He’d already resigned himself to losing her, but now he had a real chance, with good intel.
“Hawk’s Honor, this is Ghost Lead,” he began, trying to calm down. “I need a strike on those three telecom trucks observed via predator. If you can take out the engines with minimal collateral damage, the beers are on me. I’d like to take my target alive. Also, I’ve got a cargo plane at the airport. Need that taken out, too, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Roger, Ghost Lead. We have your ground targets in sight. Stand by. .”
Brent switched channels. “Juma, can you get me some people out here? We’re going to stop the trucks, but I need help! Pick up my guys at the Silver, then come on out!”
“I’ll call my people from the Almas, but we only have two cars left. I can call some more from the north.”
“Do it!”
“I will, Brent. And good news. My cousin is okay.”
Brent sighed. The Snow Maiden probably could have killed the boy. He doubted she had a soft side. She’d left him alive because that benefited her in some way — but how?
The stench of fuel and burning rubber filled the truck’s cabin, and the temperature grew unbearably hot for a moment before the engine began to cough and protest. The Snow Maiden didn’t notice the basketball-sized hole in the hood until smoke began wafting from it.
Haussler’s truck pulled over to the side of the road, followed by the second truck, and then the Snow Maiden joined them, the engine finally dying altogether.
She was aghast as she climbed out of the truck, glanced at the sky, then got on the radio to Patti. “You told me you jammed their uplinks here.”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, they’ve taken us out with a laser, melted right through the engine blocks. The gold is sitting here. Either you come and pick me up, or it’s over. I still have the oil-reserve data. Time to cut your losses, you hear me?”
“We need that gold, too.”
“Get me out, or I’m walking right now!” she screamed.
Haussler ran over to her. “What now? You want us to carry the gold to the ship?”
Several of the Spetsnaz troops slid open the rear doors and hopped down from the truck. They ran ahead of Haussler and the Snow Maiden, then began pointing down the road. One whirled back. “Vehicle coming. Looks like militia.”
“I’ve called for a pickup,” said the Snow Maiden.
“I’m sure you have.” Haussler turned away from her and began speaking in French to the chopper pilot. He finished, looked at her, smiled weakly, then began speaking to someone else.
Meanwhile, the Cheetah broke away, wheeled around, and headed north toward the oncoming car.
“Okay, so there’s a gunship,” said Lakota calmly. “Any thoughts?”
“Not really.”
“So we just drive right at him?”
Brent squinted. “His rocket pods look empty.”
“But his cannons aren’t.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Lakota’s voice grew more tense. “Captain. .”
“Relax. I got this.”
Brent took a long breath. She couldn’t hear or see what he did on the closed strategic channel. The 747 pilot had cut loose his escorts, and the F-35s were both en route, with the lead jet already locked on to the Cheetah.
The pilot stoically reported that her Sidewinder missile was away.
A shooting star wiped across the sky and descended toward the Cheetah.
Brent’s heart beat once. Twice.
He gasped.
The Sidewinder struck the Cheetah top down, and the chopper disintegrated into a fireball that lit up the entire highway. Flaming debris shot from the flames and spread like fireworks to cast a deep glow over the Range Rover’s hood.
Brent veered to the left as a jagged piece of fuselage slammed down on the hood and shattered the windshield. Then he rolled hard right, tires screeching, as the fiery hunk of metal sent flames billowing toward his helmet.
The Snow Maiden stood, aghast. Their air defense had just been blown from the sky, and all she could do was breathe.
For just a second, she closed her eyes and told herself no, she wasn’t ready to surrender. Not yet.
A blast of air nearly knocked her to the ground.
Suddenly, a pair of jets came swooping down, banked hard, then slowed and turned on their axes as vectoring nozzles switched directions, pointing downward. Both hovered now like choppers, and their pilots cut loose with internal cannon fire, rounds ripping and sparking across the road, sending all of them diving for cover behind the trucks.
The Spetsnaz troops began to return fire, but Haussler hollered for them to keep down. The jets descended even more, and the cannon fire grew unbearable, shredding through the trucks, the gold, and striking the troops huddled down near the tires.
She grabbed Haussler by the arm and ran back toward the embankment, exploiting several feet of cover below the road. The troops were screaming, dying up there in the hell storm of unrelenting salvos.
“This is it, Heinrich,” she said. “I guess this is it.”
“Did you think I would come here with no backup plan myself?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Wait. Look. .”
“What am I looking at?”
“A favor from your old friend General Izotov, who would like to see you more than ever — and I’ve promised that meeting. And so now we are saved.”
“I thought we had a deal.”
“Unfortunately, your contacts let you down. Mine won’t. You’ll be coming back to Moscow with me.”
He’d barely finished his sentence when both jets blew apart in successive bursts. Wings, cockpit canopies, and landing gear appeared through swelling fires and tumbled end over end to crash down and scrape across the highway. A wedge-shaped piece of fuselage crashed into the telecom trucks, knocking two on their sides and tearing them open. Bricks of gold tumbled out and glittered in the flames, and the Snow Maiden hit the dirt as more bricks thumped to the ground around her.
She reached down, grabbed one bar, and cursed at the top of her lungs.
Six Russian Federation KA-65 Howlers like the ones Brent had faced near Sandhurst thundered overhead as he approached the shattered telecom trucks.
At the same time, a pair of fighter jets streaked above them, and though Brent received no indication of their IDs, he could only assume that they, too, were Russian and had been responsible for taking out the F-35s.
As he and Lakota bounded out of the Range Rover, a wave of gunfire from somewhere behind the trucks sent them down to their bellies, and not a second later, a grenade exploded on Lakota’s side of the truck.
He screamed for her. No answer.
Feeling as though he’d been hit by ten thousand volts, Brent bounded around the Range Rover and dropped down beside Lakota, who was lying facedown near the wheel. Razor-sharp pieces of shrapnel had peppered one side of her suit. He rolled her over, and her eyes slowly flickered open. “Don’t let her get away…”
His HUD showed her vital signs and that the suit had already hit her with painkillers.
