Chapter 82 - Evasion and Impact
The missile’s fiery exhaust lit the swirling gray fog in a terrifying bloom of orange and white. Inside the cockpit, the master caution alarms screamed in deafening unison.
"Flares out! Bracing!" the pilot yelled, his knuckles white against the cyclic control stick.
The Osprey banked at a brutal sixty-degree angle, the gravitational force pinning my chest against the tactical harness. Outside the side blister windows, dozens of magnesium decoys erupted in a blinding cascade of white-hot phosphorus. The surface-to-air missile, tricked by the searing heat signatures, veered sharply two hundred yards out, detonating in mid-air with an ear-splitting crack that shook the airframe down to its titanium rivets.
Shrapnel tore through the Osprey's port engine nacelle with the sound of a thousand sledgehammers hitting sheet metal. Black smoke belched into the slipstream.
"Port engine failing! Hydraulic pressure dropping through forty percent!" the co-pilot shouted over the comms. "We’re going in! We can't hold hover!"
"Put us right on top of her stern!" I shouted back, disconnecting my safety tether and gripping my suppressed HK416. "Harris, gear up! We fast-rope before the ship clears the drop zone!"
"You're out of your damn mind, Marcus!" Harris yelled through his tactical headset, racking the bolt of his rifle. "We’re coming in hot at eighty knots!"
"She has her thumb on the trigger of an abyssal charge! We drop now or millions drown!"
The Osprey screamed over the pitching waters of the strait, descending through the freezing sea spray like a wounded predator. Below us, the broad, carbon-reinforced stern of the *Hydra-7* sheared through the rolling twelve-foot swells. The heavy crane was still whining, feeding high-tensile fiber-optic line into the black depths of the trench.
"Ropes! Go, go, go!" the crew chief bellowed, kicking the heavy braided fast-ropes out into the void.
I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the thick rope with gloved hands, wrapped my combat boots around the nylon, and plunged through forty feet of biting cold wind and diesel smoke. Below me, two of Clara’s armed private security operators scrambled out from behind the deck winch, raising automatic submachine guns.
I released the rope ten feet above the deck, absorbing the impact into a combat roll across the wet, non-skid plating. Before the mercenaries could acquire their targets, I brought my rifle up, firing two controlled double-taps. The rounds punched through their tactical vests, dropping them instantly onto the steel deck.
Behind me, Harris hit the deck with the solid thud of a seasoned veteran, his rifle already up and sweeping the port gangway. Above us, the crippled Osprey sheared away, fighting for altitude on a single sputtering turbine as it limped toward the distant Oregon coastline.
We were alone on the deck of the *Hydra-7*.
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From the elevated bridge-wing above, Clara’s furious voice echoed through the ship’s public address speakers, cold and dripping with venom.
"You should have stayed in Tahoe, Marcus," she hissed, her voice distorted by the ship's horn. "You took my money. You destroyed our father. Now you'll die in the deep with the rest of them."
