A 4-Year-Old Girl Fell From a Million-Dollar Mansion’s Balcony Into an Infinity Pool! After the Servant Saved Her, She Kept Pointing Upstairs… But When He Saw Who Was Closing the Curtains, His Blood Ran Cold! / Chapter 25 / 60

Chapter 25 - The Fall of the Black Bird

Gabriel didn't hesitate.

He didn't run toward cover. He ran straight into the center of the open beach, entirely exposing himself to the spotlight.

"HERE, YOU BASTARDS!" Gabriel roared at the sky, raising the captured HK416 with both hands and emptying the entire thirty-round magazine directly into the cockpit glass of the hovering helicopter.

The rounds sparked and ricocheted off the reinforced ballistic glass, leaving spiderweb cracks across the windshield. The pilot instinctively pulled the cyclic stick back, tilting the aircraft to shield the flight deck.

The sniper leaning out the side door swung his heavy rifle toward Gabriel, his laser painting Gabriel’s chest.

Gabriel dropped the empty rifle, grabbed Miller’s twelve-gauge shotgun from his back, and sprinted with explosive speed toward the sheared wing of the sunken seaplane.

The sniper fired. The heavy round blasted a crater of stone and mud two inches behind Gabriel’s heels, the shockwave nearly knocking him off his feet.

Gabriel leaped onto the crumpled aluminum wing of the Beaver. Using the bent metal as a springboard, he vaulted upward toward a massive, dead cedar trunk that leaned at a forty-five-degree angle over the lake’s edge. He scrambled up the rough bark like a mountain cat, defying gravity and exhaustion, reaching an elevation of thirty feet above the water.

The helicopter swung around to re-acquire him, its rotors churning the air into a screaming tempest that bent the cedar branches violently.

The sniper was chambering another round, his eyes locked into his thermal scope, searching the rocks below.

He didn't look up.

Gabriel, perched on the precarious cedar limb, raised the twelve-gauge shotgun. But he didn't aim at the sniper. Nor did he aim at the pilot.

He aimed directly at the exposed, open intake of the Eurocopter’s starboard turbine engine, less than twenty-five feet away.

"Eat this," Gabriel whispered.

*BOOM!*

He fired. A wall of lead buckshot tore into the spinning titanium turbine blades.

*BOOM!*

He pumped the slide and fired again.

The result was catastrophic. The turbine blades, spinning at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute, shattered upon impact with the heavy lead shot. Metal shrapnel tore through the engine casing. A violent fireball erupted from the exhaust port, followed instantly by a sound like a screaming mechanical monster being chewed up in an industrial grinder.

"ENGINE FIRE! WE'VE LOST NUMBER TWO!" the pilot screamed over the loudspeaker before the audio cut out in a shower of sparks.

The helicopter swung violently out of control, its anti-torque pedals useless as the tail rotor lost pressure. The massive aircraft began to spin like a dying top, its main blades chopping through the tops of the hemlocks, sending severed branches and splintered trunks raining onto the beach.

Gabriel leaped from the cedar limb just as the helicopter’s tail boom struck the tree, obliterating the trunk into toothpicks.

Gabriel hit the icy water of the lake hard, the breath driven completely from his lungs. He forced his body to swim beneath the surface as the burning, multi-million-dollar war machine smashed into the deep center of the glacial lake fifty yards away.

The explosion underwater was a dull, bone-rattling *THUMP* that sent shockwaves rippling through Gabriel’s ribcage. Fire boiled to the surface, licking the water with burning jet fuel, illuminating the foggy canyon in grotesque shades of orange and black.

Gabriel surfaced, coughing up freezing water and blood, his vision swimming with stars.

He dragged himself onto the gravel bank, gasping for oxygen, his body trembling from hypothermia and shock.

Across the beach, two figures emerged from the shadows of the tree line.

It was the remaining two ground contractors. They had abandoned their stealth. One held a combat knife; the other raised a sidearm, aiming straight at Gabriel’s battered, dripping form.

Gabriel reached for his Kimber .45 in his shoulder holster.

His holster was empty. The pistol had been ripped away when he hit the water.

He was unarmed. Exhausted. Drowning on land.

The contractor with the pistol smirked beneath his tactical mask, stepping forward to deliver the execution shot. "End of the line, boy."

*BANG.*

A gunshot echoed through the canyon.

The contractor with the pistol froze. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed face-first into the gravel, a jagged hole torn through the side of his neck.