Джеймс Паттерсон - Private Rogue

Feo plunged the chopper into a swift and steep dive. I unclipped my seatbelt and hauled myself into the main cabin where Dinara was sorting through a gear bag, checking weapons. She handed me an SR-2 Veresk submachine gun and a couple magazines. I strapped myself in beside her as the aircraft rode the bumpy drafts down.

“I’m going out,” I said. “I want you in the chopper covering me.”

“I should—” she began.

“In the chopper, covering me,” I said emphatically. “If it gets too hot, you bug out and we’ll rendezvous at the Pakistan border. Got it?”

She nodded.

“Floyd is moving away from us,” Feo said.

The chopper banked and I saw the solitary shooter running through the trees.

“He thinks we’re hostile,” I remarked. “Get us as close as you can.”

There was the sound of a hailstorm beneath us and I felt the rattle of bullets hitting the fuselage. I looked down to see masked, camouflaged shooters firing at us.

“Get ready,” Feo said. “He’ll be at your twelve when we touch down.”

Feo banked hard and the bird dropped like a stone. The trees loomed close to the window and the ground raced upward worryingly quickly. Then there was a sudden roar from the engines, a surge and a moment of inertia. We were down.

“Go now!” Feo yelled.

Dinara opened the door and I unclipped and jumped out. I could see Joshua Floyd directly ahead, racing through the trees. We’d pulled ahead of him and he was shocked to see the helicopter, and changed direction, running north.

“Captain Floyd!” I yelled, but my voice was lost beneath the rotors.

“Jack,” Dinara said, touching me on the shoulder.

She pointed skyward and I registered what she’d seen: two heavily armed Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopters, their distinctive silhouettes black against the blue sky. We had two minutes at most.

I started chasing Floyd. Bullets peppered the trees around me, filling the air with splinters.

“Floyd!” I yelled. “Captain Floyd!”

He glanced back. Maybe it was the use of his name or my accent that caused him to hesitate.

“Beth sent me,” I shouted. “She sent me to get you out.”

That stopped him dead. I raced to catch up as bullets zinged around us.

“Who are you?” Floyd asked.

“My name is Jack Morgan. I run a detective agency and I’m here to help.”

The shooters were closing on us in an arc, their gunfire designed to keep us pinned down. The camouflaged men were less than a hundred yards away. In the sky, the heavily armed Hinds were getting closer.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Floyd and pulling him east.

We were close to the base of a huge mountain. As we ran, I could almost have reached out and touched the cliff face that supported the vast peak. My plan was to circle round the GlobalRanger and approach it from the south. Floyd fired short bursts in the direction of the men closing on us. I stayed close to him, to avoid being picked off. There was little chance any of the attackers would risk killing their target, but they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me if they were given the opportunity.

I ran hard, my lungs burning. I saw the GlobalRanger chopper rotors whirring through the trees as we raced forward. I caught a glimpse of Feo in the cockpit, distracted and yelling at Dinara. She was leaning out of the door on the other side of the chopper and had her back to us. Her head was darting one way and then another, and I could tell she was looking for us. I saw her turn to Feo and bark a reply. He grimaced and shook his head before looking to the north.

I followed his eye line and saw the two Hinds bearing down on the GlobalRanger.

“Get out of here!” I yelled, but we were too far away for them to hear me over the noise of the rotors.

The Hind was equipped with two launchers, each of which was capable of delivering thirty-two high-explosive rockets. I watched in horror as first one rocket, then a couple of seconds later another, flew from the lead Hind. The projectiles tore forward, leaving trails of fire and smoke.

“Feo!” I yelled uselessly.

He had seen them and taken immediate action. The GlobalRanger leaped off the ground and got into the air just moments before the rockets passed beneath it.

Then realization dawned that both rockets were now heading straight for us.

I felt Floyd pull me back.

“Come on!” he yelled.

I started to move, but outrunning the rockets was simply impossible. In a few seconds they would hit and there was nothing we could do about it.

Dinara moved across the cabin as the rockets passed underneath them. The relief she felt as she watched the explosives roar away from them, quickly turned to horror as she saw what was in their path. She watched helplessly as, some three hundred yards away, Jack Morgan and Joshua Floyd went sprinting through the trees, trying to get away from the missiles bearing down on them.

“Jack!” she screamed.

The first rocket struck the mountainside. A thunderous explosion and shockwave buffeted the rising aircraft. Dinara cried as a fireball obscured her view of Jack and Floyd. She prayed it was sufficiently to their east not to have harmed them, but if they had survived, they were lost to flames and smoke. Any hopes she had that they might survive were obliterated when the second rocket hit the mountain instants later, striking the cliff directly ahead of where the two men had been. The explosion shook the GlobalRanger and created a huge fireball that consumed the forest for fifty yards around. Nothing in its path could have survived, and Jack and Floyd had been less than a couple of yards from its epicenter when she’d last seen them.

She watched the angry flames burn white hot, tears running down her face.

“Feo!” she cried in anguish. “Jack!”

“I know,” he replied grimly. “Strap in, we need to get out of here.”

She staggered to the co-pilot’s seat in a raw state of shock and slumped down. She absently reached for the four-point harness and clipped in. She couldn’t shake the horrific images of Jack’s death from her mind.

Feo pulled the chopper into a steep climb, and accelerated away from the chaotic scene. Dinara glanced down as they banked. She saw the flames recede, leaving nothing but charred devastation and clouds of smoke in their wake. All around the blast zone, camouflaged attackers who hadn’t been killed in the explosion, staggered as though badly injured. Everything caught in the blast radius had been incinerated.

Fresh tears came as Dinara realized Jack had truly gone. They had failed in the worst possible way.

Feo took them up toward the blue sky as the two Mil Mi-24 flying tanks set down and camouflaged men jumped out to attend to their injured comrades.

Dinara watched them with rising anger. She burned with hatred for them and longed for revenge.

Feo touched her arm reassuringly. A moment later they banked round the shoulder of the mountain and left the horror far behind.

“Victor Andreyev is a Russian venture capitalist with interests in shipping, energy, chemicals and armaments,” Mo-bot said. “He served five years in the Russian Army and rose to the rank of colonel.”

“Intelligence asset?” Sci asked.

“That would be my guess,” Mo-bot replied.

Justine pinched the bridge of her nose and inhaled deeply. Private had almost been ruined going up against a rogue Russian intelligence plot in Moscow. This investigation was getting out of control, and she couldn’t help but think of Jack facing these people out there in Afghanistan. She leaned over to get a better view of Mo-bot’s laptop. They were seated around the board table in the main meeting room on the thirty-sixth floor of Private New York’s headquarters. They were facing the windows and the blackout blinds were down, so there was no chance prying eyes could see the content Mo-bot was sharing.