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My eyes were on those lines, and sure enough, two more bodies emerged from the helicopter and started to slide down the ropes.
I brought the scope of the rifle in my hand up to my eye, released the safety, and aimed for one of the black-clad bodies hanging like a monkey on a vine. It needed to be a head shot or they could survive.
I shot twice, and they let go of the rope and fell into the dark sea. Then I did the same to the second person trying to shimmy down as the helicopter attempted to get closer.
“Use the grenade launcher!” Rix called out.
“Not until I have a cleaner shot,” Jorik replied. “We only have four grenades. I don’t want to waste them. The chopper’s moving too much. I don’t want to miss.”
None of us had any idea how badly the boat was shot up. We could very well be sinking, so because I wasn’t willing to risk drowning in the middle of the ocean when I’d only just gotten a taste of freedom, I grabbed the grenade launcher from Jorik, set the chopper in the middle of the bull’s-eye and launched it.
The sky erupted into a burst of fire as the helicopter exploded midair. The screams of the men on board didn’t last long, and the entire thing came crashing down into the ocean, sending a tremendous wave barreling toward us.
“Fuck!” Zane roared, cranking the boat hard to the right to avoid us getting capsized by a wave coming right for our starboard side. “A little fucking warning would have been nice, Kitten!” His quick jerk of the boat sent us all wobbling and caused me to tumble to the deck.
But he managed to right us just in time so our bow broke through the waves.
Fire danced across the water in little patches, lighting up the black night as debris from the helicopter floated, only for the flame to suddenly die and cast the water into darkness again when the pieces of debris sank to the bottom with the rest of the helicopter—and its passengers.
“You need to steer us to shore right now,” I said, dropping the grenade launcher and running to check that Rix and Jorik were okay.
“Don’t you think I fucking know that?” Zane barked at me, having let go of his rifle so that he could return both hands to the wheel.
He turned us around and started heading toward shore. I couldn’t tell in the dark whether there was any beach available, but it didn’t matter. We just needed to get close enough to dry land that if the boat started to sink, we wouldn’t have to row forever to reach the shore.
It was dark again now, the last of the fire from the helicopter having been snuffed out, so the land in front of us was just a shadowy black wall.
I could see bullet holes in the deck near the bow, and there were several in the sail, too. Undoubtedly, then, there would be some in the hull. The question was: How far below the waterline did they go, and were we taking on water?
We couldn’t exactly drag the boat up onto the beach either, since sailboats had keels on the bottom.
I clambered down the ladder into the cabin and ran to the bunk to check if water was pouring in. But thankfully, my feet didn’t end up in a big puddle.
Could we really be so lucky?
“How’s it look down there?” Rix called to me.
“Okay … I think,” I replied, holding my breath as I pulled the mattress away from the wall to check behind it.
And, sure enough, there was water.
“Uh … guys …”
If you could thunder down a ladder, Rix and Jorik did.
They joined me in the cabin and glanced behind the mattress.
“Shit,” Rix muttered.
“Motherfuckers,” Jorik exclaimed, running his hands through his short blond hair, his face a dark mask of barely contained rage. “We need to find something to shove in there until we can patch it properly.”
Nodding, I grabbed a towel from one shelf next to the bed and without thinking twice, ripped it in two, bunched it into a small point, then shoved it into the hole. It wasn’t going to hold it forever, but it’d work for a while.
We laid down towels around the hole as well, lifting the mattress up and leaning it against the wall so we had better access to the gunshot in the hull.
With more towels, we sopped up the mess.
It wasn’t enough for a bailing bucket, but if left unattended, it sure as heck would be.
