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There were soccer fields, several barns, so that looked like a racetrack At the rear of the house were illunificent, softly lit tiled pool Beyond the pool was a runith three corporate jets parked at its end

No wonder the US government hadn’t told the Mexicans about the raid How could this opulent palace so boldly exist out here in the e or consent?

The ansas, it couldn’t Staring down at the compound, I knew the rumor that Perrine was more powerful than the Mexican president was a hundred percent true

CHAPTER 92

AS WE CAME CLOSER, I tightened my helmet’s chin strap and checked the safety onanxiety Like me and the rest of the HR teaues and strapped doith guns and gear She winked back, then crossed herself and started praying

As I was about to join her, an alar console It sounded like a police whistle followed by a fire alarm

There was a lot of excited chatter over the tactical line Before you could say surface-to-air missile, a white streak whooshed up off the slope to left As I watched in stark, helpless, gaping horror, the corkscrewing streak connected with the forward rotor of the Chinook, at the end of our colu boom and a b

right flash of light, and the Chinook was spinning and dropping, spiraling doard like a spinning leaf in October

“Chalk three is hit!” ca!”

Another sizzling corkscrewingthe Black Hawk across fro contrail, I could see men on the roof of a se

“Roof left! Roof left!” someone shouted over the line as one of the Cobra attack helicopters broke rank and dove toward the house

I alun went off It sounded like soht in a shredder, or a massive industrial accident at a power plant With an extended, sizzling, spine-tingling zap, a blinding white rope of bullets and tracers the size of Coke bottles beamed down out of the attack chopper, into the structure

As the helicopter continued to rain lead, the second Cobra swiveled up and around on its axis like a record, and not one but two rockets sledded off fro shower of sparks A split second later, the guardhouse, or whatever it had been, disappeared in a blinding, three-story pa-powing blossoht The concussion of the explosion that caainstdeck of the Black Hawk

“We have small-arms fire!” someone said redundantly as from all around the well-lit house and coan to sprout I clapped unner in the door of our chopper suddenly opened up with his 50 caliber The sound of its e off the metal wall beside h hats

I looked forward, behind the