One minute forty.
“Bomb on the bird!” he shouted.
Henley’s voice rattled on the radio. “What the hell?—”
Wyatt gripped the casing and pulled. The magnetic clamp held. His fingers found the edge, dug under the housing, and he wrenched it sideways. Something gave with a teeth-rattling crack.
Heavy. Five pounds, maybe six.
The timer kept counting.
One minute thirty.
He ran.
Hard.
“Wyatt!” Henley’s voice behind him. “Get back here!”
“Can’t! Device is live!”
He sprinted flat out, legs and lungs burning, the timer in his hand counting down.
Men rounded the corner of the tower. Black tactical gear, weapons up. Not two or three. A dozen. Maybe more.
Not a hijacking. An organized assault.
Wyatt hit the platform edge. Sixty-foot drop to black water. “Bishop, go! Get out now!”
“Not without?—”
“That’s an order! Report hostile takeover and bring backup!”
He hurled the bomb. It arced out over the water, end-over-end.
Fifty feet.
Sixty.
Seventy.
Splash.
Forty seconds.
He turned. The Jayhawk’s rotors were spooling up. Henley on his knees in the cabin door, face white. Rey was shouting something as he secured the medevac patient.
Between Wyatt and the helicopter, armed men were closing in fast.
The underwater explosion kicked a geyser of white water twenty feet into the air. The pressure wave rolled across the surface of the helipad like a fist.
“Go!” Wyatt screamed into his radio. “Get them out of here!”
The Jayhawk lifted. Nose dipped forward. Banking hard.
Bullets sparked off the deck where it had been moments before. Sparks and ricochets and the sharp crack of rifle fire.
The helo climbed. Rounds punched through the tail section, the cabin door—but Bishop kept it airborne and it banked away from the station.
