To its rear, target number two had fared even worse. In the moment of maximum need, the sniper – the assassin? – within Narov had come to the fore. Eight of her missiles had struck home, just one lone projectile veering wide of the target.
At least one of the 20 mm rockets must have pierced the Black Hawk’s fuel tank. Full enough to complete a 600-kilometre combat sortie, there was fuel in there to burn and burn. A gout of angry orange flame erupted from the helicopter, and a moment later it disintegrated in a massive, blinding fireball.
Jaeger felt the heat of the blast wave wash over him, as fingers of burning shrapnel reached out from the epicentre of the explosion. For a moment, the fiery conflagration seemed to menace the Airlander above, before the plumes of burning debris tumbled towards the cloud bank far below and were lost from view.
The blasted carcass of the second Black Hawk plummeted to earth like a stone. All that remained of the two aircraft was a dark cloud of smoke drifting on the hot tropical air.
They were down to one Black Hawk versus an Airlander/Ju 390, thundering through the open skies.
The surviving Black Hawk had veered off sharply, putting a safe distance between it and any further rocket salvoes. Not that Jaeger and Narov could unleash any: they were all out of Fliegerfausts. In any case, Leticia Santos was aboard that helicopter, and Jaeger for one was not willing to see her life sacrificed too.
‘Mr Raffara, you will wish you hadn’t done that!’ screamed a voice wild with rage. ‘Now I start shooting out your engines!’
‘You do that, we’re going down,’ Raff countered, ‘and with us your precious aircraft. It’ll smash into the jungle—’
A burst of deadly-accurate fire from the surviving Black Hawk’s GAU-19 drowned out Raff’s words. Rounds tore into the Airlander’s front starboard propulsor. The instant they did so, Jaeger felt the Ju 390 lurch horribly to the right, as one of the airship’s four giant rotors was torn to pieces.
Inside the Airlander, the crew would be struggling to keep her airborne on three propulsors, adjusting thrust direction and power to try to even up the stricken aircraft’s load, and pumping helium back and forth between the airship’s three giant hulls.
‘Airlander to Black Hawk.’ Raff’s voice came up on the air. ‘You shoot out another propulsor, we are no longer airworthy with this load, and we will be forced to jettison the Ju 390. Ten thousand feet straight down. Back the hell off.’
‘I don’t think so,’ the Black Hawk commander countered. ‘You have a team aboard that aircraft, and I really don’t think you’ll let them fall. Comply with my instructions, or I will shoot out a second engine.’
A message bleeped on Jaeger’s Thuraya: Response?
Jaeger didn’t know how to respond.
Now they really were all out of options.
Stalemate.
83
For a third time the Black Hawk’s GAU-19 spat fire.
A vicious burst tore into the Airlander’s rear port propulsor. Jaeger and Narov were back in the cockpit by now, and they felt the Ju 390 give a sickening jolt to the left as a second set of rotors was put out of action.
For a few frantic seconds the giant airship fought to right herself, the two surviving propulsors set at opposite ends and sides of the craft struggling to even out the impossible load. But when the Airlander finally reached some kind of new equilibrium, it was clear that she no longer had the grunt to manage the weight she was carrying.
Almost instantly, the airship’s speed started dropping dramatically, deprived as she was of half her forward propulsion. Added to that, she was losing altitude. With the Ju 390 slung beneath her, she was slipping towards disaster.
The Black Hawk shifted position, dropping behind and moving out of sight of those in the Ju 390’s cockpit. Jaeger didn’t think for one moment that the commander had called off the attack: what the hell was he up to now?
A message pinged through on the Thuraya. BH moving around to your rear. Closing in towards your port wingtip. About to board your aircraft???
Jaeger stared at the message for an instant: the Black Hawk was doing what?
He glanced out of the port window.
Sure enough, the helicopter pilot was inching his aircraft’s side door towards the Ju 390’s port wingtip. Jaeger could see a dozen heavily armed operators clustered at the doorway, clad in black NBC suits and respirators.
He felt Narov appear beside him. ‘Just let them try!’ she snarled, as she caught sight of the black-clad figures.
A split second later, she’d grabbed her Dragunov sniper rifle, ready to nail anyone who tried to board the Ju 390.
‘Don’t!’ Jaeger forced the barrel of her weapon down. ‘Right now, they don’t have a clue where we are. You open fire, they’ll mallet the cockpit. They’ll chew us to pieces.’
‘Then let me take out the Black Hawk’s pilot!’ Narov protested. ‘At least that!’
‘You take out the pilot, the co-pilot takes control, and they still mallet us with fire. Plus Santos – she’s aboard that aircraft.’
‘Sometimes you have to take a life to save a life,’ Narov responded coldly. ‘Or as in this case, you take a life to save many lives.’
‘No!’ Jaeger shook his head violently. ‘No! There has to be a better way.’
He cast his eyes around the warplane’s cockpit in desperation. They came to rest upon a heap of dusty bundles stowed below the navigator’s seat. Each was labeled Fallschirm. While he didn’t understand the German, he figured he knew what they had to be. He reached across and grabbed one.
Do the unexpected.
He waved it at Narov. ‘Parachute, right?’
‘Parachute,’ Narov confirmed. ‘But… ?’
Jaeger glanced out of the window. The Ju 390’s speed had dropped dramatically, and he saw the first black-clad figure leap from the Black Hawk’s open doorway and spring on to the plane’s giant wingtip, landing in a crouch. Moments later, a second figure joined him, and they started moving along in a steady crouching shuffle.
Jaeger thrust the parachute bundle into Narov’s arms and threw a second at Dale, grabbing a third for himself.
‘Get ’em on,’ he yelled. ‘And let’s hope that like most things German they’re bloody built to last!’
As they struggled into the parachute rigs, a message pinged in on the Thuraya. Enemy gathered at your fuselage. Setting explosive charges.
The black-clad operators were poised to blast a hole through the Ju 390’s central fuselage to gain entry to the hold.
Jaeger messaged back: When all bad guys are aboard, cut us loose. Let us fall. And Raff, don’t bloody argue. I know what I’m doing.
A message bleeped back. Affirmative. See you in Paradise.
Thank God Jaeger had Raff aboard the Airlander. No one else would have complied with such an order so unquestioningly. That was the unique bond the two men shared, one forged over many years at the extreme end of soldiering.
From the rear of the warplane Jaeger detected a muffled explosion. The Ju 390 shuddered for an instant, as the cutting charge blasted a man-sized hole in her skin. In his mind’s eye he could see the black-clad operators piling into the dark, smoke-filled hold, their weapons at the ready.
It would take them several seconds to orientate themselves, and to search the aircraft’s rear for Jaeger and his fellows. That done, they’d advance towards the bulkhead and set a second set of charges. The bulkhead door, once locked, could only be opened from the inside – the cockpit side – so they’d have to blast a way through that too.