Bullets spewed out from the guns of the men abseiling down from the helicopters.
People ran every which way. The Indians dashed for cover in the foliage surrounding the village, snatching up their bows and arrows as they did so. Van Lewen and Doogie fired their G-11s as gunfire from above raked the mud all around them.
Race snapped about where he stood—saw Doogie take two brutal hits to his left leg—then he spun again just in time to see the German zoologist, Krauss, convulse violently as the whole front of his body—his face, his arms, his chest—became an indistinguishable mass of ragged bloody flesh, torn open by about a million rounds of devastating supermachine-gun fire.
The two Super Stallions hovered about twenty feet above the village, razing it with their cannons. As he leapt to his feet, Race saw a single word emblazoned across their sides:
NAVY.
It was Romano's team.
They had arrived at last.
And then—just then—as he ran for cover from the two enormous choppers hovering menacingly over the village, Race had an unusual thought.
Wasn't Romano supposed to bcflying three Super Stallions…
Abruptly, a spattering of gunfire strafed the ground all around him and Race scampered for the treeline, turning as he ran just in time to see Frank Nash hurry away from the shrine and dash off into the foliage beyond it with Lauren and Copeland right behind him.
Race's eyes zeroed in on the shrine. The idol was still there, sitting proudly in its alcove.
Or was it?
As the ground all around him exploded with bullet holes, Race hustled over to the shrine and grabbed the idol from its alcove, flipped it over in his hand.
A cylindrical section had been cut out of the base of this idol.
It was the fake.
'No…' Race breathed.
Gunfire rang out from the choppers above him. The gale- force wind created by their downdrafts whipped around him like a tornado.
Race ran through the powerful wind, charging into the foliage after Nash and the other two.
'Where are you going?' Renee called to him from her position behind a nearby tree.
'Nash has got the idol!' Race yelled back. 'The real one—-'
At that moment—-completely without warning—one of the big Super Stallion helicopters above them just exploded in mid-air. It was a staggering explosion, monstrous in its force. All the more so because it had been so unexpected.
Race looked up instantly and saw the mighty helicopter fall to the earth in a kind of horrific slow motion, right on top of the men hanging underneath it.
The men—they were Navy SEALs—hit the ground first, followed a split second later by the massive helicopter as it came crashing down on top of them, crushing them in an instant, its awesome bulk slamming down against the ground with a resounding whump!
Race looked above the fallen, flaming wreck of the Super Stallion and saw a horizontal smoke-trail dissipating in the air above it.
It was the smoke-trail of an air-to-air missile. Race traced it back to its source.
And saw another helicopter!
Only this one wasn't a troop transport like the two Super Stallions. It was a two-man chopper—an attack bird—thin but not skinny, with a prism-shaped cockpit and an enclosed tail rotor. It looked like a mechanical preying mantis.
Although Race didn't know it, he was looking at an AH-66 'Comanche'—the U.S. Army's next-generation attack helicopter.
Nash's air support.
It, too, had finally arrived.
Race saw a second Comanche attack chopper materialise in the morning sky behind the first one, saw it open fire on the surviving Super Stallion with its twin-barrelled Gatling gun.
The second Super Stallion responded with its own burst of machine-gun fire, covering the eight SEALs still dangling from its zipqines.
The first SEAL touched the ground—just as an arrow smacked squarely in his forehead, dropping him instantly.
The seven remaining SEALs continued down their zip- lines. Two more were taken out by arrows on their way down. The others hit the ground running.
In the air above them, their Super Stallion was in all sorts of trouble. It swivelled laterally in the air, turning to face the two Army Comanches firing on it.
Then suddenly—shoom!—a single Sidewinder missile shot out from the Super Stallion's side-mounted missile pod.
The missile traced a perfectly horizontal smoke-trail through the air behind it before it slammed at
