bodie ran through them, face coated in the new snow, firing back. The choppers swung around to give the men aboard a better line of fire.
Bodie darted for a nearby boulder, making it just in time. The task of keeping three choppers full of armed men in the air was becoming increasingly difficult. Bodie knew they couldn’t stop shooting.
He inched his head out around the rock to stare down into Base Camp, and saw something both cheering and alarming.
For a few years now, following brawls on the mountain between arrogant climbers and Sherpas, the Nepalese authorities had kept a secretariat at Base Camp with a contingent of up to nine police officers. Several men came running out of an office, their guns drawn, staring up at the descending choppers. Bodie swore. The police had no idea of whom they were dealing with.
One policeman shouted ineffectually. The others brought guns up. Mercs and Hoods aboard the choppers saw them and pointed their own weapons. Someone on board one of the choppers gave an order and all three fired.
Lead ripped into and all around the policeman, killing two at once. The others dived left and right.
Bodie broke cover to help, running down the slight slope and emptying one magazine while pulling out another.
He reloaded and kept firing. Yasmine and Cassidy were at his side. Ahead, over the main camp, the helicopters appeared to believe they’d gone far enough and were hovering in place. A second later, Bodie saw why.
Thick black ropes unfurled from all three birds, looping to the ground and slapping the rocks. Men clad in body armor leapt on, holding the ropes in one hand, guns in the other, and firing as they rappelled to the ground.
Bodie held his ground, knowing their aim couldn’t be good. He hit the second highest man under the first chopper, sending him tumbling down into the first. Both men struck the ground in a bone-crunching tangle.
The police were still yelling and taking cover while firing up at those descending. Bodie ran to a pile of rocks and ducked behind them, closer to the center of the camp. Yasmine and Cassidy were on the other side of the path, also inching closer.
The majestic scenery formed a poignant backdrop to their battle, standing untouched and uninterested, as aloof and unchallenged today as it had always been. The pristine white slopes shone under the patchy blue sky, the higher peaks releasing spindrift in hazy sheets, lines of climbers halting in their trek and perhaps wondering as to the cause of the reverberating thunder echoing around the jagged peaks.
Bodie fell to the floor and crawled out, getting a different perspective. Bullets hit the pile of rocks five feet above. Bodie hit two more men, their swinging bodies easy targets, and sent them plummeting. Yasmine and Cassidy nailed another three. From what he could see, Bodie gauged that four policemen were down, injured or dead, and at least another three were engaged in battle. Base camp residents were either fleeing or in hiding and, no doubt, using their cellphones to record what they could see.
Still, Hoods and mercenaries rappelled down from the hovering helicopters.
Several hit the ground at once. Experienced men, they still staggered after descending fast and concentrating on their enemies rather than their landing. One sprawled, another fell to his knees. Another man was hit, this time by one of the police. More hit the ground, starting to fan out.
Bodie saw Nimrod take his turn to descend, followed by a cluster of Hoods.
He took aim, but the Hoods let loose their ammo in sync, pinning him down. Cassidy managed to pick one of them off, but the rest landed safely and took cover. Bodie reloaded once more, thankful he’d thought to bring a good supply of spare magazines.
Glancing back up the slight slope, he saw both Lucie and Jemma on their knees, leaning over the hole on the ground. Lucie was making a scooping motion while Jemma held out a plastic bag.
Almost done.
What next?
There was no time to think, to plan. Bodie, looking for Nimrod, saw the man and his Hoods scrambling among rocks to the left, headed their way. He laid down a wall of covering fire to slow them down.
Another policeman died. The mercs had brought out a rocket launcher and aimed it at the row of wooden huts that formed most of Base Camp. Bodie knew civilians were sheltering in there.
Yasmine stepped up, rising and shooting the man in the shoulder, forcing him to drop the RPG. His friends scattered, leaving him bleeding. The launcher rolled away. As her last shot echoed and reverberated around the mountains, all three choppers finally came in to land, settling their skids on the stony ground.
