tremendous speed into the canopy of one of the Comanches, blasting the attack chopper out of the sky with a momentous explosion.
But it was a consolation goal. In fact, if it did anything at all, it only succeeded in sealing the Super Stallion's fate.
Because there was still one Comanche left.
No sooner had the first Army chopper been hit, than the second one quickly pivoted in mid-air and released a Hellfire missile of its own.
The Hellfire rocketed through the air at phenomenal speed, zeroing in on the Super Stallion. It found its mark in seconds, ploughing at full speed into the side of the big Navy helicopter.
The Super Stallion's walls shattered in an instant, blasting out in every direction, showering the ground beneath it with firetrails of flaming debris. Then the massive Navy helicopter crashed down into the trees above the village, a billowing, flaming wreck.
Wet fern branches slapped hard against Race's face as he and Renee ran eastward through the dense section of low foliage to the south of the village square, chasing after Frank Nash.
They passed Van Lewen on their way. He was standing behind one of the huts, firing with his G-11 at three of the five Navy SEALs who had survived their dispersal from the second Super Stallion.
He fired low—trying to wound, not to kill. After all, they were his own countrymen, and after what he had heard from Renee on the plane earlier about Frank Nash and the Army's mission to undercut the Navy, he had started to question his allegiances. He didn't want to kill men just like himself—line animals who were just following orders— unless he really, really had to.
The three SEALs had hunkered down behind some trees near the shrine and their MP-5s, when used in coordination, were proving a good match against his lone G-11. Then abruptly the SEALs' fire stopped as they were overwhelmed from behind by a horde of Indians bearing axes, arrows, sticks and clubs.
Van Lewen winced.
'Where are you going?' he yelled when he saw Race and Renee run past him.
'We're going after Nash! He stole the real idol!'
'He what—?'
But Race and Ren4e were already hurrying off into the trees. Van Lewen took off after them.
Gaby Lopez was running too. Only she was running for her life.
As soon as the Navy Super Stallions had appeared, she had hurried off behind the nearest set of trees. But she had gone the wrong way. Everyone else had gone south while she had gone north and now she was racing through the chest-high foliage to the north-east of the upper village— alone—ducking as she ran, trying desperately to avoid the bullets that smacked against the branches around her head.
The two remaining Navy SEALs were somewhere behind her, firing hard with their MP-5s as they crashed through the undergrowth.
Gaby looked behind herself as she ran, searching fear fully for her pursuers. Then, as she turned to look behind her one more time, she abruptly felt the ground beneath her feet just fall away.
She dropped like a stone.
A second later, she hit water.
Muddy liquid flew everywhere. When it settled, Gaby opened her eyes and found that she was sitting on her butt in the moat that encircled the upper village! She leapt quickly to her feet and found that she was standing in a sec tion of ankle-deep water.
The thought suddenly occurred to her: caimans.
She looked about herself desperately. She saw that the moat was roughly circular in shape, saw that it bent away from her in both directions like a road disappearing around a curve. Its sheer muddy walls towered above her, their rims a good ten feet above her head.
Suddenly submachine-gun fire raked the water all around her and on an instinct Gaby dived forward and the bullets shot over her head, smacking into the earthen walls of the moat.
Then abruptly she heard more gunfire—different gunfire this time, G-11 gunfire—and in an instant the first set of bul lets stopped firing and there was silence. Gaby was still lying on her chest in the shallow water of the moat. A long silence followed. After a few seconds, she cautiously raised her head.
And found herself staring into the smiling face of a caiman.
Gaby froze.
It was just sitting there in the mud in front of her, watching her, its tail slinking slowly back and forth behind it. It had her. Had her dead to rights.
Then with a loud grunting roar, the giant reptile charged, baring its jaws savagely, lunging at her—
Splat !—something landed right on top of the caiman from above. Gaby didn't know what it was. It had looked like an animal of some sort and now it and the caiman were rolling around together in front of her in a splashing heap of mud and water.
Her jaw dropped when she realized what the animal was.
It was a man. A man in combat uniform. He had jumped down from the rim of the moat, tackling the caiman at the exact moment that it had lunged at her.
The caiman and the man rolled as they wrestled, the reptile bucking and snapping, the man gasping for air whenever he could.
And then Gaby saw who it was.
