The Rubicon Mi-8 helicopter crew was barely five minutes out of Camp Tornado Point when they made visual contact with the Black Management helo. The Bulgarian pilot, Boyko Koritarov, had been briefed that the Black Management pilot was a novice and probably was flying visually. He knew exactly what he was going to do and he took his time to give the target a wide berth, then Koritarov brought his Russian-built aircraft in behind him, careful to hug his blind spot. When he calculated that he was ten rotor disks away, he ordered his gunner to open fire.
Camille watched through binoculars as an old Soviet-make helicopter approached Hunter’s bird from his right rear. As if the cheap Russian equipment hadn’t been enough of a giveaway, she also recognized the fuselage’s distinctive diagonal ruby stripe bordered in white. Rubicon. “What the hell’s Rubicon doing?”
“Sneaking up on him, using a blind spot. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was getting ready to-”
“He’s firing.” Camille could see sparks as the bullets hit the airframe.
Hunter was singing to himself when he thought he heard something over the roar of the turbine engines. He stopped for a minute, didn’t hear anything and resumed his jam session.
Boyko Koritarov couldn’t figure out why in the world Rubicon got its gunners from the tropical paradise of Fiji. Fijian mercs were cheap, but there was a reason. The idiot was shooting up a self-sealing fuel tank and a crew cabin that had no crew inside. The Black Management pilot was safely on the left side of the craft, apparently oblivious to the assault.
“Retarget tail rotor gearbox,” Koritarov said in heavily accented English.
Hunter had enough of Springsteen and moved on to the Stones-he loved classical music. A few seconds later the Black Hawk yawed to the right and kept spinning. Hunter stomped the left pedal, but didn’t get anything. It kept going around and around, faster and faster. He rammed both size elevens into a space barely large enough for one foot and pushed the pedal with everything he had while he jammed the cyclic forward. Then he saw the warning lights go off at the same time he caught a flash of another helicopter.
Stella.
Stella had finally nailed him.
Camille keyed her microphone. “Unidentified Rubicon Hip, this is Black Management Six, hold fire or we will engage. Repeat, Rubicon stand down.” She turned to Beach Dog. “Please tell me this is one of the Little Birds we outfitted with the 20 millimeter Gatling guns.”
“Yeah, but we’re not in range-too high and too far.”
“Get in range.”
“Hang on.”
The Little Bird dived so fast Camille felt like she was in a freefall-inside and out. She had been too angry in the trailer to grill Hunter and find out the truth she needed to know about that Julia chick-and he had pulled a gun on her. Now she realized she was in danger of losing that chance permanently. And how dare Rubicon shoot one of her Hawks out of the air? She took the targeting controls of the Gatling gun.
She watched Hunter’s helo gyrate out of control as her Little Bird dropped down behind the Rubicon Mi-8. She estimated the range to target now at two thousand meters and closing fast. A few seconds later she opened fire on the tail boom. Metal flew and the tail rotor slowed. She kept firing and now prayed that Hunter survived. The tail boom began to sag as the Rubicon Mi-8 whirled around.
Beach Dog turned toward Camille, his eyebrows raised. “Don’t you think that’s enough? The dude’s going down.”
The Rubicon helicopter spiraled toward the ground.
The gyrations were getting faster and faster. Hunter reached up and brought back both throttles, then struggled against the G-force to bottom out the collective so the damn thing would auto-rotate and quit spinning the cabin along with the rotors. It was like putting a car in neutral and now all he had to do was coast down a hill-straight down. The rotors would spin with the air and, if all went well, lower him to a rough landing. Fighting vertigo, he scanned the ground for a landing site. A village lay directly below him. He had to get clear of it or at least aim for a street, but he was plummeting fast. Pulling back on the cyclic to flare the craft, he pitched the nose up and used the momentum of the main rotor to brake the descent. The spinning slowed, but he was coming up on a rooftop. He wrestled with the two functioning controls and squeezed out a little altitude and a few more meters of distance. Barely clearing the house, he smacked down hard between two buildings. The specially designed pilot’s seat collapsed onto the floor, cushioning most of the blow, and he swallowed something.
He shoved down the collective, pulled on the brakes and blasted out of the door with Stella’s gun. The main rotor was still moving, kicking up dust and sand. He had to find cover before Stella flew overhead and gunned him down.
On the run again in Anbar, this time with no pants on-man, he’d have given anything to have that damn man-dress back.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Anbar Province
The Black Management Little Bird hovered low over the village while Camille scanned the area, trying to get a peek through the dust cloud. Please be alive. She keyed the mike to call to her Baghdad ops center. “LIGHTNING SIX to RAVEN. We have a Black Hawk down. Repeat, Black Hawk down.” She relayed the GPS coordinates. “Beach Dog, take us in low and hover. I want to see if he made it.”
“Not a good idea in this neighborhood. The bad guys we’ve chased out of Fallujah and Ramadi like to hole up in these parts. This is the Wild West.”
“Things get too hot, we’ll pull out.” Camille studied the area. Children looked up from the streets and adults were running outside to see what was going on. So far, she didn’t see any weapons.
The cloud began to dissipate around the Black Hawk. It had hit level, sandwiched between two buildings on a vacant lot. Its back landing gear had broken off, but it otherwise seemed intact. If she could get a salvage crew to it before the locals trashed it, it could fly again.
“Circle to the other side and dip down. I want to see if he’s inside and injured.”
“You got it.” Beach Dog maneuvered the Little Bird in low and pitched it slightly forward. The Hawk’s door was open on the pilot’s side and Camille could see through the front windows. No Hunter.
“He must’ve split when the dust was kicking up,” Beach Dog said.
“He’s got to be in one of these houses. Set it down. I’m going in.”
“With all due respect, Lady Rambo, you’re fucking nuts.”
Beach Dog had a point and she knew it. She didn’t take time to grab body armor or even extra rounds for the M-4. No way was Hunter going to come to her after she had shot at his helicopter this morning. She wouldn’t be surprised if he even thought she was the one who knocked him out of the air. He had no more reason to trust her now than she’d had to trust him, maybe even a little less. “Fall back to a safe distance. I’m bringing in the cavalry for a door to door search.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jabal ad Dhibban, Anbar Province
Hunter heard the thud of the second helo hitting the ground as he hauled ass down the alleyway. A tango’s RPG must have hit Stella’s bird. He hoped to god she survived the crash with only enough injuries to keep her from coming after him. His tongue probed the inside of his mouth and confirmed what he had feared: he’d swallowed the damn tooth during the hard landing.