The caiman rolled, it did so instinctively and suddenly Don was free as the artificial limbs retainers gave way.
Scrambling up the muddy slope until clear of the water he paused for the briefest moment to look back. The creature was not in sight; only turmoil on the surface gave any indication of where it was.
Turning back towards safety he saw sudden movement above him, smelled warm fetid breath and saw the layered teeth on the jaws that closed on his head.
Captain Li had raised his night glasses to peer downriver as he heard the change in the Chinooks engines pitch.
“Standby Strela… aim slightly above the trees, you may get a lock-on even if you can’t see the bastard!”
The sound seemed to roll towards them in waves as the power came on to lift the aircraft out of the clearing.
He caught a glimpse of the rear rotor, set above the fuselage and the forward assembly, but it then banked away out of sight for a second, reappearing over the river a few seconds later.
The flash made Li take an involuntary step backwards and there followed a thunderclap of sound that echoed across the jungle.
The helicopter came apart in mid-air, plunging into the river.
Li lowered his glasses and leaned over the conning tower to congratulate the air sentry but the man was looking back up at him with a don't-look-at-me expression and pointing to the tip of the launcher, where the surface-to-air missile was still very much attached.
“SIR!” called a voice from the dockside.
Sergeant Yen was cupping his hands to his mouth.
“As I was saying…they stuck a Type 72 in the engine compartment and wired it up electrically to the troop ramp locking mechanism…worked at treat, eh sir?”
Greasy smoke drifted down river on the breeze and the flicker of flame was still visible on the water, a reflection from around the rivers bend of the Chinook’s final resting place.
It had been quiet for almost twenty minutes, a lull but one that was obvious to all as the quiet bit that comes before the other thing.
Small arms fire broke out from the south side of the road bridge as the troopers finished their task of preparing it for demolition and climbed back over the guardrail. The muzzle flashes were visible from the bridge of both Dai and of Bao. One of the troopers was hit and started to topple backwards, but his mate grabbed him and in the act of pulling him over was himself hit, falling screaming to the roadway. Both vessels 23mm cannon opened fire, tearing up the area where the shots had been fired, ripping splintered chunks out of the trees and amputating branches that fell with a splash into the river, silencing the firing from that quarter.
The injured were dragged to safety under the cover of the automatic cannons fire.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Captain Li called out. “Only shoot at what you can see from now on.” They had only a limited amount of 23mm cannon ammunition. The Russian Admiral Potemkin had gone down with all the supplies.
He peered into the darkness but it was impossible to tell how effective the fire had been.
Shots next came from the opposite direction, from the eerily dark and foreboding jungle on their side of the river, it started with a single weapon, and rapidly increased into a vicious fire fight.
“How much longer?” he shouted to Bao’s bridge.
“Another hundred gallons give or take!”
The wounded troopers from the road bridge were taken aboard the Bao.
From downriver there came the sound of other helicopters rotor blades, growing louder by the moment but he caught no sight of them at all through the night glasses or weapons sight.
“Raise radar.”
Up it went, twenty eight feet above their heads.
“Go active…one sweep, no more.”
It was the equivalent of keeping phone calls short so the call could not be traced, in pre digital technological terms anyway. These days in the same way the callers ID is instantly displayed on screen so too is the radar type and location to within three metres on anti-radar weapons systems.
Modern weapons would target the origin of the source location even if the radar were to be turned off, or stooge around waiting for it to reappear.
How else though was Captain Li to see what the enemy were up to?
Just the two slow moving track of the helicopters showed, and no sign of the fixed wing threat yet.
“Double up the air sentries, I want one on the forward casing immediately.” He called down.
There had been nothing from Jie’s or the Soyuz team, no sounds of cratering charges, no nothing. No more lullabies were sung by the tone death senior sergeant. What had been a forty strong unit had first been cut to twenty eight with the sinking of the Tuan, and was now down to six effectives. The two other teams were dead or captured and the mission had well and truly lost the advantage of surprise.
An explosion beyond the fuel storage tanks brought a sudden end to the attack from that quarter, the versatile Type 72 anti-tank mine and white phosphorus smoke grenades turned into an anti-personnel claymore mine by Sergeant Yen incorporating a pile of hardcore left over from the laying of the car park. The screams of those caught in its blast provided all the judgement necessary on the mines effectiveness.
The firing slackened for several moments before redoubling in intensity as the wounded reservists mates extracted them using proven CASEVAC, casualty evacuation methods.
Under the cover of this weight of fire five pairs skirmished forwards. Nylon waterproof capes were tossed down, the three wounded casualty’s screams were ignored as they were quickly rolled onto the capes and dragged away far more swiftly than would otherwise have been possible, the smooth material of the cape providing minimal friction with the wet jungle floor. The dead were left where they lay to be retrieved after the fight.
Once back in cover the veterans with the middle aged spreads drew on the experience of years, from Kolwezi and a dozen bushfire wars in Africa, treating wounds from first aid packs stocked according to lessons learned on those battlefields. WP is small grains of phosphorus that burn in contact with the air to produce white smoke. It burns skin and bone too; in clumps it can burn clear through a limb. The best treatment is immediate immersion in water whilst the grains are removed with wooden implements. Metal tweezers will only increase the injury, rapidly heated by the same grains they picked at, glowing red hot within minutes, so the tools of choice are tiny wooden spoons, the type you can still get in some cinemas and movie theatres in small individual tubs of ice cream, suitably wetted before application of course. These were in the packs, so too was Colgate toothpaste, the original white paste but in the small sachets sold in third world supermarkets and shanty town shops. Spread thickly over the injury it took the heat out of the badly blistered surface burns, preventing further tissue damage and bringing relief from the pain.
Puncture wounds, the entry wounds, these were plugged with female sanitary tampons pushed into the entry wounds, swelling up and keeping the wound clean. Bacteria will complete a bullets job so the wounds needed to be kept clean from the outset particularly in germ rich environments such as a jungle.
Screaming men had rifle slings forced between their teeth to bite on as field first aid was applied.
When the mine had been fired by Yen he knew how the legionaries would react and made sure heads stayed down on the friendly side. He knew the reservists ammunition supply was just what they carried in their pouches, so what the hell, let them brass up the bushes as their mates were retrieved, wasting rounds and reducing their options regarding further offensive moves.