Soar (38 page)

M
IKE RITZIK
got the hint they’d been unmasked when he found himself suspended completely outside the open doorway, separated from the ground by a worn, two-inch-wide canvas strap and a carabiner that had probably been made by prison labor in Shenyang. The shock of the violent evasive move pulled the AK out of his hands and he watched it disappear between his legs. He looked down and saw the ground directly below his feet. Then the HIP rolled again and he was yo-yo’d back inside the cabin and smacked rudely onto the deck face first.

He took hold of the door-frame support to keep himself inside just in case Mickey D decided to try crazy eights again, then craned his neck to make sure
Ty
and Gino were still among the living. The sniper was walking on his knees, his arms wrapped protectively around the HK, heading for someplace he could strap the weapon down. Gene Shepard was working frantically to secure the machine gun’s pintle arm.

Ritzik’s eyes scanned the cabin. He saw the RPG rockets tied down aft, pulled himself more or less upright, detached from the bulkhead, quickly secured the safety harness to
the overhead rail with the carabiner, and lurched aft toward the grenade launcher, only to be swept off his feet as Mickey D dropped the HIP’s nose and began to slalom the chopper wildly toward the ground. Ritzik slid forward a yard and a half, finally coming to rest against the cockpit bulkhead.

0921:21.
“Help me find him, Sam—help me find him.” Mick had lost the HIND somewhere behind them. He was vulnerable. No place to be. He gave the HIP all the throttle it could stand and started an evasive sequence that took them in a clockwise corkscrew at about a sixty-eight-degree angle, followed by a rapid climb and an outward turn, followed by a series of quick, veering, downward maneuvers that brought him back over the IMU convoy at a height of about thirty feet.

As they flashed by, Mick heard the ping of rounds on the airframe. He jogged the HIP left, then right. As he pulled past the burning truck that had led the decimated convoy, and swerved violently to his right, a rocket streaked from somewhere behind him on the desert floor.

Damn convoy hadn’t been decimated enough, Mick decided.

Five hundred yards behind Mickey D the HIND wrenched itself out of its attack trajectory, twisted away, released chaff, and pulled hard to starboard at a dangerous angle, flying east, away from the chaff.

The rocket seemed to waver, then veered toward the HIND’s countermeasures and headed west, its trail visible as it cut through the floating, shiny chaff cloud and vanishing into the morning sky.

0921:27.
“What the hell was that?” Ritzik pulled himself into the cockpit area.

“Dunno, boss.” Mick jogged the HIP slightly to the south. “SA-7 of some kind. Maybe a Strela. Maybe a Chinese HN-5. Who the hell knows? It was moving too fast.”

“Damn.” That was all they needed. “We’re vulnerable,” Ritzik said. The HIP didn’t carry countermeasures.

“You guys strap in,” Mick said. “Lemme deal with this.”

0921:39.
Mick pulled the HIP’s nose up slightly and careened westward, fifteen yards off the desert floor, chest heaving, his eyes scanning for the gunship. He finally caught a glimpse of it at his four o’clock, turning into him, running flat-out balls to the wall, altitude about six hundred feet.

Where the hell had the gunship been hiding? He’d done a frigging three-sixty and still he hadn’t seen the goddamn thing.

0921:43.
Mick let the son of a bitch come on. He knew the HIND’s rockets wouldn’t do him any good—not at such an oblique angle. It was the Gatling he had to worry about. The frigging HIND could fire thirty degrees left or right of center. Mick gave himself more throttle and increased the collective pitch, pulling the HIP up vertically, keeping his own craft out of the fatal sixty-degree funnel. The HIND followed.

“C’mon, c’mon, you asshole—try this.” Mick’s eyes narrowed. Suddenly he decelerated, bringing the HDP into a hover. As the HIND flashed past, Mick popped the HIP straight up, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hundred feet. If the gunship was fully loaded—and it appeared to be—it was virtually incapable of quick stops and hovering.

0921:50.
Ritzik, Ty, and Gene Shepard rolled onto their hands and knees as the HIP slowed to a hover just above
two thousand feet. Ritzik reached for the troop seat just forward of the port-side doorway and pulled it from its storage position. “You guys better do a Bette Davis,” he croaked.

“Betty who?” Gino Shepard’s words were lost in the chopper noise, but Ritzik understood the first sergeant’s raised shoulders. Ritzik dropped onto the seat and secured the harness.

He shouted, “She’s the one who said, Tasten your seat belts, it’s gonna be a bumpy night.’”

0922:11.
Mickey D watched as the HIND arced into a wide turn, then fought for altitude, flying an intercept route that would cut them off from escape. Mick’s eyes scanned the horizon. They were sitting above the road as it came off the desert basin and curved into the foothills. The burning convoy sat to the HIP’s north and west by about two kliks—just over a mile. The nose of the front truck was less than a kilometer from where the desert plain’s lunarlike surface gave way to the sixty-foot dunes and S-curved ravines leading to the two mountain ranges that marked the Chinese-Tajik border. Mick rotated the HIP once in a three-sixty to make sure the second HIND was nowhere in sight. And then he popped the HIP another three thousand feet into the sky. “Your move, asshole.”

The gunship climbed steadily toward the HIP. At eight hundred yards or less, the Gatling was deadly. The rockets had three times that range.

Mick watched as the HIND’s profile grew larger and larger. And then, as it drew within two kilometers, maybe a little more, the gunship loosed two quick quartets of rockets.

Mick dropped the nose of the HIP toward the desert floor, rotated so he faced the HIND, then dropped the chopper in a vertical plunge, as sudden and violent as an elevator whose cable has been sheared off.

The HIP’s airframe protested by buffeting violently. Hell, the damn thing hadn’t been built for aerobatics. Mick literally stood on the pedals to maintain control as the HIP dropped below the eight rockets. His left arm fought to decrease the collective while his right somehow managed to maintain the cyclic pitch in a neutral attitude.

At less than a hundred feet above the deck he adjusted the cyclic pitch and added throttle, dropping the nose slightly and putting the HIP into forward flight. He skimmed above the desert, heading straight for the burning convoy. Above and behind him, the HIND loosed another rocket barrage.

Mick yanked the collective and the HIP jumped skyward, accelerating to two thousand feet. When he saw the rockets strike, he dropped the HIP and skimmed the ground once more. “I can’t see him, Sam—where the hell is he?”

Sam Phillips twisted in the left-hand seat, but all he saw was empty sky. “Can’t see him, Mick.”

The pilot yawed left, then right. “Damn—” He yanked the HIP skyward and to the left. A hundred yards in front of the chopper’s nose, an RPG rocket flashed into the sky. “Sorry.” Mick regained control, eased the HIP back toward the deck, and flashed over the convoy, shouting into his throat mike: “Loner, Loner, can you see him?”

Ritzik heard Mickey D’s voice in his earpiece. But the noise in the cabin was too loud to make out what the hell the man was asking. “Come again, come again,” he shouted, and then clapped his hand over his ear, trying like hell to shut the din out.

Message received. “Hold on—” Ritzik reached up then slid the carabiner onto the port-side safety rail, ratcheted the web strap as tight as he could, then released the seat harness and stood up, his right hand tight on the door frame. He pulled himself into the doorway, then stuck his head outside.

The suction of the slipstream almost pulled Ritzik out of the aircraft. He braced himself with his right hand. And then, using the safety strap to steady himself, he pulled himself aft, grabbed the rear door frame with both hands, and stuck his upper body out the doorway.

The HIND was directly on their six, perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards above the HIP, and less than a mile away. It was closing fast. Ritzik could see the flashes from the rocket pods as the gunship fired another burst. Instinctively, he ducked his head back into the cabin and shouted, “Rockets!” into his mike.

The HIP shot into the sky again, knocking Ritzik off his feet, slamming the back of his head into the door frame.

Everything went black and white. Ritzik saw big white spots in a black universe. And then he was on his butt, his back against the folded troop seat. Gino’s gloved hand was on his neck, and the first sergeant was drizzling water in his face. He struggled to his knees. “I’m okay, I’m okay.” Gino released him. Ritzik wiped his face, raised his goggles and swabbed the water out of his eyes, crawled back into the doorway, and stuck his head outside.

The HIND had gained on them. It was still directly behind the HIP, less than a mile out, and four, maybe five hundred feet above them, high enough to be able to block Mick’s evasive maneuvering—a fast-reacting cornerback angling on a wide receiver. Ritzik watched the ground blur as the HIP veered north and dropped to within twenty feet of the ground. The narrow ribbon of road came into his field of vision as Mick pushed the HIP westward, balls to the wall.

Ritzik caught the flash of the Gatling, but couldn’t see the rounds. Now the IMU convoy flashed by directly beneath the HIP’s wide body and disappeared behind them.

Something dangerous tore into the HIP’s belly, shaking
the aircraft. And then Mick slammed the HIP into a flat, ninety-degree right-hand turn, pointing the transport’s nose north. Ritzik lost sight of the HIND.

In the cockpit, Mick’s hands felt as if they’d sweated clear through his Nomex flying gloves. Maybe they had: the leather finger pads were slightly sticky on the controls. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except keeping the HIP steady, running at full throttle mere feet above the burning convoy, giving whoever on the ground had the missile—if they did have another missile—a tough target. It was human nature: give somebody a choice between a hard target and an easy one and they’ll take the easier shot.

The HIP burst through the ground smoke—but took no ground fire. Just beyond the western side of the convoy Mick used the smoke as cover, rotated the HIP six, seven, eight hundred yards to the south, then literally slid behind the first line of dunes and dropped into a hover, putting the convoy and the line of dunes between the HIP and the gunship.

Mickey D popped the HIP above the sixty-foot dune and watched as the HIND pilot took notice and abruptly changed course. Mick grinned at Sam. “Greedy, greedy,” he said, watching as the Chinese adjusted his angle of descent then accelerated and careened to the south at about six hundred feet to begin his strafing run.

Which is when the IMU guerrillas fired their second SA-7. Sam was transfixed as the HIND jogged violently left, then right, then pivoted to climb away from the convoy, releasing bunches of chaff.

Except this time Mickey D had suckered the HIND broadside to the IMU missile launcher. Broadside meant that the gunship’s jet exhausts, located amidships, just forward and above the chopper’s stubby wings, were now exposed to the missile’s sensors. And just like scissors cut
paper but rock breaks scissors, the fat, round, hotter-than-hot exhaust from twin Isotov TV-3-117 turbines trumps chaff every single time in the missile-sensor playbook.

Frankly, Mick didn’t give a rusty F-word whether the IMU was firing an ancient Soviet SA-7, or a newer Strela-2, or a stolen Chinese HN-5. All he knew was that every one of those missiles was an old-fashioned heat-seeker. To work properly, they required a heat source—the exhaust—to lock on to, and a minimum range of five hundred meters for the fired missile to arm itself. Which, Mick noted with satisfaction, was just about what the HIND pilot had allowed, intent as he was on blowing the crap out of the HIP.

Because the HIND was so low, the missile’s flight time was less than one-two-three seconds. Which was when the contact fuse of the kilo-and-a-half high-explosive warhead grazed the exhaust vent and the rocket detonated just inside. There was a brief, explosive hiccup as the engines disintegrated. A violent blast jerked the HIND onto its side. A millisecond later there was another flash, which broke the chopper in two. Rotors shattering, the gunship’s front end cartwheeled, then dropped stonelike onto the desert floor, bursting into a huge fireball that was immediately enveloped in a funnel-shaped cloud of thick, black smoke.

From the starboard doorway, Ritzik saw the dark plume and then a series of vivid white-and-orange explosions as the chopper’s rockets blew up.

Then it was all wiped from his field of vision as Mick rotated the HIP clockwise and accelerated, flying low to keep the dunes between them and the IMU as the pilot headed due west. The Chinese were still out there—prowling and growling. Ritzik had to get his people out before the PLA chopped them all to bits.

T
EN HUNDRED FIFTEEN HOURS
.
That was the cutoff Rowdy Yates had set for himself. If Ritzik wasn’t back, they’d get the hell out of Dodge and head for the Tajik border. But now there was a chopper in the area. He heard the
thud-thud-thudding
as rotor sound bounced off the rocky terrain. Friend or foe? It didn’t matter. They’d stay under cover until he knew for sure. If things had been perfect, he’d have received an intel dump from Dodger or Marko at the TOC. But Almaty was off the air. The frigging radios were still fried. He couldn’t reach Ritzik. There was even static when he broadcast to Doc, Goose, Curtis, and the rest of the Delta element, who lay no more than a hundred and fifty yards away, direct line of sight, on the opposite ridge.