woman, Major.'
At the same time Collins had started worrying about possible civilians in the tunnels, Carl Hastings, one of the Event Group's most experienced tunnel engineers from the Colorado School of Mines, was in a frightened, headlong flight from the hole his team had entered. The Delta teams led the way as the Rangers brought up the rear as they carried what wounded they were able to snatch away from the attacking animals. Their team was down to only seven men, not counting the four wounded. Bobby Jenks, a friend of Sarah's, had been pulled screaming into a hole that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, crashing into him and knocking him off-balance just long enough for the beast to grab him.
The sheer numbers of the attackers had caught them off guard. They thought that maybe they had killed at least one of the animals, but could honestly account for no more. The Delta teams in the front took the brunt of the attack while those in the rear tried to help, but it had been hopeless from the beginning, and by the time the attacks were on in force, the Delta teams were using their nine-millimeter handguns at close range. Some even had to use knives in the closed spaces. The animals had knocked several of the soldiers down easily by collapsing walls of dirt and sand upon them, then struck at them while they were in the worst possible position to fight. Now they only prayed to make it to the surface and not die in this underground hell, but to do it fighting in the light of day.
Hastings pressed his earpiece into his ear. 'We have a break in the tunnel up here, there's sunlight. Let's move and get the wounded up front and out.'
'Oh, thank you, God, thank you,' Hastings said aloud.
As they moved into the sun that was cast down into the tunnel from a hole, they saw the shadows and heard the distinctive thumping of rotors. The breach in the ground was being circled by at least three AH-64D Apache Longbow gunships. The dispirited group of soldiers and Event members could never have imagined a more welcome sound.
Two Delta men used one of the XM8 weapons as a step as they thrust first the wounded and then the rest through the opening. Once up and out, they helped pull their comrades to safety. As the final Delta sergeant cleared the hole, they collapsed down on the hardpan as the Apaches continued to circle.
The pilot of the lead Apache, a veteran of the Event Group for eight years with his team, Chief Warrant Officer Brett Jacobson, watched as the tunnel unit emerged from the hole. He quickly counted the men on the ground and shook his head, knowing the number they had started with.
'Those guys were mauled,' he said into his mike.
'Yeah, and it may not be over. Look, Chief,' his weapons man in the front nose of the Apache calmly called.
As the pilot turned, he saw with horror the speeding animals as they parted the sands in their rush toward the grounded troops, two from the north, a third from the east. He estimated a closing speed of close to sixty miles an hour as one of the creatures breached the surface as a dolphin would, most likely to spy its quarry, only to disappear again into the soil as quickly as it had breached a moment before.
'Jesus! Predator flight, we have men on the deck and three, I repeat,
The other two Apaches broke formation and started their run for the fast-attacking animals. They aligned themselves and targeted two Hellfire missiles each; in moments the laser-guided weapons were streaking toward their intended targets. But they would never make it as two of the animals came to the surface and sprang into the blue sky. The relatively slow-moving Apaches were easy targets as they slammed into the first gunship, jolting the big chopper and breaking the Hellfire's laser hold on the target. The second of the two beasts hit the Apache's tail boom and rebounded to the ground, stunned for a moment before it shook itself, then dove once again into the sand. The Hellfires remembered the last position the laser designator targeted before it was knocked offline, but the speeding creatures were by the point of the missiles' initial impact by twenty yards, as they missed the animals totally. The warheads struck the hardpan, sending surface sand one hundred feet into the air. The pilot regained enough control to bank hard and bring the Apache under control. But he didn't know the first animal was still attached to the Apache's undercarriage until the beast brought its claws up in a swinging arc and punctured the armored belly of the attack bird.
The lead pilot saw what was happening and he brought his stick forward. His Apache shot toward the dangling animal. His gunner aligned his eyepiece and targeted the clinging beast on his wingman's underside, and the thirty-millimeter chain gun erupted. The slow-operating weapon sent large tank-killing rounds forth in a perfectly straight line, catching the animal in the large bulk of its torso, severing it from the remaining parts of its body. What was left fell three hundred feet to the floor of the desert. Only four or five errant rounds hit the Apache.
'Now that was never put in the book by the manufacturer,' the weapons officer shouted in triumph.
Jacobson then turned his Apache and the chain gun fired at the distinctive lines of thrown-up soil made by the attacking Talkhan. Another animal had joined the other two on their ground attack. The explosive rounds found the first animal as it breached the surface. The thirty-millimeter shells tore through its armor, stopping it dead in its tracks. Then a Hellfire caught the second, exploding a foot in front of the parting wave of dirt, sending chunks of purple and black skyward.
The pilot pulled back on his stick, but as he did, the third animal suddenly surfaced and shot like a homed-in missile toward the hovering Apache. The pilot watched in horror as everything seemed to slow to a crawl. The animal was traveling so fast that the Apache's computer took it for an incoming missile and started to automatically pop off chaff and flares. The animal hit the cockpit with so much force, the front half of the attack helicopter separated from the back, sending the chain gun, weapons officer, and most of the fire-control system tumbling three hundred feet to the ground. The army warrant officer was inundated with flying glass as he fought for control as the huge machine started a plunge for the desert below. As the men on the ground watched in utter horror, the Apache hit hard, tearing away the wheels and weapons pod on the right side of the gunship. The rotors dug into the ground and sheared off as they struck. Jacobson was pelted with dirt and pieces of flying metal as he fought to hold on. The Apache skid along the sand and dirt, tearing access panels and the left-side weapons pod away as it hit a small rise in the earth and bounced into the air, then it flipped over once and came down on its side, sliding to a stop in two pieces.
Two Delta sergeants broke for the fallen bird to try to free anyone alive. As they approached, they saw Jacobson fighting his harness trying to get out as aviation fuel was pouring all over the two engines. The first Delta man started cutting away the damaged harness with his knife, and the other started pulling and tugging at Jacobson, who was screaming for them to hurry as he spied one of the dirt waves approaching at breakneck speed. As they finally released him and pulled the pilot from the broken Apache, the animal surfaced and jumped, missing the three men by a foot. It struck what was left of the cockpit and became entangled in wiring and broken glass. One of the Delta sergeants stopped and took out his nine millimeter and emptied his clip into the engine compartment of the Longbow. Suddenly all three were knocked flat by the explosion as one of the bullets made the spark the soldier was hoping for. The aviation fuel went up with a loud
The other wounded Apache was coming down also. The remaining arm and claw of the destroyed animal had kept working, its nerve endings continuing to fire. It tore the fuel lines and severed the tail-rotor wiring harness, stopping the thrust the bird needed to counter the main-rotor torque, thus sending the chopper into a spinning hell ride. The whine of the two turbines wound down quickly as it slammed into the ground. The Apache bounced once, breaking off all three landing gear assemblies. Then it rolled, tilting over onto its side until the rotor blades struck the rocks around it, disintegrating, sending composite metal shards in every direction.
The third Apache was a smoking ruin in the distance.
The remaining troops on the ground had watched the incredible air battle around them as at least twenty of the animals made a run for them. They stared in stunned silence, the wounded pilot, Jacobson, among them, as the creatures swam toward them in a huge dust cloud. Jacobson slowly stood on a broken leg and drew his .45 automatic from his shoulder holster. The others picked up their weapons and waited.
