She looked down and saw that at the same distance down on the outside was a foot wide ring of wood, then a fifteen-foot drop to the ground.
Gant saw the body go down but had not seen the origin of the shot. He had the toggles pulled in tight, slowing his descent as much as possible. The slanting rays of the rising sun cast very long shadows, making observation difficult.
“At least give me a gun,” the Chief of Direct Actions pleaded as the Blackhawk banked back toward the town.
Neeley glanced over her shoulder. Bailey looked like he hadn’t even heard the man. Golden clicked the transmit button on the radio. “You got one. We want proof of life. Where is Emily Cranston?”
“We’re not even at fifty percent yet,” Finley replied.
“We’re not asking you to give up Emily yet,” Golden reasoned. “Just proof of life.”
Neeley spoke into the tactical frequency. “Pilot, hold us in position.”
The Blackhawk flared to a steady hover.
“We’re not coming in,” Golden said, “until we hear from Emily. We’ve got the Chief of Direct Action to be let off next.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Finley replied. “Give me the DCA.”
Gant had lost a thousand feet of altitude while Golden fought for proof of life. He’d been tempted to cut in and tell her to cut the bullshit — the girl was either alive or she wasn’t. But then he could tell she’d already realized that as the Blackhawk came in for another landing, this time to the west side of town.
“I’m not going,” the DCA flatly announced.
Bailey popped his gum and shot the DCA in his right thigh, reached forward as the man screamed and writhed in pain, and threw him out the right side of the helicopter even before it touched down. The man landed in the dust and the chopper was gaining altitude again.
Neeley wasn’t watching the DCA. Her focus was on the town.
Gant, on the other hand, was watching the DCA. He saw the man roll, try to stand, leg buckle, try to stand again, sink to his knees.
Then get shot. Low, in his gut, making him shudder and double-over as if punched.
“Ground level, close,” Gant called to Neeley over the radio.
“Fuck,” Neeley replied. “Different shooter. I didn’t see the muzzle flash and the angle is too divergent.”
“He’s still alive.” Gant saw the DCA was now crawling, trying to get to a drainage ditch that lined the dirt road. A dark red trail of blood followed his body.
Gant angled his parachute, to the south side of the town away from where the chopper was, toward the crawling man.
“I’ve got him,” he hissed as he saw a figure in the western shadows of an abandoned gas station creeping closer to shoot again, out of sight of the chopper.
Gant turned his chute in that direction, let go of the toggles and brought his rifle up to bear.
Emily had checked the shirt and saw that the noise she had heard was the shoulder seam nearest the shoe anchor had begun to split. So she tied the shoe to the other sleeve. Then she hooked it in the notch, the opposite of the way she had done it before.
She took several deep breaths and then began to crawl off the top of the wooden planks to climb down to the outer ring. She had both hands on the shirt and one leg pressed against the side of the tank. The other leg was still hooked over the top of the tank.
She unhooked that leg, gripping tight on the shirt.
Her strength wasn’t enough as her grip failed and shirt slid through her fingers and she plummeted down, slamming onto the wood ring. She almost slid off but managed to back against the tank, trying to regain her wind and not fall off.
As she took a deep breath, a stabbing pain brutally informed her that she had broken at least one if not two ribs during the fall. As she lay there gasping she saw the strangest sight: a parachutist, floating by, heading toward the town, holding a rifle in his hands and trying to aim it.
Neeley saw the DCA’s body get slammed by several more bullets, knocking it backward to sprawl face-up in the street.
“Gant?” she called out over the radio as the Blackhawk hovered.
Hanging under a canopy at the discretion of the wind and gravity was not the most stable platform Gant had ever used to try to shoot someone. In fact, he was realizing it was an impossible platform as he was rapidly losing altitude and the un-guided chute kept turning with the wind.
“Fuck it,” he muttered, letting the rifle drop down to hang on its sling while he grabbed the toggles, dumped air, and flew straight toward the man standing in the shadow who had just fired three more rounds into the DCA.
Gant was about eighty feet off the ground when he felt the snap of a supersonic round whip close by, coming from his right. He twisted his head in that direction even as he dumped more air and the only thing he saw at his level was the church steeple, which made perfect sense.
“We got a sniper in the steeple,” Gant got out as another bullet whipped by and the man on the ground turned and looked up, surprise filling his face as he spotted Gant screaming down toward him underneath his canopy. The man began to bring up his sub-machinegun.
No time for niceties at thirty feet altitude. Gant’s hands raced from the toggles to the quick releases on his shoulders. His thumbs looped through the metal loops as the man brought his gun to bear.
Gant popped the releases at fifteen feet altitude just as the man fired. The burst of rounds flew over Gant’s head as he disconnected from the canopy and free-fell to the ground. Gant hit hard, tumbled forward and jumped to his feet less than a yard from the man. Gant grabbed the barrel of the sub-machinegun and pushed it away from his body as the man fired another burst.
The hot barrel seared into Gant’s flesh but he didn’t let go as smashed his other fist into the man’s face, staggering him backward. The man dropped the weapon and grabbed Gant by the throat and right away Gant knew he was facing Caleigh Roberts’ killer as the mechanical hand began to compress his throat.
Neeley slid the sniper rifle toward Bailey who was still covering the two remaining prisoners. She got to her feet and moved to the small crew chief window behind the pilot where the M-2 .50 caliber machinegun was mounted. As she did so, she heard the pilot curse as there was a splintering of the cockpit glass just in front of him.
“We got ground fire,” the pilot screamed. “From the steeple.”
“Hold position,” Neeley ordered as she grabbed the handles of the machinegun. “I’m taking care of it.” She held the handles at chest level and aimed the large barrel of the machinegun toward the steeple. Her thumbs pressed down on the butterfly trigger and the gun roared into life, spitting huge .50 caliber rounds out, every fourth one being a tracer.
The strings of red tracers arced from the gun and hit the steeple at the base. Neeley ‘walked’ the rounds up the building, just the way Gant — Tony Gant — had taught her to do on numerous firing ranges. The large bullets tore away chunks of the light wood framework of the steeple.
She saw a muzzle flash in the belfry and adjusted. The rounds ripped into the lightly constructed building like miniature sledgehammers. She kept her thumb pressed down as the large barrel began to smoke from the hundreds of rounds going through it as she systematically destroyed the steeple and the sniper inside it.
Gant could faintly hear the firing of a heavy machinegun in the distance, but of more immediate concern to him was a lack of oxygen. He was seeing stars as his brain began to shut down and the hand around his throat increased pressure despite his attempts to pull it off with his right hand.