Z (13 page)

But those awards had been posthumous, and that was one thing Harris didn’t want to see happen here. He looked at the situation board and noticed an aircraft listed on station over Luanda. Exactly what he needed. “Get me Spectre Four.”

Riley heard Lome order the radios switched over to the pilot’s survival radio frequency, then the team sergeant handed a headset to the medic on board. “Pilot’s down and hurt, Comsky. You’d better talk to him. Call sign is Cruiser One.”

Comsky settled the cups over his ears. He keyed the radio. “Cruiser One, this is your help. We’re en route to your location. Talk to me, buddy. Over.”

They were all startled when a woman’s voice replied. “This is Cruiser One. Good to hear your voice. Over.”

“I’m a medic,” Comsky said. “Describe your injuries and I’ll have the aspirin ready when we land. Over.”

Lieutenant Chandler was doing his best, but he only had so much ordnance. He had taken out three pickup trucks. The others had caught on and were laying low, scooting from one clump of trees to another. He solved that problem twice by simply taking out the entire clump of trees. He was gaining Vickers time, but that ate up the ordnance under his wings.

As he swooped out of another gun-run, his missile warning light went on, but he was prepared. He kicked in his afterburners and corkscrewed away, evading the missile.

Conner screamed as Sergeant Ku leaned forward and a stream of black-and-red liquid spilled out his mouth all over her and onto the seats of the helicopter. Ku’s chest was rising and falling, his breath rattling loud enough to be heard.

Riley unbuckled her seat belt and pulled her out of the way. He slid in next to Ku and checked the man’s pulse, ignoring the viscous material covering everything. His first instinct was that Ku had been shot through the lungs—how, he didn’t know—maybe a random round from the ground. From the amount of blood, it was the only thing that made sense. Riley ripped off Ku’s gear, tearing his shirt open.

Leaning against the back wall of the chopper, Seeger was filming the entire thing.

Lieutenant Vickers watched Chandler kick in afterburners and evade the missile. She was lying in two-foot-high grass on the side of a gentle swell in a large open area. There were scattered groups of trees in all directions. She’d disconnected her parachute and the breeze had blown the green cloth away to the south. She was seated, one leg extended straight out, the other tucked underneath to support herself. In her right hand she held her 9mm pistol, ready for action. She knew that in this type of terrain, someone with a rifle could pick her off well before they came within pistol range. She held the survival radio in her left hand.

The radio hissed. “Is it a compound fracture? Over.”

Vickers looked down at her straight leg. “I don’t see any bone.” She put the pistol down and felt the ankle. “I don’t feel anything sticking out. I just can’t move it. Over.”

“Roger. Any other injuries? Over.”

She thought she heard a truck engine off to the north. “Nothing serious. But if you don’t get here soon, I anticipate some more serious ones. Over.”

On the Black Hawk, Comsky was still talking to the pilot as he joined Riley. They were manhandling the sergeant, searching for a wound, but there was nothing.

“Three minutes out!” Lome screamed at them. “What’s wrong with him?” he added, pointing at Ku.

“I don’t know,” Riley said.

“Fuck,” Lome said. “I need all the bodies I can get on the ground.”

Riley picked up Ku’s M-16. “I’ll take his place.”

Lome looked at Riley for a second, then nodded. “All right. Tell your camera friend and the lady to stay on the bird. We want to go in and get out fast.”

The radio broke in on their conversation. “Uh, Rescue One, this is Cruiser One. How far out are you guys? Over.” The woman’s voice was flat, but they could read the undercurrents.

“Two minutes,” Comsky said, slamming Ku back against the wall and tightening down the man’s seat buckle. “Hang tough. We’ll be there. Over.” Comsky cut off the radio and pointed at Ku. “He isn’t hit. Must be sick. Nothing we can do for him now. Just leave him.”

“Roger,” Vickers replied. She released the transmit button and spoke to herself. “Two minutes. I guess I’ll wait. I’ve got nothing better to do.” She could see men running through the grass to her right, about two hundred yards away. She twisted her head, but the rising ground blocked her view to the rear. She checked her pistol one more time. Her heart lifted when she heard the distinctive thump of helicopter blades.

“It’s a hot LZ,” the pilot of the Black Hawk announced.

“All right,” Lome replied, sliding back the bolt on his weapon.

“No,” the pilot said. “I mean it’s hot. Missiles and heavy-caliber machine gun hot. If those guys took down an F-18, they got some heavy shit. I don’t want to hang around. In and out. Fast.”

“Just get us there,” Lome said.

Riley pulled back the charging handle on Ku’s M-16, making sure there was a round in the chamber. He looked at Conner, who was covered in red. She was trying to clean some of it off with a rag. “Stay on the helicopter! Keep Seeger on board.”

She nodded.

“Thirty seconds!” Lome yelled.

A string of bright green spots flashed by the helicopter. The door gunners replied with their M-60s, sending red tracers back at the source of the green in a grove of trees.

Riley felt his stomach muscles tighten. The ground came rushing up. He grabbed hold of a strap and leaned out. He could see the pilot lying on the ground, firing away with a pistol. Riley followed her aim and spotted the figures of three men in camouflage moving through the grass.

At that moment a ball of fire came out of the midst of the three men. “RPG!” Riley yelled.

The helicopter pilot tried turning at the last second. It was too late. The RPG rocket tore into the helicopter, to the rear of the cargo compartment, and exploded, severing all the controls leading to the rear rotor disk and stabilizer. Fortunately, they had just been about to land and their altitude was only twenty feet. The Black Hawk slammed into the ground, the wheels buckling as they’d been designed, taking up much of the impact along with the left front of the bird, the copilot dying instantly as the instrument panel crumpled into his chest.

Riley’s grip was torn from the strap and he was thrown onto the ground. He lay stunned for a second, then rolled and came up on one knee, the stock of his weapon tight against his shoulder. He was disoriented momentarily. He heard people yelling behind him and the sound of gunfire.

A stream of tracers oriented him. He fired three rounds into the men who had fired the RPG. A heavy roar just over his left shoulder joined his firing and the three men wilted under the fire, their bodies jolting from the impact of the bullets.

Riley ceased firing and slowly lowered his weapon. He looked left. Lome had one of the door M-60s cradled in his large hands. The team sergeant put the gun down and turned back to the helicopter. Riley joined him.

“Rescue One is down,” Colonel Harris said in a flat voice. He was listening to four different frequencies in his headset. “Pilot reports they’re on the ground and have a secure perimeter. One dead.” Harris’s eyes flashed at the Plexiglas status board to his right, where an enlisted man stood on the other side, writing different notations in grease pencil backward, so that they appeared correctly to Harris.

“All right, Rescue One. Hang tight. I’ve got people moving.” He switched frequencies and his tone changed, snapping out orders in a voice that brooked no questions.

* * *

Lome had Tiller and Oswald along with the two uninjured crewmen in a tight perimeter around the crash site. Riley could see that Comsky was busy, so he stood at the medic’s shoulder and assisted. Besides the jet pilot’s leg, the surviving helicopter pilot was bleeding from a gash across his forehead where his helmet visor had shattered. He had pulled out his headset and was staying in contact with the AWACS on the aircraft’s SATCOM radio. The other pilot’s body was still inside the aircraft. And then there was Sergeant Ku, lying where they’d carried him, unconscious.

“How is she?” Riley asked Comsky, who had cut open the leg of Vickers’s flight suit.

“I feel fine,” Lieutenant Vickers said. “Just won’t be dancing for a while.”

Riley smiled. “Sorry. We’ll get you out of here,” he added. Comsky was wrapping a metal splint that looked like chicken fence around her lower leg, holding it in place with an Ace bandage.

Vickers looked over at the helicopter. Smoke was still coming out of the large hole in the tail boom. “Looks like the cavalry threw a shoe.” She peered at him, searching his plain jungle fatigues for any insignia. “And you are?”

“Dave Riley.” He jerked a thumb at Conner who was kneeling with Seeger as he filmed the scene. “I’m with them.”

Vickers nodded.

“You’ll be all right,” Comsky said. “I’ve immobilized your ankle.” He reached into his aid kit and took out some pills. “These will help.”

“Transmit,” Conner ordered Seeger. They were in the shadow of the helicopter, protected by the drooping tail boom.

“Now?” he asked, surprised.

“Now.” She gestured. “This is hot.” She looked over at Lome, who still had the M-60 in his hands and was searching the horizon, looking for targets. “And there’s always the chance we might not be getting out of here.”

Seeger shrugged and took out the small satellite dish, hooking it into the back of his camera.

* * *

Ku gave a strange, choking sound. Riley and Comsky moved over to him just in time to see him vomit a vast quantity of dark red blood.

“Jesus,” Riley muttered as they stared at the sergeant.

Comsky quickly donned a pair of surgical gloves. He thrust a pair at Riley. “He’s choking. Hold him down,” he ordered as he pulled a tube out of his bag.

Riley slipped the gloves on and grabbed Ku’s shoulders. Comsky leaned over and put his hand into the man’s mouth, sweeping around with his fingers, trying to clear it out. He wiped off a mass of black goo on Ku’s shirt, then put the tip of the tube inside the man’s mouth. Ku violently threw up again. This time a mass went around the tube and splattered into Comsky’s face and over his chest.

“Fuck!” Comsky yelled, wiping across his eyes to clear his vision.

Riley kept his grip as Ku thrashed about.

“Turn him on his side,” Comsky ordered. He pushed the scope farther in. Ku’s chest began rising and falling. “All right. He’s got air,” Comsky said. The medic reached inside his aid kit and pulled an IV out. “But he’s lost so much blood, he’s going into shock. He’ll be dead if I don’t get something in him.”

There was a tearing sound from inside Ku.

“What was that?” Riley asked. It was the most nauseating thing he’d ever heard.

“I don’t think we want to know,” Comsky said as he slid the needle into Ku’s arm.

More blood came up out of Ku’s mouth around the tube. There was material mixed in the blood.

“What’s that stuff?” Riley asked.

“His guts,” Comsky said. “That’s what we heard tearing. His insides are just disintegrating.” He kept working. “Fuck,” Comsky muttered. “I can’t get this going.” The needle hadn’t taken and blood was seeping out around the hole. He tried again, with the same result. “Christ, I’m killing him trying to save him. He’s going to bleed to death while I try to get blood expander into him.”

Ku’s eyes flashed open. It looked to Riley like he was trying to speak, but the tube prevented that. The sergeant’s hands dug into Riley’s arms with amazing strength and he half sat up. More blood and guts poured out. Then Ku’s head flopped back and his eyes rolled up.

Comsky reached forward and felt the man’s neck. “He’s dead.” Comsky peeled off his gloves and threw them down next to the body. “Fat lot of good those did us.”

Riley looked up as Lome fired a long burst with the M-60. “We have other trouble right now.”

A new voice spoke in Colonel Harris’s headset. “I’ve got the helicopter. Are you sure all friendlies are in the immediate vicinity of the crash site? Over.”

Harris called the helicopter pilot and confirmed it. “Roger, all friendlies are within twenty feet of the crash site. Over.”

“Roger. I’ve multiple targets on thermals outside of that perimeter. We’ll take care of this. Out.”

The AC-130 Spectre gunship was developed around the C-130 Hercules transport plane frame. Inside the spacious cargo hold, instead of paratroopers or pallets, there were three large guns, their snouts pointing out holes in the left side of the aircraft. Between the three—a 20mm cannon, a 40mm cannon, and a 105mm howitzer—the aircraft could fire several thousand rounds a minute and put a round in every square inch of a football field in less than ten seconds.

The pilot who had just finished talking to Colonel Harris had the plane in a counterclockwise racetrack at over a mile of altitude. His targeting officer was using an amplified thermal imager to scan the ground and acquire targets. The guns were computer controlled, and the officer was feeding in each one outside of the perimeter of the people around the crashed helicopter.

In the rear crewmen waited. Not to fire the guns, the computer would do that on the command of the targeting officer, but with shovels to clear away the mounds of expended brass that would pile up around the guns once they did begin firing.

On the ground Riley cocked his head. There was a familiar sound in the air. He looked up, but in the hazy sky he couldn’t see anything. Still, he knew what was coming. He’d seen this before.

“You might want to point that thing out there,” he called out to Seeger, indicating in the direction of the UNITA rebels who were cowering behind a disabled pickup truck, popping up occasionally to fire an errant shot in their direction.

“I think I’ve got them all,” the targeting officer said.

“Let ’er rip,” the pilot ordered.

The targeting officer flipped a switch and the plane shuddered as all three guns began firing. The 20 and 40mm cannons had Gatling-type barrels and were fed by belts of ammunition. The 105mm howitzer ate a stack of rounds fed from overhead, one at a time.