159 Death

"Jump quickly!"

Bang!

Yet, it was already too late!

Facing a high-speed approaching man-portable air-defense missile, the helicopter had simply no time to evade within a matter of seconds. Even though the pilot made evasive maneuvers in the shortest time possible, after a deafening explosion and a violent shudder, the helicopter still spun completely out of control.

Fortunately, they were not hit directly; the missile merely impacted the tail rotor. A direct hit would have generated enough explosive energy to blow them all to smithereens without a trace left behind.

"Damn it, we've been hit!"

The cabin was in utter chaos. Because the main rotor was not extensively damaged, the fuselage still maintained a certain altitude, but it began spinning downwards at a terrifying speed.

Not far away.

On the water's surface, not far from the harbor, a white assault boat appeared at high speed, rushing directly toward them.

"Go! Go! Go!"

The British certainly had a lot of nerve. Smuggling a Stinger man-portable air-defense missile and its launcher into France was definitely no less difficult than stealing a classified document from the French presidential palace.

MI5's methods were truly formidable, but if this missile was meant for him, Li Changjiang was hardly going to praise the British; he was going to curse them.

"Damn the British! There's no time left, jump out!"

The helicopter continued to plummet rapidly, and the pilot had zero control over the spinning fuselage now devoid of its tail rotor.

500 meters!
400 meters!
---!
300 meters!
200 meters!
90 meters!

The sea surface loomed ever closer, and a crash was completely inevitable.

Lucia and Lina were utterly terrified. They were merely ordinary French mother and daughter who had never experienced such a terrifying ordeal. Being shot at with guns was a minor affair, but being attacked with a missile was something anyone would rarely encounter.

"Lina!"
"Lina!"
"Damn it, she's passed out!"

The Old Russian violently shoved open the cabin door, scooped up Lina, and leaped straight out into the open air. They had no other choice now.

However, apart from Li Changjiang, no one noticed that the area where the Old Russian and Lina had been sitting was soaked in a large pool of blood. Damn it, the fuselage had been pierced by shrapnel! A chill gripped his heart, but Li Changjiang had no time to ponder it.

"Eliza! Move quickly!"

Clutching the catatonic Lucia, Eliza plunged headfirst into the water. Li Changjiang was just about to leap out of the window when the fuselage suddenly flipped over.

It was out of control!
Damn it!

Mid-air, the fuselage spun completely out of control. The sudden centrifugal force of the rollover knocked him flat on his back, followed immediately by a dizzying, topsy-turvy spin that robbed him of any chance to bail out.

Bang! Bang!

We're doomed!

Someone was actually shooting at him. What an absolute bastard!

Without a doubt, it had to be the British.

Suddenly.

With a dull thud amidst the cacophony of noise, a muffled groan echoed in his ears. The pilot had been killed. Out of the corner of his eye amidst the violently thrashing fuselage, he caught sight of a spray of crimson blood erupting from the front, and instantly, the helicopter lost what little control it had left.

With a deafening crash, it slammed directly into the sea, kicking up waves several meters high.

Not far away.

Having fallen into the sea, Eliza held tightly onto little Lucia. Initially, she had been worried about the child's safety, but the little girl actually knew how to swim, and together they kept paddling toward the opposite shore.

On the other side, however, the Old Russian was not having such an easy time.

The red blood was rapidly diluted by the seawater, but it also revealed the wound on Lina's body. Located on her left back near the chest, a piece of metal shrapnel roughly one-third the size of an adult palm was deeply embedded inside.

"Lina! Lina!"

It was over. There was no movement at all. Submerged in the freezing seawater, the time she could hold on was drastically reduced. Without immediate medical treatment, she would surely bleed to death.

Yet right at this moment—

Thud, thud, thud, thud!

A string of bullets whipped across the water from the approaching assault boat not far away, kicking up a chain of violent splashes. The Old Russian was instantly alarmed.

"Damn it!"

Trailing right behind the first white assault boat was another blue-and-white pursuit boat. The number of operatives aboard the two vessels exceeded eight. This time, the British seemed genuinely determined to leave these damned mercenaries at the bottom of the Mediterranean to feed the fish.

Hell!

"There's no time!"

As the fuselage plunged into the water, Li Changjiang had failed to jump clear in time. The immense momentum and weight dragged him straight down toward the ocean floor, placing him in grave peril.

A massive surge of water poured triumphantly through the overhead hatch, leaving Li Changjiang disoriented from a single gulp, followed by a rapid descent. If he didn't escape immediately, he wouldn't drown—he would be crushed to death by the water pressure.

Leveraging the tiny pocket of air remaining inside the cabin, Li Changjiang took a few deep breaths, then sank down, swam out through the hatch, and shot toward the surface. He had held his breath for well over a minute; had he not been familiar with the water since childhood, he would have assumed he was a goner.

Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!

His head broke the surface of the water, gasping for heavy breaths, but before he could even steady himself, two white shadows were already hurtling toward him at breakneck speed.

This was a dead end, an inescapable dead end. He was completely helpless in the water, with no option left except to surrender.

Yet things always took a miraculous turn for the better with astonishing speed. With a thunderous blast, when the leading assault boat exploded less than a hundred meters away from him, Li Changjiang felt like thanking its ancestors back for eight generations.

This missile had arrived at the most opportune moment possible!

Thank heavens.

Soon enough.

A thunderous roar instantly filled the air right above him.

Whirrr-whirrr-whirrr----

A familiar sound whirred to life.

A terrifying cascade of bullets began to emit a scalp-tingling, horrific screech. A Gatling gun!

Countless smoking shell casings cascaded from the sky into the water, the intense heat radiating from the brass causing the surface of the sea to bubble. The British were facing a tragedy.

Strafed by the Gatling gun, they were riddled like honeycombs in less than a minute, followed by a deafening explosion as their remaining speedboat was blown to pieces.

"Boss, get up here!"

Lowering a rescue rope, the man who had just opened fire was none other than the Assassin. After hauling Eliza and the Old Russian aboard, the helicopter immediately veered toward the center of the Mediterranean.

Needless to say, it was heading straight for the cargo ship. No matter how the French intended to handle this fallout, the British had truly succeeded in provoking Li Changjiang's absolute fury.

"Hey, Boss, she's gone!"

He shook his head at Li Changjiang.

Amidst the deafening roar of the engines, the Old Russian's voice rang out with crystal clarity.

Looking at Lina's face, pale and devoid of a single trace of color, Li Changjiang instantly clenched his fists.

Damned Brits!

Meanwhile, Lucia was utterly petrified, shivering uncontrollably with a vacant stare, fixing her eyes dead on Lina without crying, making a fuss, or uttering a single word.

The shock of this scene was simply too much for a seven-or-eight-year-old girl to bear; it was completely beyond comprehension.

"Eliza!"

Uttering a single word to Eliza, Li Changjiang opened his arms and pulled Lucia directly into his embrace, repeating her name over and over again.

"Lucia, Lucia..."