Grant wanted to crawl into his phone and strangle the life out of Houston. “Hold on,” said Grant, putting his hand over his phone.
“What does he want?” asked Kempt.
“We have one minute to back off and let him go, or he’ll release the anthrax,” answered Grant.
“He’s going to release it anyway,” said Leonard.
“We don’t know that as an absolute certainty,” countered Hook. “This all could be about blackmail, not genocide.”
Grant looked over at Kempt.
Kempt pursed his lips and let out a resigned sigh. “Order the UAV to back off and keep the Special Forces team out of sight for now. Until we can come up with something 100 % foolproof, he’s got us by the balls.”
Hook hurried to give the order for the UAV to be redirected away from the convoy.
Grant took his hand off the phone. “Okay, Houston, you win. The UAV is being redirected away from you.”
“I never said I wanted it to leave,” said Houston smugly. “You must think me stupid, my old friend. I want you to use it to destroy the Land Rover and the helicopter following me. Once you’ve done that, then you can pull your UAV from the sky.”
With a snarl, Grant threw his phone against the wall, snapping it in half.
“What’s wrong?” asked President Kempt.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. Houston wants us to kill O’Reilly’s people,” replied Grant.
Over the speakerphone, O’Reilly pleaded, “For God’s sake, sir, you can’t do that. Those are my people in harm’s way.”
Kempt said, “General, what would you do in my shoes?”
“I’d exhaust every possibility before ordering the death of people risking their lives to help you,” replied O’Reilly.
“General, we don’t have time to whiteboard a solution. We’re running out of time.”
A new voice came over the speakerphone. It was Mike Donaldson. He said, “Sir, I have an idea. Can your people patch us through to the MI-10?”
“The what?” asked Kempt.
“The chopper, sir,” clarified Patterson.
A Hispanic Air Force major sitting behind General Patterson stood up at attention. “Sir, we can use the AWACs patrolling off the coast to cut into their comms.”
“Do it now,” said the president.
Mitchell sat in his seat looking up at the massive helicopter flying overhead. He shook his head and keyed the talk button. “Sam, are you sure that you were speaking with Mike and not some imposter trying to screw with us?”
“I’m positive,” replied Sam. “I’d know his voice anywhere. Besides, only he could come up with something as harebrained as this on a moment’s notice.”
“That’s true. Does Yuri think he can pull it off?”
“He’s never tried it before, but he seems pretty confident that he can do it.”
“What about the UAV?”
“Mike has a plan for that, too,” replied Sam. “Back off about fifty meters if you can; we’re on our way down.”
“Okay then, the ball’s in your court. Good luck,” said Mitchell.
High above, the Predator UAV banked hard right and rose straight up into the sky. Within seconds, it was lost from sight in the clouds.
As Yuri slowly brought his helicopter down, the UAV, like a hawk diving towards its prey, shot out of the clouds and raced towards its first victim.
“Target approaching from the west,” said Cardinal into his mic as he braced himself against the open door. He knew he was only going to get one shot at the UAV. If he missed, everyone’s lives would be in danger.
Yuri heard the tension in Cardinal’s voice and slowed his descent, trying to give Cardinal as stable a platform as he could to fire from.
Cardinal waited until the UAV was seconds away before aiming his weapon’s sights on the front of the Predator. He took a deep breath, held it, placed his finger on the trigger, and waited until the UAV was less than one hundred meters away. Slowly pulling back on the trigger, Cardinal felt the AK push into his shoulder as he emptied an entire thirty-round magazine into the approaching UAV. A moment later, the Predator shot over the top of the helicopter, banked to the left and then plummeted straight into the side of the mountain, exploding in a massive fireball.
“You got it!” screamed Sam into her mic.
“I’m not sure I can take all the credit for that,” said Cardinal as he ejected the empty magazine and slid a fully loaded one on his AK. “I think the UAV operator may have helped crash the Predator. Regardless, let’s hope the bad guys think that we took it out. Yuri, take her down.”
“Da, hold on,” replied Yuri.
Sam unbuckled her seat and left the cockpit.
Lying down on the cold metal floor, Cardinal brought his rifle into his shoulder and took aim at the two lead Hummers. If Yuri was going to pull off his miracle, Cardinal knew that he had to keep the guards in the lead two vehicles from firing on their helicopter. At his range, they couldn’t miss.
“Hey there,” said Sam as she knelt down beside Cardinal.
He smiled back up at her.
After kissing Cardinal on the forehead for luck, she grabbed a headset, put it on her head, and leaned her head out the open door. “Okay Yuri, you’re about three hundred meters back and about five hundred meters in the air.”
“Da, little lady,” said Yuri as he deftly brought the helicopter down over its target.
McMasters glanced out his rearview mirror at the plume of black smoke marking the destroyed UAV’s crash site and swore. He couldn’t believe Mitchell’s luck. The odds of anyone shooting down a UAV with an AK were astronomical. He was about to call Houston and ask him where their Albanian military backup was when he saw the massive helicopter descend from above and begin to edge forward towards his truck. He was speechless when he saw a giant metal claw on a thick steel cable begin to lower from the bottom of the helicopter. His blood instantly turned cold. It was coming for him.
“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Mitchell said to Grace as the four-fingered claw opened right above McMasters’ truck.
“That’s a first for me, too,” replied Grace.
The sound of the logging helicopter’s rotor blades cutting through the air drowned everything else out. Mitchell never heard Cardinal open up on the two Hummers as he tried to keep them from interfering.
The helicopter’s massive mechanical claw swung back and forth in the air as Yuri tried to bring it down onto the truck without being able to see his target. Sam, hanging half out of the open door, was his eyes.
Mitchell watched as the claw struck the top of McMasters’ truck and then slid off the back. He barely had time to yell a warning to Grace to duck as the claw swung through the air, just missing the top of their Rover. Looking back over his shoulder, Mitchell saw the massive metal claw bounce off the top of Jackson’s semi-trailer cab. He could just imagine the blast of curses his friend was screaming at Yuri.
With a quick adjustment for speed, the helicopter maneuvered once more over the top of the armored truck and gradually lowered the claw. This time, Sam’s aim was true as all four steel fingers fell on the outside of the truck. In an instant, the claw clamped hold of its target.
A second later, Yuri applied more power to the engines; the steel line went taut as the helicopter fought to lift the truck up into the air.
“What’s going on?” asked the scared driver of the armored truck.
“We’ve been grabbed from above!” replied McMasters.
“I’ve had enough of this,” cried the driver. “I’m pulling over and getting out.”
“No, you’re not,” said McMasters as he pulled out his pistol and dispatched the driver with a shot to the head.