Max took Renee into one of the bedrooms and threw the mattress up. There was a storage chamber underneath, which he opened. It held weapons and tactical gear.
“Oh my God. What, are you prepping for doomsday?”
“I like to be ready. Just in case. Quick, put these in.” He took some earplugs and handed them to her.
“Why?”
“Trust me. And take this.”
He handed her an MP-5.
“No. Max, I don’t like guns.”
“Renee, I’m sorry, but we don’t have time. Take the gun. There. Now the safety’s off. It’s in single-shot mode. You just point and shoot. And make sure you aren’t pointing it at me.”
The Eurocopter hovered just above the beach, and all four Russian mercenaries hopped off. The helicopter took back off and circled overhead.
The Russians had been told that there was likely only one target. He would be well trained. And the fact that the helicopter had just dropped them off meant that he would be expecting them. They sprinted down the beach.
“Here!” Mikhail shouted when his GPS told them that they had reached the right location. He gave a command and they fanned out into a line, about five yards between them. They scanned the backyard of the house and looked for movement in the windows.
“There,” one of the Russians said. The man depressed a button attached to his AEK-919K Kashtan submachine gun, emitting a green laser that was visible to all of them through their night vision goggles. It pointed to a room on the northern side of the house.
Two of them approached the back door. Another crept around the side of the house, keeping his Saiga 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun pointed at the window in question. Mikhail stayed back, on a mound of sand in the backyard, keeping his weapon trained on the house and searching for any sign of the man inside.
There was no movement. No flashlights. No voices. Doubt crept into Mikhail’s mind. He didn’t like how still it was.
Max watched the attackers approach from the living room window. He hunched over behind the couch. Renee was on the other side. There were four of them. He could see their silhouettes making their way over the small sandy mound in his backyard, their weapons trained on the house. A laser pointer shot out from one of them, pointing at Max’s bedroom.
Max risked a whisper. “Can you take the one on the left?”
“I don’t know, Max.” Her voice was quivering.
“Relax, Renee,” he whispered. “It’s going to be okay. Just point and shoot — when I say three, shoot. After that, we go to my car and head for the airport. Understood? Whether we get them all or not, we’ll make a run for it. Okay?”
“Understood.”
“One… two… three.”
He fired two three-round bursts. The rattle of the MP-5s rang out in the night air. Empty shells fell onto the hardwood floor. Bullets holes riddled the walls, splinters of wood and chunks of plaster flying through the dark room.
Max watched his two targets drop to the ground. Then he turned towards Renee’s side. She was frozen, her finger off the trigger. Damn.
Max took aim at a section of the wall where he thought Renee’s target might have been, then he fired at the remaining silhouette that had stayed back near the beach.
He saw the dark figure fall down in the sand, and more bullet holes began to appear on the eastern wall of Max’s home — the attacker in the backyard was firing at them.
Max flattened himself on the floor and dragged Renee down with him.
“We need to get out of here.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled by his earplugs. In the moonlight, he could see her eyes, wide with fear and anguish. Household items exploded around them as an attacker fired into the home.
“Let’s go.” Max quickly looked back up and fired several more bursts from the MP-5, until his magazine was empty.
“Come on!”
He grabbed Renee’s arm and they both ran out to the Toyota in the driveway. Max emptied his magazine and reloaded another. They were both treading backwards, aiming their weapons around the house in case anyone jumped out.
They got in and Max started the vehicle and slammed on the accelerator. They sped off down the road, the sound of a helicopter looming overhead.
“Who were they?” Renee asked, her voice near hysterical. She was in the passenger seat, looking behind them.
“I don’t know. But I heard one of them say something in Russian.”
Max turned right and floored it, speeding through the closed gate of the Jekyll Island airport.
“Who would be able to come after us this quickly?”
Max slammed the brakes and the car came to a halt. “I have some ideas. Were you able to bring your laptop?”
“Yes, I got it,” Renee said, patting her messenger bag.
They both exited the vehicle and hopped the airport fence. Max looked back in the direction of his house. It was about a mile away now. He could still hear the sound of the helicopter. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was a little louder now.
“This is our plane. Get in.” Max threw the bags and weapons into the back cargo hold and then thought better of it.
“Here.” He handed Renee one of the MP-5s and an extra magazine.
She took it with both hands, not asking questions.
Starting up the aircraft went quick, but taxiing seemed painfully slow. When the helicopter buzzed them for the first time, Renee let out a yelp.
This was what Max had been afraid of.
If he got airborne, there was no way a helicopter could keep up with his fixed-wing aircraft. The helicopter would max out around 150 knots. His aircraft would leave it in the dust. But that was only after he took off and climbed out. Right now, he was vulnerable.
It was dark, and they could barely make out the helicopter as it looped around and headed back in their direction. They were still on the taxiway, but there was a lot of flat pavement in front of them.
“Hold on,” Max said. “I’m going to try and take off here.”
“Are we on the runway yet?” Renee said, looking at him with incredulity.
“No, we’re on a taxiway. But I think I can make it. If I take off now, the helicopter might get one more pass in before we take off. Then we’ll lose him. If I take the time to taxi all the way down to the runway, he’ll be able to keep shooting at us the whole way.”
“But?”
“But we might not have enough runway to take off…”
“What did you just say?”
“Never mind. I’ll tell you later.”
Max pushed the throttle forward and the engine let out a fierce whine. They were both pressed back into their seats as they moved faster along the pavement.
“Here they come again.”
Max could see the nose of the helicopter dipping down as it raced towards them from the left side.
He looked at his airspeed indicator. Forty knots. Fifty knots. Come on… He could see little yellow bursts of gunfire coming from the helicopter’s rear cabin.
A bullet burst a hole in the Plexiglas window on his left-hand side.
“What should I do?” asked Renee.
“Fire back.”
Renee took a deep breath. She reached over him and aimed her MP-5 out his window, firing three shots towards the hovering helicopter. The gunfire was very close to Max’s face, and he reflexively turned away. He could smell the odor of the spent rounds and felt the shells dropping on his lap.
“Careful,” Max yelled, his ears ringing. “That’s enough. Just have a seat.” Perhaps Renee might be better as an observer.
Renee sat back in her seat as the helicopter sped overhead.
There. Takeoff speed.
Max pulled back on the yoke with his left hand. The airflow through the broken window was intense, but otherwise, there was no sign of damage.