“What?” Cooper poked a finger in his ear, shook his head.

“I said you were pretty,” Taggart said with a smartass grin and sprang to his feet, holding out a hand to help Cooper up.

“Ya think you used enough C-4?” Cooper stared at the cloud in awe.

Taggart looked smug. “Go big or go home, I always say.”

The two men high-fived.

“Can we hold off on the gloating until we actually get out of here?” Mike pushed slowly upright. His ears were ringing. His balance was off. He’d intended to help Eva up, but the pain in his ribs stabbed like a knife and he dropped back to his knees with a groan.

She ended up helping him. “Can you make it?”

“We’re going to get run over with UWD troops in less than five, so that pretty much says I’d better make it. And I am not over being mad at you, by the way.”

When Taggart moved in with a he’s-not-heavy-he’s-my-brother look on his face, Mike held up a hand. “I’m good.”

“Like hell.”

“I’m good,” he insisted and forced himself to stand up straight to prove it.

“Mike.” Eva’s eyes implored him to let them help.

“Mollycoddle me later,” he grumbled. “If we don’t get to the chopper pad and figure out how to stop it from taking off, we’re screwed.”

Then he headed out, ignoring the pain and their worried looks.

• • •

“So… not all of the soldiers headed for the mine.” Cooper passed the binoculars to Mike.

They were on their bellies, using a berm on the target range for concealment as they checked out the helicopter pad. Their sense of urgency magnified when they saw the big Chinook and the third semi parked beside it. Heavily tattooed, machine gun–toting men guarded it while UWD members offloaded guns from the semi to the chopper.

“I make six La Linea total—three at the front, three at the rear.” Cooper scanned the area. “As many UWDs doing the grunt work. And, lookie who just showed up to protect their investment.”

“Brewster and Lawson,” Mike speculated correctly. “Psycho babe there, too?”

“Yup. And their new business associates don’t look any too happy.”

Mike lifted his rifle, sighted through the scope, and found the men involved in the big powwow in his sites. He didn’t have to hear the conversation to know there were a lot of threats being made on the La Linea side, and a lot of cajoling coming from Brewster and Lawson. If they couldn’t control and contain their own compound, how could the cartel count on them to deliver on future shipments?

“Can we say, ‘ass in a sling’?” Beside him, Taggart also sighted through his rifle scope.

“Wonder how they’re explaining how they couldn’t contain four hostages—one of them a woman.” Eva sounded a lot more calm than Mike felt, since it was a pretty safe bet that they’d undoubtedly launched a full-out manhunt. They were still a long ways from being out of the woods.

“So,” Mike moved wrong, then silently cursed the pain in his ribs that was steadily getting worse. “What’s the plan?”

“You’re the chopper pilot. How do we keep it grounded—no, wait.” Taggart refocused the binoculars. “How do we drop it out of the sky? The semi’s pulling out and the main rotor blade is starting to spin up.”

“Forget about the rotors. Those suckers are strong enough to chop down trees.”

He thought about the bird’s vulnerabilities. “Chinooks are very slow on takeoff, so we might have a chance to keep her grounded. Eva—hammer the hell out of the engine. I’ll be right there with you. You two aim for the fuel tanks,” he said decisively. “They’re located right by the side wheels. I’m guessing the civilian models don’t have self-sealing fuel tanks, so they should be susceptible to small-arms fire. If we can get the engines burning, that fire will race right back to the leaking tanks and we might get lucky. And now, by the way, would be good.”

Mike had confiscated an AK-47 from one of the guards at the mine site. He took aim and popped off several three-round bursts—and got immediate results.

The men on the ground by the chopper scattered and ducked for cover. Then, spotting their muzzle flashes, they fired back.

Mike ignored them, pecking away like a rooster after grit. Beside him, bellied down in the dirt, Taggart, Cooper, and Eva followed his example.

“Holy shit,” Cooper sputtered when several rounds zipped past his head. “Bastard’s either a deadeye or damn lucky.”

Luck was something they needed a lot of, if they were going to keep that bird grounded and keep from getting killed in the process.

Mike kept firing; burning sweat poured into the cuts on his face, fire seared through his side. It was dark, the nightscopes were difficult to focus, the distance was not desirable—the chances of them taking down the bird were growing slimmer with every minute, which meant Brewster and his boys would be on them as soon as the threat was over.

They were sitting ducks out here. UWD soldiers behind them, Satan’s spawn in front of them, wilderness in either direction. And him with a broken rib and, fuck, an empty magazine, he realized when he squeezed the trigger.

He quickly ejected the mag and rapid-loaded a second thirty-round clip. His last one.

“She’s about to lift off,” Taggart yelled, his focus and his shots steady on the Chinook.

“Keep firing!” Mike yelled.

“I’m out of ammo.” Cooper lowered his gun.

Pick a doomsday cliché, they were living it.

Eva, rock-solid steady, kept her eye glued to the scope and methodically fired again and again.

But it was too late. The bird hovered, then lifted, and spun slowly skyward.

“Fuck.” Taggart watched the flight lights as the chopper gained elevation.

Mike roared in frustration and emptied his magazine, knowing it was hopeless—until the engine cowling blasted off the bird in an explosion of sound and a huge, raging fireball. Smoke roared out of the damaged fuselage, billowing in a black, spiraling plume. The chopper listed sideways, spun, dropped, and corkscrewed down fast.

“No way.” Mesmerized, Cooper stood, shielding his eyes from the white-hot blaze of fire as the chopper fuel combusted, and twenty tons of electronics and metal slammed to the ground and blew anything within thirty yards into fireballs, dust, and rubble.

“No freaking way did we drop that chopper,” Cooper uttered again.

Stunned, Mike stared at what was left of the Chinook. No one on the ground nearby could have survived that explosion.

The La Linea lieutenants were dead. The woman with the empty eyes was dead. Lawson and Brewster—dead.

His satisfaction was undercut by disappointment. The sonofabitches had gotten off way too easy.

“Listen.” Eva touched a hand to his arm. “Hear that?”

Above the roar of the blaze, the ammo in the bird exploding, and the blood pounding in his ears, Mike finally heard what she had. The sound of choppers. A bunch of them.

Mike looked up and finally spotted the flight lights of four Black Hawks zooming in. Their searchlights flashed on, the wide beams sweeping the crash site like a scene out of a SWAT movie. The remaining UWD members had to be running for the hills.

“You’re right, Cooper,” he said, grinning because he knew who had to be in one of those birds. “We didn’t take it out. Gabe did.”

37

“Do you know how much freaking paperwork I’m going to have to fill out to explain how a ‘borrowed’ freaking Black Hawk and a ‘borrowed’ freaking flight crew somehow managed to fire off its mini and shoot a freaking Chinook out of the freaking sky? You said this was a training mission. You didn’t say a word about live fire!”

Mike sat on the bumper of one of several ambulances that had arrived at the UWD site on the tail of the Black Hawks, watching and grinning as Gabe patiently waited for the red-faced DEA officer to finish spitting out his tirade. All around them, ATF, DEA, DHS, and FBI agents worked the scene, some of them arranging a makeshift holding area for the UWD members who had been rounded up in the woods surrounding the camp.

Gabe had covered all the bases. There were even female agents on the ground, dealing with the shell-shocked wives, daughters, and sons of the compound.

Mike didn’t know yet how Gabe had managed to charge in and save the day, but he had no doubt the Archangel would be able to appease the infuriated agent.

“You should be lying down.”

Eva. Beside him. Safe and sound. That was all that mattered now.

“I should be right here.” He looped his arm over her shoulder and kissed her beautiful dirt-and-smoke-streaked face. “Besides, you heard Collins. He’s the paramedic. That makes him the expert, and he says my ribs are just bruised.”

“I don’t care what he says. I can see the pain on your face. You need to be horizontal. You need to rest.”

“Chica.” He nuzzled his nose around the shell of her ear. “If I get horizontal, it will be with you. And trust me. We won’t be resting.”

“This dipstick giving you a hard time, Eva?”

Mike groaned when Taggart and Cooper ambled over to the ambulance. “And to think I missed them.”

Cooper hiked a booted foot up on the ambulance bumper. “Just goes to show. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

Mike looked into the faces of the two men he had thought he would never see again. They were covered in grime and the satisfaction of a job well done. The same faces that had been full of accusation and hatred the last time he’d seen them eight years ago.

He felt a wave of emotion so strong, so massive, he didn’t know if he could contain it. Then he looked at Eva and knew he couldn’t. She wasn’t going to let him.

“Yeah. About that.” He lowered his head, groped for the words he needed to say. “Thanks.” He met Cooper’s eyes, then Taggart’s, and saw the same emotions welling up there. “Thanks for showing. Means a lot.”

Hell. It meant everything.

Taggart looked at his boot tips.

Cooper found a spot in the distance that suddenly demanded all of his attention before getting himself back together. “Yeah, well… Someone’s going to pay us, right?… Because we didn’t do this for old time’s sake.”

Mike burst out laughing, then regretted it when fire bit into his ribs. “There was some mention of money, now that I think about it. Right, Eva?”

She shook her head, disbelieving. “You three are the most stubborn individuals I’ve ever met when it comes to expressing your feelings.”

Then Gabe walked over and joined them.

“How you doing?” He studied Mike critically.

“Fit and fine.” Mike hitched his chin toward the DEA agent. “You settle him down?”

Gabe lifted a shoulder. “Once he found out his name would be leaked to the media in conjunction with taking down six of La Linea’s top-tier management, and in shutting down a major illegal gunrunning op, he decided the paperwork wasn’t such a hardship after all.”

“Something I don’t get.” Taggart crossed his arms over his chest. “I figure when we didn’t check in, you put it together that things had gone south. But how’d you know to bring the birds and the mini and all the alphabet guys?”

“We’ve got a connection at NSA. A friend picked up some cyber-chatter about a gun shipment out of Canada. On a hunch we relayed the info to border control, of which there are two in Idaho. Since Porthill carries the most passenger traffic and East-port carries the most trucks, it wasn’t difficult to pin down which route they were going to take.”