“I’ll go get her,” Lennox said firmly, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You stay here out of sight and wait for Colt and the other guys to show up.”
Assuming the other guys are still alive, a small voice whispered in the back of his mind.
Talia looked like she hated everything about that suggestion, but her legs were too weak to do anything about it.
“Hurry,” she finally said, sinking back to the deck. “Maria looked so scared when Anna had that gun pointed at her head.”
Lennox nodded and took off running. He was at least a full minute behind Keller and Maria, and he had no clue which way they’d gone. Hoping for the best, he went in the direction Keller had taken. Within moments he found himself in a familiar passageway outside the cargo hold.
He headed aft at a dead run, assuming Keller would have gone toward the midship gangway. It would be a long trip through the interior of the cargo vessel—especially with Maria slung over his shoulder—but once he made it that far, getting off the ship would be easy. Lennox ran by a set of stairs when he heard automatic weapon fire coming from somewhere up ahead.
That had to be Keller. Colt and the other guys must have intercepted him.
But before Lennox could take a step, he heard a high-pitched scream from somewhere overhead. He stopped, turned, and listened, hearing another cry. This one was softer, but it was definitely a little girl.
Keller had taken Maria upstairs to the uppermost deck.
Charging up the stairs two at a time, Lennox didn’t have time to worry that Keller might be waiting in ambush on one of the various levels on the way to the top deck. He simply ran as fast as he could.
By the time he got to the top deck, he heard the familiarthunk-thunk-thunksound of an approaching helicopter. Suddenly, Keller’s escape to the top of the ship made a lot more sense. The man had a backup plan all along—or rather, Anna did.
Cursing, Lennox looked around the cluttered deck, praying he’d find Maria.
Instead, all he saw were dozens of cargo containers. They made it difficult to see much of anything but given that the helicopter was heading for the back of the ship, Lennox took the hint and headed that way at a sprint.
The helicopter was still about fifty meters away from the fantail of the ship when Lennox finally caught sight of Keller and Maria. The man was standing on the elevated helipad deck, close to the low railing along the port side of the ship. He had his back to Lennox and Maria was flailing her arms and legs around like crazy as she attempted to get free. Keller was struggling to keep one arm around her while motioning the helicopter in with the other.
Lennox moved forward, bringing his MP5 up to his shoulder and sighting in on Keller’s back, avoiding a shot line that would hit Maria if the bullet went all the way through the man.
He was seconds away from squeezing the trigger when one of the people in the open sliding door of the approaching helicopter caught sight of him and motioned frantically for Keller to look behind him.
Keller spun, continuing to back toward the copter as he held Maria in front of him, using her to shield his chest and most of his face even as he pointed his gun at her. If that wasn’t bad enough, the helicopter turned sideways, slipping closer as the man who’d warned Keller raised an assault rifle and aimed it at Lennox.
Knowing he had a split-second before the man shot him, Lennox took a step to the left, using Keller to shield him from the shooter in the helicopter for a few extra seconds. He’d go for Keller’s knees and hope the pain would keep him from shooting Maria.
But before Lennox could pull the trigger, Maria lifted one small foot high in the air and sent it slamming down into Keller’s crotch. As aiming went, that was pretty near perfect.
Keller let out a shout of pain, loosening his grip on Maria. She fought to free herself all the way even as Keller grabbed one of her tiny arms in an attempt to keep her in place.
With the helicopter sliding right to get a clear shot at him, Lennox had no more time. Shifting his aim higher, he took a step forward and pulled the trigger, paused a fraction of a second and then fired again. He grunted in satisfaction when he saw Keller go down only to curse when he realized the man was tumbling backward toward the low railing around the helipad deck—one hand still latched onto Maria’s arm.
Lennox was ten feet from the landing pad when the guy in the helicopter started firing at him on full automatic, sending him diving across the deck as sparks flew up all around him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Keller trying—and failing—to keep himself from going over the protective railing. Maria was screaming like a banshee, trying to kick and fight her way free, but that only sent him over the edge that much faster.
“Dammit!” Lennox muttered.
He shoved himself up from the deck and emptied the rest of the MP5 magazine at the helicopter. At this range, every round hit the chopper, and while he might not have hit the people flying the thing, he definitely made them want to be somewhere else.
The helicopter aborted its attempted landing on the platform, peeling off wildly and diving away from the ship. Not waiting to see if they came around for another pass, Lennox jumped up, threw his empty weapon aside, and charged for the edge of the landing pad and the place Keller and Maria had gone over seconds earlier.
When he reached the side of the ship, Lennox expected the worst—namely two foamy circles of ripples in the water well over a hundred feet below where Keller and Maria had smashed into the bay.
What he saw instead was Maria lying on the emergency safety netting that had been strung up along the side of the helipad deck, while Keller was hanging off the side of the net, his feet dangling over the water far below. One of Keller’s hands was twisted in a section of the netting, but the other was latched onto Maria’s arm, like he was threatening to take her with him if he went.
Maria was holding onto the ropes for dear life as Keller fought to climb his way back onto the netting. He was bleeding heavily from the two wounds in his upper chest but was still doing everything he could to get back on board.
Lennox leaped over the rail, getting an arm around Maria’s waist just as she was about to slide over the side. Unfortunately, Keller still had a grip on her arm.
“Pull me back up,” Keller shouted over Maria’s screams of terror. “Or I’ll take the kid down with me.”
