Andy McDermott - The Hunt For Atlantis

The men covering Nina and Kari jumped back, following Starkman’s lead and firing into the jungle. Kari grabbed Nina’s arm. “Go!”

She hauled Nina with her as she ran. A commando behind her turned to shoot them, but a bola whirred from the jungle, two of its weighted strands yanking his gun away from its targets. The fist-sized stone on the third strand smashed into his face, knocking out teeth.

Chase saw his chance as the huge man behind him moved, and thrust his elbow savagely backwards to catch him in the groin.

He missed. The man grunted in pain, but had taken the impact on the bulging muscles of his upper thigh. Chase looked up to see him staring back, anger twisting his face. The mercenary’s gun came around-

Chase flung himself backwards at the man’s knees, trying to knock him off his feet. The man staggered, then fell-landing on top of him, his knees slamming onto Chase’s chest. Wheezing, Chase grabbed at his adversary’s UMP-40-

A fist smashed into his face. Chase heard a sharp crack as his nose broke. He was almost surprised at the lack of pain, but he knew from experience that it would come soon enough.

The fist drew back for another strike. Chase released the gun and snapped his hands up to block it as it descended. He squeezed, trying to crush the man’s fingers…

Kari and Nina ran towards Castille and the other prisoners. “Get into the hut!” Kari shouted as a spear sliced through the air just behind them.

“No, we’ve got to help them!” Nina answered. One of the dead Indians lay on the ground in her path. She snatched up his knife. “Come on!”

Starkman fired off more rounds into the trees as he shrieked into his walkie-talkie. “Chopper one! I need suppressing fire on the treeline! Now!”

One of the men near the captives was hit from behind by a spear, the razor-sharp obsidian blade penetrating deep into his skull. Still firing wildly, he fell against the wall of a hut, breaking the wood.

The big man pulled his hand free of Chase’s grip with a roar, then drove his knees down with piledriver force onto his ribcage. Chase tried to yell, but there was no air left in his lungs.

Their guards distracted, Castille and di Salvo were already on their feet as Nina and Kari reached them. Nina grabbed Philby and hacked at the twine binding his hands as Kari tugged at Castille’s knots.

“Our guns!” said Castille, indicating their piled-up belongings nearby.

Another of Starkman’s men fell, a poisoned arrow in his neck.

A raging wind tore through the village as the Halo hovered overhead. Spent shell casings clattered down like hail as a six-barreled rotary cannon mounted inside the cabin door opened up, spraying fire into the wildly waving trees.

Philby was free. “Kari!” Nina shouted, throwing her the knife. Kari snapped it out of the air and hacked at di Salvo’s bonds as Castille dived for the rifles. “Get into the hut, get down!” She all but threw Philby into the flimsy structure as an arrow pierced the wood.

One of the Brotherhood’s team threw himself back against another hut to avoid an arrow, and in doing so realized that his prisoners were now free.

The Halo turned in place, raking the trees with Minigun fire. The downdraft from its main rotor was so strong that the huts were blown apart, debris scattering in all directions.

The huge soldier bent down and clamped his hands around Chase’s neck, thumbs pressing hard against his carotid artery.

The pulsing roar of blood in Chase’s ears drowned out even the noise of the helicopter. He could see it almost directly overhead, the rotors a blur behind the sadistic grin of the man strangling him. He raised his arms to strike at the man’s face, but he was too big, his arms longer, and Chase’s clawing fingers fell short.

Blackness swirled at the edges of his sight, his head pounding.

He couldn’t reach the face of the man crushing his chest-but he could reach his body…

The barrage of primitive but effective weapons from the jungle stopped abruptly as the firestorm from the helicopter carved through the attacking Indians. Horrific screams echoed from the trees.

Castille grabbed one of the team’s Colt rifles and brought it around, only to see one of Starkman’s men already aiming at him with a UMP.

The man pulled the trigger-just as di Salvo hurled himself bodily in front of Castille. The three-round burst hit di Salvo in his hip and thigh, blood spurting from the wounds as he crashed screaming to the ground.

Castille fired back. With his target wearing body armor, he aimed for the head. All three of his shots landed on target. The man’s skull blew apart in a gruesome shower.

Another of Starkman’s men heard the shots and turned to confront his new adversary-

A boot heel smashed into his face.

Even as the man reeled, Kari spun around and delivered another crushing kick into his groin. He crashed through a hut wall.

Kari picked up his gun, paused for a fraction of a second to make a decision-then shot him in the head.

Chase felt consciousness, life , slipping away. The commando loomed over him like a demon, the whirling blades of the helicopter a dark halo behind his head.

With the last of his strength, his right hand finally reached the object for which he’d been grasping: the grappling gun on the man’s back.

He pulled the trigger.

The grapple flew out with a loud thump of compressed gas, rocketing almost vertically upwards with a nylon-coated steel cable trailing behind it… into the Halo’s rotors.

The carbon-fiber grapple itself was smashed to pieces by the blades-but the cable was almost instantly drawn into the spinning rotor head, tangling around it.

And winding up.

The commando’s eyes widened in shock as he realized what was about to happen-then he was yanked off the ground so hard that several of his ribs snapped. Flying skywards as if launched by a catapult, the cable dragging him inexorably into the rotors, he burst on impact, gory shredded scraps raining back down onto the village.

The helicopter lurched, out of control. The cable around the rotor shaft was jamming the pitch controls, and now the blades themselves were damaged…

“Cover!” shouted Chase.

Kari looked around. Starkman was sprinting for the side of the temple. Overhead, the huge helicopter began to spin, the roar of its engines joined by the shriek of wounded machinery. There was only one of Starkman’s men now still standing, close to Chase.

She and Castille fired simultaneously, taking the man down.

The Halo continued spinning. A man fell from the cabin door, screaming all the way to earth, where he landed headfirst on the elders’ hut, breaking his neck. Control completely gone, the helicopter rolled towards the temple, losing height.

The pilot of the other Halo saw it coming and frantically jammed his throttle to full power, pulling up on his collective control to increase altitude. The men being winched out through the hole in the temple roof were smashed against the jagged edges and plummeted back to the stone floor beneath.