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Nicholas punched his fist in the air. “Great news. Now, do you have a few weapons we could borrow? I don’t feel like going up against a whole ship of bad guys without some serious firepower.”
The pilot laughed. “Check the cabinet to your left. There’s some C-Eights in there. Plus ammunition. You’re going to need backup. I’m going to send Lieutenant Halpern here to watch your back when you drop on.”
“Perfect.” Nicholas reached over and unstrapped the cabinet, pulled out two C8s, paused for a moment, then took an emergency first-aid kit.
He handed one weapon to Mike, and a pair of thin, sticky gloves. “This is like the M-Four assault rifle, but the barrel is up instead of down. It takes a thirty-round clip.” He pulled out two and handed her one. “So here’s a spare. It’s a little heavier than the M-Four, so it’s gonna kick. Set it to burst.”
He’d gone operational on her, his perfect, crisp, posh British accent was changing into adrenaline-driven military-speak.
“You’ve fast-roped before?”
“Yes, in training. It’s been a while.”
“It’s our only decent ingress. It’s going to be windy, so plan to go fast. Slap that strap over your shoulder, the rifle will lay nice and snug against your back. The minute we hit the deck, you spin it around and cover me.”
“Roger that.”
He looked at her then, really saw her. Her face was pale, composed and set, but her eyes, he could tell she was excited, blood pumping, locked and loaded. She was holding the C8 in a death grip.
He said, “When we’ve wrapped this all up, I’ll buy you a proper meal.”
“No haggis,” she said.
“You’re in luck, it’s not haggis season. A nice cottage pie, that will warm you from the inside.”
He broke open the first-aid kit. He was in luck, God bless Her Majesty’s Navy.
He shook out the pills. “Here, Mike, take two—potassium iodide. It will protect us from radiation.”
She swallowed the pills. “I’ll bring the first-aid kit along. We don’t know what we’re going to encounter down there.”
The chopper was swinging low over the loch now. A herd of red deer sprang away from the cliff’s edge, running away from the noise.
Mike tucked the kit inside her jacket. The adrenaline was starting to pump hard through her body. She took a few deep breaths to tamp it down, pulled on the gloves, grateful she wasn’t going to have to try this bare-handed.
She ran through the weapon, checking it, as she’d been trained to do. When she was comfortable with it, she set it square in her lap and tried to empty her mind of everything but each action she was going to undertake. She was glad she’d put on a heavy sweater under her leather jacket. She had a sinking suspicion it was going to be freezing cold once they slid out the doors of the chopper.
The pilot came over the air again.
“Two minutes to jump.”
“Roger,” Nicholas said, then opened the chopper door. The cold breeze whistled in.
“One minute to jump.”
She took a deep breath, moved into position. There was a thick black coil attached to the floor of the chopper, the ropes they were going to slide down. The copilot joined them, his own weapon at the ready. He shouted, “I’m Lieutenant Ryan Halpern. I’m going to cover your insertion. Careful to keep your feet free of the rope, ma’am, since I’ll be right behind you.”
Mike gave him a thumbs-up. She saw the Gravitania’s lights below, bobbing in the waves.
The pilot said, “We’ve circled twice, I don’t see any activity of any kind from the ship. We’re going to insert you low, so if there are bad guys down there hiding, they’ll come out like lice so you’ll have to be ready to rock ’n’ roll. You’ll have a thirty-foot slide, okay?”
Nicholas smiled at her. “Mike, you ready?”
Her heart jumped into her throat, blood thundered in her head. She gave him a mad grin, took the thick braided rope in her hand, fed it around her arms and left her legs free.
The pilot said in her ear, “Fast-rope on my mark—three, two, one, jump, jump, jump.”
And they went out the door, snaking down the lines onto the deck of Havelock’s ship.
