She tried to wrench her hand free of his, but he tightened his grip and picked up speed. They ran through snow that came up to her knees. The base of some type of steel tower blew past. She was beginning to tire.
A burst of gunfire erupted. A bullet zinged past her ear. Another ricocheted off an exposed rock. “Cutter, they’re shooting at us!”
“Not for long.”
He veered left and pulled her into a wild sprint toward a second tower. In the back of her mind it registered that the tower held high-voltage power lines. There was a clearing where crews had cut a swath of trees to build the massive towers. The realization that Cutter was purposefully leading the chopper to the power lines registered just as she heard a thunderous crack! Out of the corner of her eye she saw the chopper tilt at a precarious angle. The tail rotor snapped into two pieces. Electricity arced. Sparks flew. White smoke billowed.
An instant later the fuselage exploded. An orange ball rose into the sky like a fiery air balloon. Debris flew outward. The chopper came apart in midair, then huge chunks of twisted steel plummeted to the ground.
“Oh my God,” she heard herself say. “They hit the power lines.”
Cutter watched the last of the debris hit the ground. “Visibility is poor because of the snow. They couldn’t see the wires.”
The sight of such utter destruction left her paralyzed. Even though the men in the chopper had been trying to kill them, Mattie suddenly felt an urgent need to help them. “Cutter, we can’t just walk away from them.”
Without waiting for a response, she extricated her hand from his and started off at a jog toward the downed chopper. “We have to help them.”
Cutter caught up with her, captured her arm and spun her to face him. “You don’t want to go over there,” he said.
“Those men could be…injured or dying.”
“Take my word for it, Mattie. There are no survivors.”
No survivors.
She knew it was stupid, but the thought of more people dying made her want to cry. “How many people are going to die before this is over?”
Cutter shook his head. “When it comes to The Jaguar, people are expendable.” He looked toward the smoldering wreckage. “This proves he will stop at nothing to get the information locked inside your head.”
The words made her feel sick. “If he wants me so badly, why don’t we just set a trap? Use me as bait?”
Cutter couldn’t say he hadn’t considered it. He wanted to take down The Jaguar so badly he could taste it. He owed it to himself, owed it to the son of a bitch who’d left his body covered with scars. Martin Wolfe had made it abundantly clear that if it came down to Mattie’s life or The Jaguar, she was expendable.
So why haven’t you used her as bait, hotshot? a taunting little voice asked.
He didn’t like the answer that came to mind. “Because it’s my job to take you back.”
“You can still accomplish that and use me as bait.” Her expression brightened. “Cutter, The Jaguar is one of the few people who can clear my name. He knows who it was at DOD who gave him the plans for the EDNA project. If he testifies to that—”
“He won’t testify.”
“Maybe the federal prosecutor will cut him some kind of deal.”
“No, Mattie,” he snapped.
“But—”
“No. Damn it.”
She stared at him, her expression a combination of hurt and anger. She was too eager. Too willing to put herself on the line. The combination gave Cutter a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He told himself he was just being conservative, playing it safe. But the truth was he couldn’t put her in the line of fire because he cared for her.
“I’m going to see if I can salvage the chopper’s radio,” he said.
“I’ll go with you.”
“Stay here,” he snapped.
“Cutter, I can help.”
“Damn it, Mattie, you don’t want to see that wreckage.”
He started toward the downed chopper.
“IMBECILES! ALL OF THEM!” The Jaguar snapped the cell phone shut and threw it across the room. The one thing he could not tolerate was incompetence, and he seemed to be surrounded by it.
The two men standing at his desk shifted uncomfortably as they waited for their next orders.
Furious, The Jaguar stared them down. “You were on the radio with them when this accident occurred?”
One of the men nodded. “That’s correct.”
“How did this happen?”
“One of the men in the chopper had just spotted the scientist on the ground. They followed. Visibility was poor. I can only assume the pilot didn’t see the power lines.” The man shrugged. “I heard screaming…”
The Jaguar didn’t care about the men who’d died. All he cared about was the scientist. And Sean Cutter, the bastard. He knew Cutter was just good enough to have engineered such an accident. Even though he hated the man, he felt a grudging moment of respect for him. “The chopper was equipped with GPS?”
The taller of the two men stepped forward. “We’ve already got the coordinates.”
“Send a team to the wreckage site. I want every available man looking for them.”
“We’ve got two teams en route via snowmobile.”
“I want two more teams sent out.”