Soar (30 page)

Wei-Liu followed—lagging behind.

“Tracy, get the hell up here now,” Ritzik yelled. “Jeezus H.”

She looked confused. She saw Mickey D, then finally spied Ritzik.

Who grabbed her by the arm roughly. “Get … down.”

She settled next to him, irate. He reached into his pocket and brought out a small container. “C’mere.”

Wei-Liu turned her face toward him. Before she knew what was happening, he’d daubed dark paste on her forehead, cheeks, and neck. She tried to pull away, but he held her firm.

“What the hell do you think—”

“Your skin reflects light,” he said matter-of-factly. He peered at her face and applied more of the greasy cream. “They can see exposed skin from above.” He smeared the backs of her hands and the exposed parts of her wrists. He turned her face left, then right, examining his work. Then he smudged more goop under her eyes and behind her ears.

She’d been self-conscious like this earlier. The forced intimacy of the parachute jump had made her uneasy. And yet there was something comforting about being close to Ritzik that had made Wei-Liu feel good; feel safe. And yet he was always distant; removed; disinterested. She’d never met anyone so intensely single-minded before.

Ritzik pointed toward a stunted conifer about ten yards away. The evergreen was partially obscured by a small rock outcropping. “See that tree? Get under it—squeeze as close to the trunk as you can. Then lie down—and stay down until I tell you otherwise.”

The echoes from the chopper’s big blades were more pronounced now—which meant they were getting close. He looked at Wei-Liu, his face dead serious. “Tracy…”

“Yes?”

“Do not move. Do not look up. Do not shift your position, or squirm.” His face was severe. “Got it?”

“Yes, I got it.” She was pissed at being told what to do. But his tone had conveyed the absolute gravity of the situation. She saluted. “Yes, sir, Major, sir.”

He thrust her toward the tree, oblivious to sarcasm. “Go.”

She’d no sooner settled under the little tree than the
whomp-whomp-whomping
grew unbearably loud—and then suddenly eased off, the rotor sound replaced by the high-pitched whine of the HP’s twin turboshaft engines.

And then Ritzik saw the first chopper as its bulbous, glass-enclosed snout rose above the south ridge, three hundred yards away, roughly two hundred feet above the ground. It was a troop transport all right—painted in the Beijing Military District camouflage colors: mottled blotches of gray, blue green, and tan. The flight deck was completely glass-enclosed. He could look past the windshield wipers and see the pilots in their khaki flight suits, their hands on the collective and cyclic controls, even the flight manuals stowed next to the seats and their legs running down to the pedals that controlled the tail rotor pitch.

He pressed his transmit button. “If we’re spotted, take ‘em out.” When he realized what he’d just said, the enormity of it smacked him like a gut punch. He’d just single-handedly told his people to wage war against the duly constituted armed forces of the People’s Republic of China. But there’d been no other option. They were cornered and they’d have to come out fighting.

The big bird shifted its attitude slightly, providing a broadside as it dropped its nose over the ridgeline and moved north. The port-side hatch was open—the door slid aft in its track and secured. A machine gun on an elbowed, free-floating gimbal mount protruded aggressively from the doorway. The gunner, in headphones and goggles, craned his head through the hatch.

As the chopper turned, Ritzik could make out the identification on the side of the fuselage and was surprised to see that the lettering was Western, not Chinese. He hunkered, hidden—he prayed—by the branches and the ground. But
knowing in his heart that unless the chopper was being flown by Ray Charles and the machine gun was manned by Stevie Wonder, there was no way on God’s earth that the truck and the 4x4 would go unseen. Face it: he was screwed.

Ritzik pressed his transmit button. “Ty—”

“Loner, Ty.”

“The pilots. Shoot the pilots.”

“Roger that.”

From where Wei-Liu lay, she couldn’t see the aircraft. But she could see
Ty
Weaver as he brought his long gun up over the edge of the rocks where he lay. The heavy black weapon was draped in cloth. The sniper had shredded one of the Russian anoraks and wound the green-, gray-, and brown-flecked camouflage fabric around the stock, barrel, and telescopic sight.

Weaver’s voice in Ritzik’s ear: “Got them.” The muzzle of Weaver’s rifle followed the chopper as it hovered for perhaps fifteen seconds above the ridgeline. Then the bird moved slowly to the north, carefully mimicking the S-curve of the road.

Weaver’s voice again: “Lost the pilots—have the gunner.”

Now a second HIP hove slowly into view. It flew two hundred yards behind and three hundred yards to the east of the first craft, engines screaming, rotors
thud-thud-thudding.
The second HIP lay back as the first chopper flew a slow and deliberate pass over the road, then disappeared over the northern end of the ridge where the Americans lay concealed.

Ritzik could see the machine gunner in the second chopper. He was hanging out the hatchway, scanning the ravine through field glasses. The goddamn aircraft was virtually on top of the truck before the asshole saw anything.

But he did see it. Ritzik could even see as the man’s lips moved excitedly.

He watched, transfixed, as Chopper Two banked in a tight arc and the pilots confirmed visual contact.

The door gunner disappeared, then reappeared in the doorway. He kicked a rope ladder out of the second chopper. Now the first chopper eased back into view.

Mickey D’s voice in Ritzik’s ear: “Everybody hold until the first troops are on the ground and there’s somebody on the ladder—the pilots will be concentrating on keeping the aircraft stable. Air currents in these ravines are treacherous.”

Ty’s voice: “Roger. I’m back on Aircraft One—got the pilots.”

Rowdy’s voice: “Doc, Mick, Bill: Chopper One; I got number two—me and the spooks.”

Ritzik’s voice: “Rowdy—Loner. What about me?”

Yates’s voice came back fast. “Loner, you watch and pick up the pieces if we leave anything alive.”

Rowdy shifted on the ground, checking his six to make sure that the backblast from the RPGs wouldn’t smack the ground behind him and send pieces of rock into his back. There were no optical sights on these weapons, only the KISS
²¹
flip-up iron tangent sights favored by guerrillas and terrorists.

He looked over to where Sam Phillips and his two comrades lay concealed, some eight yards abreast of him. “I’m going for the aircraft—the door gunner,” he called to them, his voice masked by the choppers. “You get the troops. You fire short bursts until they’re all down.”

Rowdy shifted focus. The door gunner was back at his post. He was dressed in Chinese Special Ops BDUs: olive-drab shirt over dappled, camouflage trousers. Unlike the
Delta shooters, he wore no body armor. In his peripheral vision, Rowdy caught the door gunner in Chopper One dropping a ladder as the big craft hovered five yards above the ravine floor. But his focus remained steady on the second aircraft. He chewed the droopy corner of his mustache, happy with the way he’d positioned his people. The choppers had to descend below the ridgeline, which made it harder for them to take evasive action because they were walled in by Mother Nature. Meanwhile, Rowdy and his people held the high ground.

Rowdy checked the spooks and saw that they were ready. “Sun-Tzu says there are six terrains to be considered when setting the location of battle,” he said, looking in Kaz’s direction. “On steep terrain, the first to claim the high positions and the sunny side will be victorious.” He watched as the HIPs eased into the kill zone and then nodded at X-Man. “We’ve got the sunny side up today.”

The Chinese troops—those who actually made it onto the ground alive—would be forced to move uphill toward them, with very little cover and no concealment. Rowdy looked toward Sam Phillips. “The contour of the land is of great help to the victorious army if the general knows how to use it to his advantage. Remember that, Sam I am.”

Rowdy’s right hand settled around the trigger grip; his left hand held the front-heavy launcher steady. He followed the target as it approached. Rowdy liked the RPG. It was lightweight—the launcher and four rockets weighed less than forty pounds. Much more man-portable than a Carl Gustav or the old Italian Folgore. Sure, it wasn’t as accurate as either one. But at close quarters, which is all Rowdy worried about, it was deadly. Most of all, it was simple. And there were so many of them floating around that there was virtually nowhere on earth you went that you couldn’t obtain one. More to the point, since your adversaries almost
certainly carried RPGs just like you did, you could kill them and come away with extra rounds. That, certainly, had been his experience in Mogadishu and Kosovo, Colombia, the Philippines, Lebanon, and northern Iraq.

He fixed the big exhaust of the chopper’s turbo engine in his sight. The bird was dropping slowly, slowly, now just fifteen feet off the road. The bottom of the ladder began to drag. A Chinese trooper, weapon slung over his back, swung out and clambered down, fighting the prop wash, the ground-effect vibration, and the ladder itself.

The son of a bitch almost fell as he caught a leg. Then he recovered, pulled himself up, got his leg free, and continued down two dozen rungs onto the road. He waved at the hatchway, then grabbed the ladder to stabilize it.

Rowdy waited until there were two men on the ladder. He saw the copilot’s face, looking down and back, anxiously, as the soldiers descended. His eyes shifted to the door gunner. And then he lowered the sight picture slightly, and squeezed the RPG’s trigger.

That action ignited a powder charge, which ejected the grenade from the launcher with a loud explosive
ka-boom
at 84 meters per second. Rowdy was careful to watch as the round flew away, to make sure that all four of the stabilizing fins had deployed. If one of them hadn’t, the damn thing could cartwheel, reverse course, and come back to bite him on the ass. He knew that 5 meters—six one-hundredths of a second—after it left the muzzle, the grenade warhead had armed itself. After 11 meters—thirteen one-hundredths of a second—the sustainer rocket fired with a loud
shrieeek.
There was a huge flash, and the rocket accelerated to its full velocity: 294 meters a second.

Chopper Two was less than eighty meters from where Rowdy lay. It took less than a third of a second—.2721 of a second to be precise—for the rocket’s Piezo-electric fuse to
crush against the interior of the choppers starboard-side interior wall, igniting the 94 percent RDX high-explosive warhead.

The explosion blew the minigunner clear out of the aircraft. Rowdy could see wounded Chinese tossing themselves about inside the fuselage. The aircraft stuttered—maybe shrapnel had hit the hydraulics or guidance systems. It didn’t matter. Either way, the pilots had to fight like hell to bring the chopper under control.

But Rowdy wasn’t watching anymore. His attention had moved on to the second threat—the soldiers on the ground. He screamed, “C’mon, assholes—get the sons of bitches,” at the spooks, who shook themselves out of whatever Langley-influenced stupor they were in and began to lay down a stream of suppressive fire at the Chinese troops.

And then Rowdy was reloading, quickly but firmly jabbing a second rocket into the blunderbuss muzzle of the launcher, bringing the weapon up onto his shoulder, and aligning his sight picture. The process took him less than seven seconds.

He fired again. The round cleared the RPG cleanly. But the chopper dropped precipitously as the pilot tried to keep his aircraft from spinning into the ground.

The HIP began to buffet. The rocket flew over the top of the bird and exploded against the far ravine wall.

Rowdy cursed. Quickly, he stuffed a third rocket—an OG-7 high-explosive fragmentation grenade—into the launcher’s muzzle.

Now the chopper careened to the right, arcing away from him like a clay bird coming out of a skeet house. Teeth clenched, Rowdy swung the grenade launcher around, following the HIP’s trajectory. He forgot about the iron sights. Instead, he let the wide RPG warhead overtake the center
of the cockpit, almost as if he were swinging a big, lethal paintbrush. And just as he “painted” the leading side of the chopper’s glassed-in nose with a smooth, even stroke, he pulled the trigger and
“Hoo-ah!”
remembered to follow through the swing.

F
ROM EIGHTY YARDS AWAY,
Ty Weaver’s 168-grain boat-tail bullet caught HIP One’s pilot in the philtrum—that small indentation between the bottom of the nose and the top of the lip. The shot was catastrophic: the target’s central nervous system was destroyed and he was brain-dead before he even realized he’d been shot. The chopper lurched vertically ten yards. The HIP’s sudden movement shook three Chinese off the rope ladder. They fell hard, twenty-five feet onto the road below. One scrambled away. The other two lay stunned.

The sniper moved the crosshairs of his sight to his left, found his secondary target—the copilot’s throat—and squeezed the trigger. Weaver saw the man’s head snap sideways. Then the HIP corkscrewed to the right and dropped stonelike forty feet, smacking hard onto the roadbed and shearing its port-side tire off.

The chopper bounced once, then twice, crushing the two soldiers who’d fallen from the ladder.
Ty
squinted through the ten-power scope, and wasn’t happy with what he saw: the copilot in profile, blood oozing from his neck, still alive, working frantically to operate the controls and save
his aircraft. The sniper focused again, his pulse steady, his breathing even, his right index finger easing tighter on the trigger.

The HIP dragged itself to clockwise, blades kicking up dust and stones, rotating on its broken landing-gear strut. Ty cursed silently. Now—when he could see at all—what he saw was the profile of the pilot, head thrown back, strapped dead into his seat.