wall of the crater plunged down into the water.
Schofield swung the Super Stallion to a halt thirty yards away from the bipod, kept it in a hovering pattern ten feet above the choppy surface of the water. Wind-hurled sand pelted the windshield.
He looked at the bipod more closely — a rope of some sort stretched down into the water beneath it.
The bipod was at anchor…
And then suddenly he saw movement.
On the bipod.
Through the veil of flying sand, he saw a pudgy-looking, bald-headed man in shirtsleeves get to his feet inside the left-hand pod, the driver's pod.
Gunther Botha.
Botha had been bent over in his pod, doing something when Schofield's chopper had arrived under the cover of the roaring sandstorm.
In the right-hand section of the bipod, however, Schofield saw someone else.
It was the tiny figure of Kevin, looking very small and out of place in the fearsomely equipped gunner's pod.
Schofield felt relief wash over his body. They'd found him.
Schofield's voice boomed out from the exterior speakers of the Super Stallion: 'Dr. Gunther Botha, we are United States Marines! You are now under arrest! Hand over the boy, and give yourself up now!'
Botha didn't seem to care. He just hurriedly tossed something square and metallic over the side of his bipod. It splashed into the water and sank, disappearing. What the hell is he doing? Schofield thought.
Inside the Super Stallion's cockpit, he turned to Book. 'Open the loading ramp. Then bring us around, rear-end first.'
The Super Stallion turned laterally, rotating in midair as its rear loading ramp folded down, opening.
The giant chopper's rear end came round toward the stationary bipod, hovering ten feet above the water. Schofield stood on the now-open loading ramp, his Desert Eagle pistol in his hand, a hand mike in the other, windblown sand flying wildly all around him.
He raised the microphone to his lips.
'The boy, Botha,' his amplified voice boomed.
Still Botha didn't seem to care.
Kevin, however, turned in his seat and saw Schofield, standing in the hold of the Super Stallion. A broad smile appeared across the little boy's face. He waved — a child's wave, his arm swatting rapidly from side to side.
Schofield waved back briefly.
At the moment, he was more concerned with what Botha was up to, for now he could see the fat South African virologist much more clearly.
Botha had a scuba tank strapped to his back, over his white shirtsleeves. He hurriedly threw a full-face diving mask to Kevin and gesticulated for the little boy to put it on.
Schofield frowned. Scuba gear?
Whatever Botha was doing, it was time to stop him.
Schofield raised his gun and was about to fire across Botha's bow to get his attention, when suddenly there came a loud whumping noise from somewhere close above him and completely without warning, he saw the tail rotor of his Super Stallion blast out into a million pieces and separate completely from the rest of the chopper!
Like a tree branch snapping, the Super Stallion's tail boom broke free of the chopper's main body and dropped down into the water, causing the entire helicopter to spin wildly and veer away from the bipod.
With its tail rotor gone, the Super Stallion spun out of control — and wheeled down toward the water's surface below.
Book II wrestled with the chopper's control stick, but the Super Stallion was beyond salvation. It rolled sharply in the air, heading nose-first for the water.
In the rear cargo bay, Schofield was hurled against the side wall, somehow managed to get a grip on a canvas seat there.
The Super Stallion hit the lake.
Water flew everywhere, a gigantic Whitewater splash.
The big helicopter's nose drove down into the water, going under for a full ten seconds before its buoyancy righted it again, and the massive chopper bobbed slowly on the surface.
Book II hit the kill switch and the chopper's engines died instantly. Its rotor blades began to slow.
Water rushed into the cargo hold.
It didn't come in through the open rear loading ramp just yet — since the ramp was designed to rest just above the water's surface in the event of a water landing — but rather it entered the crashed helicopter via the small access hatch that Schofield and Book II had used to enter it earlier.
A Super Stallion is built to stay afloat for a short while in a water crash, but since Schofield and Book had discarded the chopper's floor access hatch when they'd entered it, this Super Stallion wasn't even going to do that.
It was sinking. Fast.
Schofield ran into the cockpit. 'What the hell was that? Something hit us!'
'I know,' Book II said. He nodded out through the windshield. 'I think it was them.'
Schofield peered out through the forward windshield.
Hovering above the water in front of their sinking helicopter, partially obscured by the veil of wind-hurled sand — and flanking the anchored South African bipod — were the two remaining Air Force Penetrators.
The Super Stallion sank with frightening speed.
Water gurgled up through the access hatch, expanding outward as it rose up into the cargo hold, pulling the rear end of the chopper down into the lake.
As more water rushed into it, the helicopter dropped lower in the water. Within a minute, the rear loading ramp fell below the waterline and from that moment on, water came flooding in through the wide rear opening.
Up in the cockpit, Schofield and Book II were standing ankle-deep in water when abruptly the entire chopper tilted sharply skyward.
'Any risky ideas now?' Book II shouted, grabbing for a handhold.
'Not a one.'
The Super Stallion continued to sink slowly, rear end first.
With the Football still hanging from his side, Schofield looked out through the cockpit's forward windshield.
He saw one of the Penetrators approach Gunther Botha's bipod. It hovered directly in front of the tiny rivercraft, like a gigantic menacing vulture.
Schofield saw Botha stand in his pod and face the black Air Force helicopter — waving. With his arms flailing, he looked like a tiny pathetic figure beseeching an angry bird-god.
Then, without warning, a Stinger missile shot down from the right-hand wing of the Penetrator, trailing a dead straight finger of white smoke.
The missile hit Botha's pod and blasted it out of the water.
One second Botha was there, the next he was gone, replaced by a frothing circle of ripples.
Kevin's pod, however, remained intact — severed cleanly from Botha's by the missile impact.
His pod and the cracked remains of the bipod's crossbeam just bobbed in the water under the steely gaze of the hovering Penetrator.
From his position inside the sinking super stallion, Schofield blanched.
They'd just killed Botha!
Holy shit!
His Super Stallion was now three-quarters underwater — its entire rear section underneath the surface. Only its domelike glass windshield and the tip of one of its rotor blades still protruded above the waterline.
Water began to lap up against the outside of the windshield.
The entire rear cargo hold was now filled with encroaching dark-green liquid — water that wanted to rise into the cockpit, and devour the whole helicopter.
