“Get to the plane!” Dan yelled to Zoelner and it occurred to him that, in keeping with the night’s theme, he’d channeled a little Arnold Schwarzenegger à la the classic film Predator. He very clearly remembered the scene where the Governator yelled, Get to the choppa! It played through his head as he squeezed his trigger again, satisfied when this round slammed into the truck’s front windshield.
It was hard as hell to hit a moving target in perfect conditions. And these were not perfect conditions. His face and hands were already numb from the stinging cold. Icy rain slipped beneath his collar to slide down his back, making it feel like he’d received an electrical jolt.
“Move it!” Zoelner shoved at Winterfield with one hand, the other occupied by his Beretta as it barked out round after round in the direction of the advancing truck. They hustled across the tarmac in a classic scoot-and-shoot maneuver. But they still needed cover. Clearly the driver’s target was Winterfield because another bullet dug into the runway not a foot away from the traitor’s feet.
Employing the slow breathing technique he’d perfected as a SEAL, Dan was able to control his heart rate and stress hormone levels as he dropped down to one knee. He only had three slugs left in his clip. Which meant every single one needed to count. Closing one eye, blinking away the frigid water that clung to his lashes, he took a quick aim and fired. The little Bersa jerked in his hand, the .38 bullet flying true.
Bull’s-eye! The truck’s left front tire blew, the rubber shredding apart, rolling under the rear wheel, and leaving nothing but the bare rim to spark against the blacktop of the tarmac. It forced the driver to duck inside to steady the vehicle as it lurched violently, spilling half of the gardening equipment onto the edge of the runway with a mighty clatter.
Chelsea materialized in the open doorway of the plane, lifted her little Springfield XD-S 9 mm, and started wildly peppering the tarmac, the grass at the edge of the tarmac, and the truck’s front bumper with lead. What the…? A quick glance showed her glasses were beaded with raindrops. The woman couldn’t see a damn thing, but that wasn’t stopping her from letting the bullets fly. Orange flashes blinked from the end of her muzzle, and between the boom-boom of Zoelner’s Beretta, the pop-pop of her Springfield, and the loud roar of the rain falling from the low-hanging clouds, the air around Dan was a wall of sound.
It occurred to him then that a firefight was a bizarre thing…
For the untrained or unprepared, it was like hell on earth, so chaotic and quick it precluded the ability to make rational, reasonable decisions. So loud, so disorienting, that a person was reduced to their animal self, relying purely on instinct: fight, flight, or freeze. Take the ground crew, for example, cowering under the van instead of doing the smart thing, which would be to beat feet until they were hell and gone from the range of the weapons.
But for those few folks who’d survived the crucible of war, who were battle-hardened and used to the exchange of deadly gunfire, it was just the opposite. Whizzing bullets put everything in perspective. And the thing Dan realized as the world slowed to a series of halcyon images like a movie reel that was skipping frames—Chelsea grimacing as the weapon barked in her hand. Next frame, Zoelner slamming in a new clip and chambering the first round. Next frame, the driver of the vehicle fishtailing this way and that, still headed straight for them—was that for the first time in years he cared whether he lived or died.
After his wife’s death, he’d tried his damnedest to join her by drinking himself into an early grave. Then, when his liver refused to give out on him, he’d sobered up. But even though he’d stopped actively seeking a way to punch his last ticket, it’s not like he’d clung to life either.
The truth was, when he laid his head on his pillow at night, he didn’t much care one way or the other if he woke up the next day. Life was just something to get through. And he whiled away the hours, the days by making sure he had a job to do. A duty to perform. A task to complete. It was nothing more and nothing less than that.
But now? Oh, now he had something to live for. Someone to live for. Penni and her big, dark eyes. Penni and her smart, sexy mouth. Penni and her hot woman’s needs. She made him excited for the future. And, by God, if he’d gotten to this point only to kick it on a Peruvian runway in the middle of a rainstorm, he was going to be beyond pissed.
Eeeerrrrrtttt! He didn’t have time for any more grand epiphanies because the driver of the truck screamed to a stop not forty yards away.