Charlie Dean ducked as rifle bullets plowed into loose cinders just above him. The smoke screen was dissipating rapidly, and he was now in clear view of gunmen down on the crater floor. He could see several armed men kneeling or standing near the drilling rig, aiming their weapons at him as they tried to pick him off the inside wall of the bowl.
If the air strike was on schedule, the bombs were already on the way. He needed to get out of the crater, and quickly, or a laser-guided JDAM was going to sweep him off this slope like a broom.
The trouble was, he’d moved around the inside of the crater counterclockwise, hoping to lead the bad guys below away from the gully where Lia was climbing. He didn’t have the gully’s rough ground to aid his scramble up the hill. The ground here was bare rock, too steep even for the cinders that covered everything on the lower slopes, and he had to pick his way along carefully or risk sliding all the way back down into the pit.
Another burst of full-auto rounds whined off the rock just ahead, making him flinch back.
Bracing himself against the slope, taking aim, he loosed several bursts at the gunmen below. He didn’t wait to see if he’d hit anything; he just wanted to make them keep their heads down, giving him a chance to move a bit farther up. The ground was so steep here that he couldn’t move straight up but was having to navigate along the northern slope toward the west, trying to work his way uphill a few feet for every dozen yards that he traversed the inside of the crater rim. The top was still a long way above him.
“Charlie! Ilya!” sounded on his tactical radio. “Lia’s here with me.”
“Good.” He didn’t have the breath for extended conversations at the moment.
“You’ve got about two minutes before it gets very noisy down there.”
“I know. See if you can distract those guys near the drill rig.”
“I’m on it.”
“No smoke. The bombs are probably already locked on.”
“Copy that. Forty mike-mike HE on the way.”
A few seconds later, an explosion thundered in the bottom of the crater, spewing a geyser of cinder, rock, and smoke.
He began climbing faster.
At last, the helicopter began to lift from the ground. Almost immediately, bullets started striking the aircraft, sounding like rocks thrown against a tin roof.
“Get us up!” Feng screamed. “Get us up!”
The helicopter rose faster …
Akulinin heard the roar of the helicopter’s rotors, saw the brightly painted civilian aircraft begin to rise above its makeshift landing pad.
He didn’t know who or what was aboard that Puma. It might be Tango leaders trying to make an escape, gunmen getting airborne to try to find the Marines at the crater rim, or even someone with a nuclear weapon trying to get clear of the combat zone.
Whatever the case, it wouldn’t be good for the mission, and he wasn’t going to let them get clear of the crater.
The range to the helicopter was about 250 yards, well within his weapon’s maximum range, but farther than its effective range of 150 meters for a point target. He should be able to hit an area target at that range, though, and the general area of a helicopter was all he needed.
Snapping home another 40 mm grenade, he took aim and squeezed the trigger.
Charlie Dean was almost at the top, racing along the inner slope. He went to ground again, though, when he heard the helicopter taking off. Bullets kept snapping and whining past him, but Ilya’s grenade barrage had driven the Tangos to seek shelter, and their fire was now sporadic and confused.
He considered trying to take the helicopter under fire but decided that the Marines and Ilya would have that problem covered.
Dean continued making his way upslope, loose rocks and gravel spraying from beneath his boots with each step and avalanching down into the bowl. He braced himself with his right hand against the slope as he continued to move, cutting across the face of the slope to the east as he gained height.
How much time was left? He couldn’t know for sure. He wasn’t certain if the “ten minutes” Marie had mentioned eight minutes ago was how far the incoming aircraft were from releasing their weapons or how far out the bombs themselves were. He knew he could call the Art Room, but at the moment he needed all his wind for running.
He would assume the bombs were just a couple of minutes out, and use that time to get off the inside slope of the crater.
The slope was a lot steeper here. He slung his rifle over his shoulder in order to free his hands.
Akulinin was loading another grenade when the first exploded. It hadn’t struck the helicopter but had fallen short, landing close to the tents.
The explosion came in two parts — an initial burst followed by a much larger, much more powerful detonation that sent a towering plume of smoke and orange flame boiling into the sky. At first he thought he’d hit an ammo dump, then realized that he’d managed to touch off a large supply of fuel, probably avgas for the helicopter.
The blast, visible as the rising plume of smoke, caught the bright green helicopter and tilted it wildly to the side …
The helicopter lurched savagely to the right, throwing Feng against the side. Outside, a wall of boiling, oily smoke was engulfing the aircraft, which began turning sharply, out of control. They were going to crash, Feng knew it. He had only a few seconds left. Raising the remote unit Azhar had given him, he mashed his thumb down on the firing button.
Nothing happened. The helicopter continued to spin as it fell. Panicking now, Feng hit the button again and again, then flipped the remote over and clawed off the plastic panel over the battery housing.
There were no batteries.
He just had time to realize that Azhar hadn’t trusted him after all before the helicopter struck the floor of the crater in a burgeoning mushroom cloud of flame and black smoke.
Lieutenant Colonel Farley stared at the telemetry readout from his number two JDAM.
“Firestorm, Firestorm Five,” he said. “One of my weapons just lost target lock. Switching to GPS mode.”
“Five, One. Which target? Over.”
“One, Five. The southern San Martin crater. It’s now tracking on GPS guidance.”
“Copy, Five.”
Farley didn’t know why their orders called for them to drop bombs on one of the Canary Islands. The whole
