“Seven, six, five…” The tack, tack, tack of bullets hitting metal echoed loud and clear. The side of the bird taking a direct hit.
“You’re up, Z-man,” Grant shouted with a hard jerk of his head toward the belly of the beast.
“Four, three, two…”
The dickhead waited until Zander cleared the door, and the wheels left the ground before he plunked his ass onto the edge of the deck, catching a last-second ride as the Black Hawk lifted into the air.
“Extraction team airborne,” Chase said, his voice cutting through the chaos of gunfire still erupting around them.
“You can’t leave Jay!” Rebecca screamed above the whomp of the rotors, her fingers clawing at the four-point harness holding her in her seat. “Let me out, you motherfucking asshole pieces of shit! Let me out!”
“We’re not leaving him!” Cody repeated as the helicopter climbed higher. “Exfil point, eastern plateau. Ten minutes,” he barked, communicating Jay’s plan to the entire team.
“Copy that,” Ryder responded through the comms. “Exfil. Eastern plateau. Ten minutes. Understood.”
“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.” Back of her head banging against heavy-duty fire-resistant nylon with every panicked outburst, Becca fought her fear of heights with a level of violence that was sure to injure. “Let me out. Please,” she begged, and giving up on her failed attempt to release her straps, she pulled at the collar of her hoodie with white-knuckled fists. “Please! I can’t breathe. I can’t leave him. I can’t?—”
“Doc,” Zander said. “You have to knock her out.”
“No!” Eyes squeezed shut tight, she shook her head back and forth with enough force to snap her neck. “Please! I can’t breathe. Just let me go. Let me go. Let me go…”
“Alpha Bravo, move out,” Chase snapped, ordering the JTF2 cover teams to fall back to their exfil point after multiple failed attempts to connect with Jay through the comms link.
The right call to make, Grant would’ve done the same. The JTT had their primary target on board. The objective now? Keep everyone alive long enough to pick Jay up and make it back across the Bering Strait.
Once they landed in the good old United States of America, they’d rendezvous for a quick debrief with the JTF2, exchange personnel, and then fuck off for safety and security reasons.
Behind his rib cage, his pounding heart constricted, morphing into solid stone right inside his chest. The sharp pain a crippling consequence of leaving one of their own behind. Temporary or not. Didn’t matter. He knew from experience what it felt like to be alone and on the run.
The Black Hawk’s twin turbos roared overhead, the thumping sound of the rotors drowning out everything but the voice in his head as he buckled himself into his seat.
Fucking hell. This felt wrong. On so many levels. Leaving behind a fully trained tier one special forces assaulter was one thing, but Jay—he was the brains of their operation. The problem solver. The guy who unraveled the clues and fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
They couldn’t do this without him. Couldn’t fight the Imperium Council, stop Dominion, eliminate Johnson, or save humanity. Jesus Christ, they were dead in the water without the computer genius.
Sure, they had Rebecca now. And according to Jay, she was the key to controlling Dominion. But who knew what she was truly capable of? Who knew if she’d even be willing to help the JTT? She didn’t know them. Had no reason to trust them. Not her fault. They were the ones refusing to let her go despite her desperate pleas.
His machine gun clenched in his hands, Grant kept watch out the open door, the cold air freezing his eyeballs in their sockets as he stared at the growing distance to the ground below. The higher they climbed, the lower his stomach sank.
God damn, he should’ve gone after his teammate. Covered Jay’s back. Found another way.
“Don’t leave him. Please, don’t leave him!” Louder than the chatter coming through his headset, Rebecca’s broken-hearted cries were a twelve-inch Ginsu straight through his sternum as the Black Hawk cleared the ridge penning it in and banked a hard left.
Strapped in tight, the retention belt, along with a significant amount of centrifugal force, kept him from executing a spectacular headfirst dive to the ground. Although, to be honest, turning his melon into his asshole didn’t much matter in the grand scheme of things. He wasn’t the superhero in this scenario.
If he disappeared from the face of the earth? No big deal. Captured by the enemy? Who gave a fuck. But Jay? One way or the other—dead or taken prisoner—nobody would survive the hellscape about to be unleashed.
Nobody. Not long-term. And not without consequences.
Thanks to Johnson and the Imperium Council, the planet teetered on the brink of becoming the Thunderdome. Winner takes all, and the losers...well, those less fortunate would wish they’d never been born.
It wasn’t just a matter of survival anymore. The gears of war were already grinding. The machine about to go nuclear. Without Jay, a power vacuum blackened the horizon. A free-for-all of unprecedented proportions unleashing global chaos. Every faction, every member of the Imperium Council, every damn self-entitled asshole with a chip on their shoulder would be gunning for dominance.
The fragile balance they’d managed to maintain. Gone.
Life as they knew it. Gone.
And the worst part? They’d be the ones to blame.
