The Devil's Footprint (57 page)

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.