in through it.
Just as he was about to follow her, however, he saw Doogie and Gaby hurrying across the main street toward him, waving their arms wildly. Gaby was helping Doogie as he limped along as fast as he could.
They arrived at the ATV, clambered up onto it.
'What the fuck is going on here?' Doogie said in between breaths. Race saw his bloodied left leg. It had a makeshift tourniquet tied around it. 'We got here just in time to see the colonel shoot Leo in the fucking head!' Doogie's face was contorted with a mixture of rage and helpless confusion.
'The colonel had other priorities,“ Race said bitterly. 'Priorities that didn't include us.'
'What are we going to do?' Doogie said.
Race bit his lip in thought.
'Come on,' he said. 'Get inside. We're not out of this yet.'
The two Army helicopters—the Comanche and the Black Hawk II—rose into the sky above the main street of Vilcafor.
Nash looked out the side door of his chopper at the crowd of angry natives beneath him, yelling and screaming and waving their fists at the helicopters. He snorted a laugh as he turned away from them and looked out through the forward windshield of the chopper.
The two Army helicopters cleared the treetops.
And Nash's smile went flat.
There were eight of them—Black Hawk I helicopters— similar to his own but older; superseded models that the Army had discarded years ago. They were all painted black, with no markings on them whatsoever, and they hovered menacingly in a wide, 500-yard circle around Vilcafor like a pack of hungry jackals waiting on the periphery of the battle, waiting to pick up the scraps.
There came a sudden puff of smoke from one of the unmarked Black Hawks as, without warning, a missile shot out from one of its stub-like wings.
A long finger-like trail of smoke extended through the air in front of the helicopter as the speeding missile cut a bee-line for the Army Comanche. The Comanche exploded in an instant and dropped clumsily out of the sky. It smashed down onto one of the stone huts on the main street of Vilcafor, flames spilling out from its charred, twisted shell.
Race and the others were inside the citadel and about to climb down into the quenko when they heard the sudden explosion outside.
They hurried back into the ATV and peered out through its narrow slit-like windows to see what had happened.
They saw the blazing wreck of the Comanche lying awkwardly on its side on top of one of the small huts of Vilcafor.
They also saw Nash's Black Hawk II hovering above the village, not daring to move.
The rotors of the Army Black Hawk thumped rhythmically as the big helicopter hovered over Vilcafor, in the centre of the circle of ominous black helicopters.
Suddenly, two of the unmarked choppers banked out of their formation and flew in toward the village.
Black-clad soldiers sitting in their doorways opened fire on the natives on the ground and the Indians scattered immediately, hurrying over the log-bridges, darting into the dense foliage around the town.
A voice came over a loudspeaker from one of the choppers. A man's voice, speaking in English.
“Army Black Hawk. Be advised, missile lock has been established on your aircraft. You are to land immediately. I repeat, you are to land immediately and prepare to hand over the idol. If you do not land immediately, we will blast you out of the sky and pick it out of the wreckage later.”
Nash and Marty exchanged a look.
Lauren and Copeland did the same.
'They're not lying about the missile lock, sir,' the pilot said, turning to Nash.
'Take us down,' Nash said.
Flanked by the two unmarked Black Hawks, Nash's Black Hawk II slowly descended back to earth.
The three choppers hit the ground together. The moment the Army chopper's wheels touched the mud the voice on the loudspeaker came again.
“Now exit the helicopter with your hands up.'
Nash, Lauren, Copeland and Marty did so, accompanied by the chopper's pilot.
From the safety of the ATV, Race and the others stared out at the scene before them in awe.
Race couldn't believe what was happening. It was like one of those fables where a big fish eats a smaller fish, only to be eaten itself by an even bigger fish moments later.
Frank Nash, it seemed, had just come across a bigger fish.
'Who the hell are these guys?' Doogie asked.
'I would guess,' Renee said, a strip of gauze pressed firmly against her bloody shoulder,'ht at they are the people who were responsible for the break-in at DARPA headquarters two days ago. The break-in that involved the theft of the Navy's Supernova.'
Half a world away, Special Agent John-Paul Demonaco and Commander Tom Mitchell were sitting inside
