Never a good thing to hear your pilot shouting like that. “What is it?”
“We’ve got a storm warning,” Darrel says from the copilot’s seat.
Darrel can fly this bird, too. So can I, albeit with fewer hours of practice under my belt.
Elise folds herself up, increasingly uncomfortable.
“We better head east to avoid the storm,” Jordan says. “Then we’ll cross the Swiss border again.”
“Do it!”
I glance at Elise. She’s not doing well. I try to smile reassuringly, forgetting for a moment that my smiles tend to scare the hell out of people.
“I bet you’ve never gone through the Alps like this, have you?” I say.
She shakes her head.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “You’re in extremely capable hands, and this helicopter is the best money can buy.”
She forces a faint smile.
A loud ping startles her. “What was that?”
I don’t know.“Darrel?” I shout.
Give me a good answer.Tell me it was just a bird or something.
He turns to us, confused, while Jordan forces the controls. “We’ve been hit!”
“With?”
The pings intensify, turning into a volley of percussive blasts.
“Gunfire,” Darrel says.
But how?There’s no way a street criminal like Doc would have the means to chase us down in a chopper. Even if he owned one, it wouldn’t have the range or the throttle to keep its balance in these winds.
Then who’s attacking us?The Swiss wouldn’t shoot down a civilian craft… Could it be—
“Boss!” Darrel shouts. “We should prepare for a worst-case scenario.”
He unbuckles himself to get the parachutes.
A loud cracking sound gives me a jolt. The helicopter sways and tilts to one side. We’re listing now. A bullet must have hit the cockpit window and startled Jordan. One wrong move, and we’ll be on a fast track to the ground. I stand up and lurch to the front.
“Jordan, get a hold—”
He’s slumped over. The whole window is cracked from a spray of shots that ran across the front. It looks like he took two in the chest and collapsed from the pain.
“Hang in there!” I move over him and try to right the whirling bird.
A glint of sun off the sky to my left shows me where our attackers are. They’re fast. It isn’t a chopper, it’s a light aircraft. A newer prop plane fixed with under-mounted guns. Doc has nothing to do with this. The man who sent this private plane to take us down is of a vastly superior league, and playing a different game.
Kurt Ozzi.
I don’t know how he knew I was in this helicopter. But he’s the only person in the world who hates my family enough and who has the resources to launch an assault like this.
I manage to even out the craft, but it’s spinning and going down. I shove the stick to get us out of the spin.
