Chapter 6 - The Rotors Above
The deafening thump of heavy turbine blades slammed against the rotting clapboard walls of the weather station, shaking dust, dried paint flakes, and rusted nails loose from the ceiling rafters. The high-intensity searchlight beam slashed through the broken second-story window, sweeping across the floor like a physical interrogation tool.
"Get down!" Commander Cole roared, his hand instantly grabbing the back of Petty Officer Brooks's tactical vest and shoving him beneath a heavy, overturned oak workbench.
Henderson didn't move. He stood frozen in the center of the room, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as the vibration rattled the rifle in his trembling hands. "They tracked the encrypted relay," he muttered, his voice barely audible over the screaming machinery outside. "I told you... I told you they never stop hunting."
"Who's out there, Henderson?" I demanded, dropping into a low crouch beside him and grabbing the barrel of his weapon to redirect it away from us. "Give me names! Are they federal, or are we dealing with a private contractor unit?"
"Both," Henderson gasped, his face slick with sweat. "They call themselves the Aegis Oversight Group. A black-budget shadow division created right after our deployment to clean up every loose end left behind by the Cold War naval intelligence unit. And they know we have the primary ledger."
"What ledger?" Cole asked, pulling his sidearm as he crawled across the floor toward the window, keeping his head well below the shattered glass line.
Before Henderson could answer, a loud, concussive bang echoed from the front porch. Heavy military boots stomped against the rotting wooden steps. The splintering crash of the front door being kicked completely off its hinges signaled that our time for questions had officially expired.
"Perimeter breached! Flashbangs incoming!" Brooks shouted from beneath the workbench, his hands clamped over his ears.
"Move!" I yelled, kicking open a side door leading into the dark kitchen area.
A blinding white flash illuminated the main room, followed immediately by a deafening concussive blast that rattled my teeth and filled the air with thick, acrid white smoke. Shouts in crisp, military-standard tactical shorthand echoed through the hallway.
"Clear the sector! Secure the target!" an unfamiliar, metallic voice barked from inside the smoke.
We tumbled through the kitchen exit onto a narrow, rotted wooden catwalk that wrapped around the exterior of the weather station, hanging precariously over the dark, churning waters of the Atlantic inlet. The cold ocean wind hit us like a wall, stinging my face and carrying the sharp ozone scent of military pyrotechnics.
"Where do we go?" Brooks yelled, his boots slipping on the wet, moss-covered wood of the catwalk as he struggled to keep up.
"The utility boat!" Cole shouted over the roar of the helicopter hovering directly overhead. "If we can reach the cove before they drop a fast-rope team, we can lose them in the island channels!"
We scrambled down the exterior ladder, hitting the rocky shoreline just as a burst of suppressed automatic gunfire chewed through the wooden railing right where we had been standing a second earlier. Splinters rained down around us like lethal rain.
Henderson stumbled, his injured arm giving out beneath him as he pitched forward into the wet shale. I lunged forward, grabbing his tactical jacket by the collar and hoisting him back to his feet.
"I can't... I can't run," Henderson wheezed, blood trickling from a reopened wound on his forearm.
"You're going to run, or you're going to swim," I said fiercely, pushing him toward the cove where our utility boat bobbed violently against the rocks.
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As we reached the boat, the searchlight from the hovering helicopter suddenly snapped directly onto our position, bathing the rocky shoreline in a blinding, inescapable glare. From the cliffside trail above us, two armed figures in midnight-black tactical gear dropped rapidly onto the beach via fast-ropes, their weapons raised and trained directly on our chests.
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