The Silent Sea (Oregon Files 7)

ull attention. “Jerr, it’s the only way.”

“Mike, get this tub to the RHIB,” Jerry shouted past Cabrillo. “Chairman, please. I know I’m dying. I can feel it getting closer and closer. Don’t throw your lives away on a dead man. I’m not asking, Juan. I’m begging. I don’t want to go knowing you guys went with me.”

Pulaski held out a hand, which Juan took. The congealed blood on his palm cemented their skin together. Jerry continued. “It ain’t noble, staying with me. It’s suicide. Argies are gonna shoot you for spies after torturing you.” He coughed wetly and spat a little blood onto the deck. “I got an ex who hates me and a kid who don’t know me. You’re my family. I don’t want you to die for me. I want you to live for me instead. You understand?”

“I understand you copied that sentiment from Braveheart,” Juan said. His lips smiled. His eyes couldn’t.

“I’m serious, Juan.”

For Cabrillo, time stopped for a few moments. The steady beat of the rotor and the whine of the turbine faded to silence. He’d known death and loss. His wife had been killed by a drunk driver—herself. He’d lost agents and contacts during his time at the CIA, and the Corporation had been visited by the Grim Reaper as well, but he’d never asked another man to die so that he could live.

He reached into his pack and handed the portable GPS to Mike. “The RHIB’s at waypoint Delta.”

“There’s no place to land,” Mike said. “You remember how thick that jungle was. And there’s no way I can ditch this thing in the river without killing us all.”

“Don’t worry about an LZ,” Mark Murphy shouted forward. “I got that covered.”

Cabrillo knew to trust the eccentric Mr. Murphy.

“Swing us around and punch in waypoint Delta.”

“Not Delta,” Murph said. “Echo.”

“Echo?” Juan questioned.

“Trust me.”

The Eurocopter’s navigational computer was self-explanatory, so Mike punched in the coordinates from the handheld GPS, then swung the chopper around to a southeasterly bearing. So far, his flying had been smooth and controlled, just as he’d been taught. Gomez Adams would be proud.

“Looks like we have enough fuel. Barely,” he said.

“Chairman,” Mark shouted. “Starboard side. Maybe three klicks back.”

“What?”

“I saw the flash of sun off the other chopper’s windshield.”

Juan looked out the side window. He didn’t see anything but he didn’t doubt Mark’s eyesight. The Argentines were coming a lot faster than he’d thought. Then he should have realized it. With their helo burning oil, they didn’t have the speed to match the other bird. And the Argentine Major would tear the guts out of his aircraft in order to get his prey.

“Mike,” he shouted. “Give us everything she’s got. Company’s coming.”

The turbines kicked up a notch but didn’t sound healthy. Metal was grinding someplace in the engine compartment, and it was only a matter of time before they shut down.

Juan looked around the cabin for additional weapons. The door-mounted .30 caliber was a better option than their H&K machine pistols, but only if the other helo came up on the port side where the gun was mounted. He found a medical kit under the bench seat and a red plastic box containing a large-bore flare pistol and four stubby projectiles. Juan knew the script for this mission didn’t include a billion-to-one shot with a flare, so he left it on the bench.

“Mark, jury-rig a harness for me,” he ordered as he set to work unbolting the old Browning machine gun from its webbing gimbal.

The gun was a thirty-pound, four-foot-long antique with a single pistol grip at the end of its boxy receiver. A belt of fifty brass cartridges dangled from the breach and made an almost musical chime when they clinked together. He was familiar enough with the weapon and knew it had a reputation for reliability as well as a recoil that could shatter teeth.

Juan stripped off his shirt. He wrapped the garment around the Browning’s twenty-four-inch barrel and tied it off with the rest of the surgical tape.

Murph, meanwhile, shucked out of his combat harness and reconfigured the nylon webbing into a long loop that he clipped to a D ring just forward of the starboard door. He clipped the other end to the back of Cabrillo’s combat harness. He used the strap of his backpack to make a second loop that would go around the Chairman’s ankles. He would hold the other end to prevent Juan from falling into the Eurocopter’s slipstream.

“I see them in my mirror,” Mike announced from the cockpit. “If you’re going to do something, do it quick.”

“How much farther?” Juan asked.

“Eight miles to Echo. And just so you know, I don’t see anything below us but jungle.”