controls. She looked over. The Aussie pilot had let go of the sticks and clutched at his thigh, his fingers already slick with blood. Contorted with pain, he met her eye and nodded.
“I have the controls,” she said.
“How bad?” Bruneseau asked over the intercom, leaning farther into the cockpit to check on his man.
“Leg,” Carlson panted. “Bullet’s still in there. Oh, Jesus.”
Mercer hadn’t seen what had happened. The gunship had swung across the side of the JetRanger right into view. He fired a full clip, joined by a long burst from Foch, who was still strapped in at the other door. The gunship broke off, turning her tail to gain distance before twisting back again, her door gun pounding.
“Where’s the Gazelle?” Mercer shouted, a fresh magazine ready to be slapped home.
“I don’t know!”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lauren cut in as the struggling chopper clawed its way up to the deck of the car carrier. “Prepare for a crash landing.”
“Gather the weapons,” Bruneseau added. “Run for the stairs as soon as we hit.”
The engine coughed again as Lauren fought to gain enough altitude to clear the ship’s railing, still thirty feet above the helicopter. They were less than a hundred yards from the slab side of the car carrier, and it seemed the vector she’d chosen wouldn’t be enough. She goosed the engine again, wincing as it skipped, her concentration solely on getting them down safely.
Like a thoroughbred taking a fence, the JetRanger gathered itself at the last moment and flashed over the railing just as the engine quit. The rotor’s momentum gave just enough lift to avoid a fatal crash but the skids hit the deck hard enough to snap one strut and pitch them forward. Sliding across the rain-slicked surface, the aircraft hit a stanchion and stopped dead. Carlson managed to shut off the fuel as the men in the hold scrambled out into the storm. The Gazelle was closing fast from two hundred yards off, while the gunship was out of sight below the side of the ship.
Ignoring the plight of the others, Bruneseau ran for the staircase door. Lauren had already hit the quick disconnect on her safety harness, so when Mercer yanked open her door, she jumped down, ducking because the chopper’s lop-sided position allowed one arc of the turning rotor to cut just three feet from the deck. He pushed her toward where Bruneseau held open the stairway door and swung around to help Foch, who’d just eased the pilot out of the chopper.
Without warning, the gunship appeared over the railing. Her rotors kicked up a tornado whirlwind that drove sheets of rain across the deck. Because of the wall of swirling water, the gunner’s aim was off by a few feet. He had to muscle the.30 caliber to correct. Mercer was holding up Carlson’s right arm, which left his own right hand free. The range was fifty feet and even one-handed he couldn’t miss. He raised his FAMAS on its sling and began firing even before he had centered his aim. Sparks exploded along the ship’s railing in a trail leading toward the hovering chopper. The Chinese door gunner was almost set when the trail reached him. His body bucked against his safety straps and jerked like a marionette as Mercer poured in the fire. He only went slack when the gunship heaved itself away from the auto carrier.
“Come on,” Lauren’s alto sounded over the rain and the echo of combat. The Gazelle was fast approaching.
With Carlson between them, Mercer and Foch ran for the stairs, hunching under the rounds Bruneseau sprayed over their heads to keep the Chinese troop copter at bay. Once safely inside the stairwell, Mercer slammed the door. The stairwell was a steel shaft that dropped straight down for eleven decks, with scissor stairs that cut the distance in steep zigzags. Heavy doors led to each of the separate decks. Mercer passed Carlson off to Rene and reached for the fire ax clipped to the wall. He turned back and with one perfectly placed blow wedged the blade into the gap between the door and the jamb.
“That’ll hold them for a few minutes.” His breathing was already returning to normal as adrenaline drained from his bloodstream.
“I got us here, boys.” Lauren’s face glistened and her eyes shone with the triumph of her successful landing. “It’s up to you to get us out again.”
“There should be a lifeboat one deck above the waterline,” Mercer informed them, hoping the auto carrier was outfitted the same as the super tanker he’d once been on near Seattle. “It’s launched down a rail like a bobsled. If we can reach it we might be able to get away.”
“If the Gazelle lands, it won’t be able to take off in time to catch us before we reach shore, but what about the gunship?”
Bruneseau had a valid point. Mercer was about to say that he suspected the other chopper would clear out. The crews on all three ships that had witnessed the aerial duel would be contacting the Panamanian authorities. He didn’t think Liu could afford to answer the kinds of questions they would ask if his chopper was identified. Before he could voice his reply, bullets pounded the door and harmlessly bounced away.
“Later.” Foch rebraced Carlson and started down the stairs. “Let’s go.”
They’d descended just two decks when an explosion blasted down the shaft, a heavy wall of hot air that was immediately sucked back up due to pressure change. The door had just been blown from its hinges by a grenade or satchel charge. A dozen rounds were fired into the antechamber at the head of the stairs, and when the Chinese received no return fire, they’d come pouring down the stairs like banshees.
Burdened by the injured pilot, the team would never be able to stay ahead of the troops. They had to get out of the stairwell.
Mercer opened the next door they reached, waved them through and closed it gently behind them. All five of them stopped short when they first encountered the cavernlike cargo deck, struck dumb by its enormity. In front of them stretched an enclosed space large enough to store eight hundred automobiles in rows marked on the floor like a parking lot. Yet the deck was empty, its uniformity only broken by support columns as thick as trees and structural baffles that shored the long walls like a cathedral’s buttresses. Because the area was one hundred feet wide and eight hundred long, its low ceiling felt unnaturally squashed, like some subterranean realm where untold tons of earth bore down on them. The few lightbulbs merely served to accentuate the shadows and add to the eerie claustrophobia. Only when their eyes adjusted to the dim light did they see a ramp amidships that descended from the deck above and curled around to connect to the next one down. Similar ramps were next to them at the stern. The air tasted metallic.
“
A moment later, what sounded like a dozen feet raced past the door and continued down toward the bottom of the ship.
“Once they realize we’re not down there,” Lauren said, “they’ll be coming back up to check each deck.”
“We should seek out the crew,” Bruneseau suggested.
Mercer looked at him sharply. “Negative. We involve them and they’re as good as dead. After what we’ve seen, the Chinese won’t hesitate to kill a few civilians to stop us.”
The agent’s face reddened, angered at Mercer’s presumption of authority. “What do you suggest?”
Looking around the echoing hold, Mercer sought inspiration and found nothing. All he knew was that standing by the door was the quickest way to get caught. “Follow me,” he said without a clear plan and began running toward the distant set of ramps.
The others had no choice but to keep up.
The equipment slapping against his uniform sounded like a one-man band to Mercer as he jogged to the amidships ramp, certain that the pursuers would burst through the door at any second. He started up the gentle slope. Carlson slowed the others so they reached him seconds later. They eased the injured man to the deck. Lauren looked at Mercer, her eyes at once quizzical and confident. She lifted a brow.
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” he answered, peering farther up the ramp and wondering what lay on the deck just out of view. He strode up the rest of the way and his answer crouched before him in a spectacular shade of blue so deep that it seemed to absorb the light cast by the bulbs secured to the ceiling girders.
Appreciated by auto enthusiasts as near perfection in vehicle design, and by art lovers who responded to its low-slung crisp lines, the beauty of the Bentley Continental R was undeniable. It seemed unable to suppress its luxury in even these drab surroundings. With a curb weight of three tons, the English-built touring sedan easily managed a top speed of a hundred and fifty miles per hour thanks to a whisper-quiet turbocharged V-8. Unparalleled in safety, comfort, and style, the only thing keeping such a magnificent machine from every garage in America was its base price of $275,000.
