Chapter 10 - The Fall of the Hawk
The sudden rumble shook the canyon floor. Miller looked up in pure terror as tons of iron and stone tore down the hillside straight toward the helicopter’s tail rotor.
"Move!" Miller screamed to the pilot.
The pilot reflexively pulled the collective, pitching the aircraft up. The spinning tail rotor clipped the falling ore cart with a violent, catastrophic explosion of shrapnel. The tail snapped like dry kindling. The helicopter whipped into an uncontrollable spin, slamming back into the dirt embankment and crushing the cockpit under its own weight.
In the blinding storm of dust and debris, Miller stumbled backward, losing his grip on Maya's sweater.
"Maya! Run!" Gabriel roared.
The girl didn't hesitate. She threw herself flat against a crevice in the canyon wall, tucking her knees to her chest just as Gabriel had taught her during the diner breach.
Gabriel closed the gap like a thunderbolt. Miller scrambled up from the dirt, his face covered in blood, drawing his pistol blindly through the dust.
Gabriel didn't draw a weapon. He hit Miller with the full weight of his two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame, driving him into the jagged rock face. The gun went flying into the abyss below.
Miller gasped, clawing at Gabriel's throat. "You can't... you can't beat the Syndicate, Gabriel! There are fifty more behind me!"
Gabriel pinned Miller against the rock with a forearm pressed against his throat, his eyes void of mercy. "They aren't here. You are."
"Kill me... and you'll never find the cabin before the water rises," Miller wheezed with a bloody smile. "The floodgates at the old dam... they open automatically at four o'clock. She’s locked in the spillway chamber."
Gabriel checked his watch. It was 3:18 PM. The old dam was twelve miles of treacherous mountain trail to the north.
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Gabriel didn't waste another second. He struck Miller once, a brutal, concussive blow that put the syndicate boss into deep blackness, leaving him tied to the wreckage.
He turned and scooped Maya up from the crevice, throwing her over his uninjured shoulder. "Hold on tight, Maya. We have to ride."
