“Moving fast, too,” added Lashev.
Felix scanned the forest ahead of them with a handheld infrared scope, finding nothing. He pointed it in the new direction of gunfire, still coming up empty. The action was too far away to detect with a portable thermal imaging device. He checked the Garmin Foretrex strapped to his wrist to get an idea of the direction of the gunfire. Almost due west, when it should be coming from the southwest. Shit.
“They’re headed for the helicopters,” he said over the radio net. “One of them must be a pilot.”
“Why would they bring a pilot on a direct-action mission?” asked Oksana.
“I don’t know, but why the fuck else would they be headed for the helicopters?” said Felix. “Valerie. Oksana. We’re headed to the helicopters. All-out sprint.”
“Our orders haven’t changed,” said Oksana.
“Our orders are to kill that team,” said Felix. “And that’s what I intend to do. Oleg. If they show up along the planned ambush route for some bizarre reason, take down as many as you can and radio me immediately. We’ll flank the survivors.”
“Understood,” said Oleg, not sounding too enthusiastic about the decision.
Felix pressed a few buttons on his wrist-mounted GPS unit to select the waypoint he’d inputted when they first landed—and took off at a full sprint. At this point, he’d be lucky if they arrived in time to stop the team from stealing one of the helicopters, but he had to try. As he ducked under branches and dodged trees, another thought hit him like a hammer. The machine guns.
It didn’t matter if they could fly the helicopters out or not. If that team took possession of the M249s, or even just one of them, they could flip the odds definitively in their favor. He hoped he hadn’t waited too long to prevent a disaster.
CHAPTER 51
The helicopter engine started somewhere ahead of them and slowly began to power up. Devin still had no idea how far they had to go to reach the clearing. He’d caught up with Marnie after she tripped and tumbled to the forest floor—quickly getting her back on her feet and moving again. By the time they’d resumed sprinting, presumably in the right direction, Alex and Rich had vanished into the sea of green ahead of them.
“We don’t have much time,” said Marnie, picking up what felt like an impossible pace.
Two suppressed shots echoed off the trees, giving him no indication of a direction. He barreled through the forest a few steps behind her, thinking they couldn’t possibly miss a one-hundred-yard-wide clearing. Or could they? His earpiece crackled.
“Where the hell are you two?” asked Rich.
“We should be there any—” he started, the two of them breaking through a jumble of bushes into the clearing.
The helicopter stood in the center of what looked like a mowed field, its rotors slowly picking up speed. Alex stood next to the helicopter, pointing his rifle inside.
“There you are,” said Rich, waving to them from the eastern edge of the clearing before vanishing into the forest.
“Cabin is clear,” said Alex. “I found an M249—ready to rock and roll. Do you want it on the tree line?”
“Negative. We’ll be wheels up in forty seconds or less. I don’t see anything moving out here,” said Rich.
“Copy. On my way over,” said Alex, already scrambling across the field toward Rich.
“Marnie. Do whatever you need to do to get us out of here,” said Rich. “Remember. There’s another helicopter in the clearing west of here, maybe fifty yards away. My guess is they’re pretty desperate to stop us, so watch your three o’clock on the way out.”
“Got it.”
The two side-by-side bullet holes in the windshield came into focus when they passed under the rotor blade arc. Marnie reached the helicopter first, immediately opening the pilot-side door and going to work on the dead pilot’s seat harness. She’d pulled him free of the helicopter just as Devin hopped into the cabin. Marnie poked her head between the front seats, nodding at the machine gun.
“Do you know how to work that?” she asked.
“I’ve held one, but never fired one,” said Devin, lifting the machine gun off the bench seat to examine it. “But I can’t imagine it’s that complicated.”
“It’s not. Press the trigger for a second or two at most. It has a very high rate of fire. Very hard to control if you don’t brace it against something. And don’t forget about the safety. It’s a button right about where your thumb rests. You have to push it from the other side with your index finger to take it off safe. And make sure to fire very short bursts.”