Chapter Eight
Helios
After three calls that went to fucking voicemail, I walked back onto the bridge thinking my mood couldn’t get worse.
Still scanning the shoreline and the damn estate that wasn’t out of sightline yet, Ares crossed to the helm station. “Cut the engines.” Dropping the binos, he reached for the controls. “Disabling all electronics.”
“What the fuck? Autopilot’s on.”
“Disengage it.” He shut off all nav systems. “Nix has company. Activating the transponder on the helo.” He switched on the customized closed-loop positioning tracker that communicated between the boat and the Sikorsky S-76D. “Gear up.”
I wasn’t going anywhere that’d delay me getting back to Feralyn. “Nix can handle company.” Hell, the fucker could gut you in broad daylight before you realized he was holding a damn blade.
“A woman’s on the lower terrace, distracting him. Tango’s on his six.” Ares fucked with his cell, then quickly typed on the laptop Nix kept on the bridge. “You’re piloting.”
The hell I was. “Fucking text him. Let him deal with his own shit. Nix doesn’t do distractions.
Fucker probably prearranged this.” Besides, I hated flying helos, and we had incoming weather.
“That storm’s gonna be on top of us faster than you think.
Outer bands are already kicking up.” The ceiling was low, and it was gonna suck navigating through that in the goddamn boat, let alone a helo.
I wasn’t getting caught in that shit in the fucking Sikorsky.
“Already texted him. No response, and we’ll beat the weather.” Ares shut the laptop. “Sniper’ll have Nix in his sights by now. Oscar Mike.”
I snorted. “If you saw a sniper on that property from two miles out with the binos, Nix is fucking fine.” Any asshole who couldn’t conceal himself in the amount of vegetation covering all those terraces wasn’t worth a damn.
“I didn’t see him.” Ares spared me a glance. “I saw his Leupold Mark 5HD.”
Fuck me.
The Mark 5 was a tactical scope. Specifically used by Army Snipers and every other SOF operator who knew what the fuck they were doing.
“Oscar Mike,” I confirmed, not questioning who the hell would’ve been waiting to pick off Nix or how the fuck they’d found him.
“Disengaging autopilot and cutting the engines.” I shut down the boat, then grabbed my M4 and SR-25 because Nix had more fucking enemies than I had hours in a cockpit.
“But I’m not piloting.” I felt like shooting shit today. “You are.”
“LZ is tight on those terraces without all the crosswinds.” Ares walked off the bridge with nothing more than his sidearm and his switchblade.
Not that he wasn’t as good a sniper as I was.
Better, if you measured patience. But my brother could also inflict some seriously fucked-up shit with that blade.
“Then fucking hover.” I didn’t need him to land to take out some sniper asshole. “Hell, keep us at one thousand feet. I’ll send it on a flyover.”
“Either way, he’ll hear us coming.” Ares headed to the right side of the helo and fucked with his cell before undoing his side of the tiedowns. “Wind’s picking up. If you pilot, you’ll get us in and out faster.”
Ares was full of shit, but the adrenaline was already pumping, and I was beyond giving a fuck. Done arguing with him, ready to unload some lead, I tossed my rifles into the helo and released the tiedowns on my side.
With an unspoken division of labor, Ares and I flew through the prechecks same as we did on my Cessna. Less than two minutes later, we were airborne over open ocean, flying nap-of-the-earth to stay off radar, when it hit me.
I switched on the mic for my headset, then tapped it twice to tell Ares to do the same.
Following suit, he nodded.
I asked the question. “Why didn’t Nix respond to your text?”
“He couldn’t. Our cells are jammed.”
“I made outgoing calls ten fucking minutes ago.” How the hell was our shit jammed?
“Did the calls go through?”
“Christ.” Now I was seriously fucking pissed. “Nothing went through. I got Feralyn’s voicemail. You telling me that’s because our shit was hacked?”
“Possibly.” Ares scanned the grounds as we came up on the rear of the property. “West side, third terrace. Sniper, ten o’clock.”
Glancing down as I angled us in, I caught the rail of the rifle and the scope. Then I saw the top of the sniper’s head. “That fucker’s mine. Take the controls. Bring us in south, southwest. Five feet off elevation. Watch the wind. One second hover. Then get the fuck out of here after I exfil.”
“Copy. Taking the controls,” Ares confirmed. “South, southwest. Infill, exfil. But you know Nix’s protocol. He’ll want to interrogate before you eliminate.”
My door already open, my M4 aimed, losing our window by the second, I didn’t give a fuck what Nix wanted. “One step ahead.” Ripping off my headset, I jumped out of the helo and hit the ground running.
I was a goddamn warfighter.
I didn’t wait for motherfuckers to shoot first.