Adams turned the Robinson broadside to clear Linc’s view. A few guards in the distant compound fired at the hovering helicopter, but the distance was too great. Lincoln fitted the big rifle to his shoulder and checked the sight picture through the night vision scope. The world was an eerie green through the optics, but somehow intimate. He could see the frustration on the guards’ faces as they fired at the chopper. He scanned the scene and settled the reticle on the idling JetRanger helicopter. His view was so sharp he could see the air shimmering from the heat that poured from the turbine’s exhaust.

The crack of the gun sounded like a cannon, and Linc absorbed the brutal recoil without taking his eyes from the sight. The bullet arrived long before anyone on the ground heard it, so the destruction came as a stunning surprise. It struck the JetRanger’s rotor mast, the most vulnerable part of any helicopter. The whirling mast came apart so that her blades were launched like a pair of deadly scythes. One cut through a cluster of men who were setting up a shoulder-fired missile. The dismemberments were something even a veteran like Franklin Lincoln had a hard time stomaching.

The other blade hit a large fuel tank mounted on stilts. The highly volatile aviation gas went up in a towering explosion that overwhelmed the scope’s light filters. Linc looked over the rifle and saw flames mushrooming outward and upward. Anyone standing within a hundred feet of the tank was knocked back by the concussion. Anyone within fifty feet had been immolated.

“I’ve got movement,” Adams called out. “Rear door of the JetRanger just opened. Guy wearing a turban is running for it.”

“That has to be Shere Singh,” Tory said. “Where’s he going?”

“Hold on.” A few tense moments passed. “Okay, he’s getting into a car. Looks like a big Mercedes sedan. He’s getting into the backseat. There’s only him and the driver.”

“Want me to take him out, Juan?” Linc asked, bringing the sniper rifle to his shoulder again.

“Not here. Let him get out onto the highway and away from all these guards.”

“Singh must have radioed someone,” George announced. “Another car is pulling away from the residential compound. Looks like at least three armed men inside.”

“We knew this wouldn’t be easy.” Cabrillo checked his watch. A third of their thirty-minute window to catch the Oregon had gone by.

A moment later they all saw the headlights of the pair of cars race out the facility’s back gate and head south. The road was hemmed in by dark jungle, so the lights reflected as though the vehicles were speeding through a tunnel. George opened the throttle to the Robinson’s engine and quickly overtook the vehicles.