Private Rogue

Chapter 51

Dinara moved across the cabin as the rockets passed underneath them. The relief she felt as she watched the explosives roar away from them, quickly turned to horror as she saw what was in their path. She watched helplessly as, some three hundred yards away, Jack Morgan and Joshua Floyd went sprinting through the trees, trying to get away from the missiles bearing down on them.

“Jack!” she screamed.

The first rocket struck the mountainside. A thunderous explosion and shockwave buffeted the rising aircraft. Dinara cried as a fireball obscured her view of Jack and Floyd. She prayed it was sufficiently to their east not to have harmed them, but if they had survived, they were lost to flames and smoke. Any hopes she had that they might survive were obliterated when the second rocket hit the mountain instants later, striking the cliff directly ahead of where the two men had been. The explosion shook the GlobalRanger and created a huge fireball that consumed the forest for fifty yards around. Nothing in its path could have survived, and Jack and Floyd had been less than a couple of yards from its epicenter when she’d last seen them.

She watched the angry flames burn white hot, tears running down her face.

“Feo!” she cried in anguish. “Jack!”

“I know,” he replied grimly. “Strap in, we need to get out of here.”

She staggered to the co-pilot’s seat in a raw state of shock and slumped down. She absently reached for the four-point harness and clipped in. She couldn’t shake the horrific images of Jack’s death from her mind.

Feo pulled the chopper into a steep climb, and accelerated away from the chaotic scene. Dinara glanced down as they banked. She saw the flames recede, leaving nothing but charred devastation and clouds of smoke in their wake. All around the blast zone, camouflaged attackers who hadn’t been killed in the explosion, staggered as though badly injured. Everything caught in the blast radius had been incinerated.

Fresh tears came as Dinara realized Jack had truly gone. They had failed in the worst possible way.

Feo took them up toward the blue sky as the two Mil Mi-24 flying tanks set down and camouflaged men jumped out to attend to their injured comrades.

Dinara watched them with rising anger. She burned with hatred for them and longed for revenge.

Feo touched her arm reassuringly. A moment later they banked round the shoulder of the mountain and left the horror far behind.