Collateral Damage by Kaylea Cross Read Free Book Online

his head to look back at the others in the belly of the aircraft, shock punched through him when he saw the end of the strawberry-blond ponytail poking out from beneath the bottom of the right forward gunner’s helmet.

 
     
     
Chapter Four
     
     
    Feet braced apart on the helo’s deck, Honor struggled to put on her safety harness, wincing as one of the straps dug into the wound in the top of her right shoulder. Something had hit her when one of the rockets had exploded, a piece of shrapnel or something, she wasn’t sure.
    She’d been running away from the hangar when the RPG exploded and sent her flying backward. The next thing she knew, Ipman was leaning over her, his face a mask of concern until she’d mumbled that she was okay and reached for his hand. A few minutes after that she’d heard someone shouting that they needed gunners and she’d raced after the crew chief with Ipman, who was currently manning an M240 in the back.
    Thankfully she’d been wearing a helmet from the time the first alarm had sounded, but the bang to the back of the head had still given her a doozy of a headache. The flesh wound burned like hell though and she could feel the blood trickling down her back. Her elbows were scraped up and she’d have a big multi-color mark on her left hip where she’d hit the ground. All that was nothing compared to one victim she’d seen being carried away from the scene closer to the impact site, a soldier with his arm blown away at the shoulder.
    Filled with hard, cold resolve to end this attack, Honor loaded a belt of ammo into the M184 minigun as the Chinook soared upward away from the base. She’d primarily fired M240s in the past, but even though she wasn’t technically qualified on this weapon she knew how to operate it. Besides, there’d been no time to hesitate and no one else around to do the job. When the crew chief had shouted for gunners, it was either get on and pitch in or allow the attackers to take out vital aircraft.
    She consciously slowed her breathing and scanned out the right shoulder window, trying to get a better look at the threat they were facing. It felt surreal to be in this position, weirder still to know she’d unknowingly hopped on Liam’s bird with the Night Stalker crew chief. She’d always wanted to fly with him and never had the chance, but not like this.
    Liam expertly pulled them up over Bagram and banked hard right, taking them out over the desert. Honor braced a gloved hand against the window frame and kept her eyes trained on the ground below.
    “Contact, two o’clock low,” Liam’s voice announced over the ICS in her helmet.
    Ignoring the throb in her head and whatever was going on with her shoulder, Honor immediately focused on the area and spotted a group of eight old pickup trucks speeding toward the base, each spaced wide enough apart that a regular machine gun would have a tough time hitting them. But hers wasn’t a regular machine gun.
    She swung the muzzle of the six-barreled minigun at the trucks, pulse pounding in her ears as her thumbs made contact with the triggers. To Honor’s three o’clock, another aircrew engaged the tangos. She watched as rounds burst from the forward weapon in the Black Hawk’s starboard side, hitting one of the trucks.
    “Let’s light ‘em up,” the crew chief said from behind her at the left shoulder window. He opened fire on the targets below just as the guns mounted in the beds of the pickups fired up at them. The Chinook pitched upward as Liam took them out of the path of the bullets, then banked hard and dropped as more fire came at them. Honor’s muscles were rigid as she braced herself.
    The moment she had a clear view of the targets on the ground she aimed the muzzles of her weapon at a group of three trucks still speeding toward the base and hit the triggers. All six barrels opened up with a loud buzzing noise.
    Brrrrrrrt. Brrrrrrrt .
    The hail of lethal fire streaked downward like a deadly lightning