soldiers shot backward as a swarm of hundreds of miniature flechette darts ripped them asunder.
He felt nauseated.
A laser beam cut through the darkness and settled on him. He could imagine the enemy gunner registering his aim and he knew, at that precise moment, that he was going to die. He thought of Boots and he felt a great sadness that he would never see his young son grow. He thought of…
The laser flicked out and then on again, and there was an irregular rhythm to the beam. Then the beam slowly rose to the vertical and cut into the night sky pointing at the stars.
Morse code: ‘C-A-L-V-I-N.’
The exhilaration that follows despair gripped him. He gunned the engine and drove toward the source of the light. He'd been an idiot. The light was the type that only Team Rapier could see through special filters. This was not the enemy.
A skirmishing line of enemy troops showed up ahead of them just beyond the light source. Through his night vision goggles, Fitzduane could see they were armed and purposeful and that this was a different problem to the three he had just killed.
He accelerated and turned slightly to the left so that he would break ground above the light source and have a clear shot at the enemy.
The mercenaries had no night vision goggles, but the heard the rapidly approaching engine noise and opened fire. Flashes could be seen in the darkness, and there was the zip and crack of rounds passing over and around the Guntrack.
An aiming laser flashed out from Cochrane's GECAL and a moment later the weapon began to fire. Fitzduane halted the Guntrack and emptied the magazine of his grenade launcher. In just five seconds, the area occupied by the mercenary patrol was hit by more than a thousand metal projectiles. Their firing ceased.
The friendly laser flashed on again. Fitzduane zigzagged down the hill toward it and at last Calvin could be seen. He lay there on his back tied to the wing with carabiners, but there was no sign of the fuselage.
Fitzduane leaped out while Ross kept watch, cut the aviator free, then bundled him into the front gunner's seat, gave him a headset, and plugged him into the intercom.
The entire exercise took no more than forty-five seconds. Calvin was bruised and had a broken ankle and was in some pain, but otherwise he seemed in reasonable condition. Fitzduane felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He contemplated giving the aviator morphine but decided against it.
The grim fact was that someone might need it more urgently later. The shooting was not necessarily over. They had to exfiltrate successfully, and that, in special-forces operations such as this, was always the hardest part. The element of surprise was gone and now they were the hunted.
He talked to Calvin as he drove to distract him from the pain. 'You went up with an engine, Calvin,' he said as he sped through the night toward the RV point, 'but came down without one. What gives?'
Calvin forced a laugh.
'After I got the helicopter gunship with the RAW, I got chased by a much smaller machine. It wasn't armed as such, but someone inside it had a weapon and went after me as if it was personal.
'Well, I maneuvered every which way and my whole machine started coming apart. The struts had already been damaged over the airfield and jury-rigged, and these kind of gymnastics were just too much. The fuselage and engine decided to go their own way, and I had no parachute. And I was a couple thousand feet up. In addition, AK-47 rounds were pinging off the engine. It was a little hairy.'
Fitzduane could imagine the reality behind the dry account. 'So what did you do, Calvin?' he said. 'Wake up?'
'I went back in aviation history a bit,' said Calvin through clenched teeth as the Guntrack hit a rough patch. 'The chopper was shooting at the fuselage for the obvious reason that that is where the pilot sits.'
'So?' said Fitzduane encouragingly.
'Flex flying all started with the wing alone,' said Calvin. 'Suspending a fuselage for the pilot to sit in and to hold an engine came much later. Well, that being the case, the solution was obvious.'
'Not to me, it isn't,' said Fitzduane. Wearing PNV goggles, his world endless shades of green, he was driving over the appalling terrain as fast as the terrain would allow, and his concentration – to put it mildly – was not entirely on Calvin's story.
'I clipped my harness to the wing and then cut free the fuselage and engine,' said Calvin. 'The helicopter followed the fuselage down and blew it apart as it fell, and I just flew the wing down like a hang glider. It worked fine. I didn't need a parachute. I don't know why I was worried.
Fitzduane nearly choked with laughter and reaction.
'Fucking A!' said Cochrane.
Fitzduane recovered and then started to laugh again, and the Guntrack slithered and bucked and jumped and raced across the shale and gravel toward the RV, and up in the sky their salvation flew toward them.
Unfortunately, it was short one critical aircraft.
22
Madoa Air Base,
Tecuno, Mexico
Reiko Oshima stood in the shower for three minutes and washed General Luis Barragan's blood off her body. It disgusted her. It was a symbol of their failure.
Her outburst had left her drained and tired, but the water was soothing and she could feel her resolution returning.
Her strength of will was one of her strongest assets, and now she focused on what should be done immediately. Recriminations would have to wait. There was a score to settle now, and she was fairly sure she knew how.
She hastily toweled her long black hair to an acceptably damp state and put it up in a bun. Then she dressed in fresh desert camouflage fatigues tucked into combat boots and donned full combat webbing. Finally she tied in place the ritual hachimaki – the headband – worn by Yaibo and strapped a katana to her back.
She paused as she finished and looked in the mirror and was pleased with what she saw. She had regained her poise and her command quality. She was once again a force to be respected and feared. The brief time lost taking the shower and dressing had been worth it.
She looked at her watch. It read 0209. It seemed an age but was actually only just over an hour since Luis had bled to death on top of her. She shuddered.
There was a banging on the door. 'Oshima- san,' said a panting voice. 'Please come to the operations room immediately. Governor Quintana is calling and wants a full situation report.'
There was bedlam in the operations room as she walked in. A dozen different people were talking at the top of their voices and gesticulating wildly, and there seemed to be no one person capable of restoring order.
She went through the large operations room to the adjoining radio room, but left the door open. The radio operator looked distinctly relieved when she arrived, and handed her a headset. She put on the headset and evicted the operator from the room with a single gesture, and this time closed the door.
'Governor,' she said respectfully. 'This is Oshima- san.'
'Oshima,' said Quintana, the strain evident in his voice, 'what is happening? I hear we have been attacked, but I have received a dozen different contradictory reports.'
Oshima took a deep breath.
'Out with it, woman,' said Quintana. 'I need to know.'
Reiko Oshima gave him a situation report, appalled as she spoke at the sheer scale of the destruction. It had seemed bad enough at the time. In its totality, it was very much worse. But in one fundamental way, they had been exceptionally lucky.
The supergun was unscathed. True, one installation holding explosive and experimental chemical warheads had been completely destroyed, but the charge placed in the all-important bunker that controlled the hydrogen feed had, by some miracle, failed to go off. Evidently, the attackers had been disturbed. Oshima speculated that it must
