And yet, as Skye had said, they were headed in different directions. She didn’t fit into his life, and he couldn’t fit into hers. Another truth he accepted.
“The chopper is in the air.” Harding’s voice came through crystal clear. “Visual contact with the first ATVs.”
Edge took out his night-vision binoculars and focused on the trail leading into the valley. A line of six ATVs, each pulling a two-wheeled trailer loaded with boxes of munitions, rolled toward the landing zone. Six well-trained members of the United States Army, equipped with the finest weapons and gear in the world, drove the machines.
Taking them down wouldn’t be easy.
He swung the binoculars in the opposite direction, saw vehicle headlamps bumping over a dirt track he had noticed when they’d first arrived. Five SUVs. As they passed the abandoned cabin and neared the landing zone, he could make out the profiles of three men in the first vehicle, two or three in each of the others.
Best guess—Markham, his top lieutenant, and a driver in the first car; at least eight cartel soldiers in the other four SUVs. Plus six US Army soldiers. As many as seventeen men, and the helo hadn’t yet arrived.
The good news was, he and the others were positioned on the high ground. Always better in a firefight. And they had one of the best Ranger snipers in the army ready to help take the bastards down.
All but Markham. Edge had shown Trace his photo. Markham would stay alive—for now.
One of the men turned on the floodlights in the circle around the landing zone, and Edge switched back to his regular binocs. The thump, thump, thump of a chopper grew louder as the helicopter approached. It hovered above the circle of lights, stirring up clouds of sand and small rocks, then swayed side-to-side as it settled onto its skids.
The rotors slowed to a soft spin but didn’t stop. The doors slid open, and two men jumped down. SUV car doors popped open, and cartel men poured out. As one of the men in the first car stepped out and walked into the light, Edge recognized Major Bradley Markham, and fury burned through every cell in his body.
“Hold your positions,” Colonel Harding commanded through the earbuds.
“Roger that,” one of the militia men replied.
“Copy,” Edge said, clamping down on his control. He wanted to grab Markham by the throat and drag him all the way back to Fort Campbell.
Nobody moved.
Edge glanced at Skye, could barely make out her slender figure in the darkness. Worry for her settled in his chest. He vowed, as he had a dozen times, that he’d do whatever it took to protect her. Even bagging Markham wasn’t worth getting Skye wounded or killed.
They were minutes from the takedown. Tension filled the air. Anything could happen. He flicked a glance toward Skye’s position, worry for her filling him with dread.
He shook his head to clear it. Too late to change things now. He focused on the action happening near the circle of lights, watched Markham pace over to the helo, then motion for his lieutenant to join him. The guy was a big, muscular man with close-cropped, reddish-brown hair and a tat on his neck behind his ear. He was carrying what looked like a black vinyl laptop case.
Another man approached, this one with coarse black hair and a thick mustache, wearing a dark sport coat over a white shirt, and a pair of tan slacks. The fit of the clothes and the way he moved said he was the man in charge.
The ATVs rolled up to the chopper, engines went off, and men began unloading the two-wheeled trailers stacked with wooden boxes. Through the open bay doors of the chopper, he could see the ends of a pile of narrow boxes. The Stinger missiles must already be on board the helo; they would have come from a different location on the base.
The militia men were in position around the helicopter and the men working to load it, all but a pair of cartel soldiers who’d been left to guard the dirt road leading in from José Marie Morelos.
Harding’s deep voice came through the earbuds. “Get ready.” While the rest of the militia held their positions, the colonel rose in the shadows just out of sight.
“You’re completely surrounded!” Harding shouted toward the men in the valley. “Stay right where you are!”
Heads jerked up. Men reached for their weapons. From their location among the rocks, militia men fired into the dirt at their feet.
“No more warning shots!” Harding called out. “Throw down your weapons! Do it now!” With no idea how many men were ready to blow them to pieces, no one moved.
Then two cartel men fired wildly, spun, and started running. A barrage of gunfire from the rocks took them down. Three army soldiers turned and raced back toward the trail leading over the mountains to the base. A single sniper shot hit the first man, and he went down. Edge’s bullet took out the second soldier, while Trace was busy firing into the helicopter to disable it before it could lift off with the Stinger missiles on board.
The third soldier made it to the rocks and disappeared not far from Edge’s position. With a glance at Skye to be sure she was safe, he slipped into the shadows and went on the hunt.
More cartel men bolted. The echo of gunshots drowned out the sound of the damaged chopper struggling to get into the air. Car engines roared to life, and cartel SUVs shot backward into the darkness, bullets pinging against their front grills. Since it wasn’t the Mexicans they were after, the militia ignored the men who reached the cars, and the fighting turned back to the men who remained.
“Toss your weapons!” Harding demanded as armed Desert Eagles, dressed head to foot in camouflage, stepped out of the shadows, their rifles pointed at the enemy in the circle of light. “On your knees! Hands in the air!” Men dropped to the ground and raised their hands.
Behind them, the helicopter wobbled and lifted thirty feet off the ground before the blades quit spinning. The chopper came down hard, jolting into the ground and flipping onto its side. Spinning rotors dug into the dirt, some of them breaking up, whining and slicing like knives through the air.
Men on both sides hit the ground and covered their heads until the blades stopped spinning and the danger passed. Then Harding’s guys took over again, holding cartel men and soldiers at gunpoint.
