Chapter 11 - Fire in the Sky
"Evasive maneuvers!" Maya screamed over the engine roar.
Marcus jerked the wheel hard to port. The boat carved a brutal arc through the waves just as a burst of high-velocity sniper fire tore through the fiberglass deck where Maya had been sitting a split second earlier.
The helicopter banked aggressively, staying right above their wake. Over the aircraft's external loudspeaker, Victoria Callahan's shrill, recorded voice crackled with chilling authority:
"Kill the engines and surrender the vessel, or you will be sunk without survivors."
"They're completely out of their minds!" Marcus yelled, fighting the choppy waves as spray blinded the windshield. "They're willing to murder their own grandson in broad daylight to bury the evidence!"
"Julian doesn't care about blood!" Maya yelled back. She crawled along the vibrating deck toward the emergency locker beneath the helm. "Marcus! What's in the flare kit?"
"Heavy maritime distress launcher! Under the passenger seat!"
Maya ripped open the red watertight container and pulled out a heavy steel 26.5mm signal flare pistol. She loaded a thick phosphor-magnesium cartridge into the breech and locked it shut with a solid snap.
"Marcus, bring us around into the wind!" Maya ordered, standing up against the center console and bracing her boots against the deck cleats. "Draw them down to thirty feet!"
"If I slow down, their next burst takes out the fuel tanks!"
"Trust me!" Maya yelled.
Marcus gritted his teeth, cut the starboard throttle, and spun the helm. The boat skidded sideways across a rolling swell, presenting its broadside to the pursuing chopper.
The helicopter pilot saw the boat slow and dropped altitude to allow his gunmen a clean, lethal shot into the cockpit. The downwash from the rotor blades whipped the lake surface into a white froth, throwing stinging spray into Maya's eyes.
Thirty feet. Twenty-five feet.
Maya raised the flare gun with both hands, took aim directly at the helicopterâs exposed turbine intake manifold, and squeezed the trigger.
THWUMP!
A blinding streak of 2,000-degree white-hot phosphor launched from the barrel, tracing a laser-straight line into the helicopter's starboard engine intake.
KABOOM!
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The engine swallowed the magnesium flare. An instantaneous internal explosion blew the turbine cowling off in a shower of twisted metal and orange flame. The helicopter lurched violently to the right, black smoke billowing from the turbine as the tail rotor lost hydraulic pressure.
The pilot screamed over the radio as the aircraft began to spin in a wild, uncontrollable death spiral. It slammed into the dark waters of Blackwood Lake three hundred yards away, throwing up a colossal geyser of foam and steam before sinking beneath the waves.
