Madoa Air Base,
Tecuno, Mexico
Reiko Oshima lay on her back, her knees drawn up and spread apart and her hands grasping the metal bed-head of the military-issue bed.
Her forehead was beaded with sweat and her loins were sticky with sexual fluids. General Luis Barragan's principal attraction, as far as she was concerned, was a combination of his endurance and imagination, and he had already been working on her for several hours. A few moments ago, just as she had been about to come yet again, he had withdrawn from her and now stood gazing out of the window at the night sky. There was a flash of flame as he lit a cigarette, and as he turned to look at her she could see that his organ was still hard and erect.
She wanted to hit him, to inflict pain, but she was helpless, her wrists bound to the metal frame. He smiled at her, a flash of white teeth, and then he came nearer, the red tip of the cigarette glowing in the darkened room. Her eyes fixed on the red tip and she followed it as it approached her lower body.
She clenched her teeth in anticipation of the sharp pain and the sudden jolting burst of intense sexual pleasure that would follow, and then Luis would enter her again and pound in and out of her and finish what he had started. And then it would commence again, but always with a subtle variation. Or perhaps he would be the victim next time around. That was a pleasing prospect.
There was a flash in the sky and a thunderous explosion, and the window shattered and she could hear bursts of machine-gun fire. She pulled in reflex at her bonds, but it was useless.
"Cut me loose, you fool," she shouted at Barragan as she switched her gaze from the window to her lover.
He seemed frozen with shock. The cigarette fell from his hand and he took a couple of uncertain steps toward her and then collapsed on her body, crimson pouring from his severed jugular, the shard of glass still protruding.
She lay there screaming in rage and frustration and disgust as Barragan's life-blood gushed over her and soaked into the bed. Then she noticed that the shard of glass was near her right wrist and she moved the leather thong against it.
It took several minutes, but gradually she worked herself free.
Outside on the airfield, every single weapons emplacement seemed to be in action, but to what purpose it was far from clear. Tracer crisscrossed the sky in wild abandon, and on the ground explosion followed explosion.
She threw on some clothes over her blood-soaked body, grabbed her AK-47, and ran outside to see if she could make sense of what was going on. They were under attack obviously, but whether from the air or from the ground she could not tell.
The scene that greeted her was total chaos. She ran toward her helicopter. Around her, an ammunition dump was exploding and the flames from a fuel bowser licked at the sky, but her helicopter seemed untouched. Better still, her pilot was already at the controls.
She jumped in, and seconds later they were airborne.
Above Madoa Air Base,
Tecuno, Mexico
Calvin banked the microlight steeply to the left as a stream of green tracer arced toward him.
There was bedlam below. None of the fire seemed to be aimed, but so much lead was being thrown up there was a reasonable chance he would be hit by accident unless he got out fast. He dived to fifty feet and accelerated to maximum speed.
A mortar pit below started to fire as he flashed over. In their haste they had misjudged the range, and the heavy teardrop-shaped bombs instead of landing outside the airfield among the imagined attackers were landing inside it among the defending troops as they crouched in their trenches and blazed away into the darkness.
The little aircraft lurched as he crossed the perimeter, and he had to lean to the right to keep his balance. The miniature machine was hit, fuck it, but he did not take the time to check the damage. Instead he concentrated on the decidedly hairy business of flying down a long twisting wadi at ground-hugging height. The dry riverbed was pointing northwest, so it was in the wrong direction, but it took him away from the action and another chance encounter with an unfriendly projectile.
He slowed down, activated the sound suppressor, and climbed.
A quick glance showed him that one of his supporting struts had been severed.
Unless he made some emergency repairs fairly soon, the wing might go on flying, but the fuselage that contained him would part company from the airfoil and head straight for the ground. This was not a prospect that attracted him. To maximize his weapons load under the tight weight constraint, he had opted not to wear a parachute.
He put in an airborne radio call to Fitzduane, but either he was out of range or things had gone badly wrong for the ground-based members of Team Rapier. Suddenly he felt very alone, and as the adrenaline rush wore off, the reaction hit and he felt tendrils of fear.
He decided that he just did not have time to feel afraid.
He activated the FLIR and looked for a reasonably friendly patch of ground to land on. The bottom of the wadi was a mass of loose boulders and larger rocks, so he focused on the perimeter.
Three minutes later, he was on the ground.
In the distance he could see that the fireworks display at the airfield was still continuing and he wondered how much damage he had done. He had certainly gotten their attention, but the key issue was the extent to which the helicopters and the MiGs had been damaged.
He started to get out of his tiny cockpit to repair the damaged struts, and it was only then that he realized that he had been hit.
The whole front of his duvet jacket had been torn away, and under it the ceramic plate body armor insert that protected his vital organs was exposed. The heavy round had hit him on the diagonal and cut through the outer layers of Kevlar as effortlessly as if they were paper, but had then been deflected by the ceramic plate.
He had damn nearly left the insert plates behind but had rethought after Fitzduane's caution.
Calvin sat down on a rock and for nearly two minutes shook like a leaf. The spasm ended when he heaved violently and threw up.
He felt weak but able to function again, and went back to work.
Outside The Devil's Footprint,
Tecuno, Mexico
Fitzduane tried to look at his watch, then swore as Steve threw the Guntrack into reverse and shot backward for thirty meters.
A tank shell impacted in the hill just behind the spot they had just vacated and showered them with debris.
‘Shoot and scoot,’ was the tactic, but as the battle progressed and the enemy began to learn the rules, it made sense for there to be more emphasis on ‘scoot.’ It was then that the driver's battle skills really came into play. There was not time for him to merely respond to the vehicle commander's instruction. He had to read the battleground and follow his intuition.
Cochrane turned the. 50 GECAL on the tank and hosed for a weakness away from the glacis at the front. Individually, the armor-piercing rounds would not penetrate a tank's frontal armor, but at sixty rounds a second against the less protected areas, hit after hit pounded its way through.
His periscopes blinded, and the tank's commander – fighting from his open cupola to try to see what was going on – was obliterated. Shortly after, there was penetration under the turret ring by explosive-filled multipurpose. 50 rounds and the stored shells blew up.
It was time, in Fitzduane's opinion, to get the fuck out. Belting across this brutal terrain in a Guntrack with a repressed Formula One racing driver like Steve Kent at the wheel was dangerous enough in itself without hostiles shooting at you.
"Shadow One, this is Shadow Four," said the Brick. "Mission successful. We are loaded up and ready to come out."
"Roger that," said Fitzduane. "Shadow Two – where the fuck are you?" The plan was that Lonsdale's unit, Shadow Two, having infiltrated through the wire on the rim, would hold the blockhouse until the Brick had done his thing in the valley below. Then both would leave together.
There was an access road from the blockhouse on high to the supergun valley. They would then cross the perimeter road with the other three Guntracks, who had already made the trip, providing cover.
The plan had not included an armored column approaching from the south and a major firefight in progress. Still, life was rarely perfect, and as of now, the column was stalled and in decidedly bad shape, though it still had fangs.
Shadow Two was barreling down the access road to the valley floor with Shanley at the wheel when Fitzduane's check call came in. In Al Lonsdale's view they had stayed perhaps a minute or two too long on rim, but the domination of the battlefield they had enjoyed from that position linked to all that ammunition had been hard to resist.
"Shadow Two to Shadow One," said Lonsdale over the open net. "We're sixty seconds behind Shadow Four. We'll make the break together."
"Roger that," said Fitzduane.
"Affirmative," said the Brick from Shadow Four. "We'll break in about forty-five seconds."
"Make smoke! Make smoke!" said Fitzduane.
All three Guntracks beyond the perimeter road and already under cover now fired their smoke dischargers, and within seconds a thick blanket of black smoke blocked the view of the supergun valley entrance from the column.
The smoke contained particulates that obscured infrared-vision equipment as well as normal vision, but this was overkill since none of the T55 tanks or armored personnel carriers was so equipped. However, the survivors of the mechanized column, already shattered by the intensity of the unexpected assault, panicked when the thick black smoke rolled over them.
The high-tech particulates made the smoke different from normal and tended to make the eyes itch, although it was otherwise harmless. There were immediate cries of "NERVE GAS! CHEMICAL WEAPONS!" and any semblance of discipline that remained with the unit vanished. To a man, they turned and fled.
It looked as if Shadow Two and Shadow Four would have a clear run across the perimeter road into the cover beyond, and then a helicopter gunship loomed out of the darkness in a reconnaissance pass before vanishing again.
"Rat shit!" said Kent, and moved their position fifty meters.
"If all they're going to do is look at us, I won't complain," said Fitzduane.
He put out an air threat warning on the net, but as he spoke into the boom microphone his thoughts were of Calvin. He reached for a Stinger.
The damn thing did not feel right.
The missile was full of holes. Well, better it than him.
But there was still the matter of the fucking helicopter. Green tracer began to wink down at them, and if memory served it also carried rockets and bombs.
Calvin, my son, where are you?
Gunfire damage to the SkyEye was a predictable hazard, so the microlight was equipped with a spares kit.
The damaged struts were splinted together with Kevlar tape, and within five minutes Calvin was airborne again. The repair would hold, he thought, provided he could avoid violent maneuvers, but anyway it was the best he could do.
He climbed to 2,000 feet and headed back to the Devil's Footprint and Team Rapier. Fitzduane had stipulated a maximum twenty-minute action before exfiltration, and at full speed Calvin would arrive to provide top cover just as they were withdrawing.
His route took him to one side of the air base, but he was high enough to keep out of harm's way and attracted no fire. He tried the FLIR to see if he could get some reading on damage to the helicopters, but although the magnification was more than adequate, all he could see from this angle was the sandbag revetments and flames from half a dozen fires. He had done considerable damage, he was sure, but the scale was hard to estimate.
Suddenly, he noticed a small helicopter take off. He throttled back and watched it circle as if waiting for something. Thirty seconds later, a much larger helicopter could be seen. The first helicopter had not disturbed him unduly, since it was a militarized version of a civilian Bell and carried, as far as he could see, no heavy weapons. However, the sight of the second helicopter made his heart sink.
It was a Russian-built Mil Mi-4 Hound fitted with a DShK 12.7mm heavy machine gun in the gondola, four sets of rocket pods, and four five-hundred-kilo bombs. Russian helicopters, like their ships, always seemed to carry a horrendous amount of firepower. Creature comfort was always a secondary issue.
The two helicopters formed up and headed for the Devil's Footprint.
Calvin followed, furious at himself for not having risked a second pass and maybe then having destroyed all the helicopters. Steadily, the two enemy machines pulled away from him. They were a good thirty miles an hour faster and would reach the camp a couple of minutes before he could.
He spoke into his radio as he came within range to warn Fitzduane, but there was no response. The radio was dead.
He looked at his remaining stock of weaponry. He still had four RAW projectiles and three hundred-round Ultimax magazines left. He had never heard of a microlight attacking a heavily armed helicopter gunship, but right now he had no better ideas.
He flew on, alone and ill-equipped for the task, but determined. The fear he had felt earlier had completely vanished.
He kept the two enemy helicopters in sight with the FLIR, and ahead of them he could see the smoke, flames, muzzle flashes, and tracer that marked Team Rapier's bloody little war.
As her helicopter powered toward the Yaibo base in the Devil's Footprint, Reiko Oshima finished speaking to the air base and then tried to make some sense of what was going on.
The base commander reported that one other helicopter gunship could be airborne shortly but the remaining two had been totally destroyed, as had four out of the six MiGs. He had been near apoplectic with rage. No one had expected a raid this far from the Tecuno border. They were supposed to be safe.
He blamed it on the Mexican armed forces. Oshima was not so sure. The commander had reported that the damaged helicopters and jets had been riddled by some new type of weapon. Several of the aircraft had looked intact until you got up close; then it could be seen that they had been riddled with thousands of small holes as if fired upon by some giant shotgun.
Special weapons, to Oshima, suggested special counterterrorist forces, and her mind turned immediately to who might be involved. Given the distances to get to this isolated spot, the logistics problems were immense, and that suggested the Americans or the Israelis.
Both had many reasons to want Yaibo out of existence. Delta, in particular, harbored a grudge. She had blown up a civilian plane with 340 passengers on board three years earlier to kill an eight-man Delta team who happened to be on board returning from the Middle East.
U.S. or Israeli special forces suggested air involvement. She turned her mind to how they operated and where they might operate from. This was a raid on the lines of Entebbe. How had that been carried out?
She pulled out a map. Air involvement imposed its own parameters. You could parachute in, but who would you get out? There had been no mention of helicopters, U.S. Special Forces' favorite toys.
Curious. The intensity of firepower suggested more than infantry. What could a special-forces aircraft carry? Tanks? No, they were far too heavy for this kind of mission. Heavily-armed jeeps? Yes, it would be something like that. She started looking at routes and possible landing fields.
Oshima had survived for as long as she had because she was very quick and very smart and she studied the ways of her enemies.
The pilot of the helicopter gunship had been trained by Russians who had fought in Afghanistan.
They taught him well, and they had warned him in particular about the threat of handheld SAMs, surface-to-air missiles. The arrival of the U.S.-made Stingers had not eliminated Russian use of helicopters, but it had forced them to fly high and to adopt new tactics. Unfortunately, most of these tactics required the involvement of several gunships, and he was on his own. Oshima's little Bell was not worth shit in terms of firepower and was totally unarmored.
He decided to climb to 5,000 feet and prep the area outside the two camps with his 12.7mm. The camps were obviously the target, and that gave him a clear idea of the general area where the enemy must be. Unfortunately, he had no night-vision equipment, but he was still able to orient himself by the road below and by the burning wrecks of tanks and armored cars.
In his low recce maneuver he thought he had detected some movement in the suspect area below, but he had no idea what he had seen.
He had just been able to make out some vague black shapes, and then they were gone. They were in the right place for hostiles, but it was hard to be sure. Their tracer would have helped, but they did not appear to be using it. Other gun flashes were too brief to really help adequately.
At 5,000 feet he leveled off and opened fire with the 12.7mm and salvos of rockets. The 12.7mm could be seen vanishing into the black smoke, and seconds later there were brief bursts of flame as the rockets plowed into the ground. He wasn't sure he was hitting anything, but at least he would be distracting any enemy force and taking some of the pressure off the camps.
"Get lower! Get lower!" shrieked Oshima over the radio into his ear.
He could just make out her machine. The lunatic was circling around to one side of him but several thousand feet beneath. He couldn't see it, but he knew damn well she would have the side door open and be firing into the maelstrom with her personal weapon.
She would have a Stinger up her arse if she did not watch it – which would be no loss to the world.
He finished his firing pass and circled for another. This time he would drip a couple of bombs. As he circled he noticed a small black shape to one side. It looked like some giant bird.
A vulture? Did vultures fly at night? He wished he had night-vision equipment. Flying the Mi-4 at night without it was really fucking Stone Age and no way to fight a civilized war.
The black shape came closer, and suddenly he realized what he was seeing. He'd never seen one in the flesh, but he'd read about them in aviation magazines.
So this was a microlight. Really it was little more than a cloth wing with a fuselage hanging underneath suspended by wires. He could see the pilot bundled up underneath.
The microlight looked too light and small to carry weapons, but it was not up there in the middle of the night for pleasure. It was some sort of reconnaissance vehicle.
He banked the helicopter and moved into a better firing position.
Fuck! The damn thing was not where he'd left it. He turned and lost height and scanned the sky. The microlight was small, but it should show up against the sky. Starlight had its uses.
He had just found it when a RAW projectile fired by Calvin hit the outer casing of his Shvetsov ASH-82v 1,700-horsepower engine and blew it right out of its mountings and through the fuselage where he sat.
The helicopter broke into flaming fragments and rained down on the remains of the main camp below. Four of the larger fragments were five-hundred-kilo bombs. The entire bowl of the valley erupted in a series of violent explosions, lighting up the surrounding hills with searing white flashes. A moment later the main ammunition store and refueling depot blew up.
Shadow Three and Shadow Five roared across the perimeter road and into the hills on the other side.
"Elegant," said Steve Kent, a broad grin on his face. "Fucking outrageously elegant. The regiment could not have done any better."
"High praise from SAS," said Fitzduane. He keyed his transmit button. "Shadow One to all. Who got the Mi-4? I didn't see a Stinger, so maybe Calvin's up there, but I can't see shit from here. We're in a world of smoke."
Four negatives came back.
"Head for the RV," said Fitzduane. "Shadow One will follow ASAP. Wait fifteen and head for the pickup."
"Roger that," came four times over the radio, and then they were alone.
"Steve," said Fitzduane, "take us back out of the smoke a couple of hundred meters and cut the engine. According to my vibes, Calvin's somewhere near, and we are not going to see him in this smog."
The Guntrack did not move. Fitzduane turned toward Steve. He was slumped back in his seat, the front of his combat smock drenched in blood. Most of his head was missing.
Fitzduane suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. He put his hand on the dead man's, which still gripped the steering wheel and clasped it for a moment. Then he turned to Cochrane, who was searching the surrounding terrain with his GECAL.
"Lee," he said. "I need a hand. Steve's bought it."
Cochrane looked shocked for a moment, then jumped down and helped Fitzduane remove Steve from behind the steering wheel and into a body bag. The body was then strapped to the rear engine compartment. It was a contingency they did not like to dwell upon, but they had come prepared for it and the exercise had been rehearsed. No bodies were to be left behind. The enemy were not to be given even that much satisfaction.
Fitzduane slid into Steve's seat. It was still slippery with blood.
He drove out of the smoke to some dead ground where they could assess the situation with the FLIR and still stay concealed.
In his bones he knew Calvin was around there somewhere.
It was unthinkable to leave him behind – but there were only minutes to look for him.
A very shaken Reiko Oshima circled the main camp.
It was a scene out of hell lit by dozens of fires, large and small. Destroyed tanks and armored vehicles still poured black smoke, and some were still actively burning. There were sudden flashes and explosions as ammunition was ignited by the extreme heat. Green tracer fired spontaneously.
The neat lines of tents and wooden huts of the mercenary guard battalion had completely vanished, and everywhere she looked there were bodies. She tried to count them, but there were hundreds. Most were still. A few moved in a vain attempt to attract assistance.
She ordered the pilot to circle the observation post on the rim. As they approached there was an enormous explosion and the small Alouette helicopter was caught in the blast and thrown up and to one side. For a few long seconds she thought they were going to crash, and then the pilot regained control.
He looked at her briefly, mutely pleading. Sweat beaded his forehead and he looked quite terrified. She could see that he wanted to ask permission to return to the airfield, but he was even more terrified of her. She grunted. It was just as well. No weak man was going to break when Oshima was in command.
She was beginning to get a rough idea of what had happened. Given the isolated location and the large guard force, the twin valleys of the Devil's Footprint had looked exceptionally secure. However, with the benefit of hindsight it was easy to see that once the attacking force had seized the observation post and the high ground, both valleys were vulnerable.
Still, who could have expected such heavy firepower to be deployed against them and for it to be deployed with such speed and ferocity? The defending force, apart from substantial manpower, had heavy armor and other weapons at its disposal. It should have been able to put up some kind of resistance and to buy time until relief arrived.
No, this was not just a conventional commando raid against them by soldiers on foot. This was some new kind of warfare, faster and more deadly than anything she had either experienced or heard of before.
"Pilot, I want you to land behind the Yaibo barracks," she said, pointing.
The pilot looked at her, ashen. He tried to speak, but his mouth had gone dry. He licked his lips and tried again. "Oshima- san," he croaked, "that is insane. You can see for yourself that the camp is a death trap."
Oshima drew her 9mm Makarov pistol and placed the tip of the barrel against the pilot's scrotum.
"Listen, you fuckhead," she snarled. "If you don't do what I tell you, I'm going to shoot this decoration off. Whatever it contains, it certainly isn't balls."
The pilot started shaking. But he landed.
Amid the destruction and the carnage, the Yaibo barracks was still miraculously intact. Oshima felt a surge of pride as she approached. Though the perimeter guards had been vanquished, the force she had trained was made of tougher stuff. There might be casualties, but most would have survived, she was sure of it. Two minutes after she entered the building, over the background sounds of conflagration and the moaning of the wounded and the sharp crack of exploding ammunition, the pilot heard the most terrible bloodcurdling scream. It was piercingly loud and it rose to a crescendo before it fell, and then this dreadful cadence was repeated again and again.
It was the most awful sound he had ever heard in his life.
Five minutes later, Oshima staggered out the front door and then collapsed. The pilot went to help her, and as he lifted her to her feet he saw with horror that her clothing was completely saturated in blood.
She clawed at him and he pushed her away in panic, but she clung on to him and would not let go. Her fingernails ripped his face, and he could feel his flesh tearing.
"They're all dead!" she screamed. "Everyone! Everyone! Everyone! Everyone! They're all dead!
"There's nothing but blood! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!"
The words hammered out of her. Her spittle showered his face. He wanted to retch. At first he thought Oshima was experiencing some kind of breakdown, but then he realized that what he was witnessing was nothing of the sort.
It was an uncontrollable rage.
Outside the Devil's Footprint,
Tecuno, Mexico
Seven minutes had passed.
Fitzduane was methodically searching the terrain around them with the FLIR, but there was no sign of Calvin. Behind him, Cochrane was doing much the same thing with his night-vision equipment.
Three mercenary soldiers ran out of the black smoke that had now settled over the perimeter road and stopped in shock as, at the last minute, they saw the menacing black wedge shape that was Shadow One.
In their initial panic as the road column was shot up, they had dropped their weapons. Most were campesinos – young men, peasants, wanting no more than to go home and be with their families.
They stared at the Guntrack, frozen with fear, uncertain what to do.
Let them live, said Fitzduane's heart. They are the enemy, but they can do us no harm.
Kill them, his mind said. They have seen us and they just might say something that could help the opposition, and I owe it to my people to see they are given every chance.
I have no choice.
He fired the pump-action grenade launcher that was kept clipped beside the driver's seat and the three soldiers shot backward as a swarm of hundreds of miniature flechette darts ripped them asunder.
He felt nauseated.
A laser beam cut through the darkness and settled on him. He could imagine the enemy gunner registering his aim and he knew, at that precise moment, that he was going to die. He thought of Boots and he felt a great sadness that he would never see his young son grow. He thought of…
The laser flicked out and then on again, and there was an irregular rhythm to the beam. Then the beam slowly rose to the vertical and cut into the night sky pointing at the stars.
Morse code: ‘C-A-L-V-I-N.’
The exhilaration that follows despair gripped him. He gunned the engine and drove toward the source of the light. He'd been an idiot. The light was the type that only Team Rapier could see through special filters. This was not the enemy.
A skirmishing line of enemy troops showed up ahead of them just beyond the light source. Through his night vision goggles, Fitzduane could see they were armed and purposeful and that this was a different problem to the three he had just killed.
He accelerated and turned slightly to the left so that he would break ground above the light source and have a clear shot at the enemy.
The mercenaries had no night vision goggles, but the heard the rapidly approaching engine noise and opened fire. Flashes could be seen in the darkness, and there was the zip and crack of rounds passing over and around the Guntrack.
An aiming laser flashed out from Cochrane's GECAL and a moment later the weapon began to fire. Fitzduane halted the Guntrack and emptied the magazine of his grenade launcher. In just five seconds, the area occupied by the mercenary patrol was hit by more than a thousand metal projectiles. Their firing ceased.
The friendly laser flashed on again. Fitzduane zigzagged down the hill toward it and at last Calvin could be seen. He lay there on his back tied to the wing with carabiners, but there was no sign of the fuselage.
Fitzduane leaped out while Ross kept watch, cut the aviator free, then bundled him into the front gunner's seat, gave him a headset, and plugged him into the intercom.
The entire exercise took no more than forty-five seconds. Calvin was bruised and had a broken ankle and was in some pain, but otherwise he seemed in reasonable condition. Fitzduane felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He contemplated giving the aviator morphine but decided against it.
The grim fact was that someone might need it more urgently later. The shooting was not necessarily over. They had to exfiltrate successfully, and that, in special-forces operations such as this, was always the hardest part. The element of surprise was gone and now they were the hunted.
He talked to Calvin as he drove to distract him from the pain. "You went up with an engine, Calvin," he said as he sped through the night toward the RV point, "but came down without one. What gives?"
Calvin forced a laugh.
"After I got the helicopter gunship with the RAW, I got chased by a much smaller machine. It wasn't armed as such, but someone inside it had a weapon and went after me as if it was personal.
"Well, I maneuvered every which way and my whole machine started coming apart. The struts had already been damaged over the airfield and jury-rigged, and these kind of gymnastics were just too much. The fuselage and engine decided to go their own way, and I had no parachute. And I was a couple thousand feet up. In addition, AK-47 rounds were pinging off the engine. It was a little hairy."
Fitzduane could imagine the reality behind the dry account. "So what did you do, Calvin?" he said. "Wake up?"
"I went back in aviation history a bit," said Calvin through clenched teeth as the Guntrack hit a rough patch. "The chopper was shooting at the fuselage for the obvious reason that that is where the pilot sits."
"So?" said Fitzduane encouragingly.
"Flex flying all started with the wing alone," said Calvin. "Suspending a fuselage for the pilot to sit in and to hold an engine came much later. Well, that being the case, the solution was obvious."
"Not to me, it isn't," said Fitzduane. Wearing PNV goggles, his world endless shades of green, he was driving over the appalling terrain as fast as the terrain would allow, and his concentration – to put it mildly – was not entirely on Calvin's story.
"I clipped my harness to the wing and then cut free the fuselage and engine," said Calvin. "The helicopter followed the fuselage down and blew it apart as it fell, and I just flew the wing down like a hang glider. It worked fine. I didn't need a parachute. I don't know why I was worried.
Fitzduane nearly choked with laughter and reaction.
"Fucking A!" said Cochrane.
Fitzduane recovered and then started to laugh again, and the Guntrack slithered and bucked and jumped and raced across the shale and gravel toward the RV, and up in the sky their salvation flew toward them.
Unfortunately, it was short one critical aircraft.