Tom Clancy Support and Defend

48

As Dominic raced to the scene he heard the low-flying helicopter churning the air right over his head. He looked up, but he could make out only a slight lightening in the clouds from the aircraft’s running lights as it flew by. He still couldn’t imagine how in the hell anyone could get airborne in these conditions.

Within seconds he was driving his bike through the after effects of the battle. There were bodies lying motionless on the road. He passed the unmistakable form of Gianna Bertoli, she was on her back and snow had already blown across her jacket, dusting it with white.

He found Albright lying on his side by one of the shot-up silver Expeditions. Dom parked the BMW and ran to the man, rolled him onto his back.

Albright was alive, but there was blood everywhere. He’d been shot in the shoulder and the hip, he groaned in agony, but he was conscious. He reached out to grab for his mobile phone, which had been knocked several feet away in the gunfight. Dom scooped it up and handed it to him. “Is Ross gone?” Albright nodded. He grunted in pain again, then said, “Helicopter.”

“I still hear it. It’s heading southwest.”

“Farsi.”

“What’s that?”

“They were speaking Farsi. They’re Iranians.”

“That figures,” said Caruso.

“We’ve got to let the Italians know,” Albright said, and groaned.

Dom pulled a med kit out of the closest vehicle and returned to Albright, who was dialing a number on the phone with his bloody fingers.

Dom knelt to treat the man’s wounds, but Albright waved him off. “Check the others first.”

Mohammed Mobasheri was not satisfied with the pilot’s performance, they seemed to be flying too slow, though it was difficult to be certain in the near white out conditions.

The Iranian put on a headset and crawled between the Lyon cell men just behind the pilot’s seat. “Go faster!” He looked to Ajiz in the copilot’s seat, and the Hezbollah man waved his pistol in the man’s face.

The pilot did not seem to notice. He was covered in sweat and his eyes were locked on the multifunction display in front of him, worry evident on his face.

Ajiz, who had been flying alongside the man for a halfhour, noticed a change in the man’s behavior.

“What is it?”

“A problem.”

Mohammed held his own pistol to the pilot’s head. “You lie! You will fly this helicopter south. To Genoa.”

The pilot spoke into his mike. “It’s the tail rotor.”

“What is wrong—”

“It’s not responding properly.”

Mobasheri screamed at the man. “No! You are lying!”

He struck the pilot in the head, but the man did not react, so carefully was he watching his gauges. After several more seconds, Henri said, “It’s getting worse!”

Henri did feel an abnormal oscillation in the tail rotor, but he was not, in fact, losing control. He used the opportunity to bank to the right, following the moving map display in front of him to fly along the snowy ridgeline at the top of the valley.

He decreased altitude and lowered his speed. The Middle Easterner next to him screamed at him, and the man between the seats behind him shouted as well, but Henri focused on what he was doing. Right as he arrived at the top of the ridgeline, he shouted into his headset.

“Claudette!”

Behind him, Henri’s daughter took her opportunity. She unhooked her seat belt, dove onto the blond-haired man by the back door, then she kicked her legs out over the side. Shiraz recognized what she was doing, he lunged for her, desperate to take hold of any part of her clothing. The coiled wires of his headset pulled tight just as he got his hand on the cuff of her ski jacket, but gravity was stronger than his grip, and she was out of the helicopter, disappearing over the side.

The other men in the back saw the movement, but they were too late to do anything more than lean out over the side and watch her disappear into snowy trees. Her fall was no more than fifty feet, with hundreds of branches to slow her before she hit the powdered drift on the ground.

She would break bones and lie in pain for hours, but she would survive.

Henri turned back around in his seat when he heard the shouting in Farsi. As he turned he prayed he would not see his daughter in the cabin, but at first he could not be sure. He saw nothing but arms and legs and blurred motion of angry men crawling over one another. More screams in his headset told him the men were agitated, so he had reason to hope, but he could not see the seats directly behind him. It was possible Claudette had been moved. It was not until the men on the starboard side looked down into the trees below, shock and anger and even some fear registering on their faces, that he knew she had done it.

His beautiful, brilliant, brave daughter had fucking done it!

His heart had been pounding in terror unceasingly for the last hour, but now it pounded with a father’s pride.

Henri turned back to the windscreen in front, and he flew the helo over the peak, picking up speed as fast as he cold. The little winding valley disappeared below him, and these men would never be able to find it again. Claudette was, if not safe, then at least safe from these murderous terrorists.

Now he steeled himself to be as brave as his little girl. He turned to his right and eyed the man called Ajiz, then looked over his shoulder at the little man with the boyish face. They called him Mohammed. He appeared to Henri to be truly the least likely in the group to be in charge of anything, much less these other brutes. Mohammed had been focused on the activity in the back, he shouted what were obviously admonitions at his men, only two of whom were wearing headsets and able to hear him.

Now Mohammed stopped talking suddenly, and he spun his head to the pilot.

Henri stared back at him, a thin, determined smile on his lips.

The Iranian’s eyes widened. He shouted, “Non!”

Henri’s smile grew with the terror evident on Mohammed’s face. “Oui,” he said, grinning now.

Henri turned back to the windscreen, and sucked in a chest full of air, and he slammed the cyclic forward, while pushing the collective to the floor.

The Eurocopter pitched down and dove toward the undulating landscape hundreds of feet below. Mohammed screamed in sheer terror, while Henri closed his eyes and found himself at peace, thinking about how damn lucky he had been to have lived his life in such a beautiful place as this mountain.

Mohammed looked away from the pilot toward a sudden darkness that filled the right half of the windscreen in front of him. A craggy mountain wall was directly in the path of the Eurocopter, a violent jolt from behind told all on board the tail rotor struck the rock face. The rotor disintegrated and the helo spun hard to the left. The main rotor dug into trees and the aircraft slammed into a forested hillside and tumbled down.

Dom had found two Americans still alive in addition to Albright, though both men were badly injured. Several cars full of civilians had appeared at the scene with their own medical kits, and they began treating the wounds to the best of their abilities. Caruso had just returned to Albright and knelt down to help him when he heard a sound to the southeast.

It was far in the distance but unmistakable. It was the low muffled thump of an impact.

The faint but persistent rotor noise of the distant helicopter stopped abruptly.

He stood up quickly and spun toward the noise. “They crashed! The helo just went down!”

Albright was holding the phone to his ear and gauze against his bloody hip. He’d heard the noise, too. He looked at Caruso. “Go get that asshole. I can treat myself.”

“You sure?”

Albright shouted now. “Go!”

The FBI senior special agent put down his phone and lifted his pistol for Dom to take. But Caruso ignored it. Instead, he scooped up one of the dead HRT team member’s carbines and dropped the magazine to check the round count. It was fully loaded with thirty rounds, and there was a 3.5 power scope on the rail.

Dom ran back to his motorcycle without another word.