“We need communications to come back up,” Eliana said. “Barring that, someone could fly to Somero and try to get information on the ground, but we don’t know what’s happening in Somero either. They could be dealing with a takeover in the palace, and that’s not a situation we want to blindly walk into.”
“I’ve already thought of taking a military helicopter into Somero to look for Dad’s plane. Somero is under attack, there’s no doubt about it, but we can’t sit by if there’s any chance Dad’s still alive,” Elias said.
“But if your father is gone, Elias, that makes you king. You’ll be a target either way if you fly into Somero unannounced—both by any insurgents and Somero’s military as well. They won’t know who you are if you can’t communicate. It’s a giant risk to put your life on the line like that.” Chey removed her arm from around Emily’s shoulders as she made her case for Elias’s safety.
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand. And she was right. It was risky. But he’d grown up learning that sometimes a favorable outcome was worth the risk.
“I know, Mom. But I can’t do nothing. Dad wouldn’t sit here and do nothing either. Look how hard he fought for me when I had amnesia. Emily and Erick can help you deal with Kirkley and the military. You know what to do when communications come back online. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I need to go. Eliana can come with me.” He glanced at his sister. Eliana nodded, indicating she was on board with the plan.
“Don’t worry about our borders. We’ll take care of it,” Emily said. “Go find Dad.”
“Because we don’t know what Dad’s status is, I can’t swear you in as heir in my absence, Emily. You’ll have to deal with that should the worst come to pass.” Elias hugged his mother tight, kissed her cheek, and clapped Erick on the shoulder before departing with Eliana to have a word with Kirkley.
He tried to tamp down any unease at what he might find in Somero.
We’re going down.
The words haunted him all the way out the front doors of Kallaster Castle.
Elias spent fifteen minutes in the courtyard with Kirkley finalizing departure plans. There were always pilots on standby at Kallaster for emergencies and today was no different. The pilot on duty was highly experienced and Elias trusted the man to get them in and out of Somero safely. While he was busy with Kirkley and the pilot, Eliana worked with another guard to secure more weapons and extra magazines, which arrived in good time.
On the short drive from the castle to the helipad, Elias kept an eye on the surroundings. Pallan Island would be difficult to infiltrate—but not impossible if all the guards had been taken out at the docks. He doubted such a scenario, however, and they made it to the helipad without incident.
The weather could have been better. An overcast, brooding sky promised rain at some point. Elias hoped it hit after they departed for Somero.
Luck was not with them.
As soon as they were airborne, the first raindrops fell.
Chapter 19
Sander quickly realized that the attackers meant to hunt them down like dogs. The vehicle had stopped somewhere beyond the wreckage, out of sight, and the men inside were now on foot. He knew by the cease of gunfire and the silence beyond the sounds of a burning plane. The men were not shooting randomly or at questionable targets; they were systematically sifting through the wreckage, hoping to startle Sander and the others from cover or trap them where they hid. At some point the attackers would round the end of the fuselage, see him and the others crouched there, and open fire.
Not before I blow them to hell, Sander thought. He wouldn’t play sitting duck and die without a fight.
The lack of rain allowed the smoldering fire in the tail end to burn hotter and brighter. Smoke began billowing from the interior and, thanks to a shift in wind, blew it right toward them. Sander cursed under his breath. No sooner had he done so that wisps of smoke enveloped the entire area.
Jeremiah coughed three times.
Despite the distant roll of thunder and the renewed crack of flames, the coughing sounded like a siren. Sander knew Jeremiah couldn’t help it. It was impossible to avoid breathing the smoke.
Mattias coughed.
Leander coughed.
And then he coughed.
Their coughing was going to get them killed.
Beyond the crack of flames, Sander heard their stalkers coughing, too. The noises were too distorted for him to discern from exactly which direction they came. As far as he could tell, it would come down to a matter of who found who first, and he wasn’t about to be the loser in this game. He crept from his spot toward the far end of the fuselage and rounded the smashed tip. One of the pilots hung half out the window, facedown, clearly dead. He ignored the body and brought up his gun. In that moment, he wished he’d liberated an assault rifle from the plane.
As if he’d had time.
Movement through the swirling smoke to his right alerted him to company. Sander dropped to a knee and fired.
There was nothing else to be done. If he waited, he might get shot. There was little chance that he’d gone unnoticed by the enemy.
Another slip of movement brought his aim around. He fired again, unsure whether he’d hit either of his targets.
Shouts erupted—he tried to count how many voices and failed—perhaps twenty feet from the plane.
He’d maybe taken down two. Maybe. How many more to go?
Too many.
Sander retreated behind the nose of the plane, moving slowly backward toward Mattias, Leander, and Jeremiah. He expected the stalkers to split up and attack from around the nose of the jet as well as the severed end. With the inability to see or to know if he’d hit his target, and the limited amount of ammunition, there was little choice in Sander’s mind but to sit and wait for the attackers to show themselves. Pick the bastards off like ducks in a row. He sank to a knee, making himself a smaller target, and aimed generally where he thought the enemy might appear. Mattias, Leander, and Jeremiah were going to have to take care of the others.
Gunfire erupted behind him. Sander twitched with the desire to turn and look—he couldn’t. Knew he shouldn’t.
And it was a good thing he didn’t.
Three armed men in camouflage burst from around the nose of the jet, already shooting. Bullets whizzed over his head. Sander threw himself against the side of the plane and popped off five successive shots.
Two men fell.
The third realized the error of shooting too high and brought his aim down.
Sander pulled the trigger before the bastard could blow his head off.
He risked a look behind him.
Mattias, Leander, and Jeremiah were crouched next to the fuselage, guns drawn. Sander caught a glimpse of bodies beyond, dead on the ground. While he had a moment, he exchanged magazines, giving him a full fifteen rounds. If he found himself in another shootout, he didn’t want to have only eight bullets left.
Five minutes ticked by.
Ten.
Sander crawled closer toward Mattias.
“Think that’s it?” Sander asked.
“I don’t know. How many are down?” Mattias countered.
“I maybe got two on the other side and three at the nose.”
“We got five between us. That’s ten. That should account for everyone in the vehicles.”
“We need to get away from the wreckage. I guarantee that we haven’t seen the last of them,” Leander said. He coughed and wheezed with the effort to speak as a fresh cloud of smoke passed through.
Sander coughed, too. “The pilots did a good job of landing us in a field. Problem is it’s too far to the forest. We can’t hide behind the few trees the plane didn’t obliterate when we came down.”
“If we go into the open and make a run for the woods, we’ll be easy targets,” Mattias said.
“Some of us can’t make a run for it.” Sander shot a pointed look at Mattias’s leg.
“If I have to, I will,” Matti
as said.
“If we don’t, we’ll die,” Leander pointed out. “I can make it. I won’t be fast, but I’ll get there.”
Sander glanced at the distant tree line. Under the gloomy sky, through layers of smoke, it seemed a mile away. Or more. An impossible distance with so many of their party sporting serious injuries. But Leander was right. They would be too easy to pick off if they stayed. A bigger group might be on its way.
“Search the bodies for ammunition and let’s take the assault rifles with us.” Sander pushed to his feet and began the tedious task of stripping the attackers of their weapons. He kept an eye on his surroundings as he did so, wary of someone they might have missed.
“What was that?” Leander whispered.
“What was what?” Sander froze, one hand on an assault rifle.
“Heard something.”
“Let’s go. We can’t wait.” Mattias appeared at his side and wrested weapons from the deceased. Two assault rifles, two magazines.
Sander resumed confiscating his own weapon but listened for whatever it was Leander thought he heard. He crept back to the safety of the fuselage once he’d finished and, when Leander was armed with an assault rifle, moved away from the wreckage with Mattias, Leander, and Jeremiah creeping at his heels. Mattias limped the entire time, having dumped the modified crutch some time back.
Perhaps twenty yards from the nose section, Sander thought he heard the distant sound of a machine. He halted the group and scanned the field to the north.
Three tactical vehicles, engines gunning, drove into view past the smoke. The lumbering trucks could hold more than ten men apiece.
Sander gauged the distance to the trees. They weren’t going to make it before being spotted.
If they hadn’t already.
“Down!” Sander called.
He dropped to the ground, wincing at the pain that shot through every part of his body. The black attire he and the others wore would not serve them well against the green and beige colors of the field. Sander only hoped the billowing smoke would help obscure them from view.
“They’re going to see us,” Leander said. He was out of breath, face a mask of agony. The bright red patch on his scalp stood out sharply against his wet, bedraggled hair.
“They will either way,” Sander agreed. “We can’t go back to the wreck. We’re too far now.”
“Spread out and crawl,” Jeremiah said. “If they haven’t seen us, they’ll search the wreckage first. That’ll give us a better head start.”
Sander knew crawling would exacerbate their injuries, maybe to the point of incapacitation. Leander wasn’t going to make it very far. But what other choice did they have? Even with the extra rifles and ammo, there wasn’t enough firepower to wage war against twenty or thirty men.
How the hell had such a number infiltrated Somero’s defenses? Sander dreaded to think the palace had been overtaken and Thane killed.
He started crawling. One hand over the other, pulling himself along the rough, rain-drenched terrain. Every slide of his body brought with it agonizing pain.
Better than being dead.
Grunts of pain erupted from Mattias, Leander, and Jeremiah as they followed suit. Jeremiah was at a serious disadvantage with his broken arm, but he persevered, somehow carrying all his weaponry and dragging himself through the scrub and the mud.
“Look. There’s a collection of boulders over there. Not very high, but we should be able to hide behind them. Or use them for cover to shoot,” Sander said. The four-foot stack of rocks had been hard to see from the wreckage. He changed trajectory and crawled that way. The rocks were much closer than the trees.
“My insides are going to fall out,” Leander muttered.
Leave it to Leander to reach for levity at a time like this. Sander would have laughed under different circumstances. As it was, he struggled to pull himself over the ground, using his boots to dig into the earth for leverage.
Mattias cursed.
“What?” Sander shot a look over his shoulder toward Mattias.
“The trucks are diverting around the wreck. They’ve seen us.”
Chapter 20
The weather remained terrible as the chopper left Latvalan territory and crossed the border into Somero. They flew through bouts of rain that made it impossible for Elias to see anything but a haze of white out the window, a frustrating development as they drew closer to the flight path the jet would have taken. The chopper pilot, well versed in trips back and forth between countries, flew them on a heading that should have allowed them better odds of finding any wreckage.
Finally, the rain ceased.
“It’s about time,” Eliana said over the headset.
Elias understood her frustration. It was difficult enough to be searching for their father’s downed jet, much less having to deal with severe visibility issues and threatening storms.
The helicopter cruised along at a steady pace. Elias searched the ground for any signs of debris. His heart was in his throat the entire time, dreading what they might find. There was a part of him that hoped they found nothing at all and that the jet had somehow made it to one of Somero’s airports to land. But every time he remembered the noises over the phone and his father’s grim announcement, he instinctively knew there would be no miracle outcome. The jet had gone down despite all his wishes and prayers to the contrary.
A half hour later, Elias had spotted nothing of significance on the ground. No glimmers of metal or pieces of wing. The pilot announced that he’d not seen anything, either, nor had Eliana or three of Kirkley’s guards who’d come with them.
Fifteen minutes ticked by as the search continued.
“Changing trajectory,” the pilot said over the headset.
“You think they veered off course?” Elias asked.
“They could have, Prince Elias. But I think I see smoke to the east. Going to check it out.”
“That definitely looks like smoke,” the copilot said.
Both pilots were combat veterans. If they thought they saw smoke, the chances were better than good that they were right. Elias pulled in a breath and exhaled slowly. He glanced across the seat to Eliana, who was looking his way. Their gazes locked. No one had to tell Elias that his sister was as unnerved as he. They communicated their apprehension in silence before looking out their respective windows.
Minutes later, Elias spotted the first bits of debris. Small shards of metal glinted against the ground. A section of broken wing came into view, almost as if the jet had been nothing more than a toy plane smashed onto the clearing by a toddler’s hand.
Elias’s stomach drop to his feet.
Dear God.
“I see the fuselage,” the pilot said in a grim voice. “It’s broken into three or four pieces.”
Elias wasn’t at the right angle to see the entirety of the wreck. But the debris field was wide enough that he held little hope of finding the plane mostly intact.
“Tactical vehicles on the ground,” the copilot announced. “We have thr—wait. Evasive maneuvers!”
The helicopter swerved sharply to the left.
“Everyone hold on! We’re taking fire,” the pilot said.
Elias shot a hand out to brace himself and looked out the window. He caught a glimpse of fuselage and a speeding tactical vehicle. The chopper circled all the way around, as if going in for a second pass.
“Prince Elias, we have combatants on the ground. Permission to shoot,” the pilot said.
“Are you positive they’re combatants?” Elias considered that the vehicles might be Thane’s own men. He didn’t want to be responsible for a massacre against an ally.
“Wait, wait. I see men on the ground not attached to the tactical vehicles!” the copilot shouted. “Could be survivors of the crash.”
“Yes, Prince Elias. They’ve got several men pinned down and they’re shooting at us,” the pilot said.
The speed with which the situation escalated intensified. Elias saw several bodies o
n the ground, all dressed in black. He heard the ping-ping of bullets impact the helicopter and knew the pilot was right even before two more terrain vehicles come into view. Several combatants stood in an open hatch in the roof, aiming skyward. If any of the vehicles had belonged to Somero, they would have had some sort of identifying sign. There was none.
“Fire at will,” Elias said. He pulled the assault rifle he held tighter across his lap.
The helicopter swerved again and approached the scene from another angle. Fifty-caliber rounds erupted from the helicopter’s guns as the pilot made a first pass over the enemy convoy. Elias glimpsed men diving for cover; a few others popped up above the hoods of the trucks and aimed for the chopper.
This time, the pilot veered to the right. He came around firing, exhibiting an extraordinary amount of piloting skill.
Elias had a better view of the men pinned down on the ground. His heart was in his throat again. Could they really be survivors of the crash? He recognized the gear as that which his father and the others—as he himself—wore on missions. The distance was still too great to pick out minor details such as hair color or facial features. It could have been guards—but what if one was his father?
He tried not to get his hopes up too high.
“Set us down behind the men!” Elias said to the pilot. He knew the risks. They were many. Setting down, even for a minute, would give the enemy time to regroup and fire on the helicopter. But Elias thought he and Eliana would be better use on the ground than helpless in the chopper.
The pilot made another wicked pass, punching holes into the side of a vehicle. Several men hit the dirt and did not get up again.
After the last strafing run, the pilot landed in the field behind the crash survivors. Elias yanked open the door and hit the ground running. Eliana and the three guards followed him out, guns raised. Elias’s rifle chattered as he fired toward the caravan of vehicles, attempting to give the pilot time to take off. If they could get the bird in the air, Elias thought they had a good chance of winning the skirmish.
Latvala Royals: Darkest Hours Page 10