Once he had managed to climb back up his grappling hook's rope, Race dashed across the now-deserted clearing in front of the temple, searching for the Green Berets, if any of them were still alive.
He found Van Lewen and Cochrane at the ledge which had once held up the rope bridge.
'Son of a bitch,' he said as he saw the yawning chasm in front of them. 'They cut the bridge.'
'There's no way off this thing,' Van Lewen said. 'We're stuck here.'
Just then the black Mosquito helicopter came roaring past them again, its side-mounted cannons blazing. The Nazis must have left it behind to finish the job.
Race and the others immediately dived for cover in the brush. Leaves exploded above their heads, tree trunks shattered into splinters.
'Fuck a duck!' Cochrane yelled over the roar of the gunfire.
Race peered out at the Mosquito chopper as it hovered above the chasm, long tongues of fire spewing out from its guns, its long spindly landing skids dangling beneath its body.
The landing skids.., he thought.
And at that moment, something inside Race clicked—a kind of fierce determination that he had never known he possessed.
'Van Lewen!' he called suddenly.
'What!'
'Give me some cover fire!'
'What for?'
'Just get that chopper to hover a little higher, will you! But don't scare it off!'
'What are you doing?'
'I'm getting us off this rock!'
“ That was good enough for Van Lewen. A second later, he snapped out from behind the foliage and loosed a volley of fire at the hovering black chopper.
The Mosquito responded by rising a little higher in the air and firing back.
Meanwhile, Race was working feverishly with his grappling hook, unspooling its rope. He looked out at the chopper.
'Get it higher!' he yelled. 'Higher! It's too low!'
Race gauged the distance between him and the chopper.
It was too close to fire the grappling hook from its launcher. He was going to have to throw it.
He unspooled the rope a little more, keeping it loose so that when he did throw it, it wouldn't get all tangled up.
'Cochrane!' he shouted. 'Can you swing with that busted leg of yours?'
'What do you think, Einstein?'
'Then you're no good to me!' Race said fiercely. “You're staying here. Van Lewen! Give me cover!'
Then, as Van Lewen loosed another burst at the chopper, Race quickly leapt out of the foliage with the grappling hook hanging from his hand, and in one fluid motion he threw it, underhanded, out at the Mosquito's left- hand landing skid.
He knew as soon as he did it that he'd weighted the throw perfectly.
The grappling hook sailed through the air toward the hovering helicopter, reaching the zenith of its arc just as it arrived at the Mosquito's left landing skid, and then—with a sharp clink-clink—the hook swung over the landing strut and looped itself around it twice, clinging to it.
'All right, Van Lewen! Let's go!'
Van Lewen let off a final burst of fire at the chopper before he ran over and joined Race at the edge of the ledge.
'Grab on,' Race offered Van Lewen his M-16. The gun was tied to the end of the grappling hook's rope.
Van Lewen took it and gave Race a look. You know, you're a lot braver than most people would give you credit for.'
'Thanks.'
And with that, Race and Van Lewen pushed themselves off the ledge and swung—together—across the wide one-hundred-foot chasm, in a wonderful graceful arc, suspended from the landing skid of the hovering attack helicopter!
'Motherfucker…' Buzz Cochrane said as he watched the two of them swing away from him across the bottomless ravine.
Race and Van Lewen swung up onto the path on the other side of the chasm, onto their feet. Once they were up, Race quickly disengaged the grappling hook's rope from his M-16 and let it go.
The chopper above them didn't seem to know where they had gone—it just wheeled around wildly above the gorge, firing its guns in frustration, shooting at anything and nothing, while Race and Van Lewen took off down the spiralling path, heading back toward the village.
Heinrich Anistaze held the cloth-enclosed package in his hands, held his breath as he unwrapped it.
