"We're taking fire!" Peretz shouted from the weapons station down below.
"What? That's impossible." Ramirez whirled, then stepped in behind him to look. Lights from the control panel winked over his shoulders, while below them the Aegean was dark and gray. "Check the look-down radar."
Peretz flipped a switch on his left and scanned the screen.
'There's something down there. Maybe a fishing-"
"Idiot, nobody's fishing here now. Not with this weather." He looked up and shouted to the cockpit. "Salim, take her about, one-eighty, and we'll strafe the son of a bitch."
The 12.7mm nose cannon was slaved to the radar, another of the Hind's many well-designed, and lethal, features. While Ramirez watched-he would have moved back into the gunnery seat himself, but there was no time-Dore Peretz switched on the nose cannon. When the target locked on the radar, he pushed the fire control under his right hand.
A flare of machine-gun fire, hopping across the churning sea, caught the side of Odyssey II and sprayed flecks of wood around him. But the swell was making him an elusive target. The line of fire had not really done any damage, not this time.
They knew he was there, though. Now the chopper was banking and returning for another pass.
Maybe, he thought, they're going to stick with the nose cannon. They won't bother wasting rockets or a multi- thousand-dollar Swatter missile on the wreckage of a raft. The bastards are just having some target practice, a little fun and games.
He saw the flames from the nose cannon begin as the massive Hind started its second pass. This was it. Odyssey II was about to be history.
But not before he gave her one last blaze of glory.
Holding to the gunwale and readying himself, he took careful aim at the starboard Swatter, still perched like a thin white bird on the stubby wingtip. He steadied the Walther, on semiautomatic, and began firing-oblivious to the line of strafing coming his way.
He saw the rounds glancing off the armored wing, and the sparks guided his aim. The clip was going fast, but then…
Bingo.
A flare erupted, then an orange fireball, neatly severing the starboard wingtip. The missile had detonated, but just as it did, the Hind's strafing caught Odyssey II right down the middle, shearing her in half.