The Edge of Armageddon

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Drake ran at the center of his friends, right where he wanted to be, gun up and firing hard. Bullets discharged from every single running gun at two thousand five hundred feet per second, multiple blasts echoing around the slipways. Windows shattered all along the ferry.

In seconds they had halved the gap, still shooting hard. The SAW user modified immediately, shocked by the ferocity of the assault. Not that he stopped firing; his bullets stitched a trail across the slipways and out to sea as he quite possibly staggered back. Drake fitted the scope to his eyes, finger on the trigger, and made out the features of the man holding the SAW.

“That’s Gator,” Hayden said through the comms. “Don’t miss.”

The SAW panned around, heading back towards them and still spitting lead. Drake imagined the barrel had to be so hot right now it was on the verge of melting, but not fast enough. A bullet caught a cop in the vest and then a second broke the arm of another. At this point their hearts were in their mouths, but they did not stop the charge or reduce the gunfire. The lower-rear sides of the ferry fell away, shattered, the open rear end so perforated it resembled a cheese grater. Gator swung the SAW hard, over-compensating. Bullets laced the spaces above their heads.

The dull note of the ferry’s engine turned to a slow roar, and that changed everything. Gator jumped aboard, still firing wildly. Water started to churn from the back and the vessel lurched ahead. Drake saw they were still twenty feet from the back end, saw it turning to the left and away, and knew they would never make it in time.

Shouting, falling, he dropped to his side, skidding to a halt. Dahl dropped alongside. Hayden rolled, all this to further impair Gator’s aim, but the man didn’t seem to care anymore. His figure could be seen backing away, heading deeper into the ferry.

Drake signaled to Hayden and Hayden called in the choppers.

Black birds lunged to the slipway, dropping abruptly, and hovering three feet off the ground as the SPEAR team climbed aboard. At the cops’ and agents’ assembled salutes, a new bond formed that would never break, they saluted back as best they could, then the choppers practically leapt into the air. Pilots forced the machines to their limits, chasing the churning ferry and soon coming overhead. It was a sight Drake could never have imagined, the birds hanging like deadly black predators in the skies of New York, the famous skyline as a backdrop, preparing to take out a Staten Island Ferry.

“Hit them hard,” Hayden spoke into the chopper’s radio. “And fast.”

Plummeting now, two choppers dove toward the ferry’s rear. Almost immediately the irrepressible Gator popped his head out of a side window and let loose a vicious salvo. His third burst smashed into the choppers’ outer skin, punching through parts and glancing off others. The helicopters plunged like boulders, falling from the skies. Dahl cracked his door and returned fire, the bullets passing hopelessly wide.

“Shoots like he shags,” Drake grunted. “Never hits the right target.”

“Piss off.” Dahl gave up trying to hit Gator and readied for the coming impact.

Three seconds later it came, only it wasn’t an impact just a sudden stop. The first chopper hovered above the ferry’s top deck as the second one hovered to the left side, the rest of the SPEAR team aboard. They exited fast, boots striking the deck and forming into groups. The choppers then ascended to join their brethren in the air, tracking the ferry.

Hayden faced the team for a few seconds. “We know where he is. Engine room. Let’s end this right now.”

They started to run, adrenalin pumping beyond measure, and then Gator clearly changed tactics on the deck below.

An RPG screamed through the air, impacting with a chopper and exploding. The bird lost control, metal ripping away in all directions, fire engulfing the black shell, and fell without power towards the ferry’s top deck.

Toward the running SPEAR team.