Someone ran up from the stream and yelled at him in Romanian. Danny yelled back in English, not understanding a word.
The soldier twisted toward the barn and began firing. Danny couldn't see his target, but apparently the soldier hit it, because he jumped up and started running in that direction. Following, Danny got about four or five yards before tracers zipped so close he could practically feel their tailspin.
He threw himself down, then crawled to the soldier he'd been following. The man had been hit in the head four or five times. The bullets had ripped most of his skull apart.
A fresh salvo of gunfire flew from the barn. Danny flattened himself against the ground, using the dead man's body as cover. The bullets were heavy caliber, and they tore up the ground in little clumps as they sprayed across the field.
"Zen, you see that machine gun twenty yards from the barn?" said Danny.
"I'm on it. Keep your guys away."
Inaudible above the din and rendered invisible because of its black skin, the Flighthawk seemed to be a lightning bolt sent by God Himself. The earth reverberated as a tornado of dirt and lead swirled in a frantic vortex where Danny's enemy had been. Gun and gunner disappeared in the swirl, consumed by its fury.
The ricochets and shrapnel missed him, but not by much. A few hit the dead man in front of him, ripping his already torn body still further. Bits of cloth and flesh splattered over Danny, sticking to his uniform.
The gunfire across the battlefield abruptly stopped. Danny turned toward the stream and yelled for the lieutenant, whom he thought would be there by now, but he didn't get an answer.
He began making his way toward the barn, moving cautiously. He came upon another soldier, facedown in the field. As he checked to see if the man was alive, a shadow moved to his right. Danny raised his submachine gun to fire, stopping only at the last second when he saw what he thought was a helmet, the sign of a soldier.
"I'm Captain Freah!" Danny shouted. "The American observer. The American!"
The figure answered with gunfire.
Two bullets hit Danny's side. He spun to his right, sprawling on the ground. Though the carbon-boron cells in his body armor gave him considerably more protection than a standard bulletproof vest would have, he could practically feel the welts rising at the side of his chest.
Danny pulled himself around, catching his breath and trying to think of something he could say to get the man to stop firing.
He couldn't return fire — he'd lost his MP5 when he fell. Finally, the bursts stopped.
Danny watched as the shooter rose and began moving across the field, apparently thinking he'd killed him. As the man passed close by, Danny realized it wasn't a helmet he'd seen; the man was wearing a watch cap.
Danny waited, not daring to move until the man was behind him. Then he leaped up, twisting around and throwing himself on the guerrilla's back. He rode the man to the ground, then grabbed the man's rifle and began battering his head with the stock. The man tried to roll and fend off the blows, but Danny swung harder. He battered away, anger and adrenaline fueling a bloody revenge.
By the time he got control of himself, the guerrilla was dead, his face a bloody pulp.
Danny knelt next to him, watching as someone ran up from the direction of the stream. It was Lieutenant Roma.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yeah." Danny got up. "If you pull the men back, I can have the Flighthawk hit the barn."
"There may be hostages," said the lieutenant. "I don't want to strike blindly."
As if on cue, another machine gun began to rake the field from the second story of the barn. Danny put a fresh box of ammo in the gun he'd taken from the guerrilla and began moving to his right.
"Where are you going?" yelled Roma.
"I'll flank it, get an angle. You draw his fire from here."
"No. You stay. My men will take care of it."
"Draw his fire," insisted Danny. "I only need a few seconds."
Danny leapt up, charged to his right a few yards, then dove back to the ground before the machine gunner could bring his weapon to bear. In the meantime, Lieutenant Roma had begun firing. As the bullets swung back toward Roma, Danny lurched up on all fours and scrambled along the ground until he came to a slight rise. He crawled behind it and crept up along a narrow rift formed by a tiny stream that ran only after very heavy rains. He could see the machine gun's tracers, but not the gunner inside the building, hidden by the angle.
Before he could decide whether to go back a little and try from another spot, Danny heard a loud hiss in the field. He threw himself back down into a ball, rolling into a fetal position as a rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the machine-gun post.
He stayed like that for a full minute before he unfolded himself. The Romanian soldiers began moving forward in the dark.
"American!" yelled one.
"I'm over here!" answered Danny. A sergeant ran toward him. Danny saw three or four figures running past the barn; by the time he realized they were guerrillas, it was too late to shoot.
Lieutenant Roma joined him as his men worked their way toward the barn. There was still sporadic gunfire, but nothing as intense as it had been just a few minutes before.
"We have reinforcements on the way," Roma said, his voice tight with anxiety. "We're cutting off the road near the highway. Then we'll tighten the noose."
"How many troops are coming?" Danny asked.
"A company. Two. Whatever can respond. I don't think there are many more guerrillas," he added. "And those who are left may not have the stomach to keep fighting."
"They have plenty of stomach from what I've seen."
Zen spotted two figures running from the rear of the barn toward a building across a dirt road a hundred yards away. As he circled around, he saw someone else near the building. Suddenly, one of the walls seemed to give way. A small pickup truck emerged — it had broken through a garage-style door — and headed toward the road. The man nearby threw himself into the back. The two others ran and did the same. Another vehicle, this one a car, followed.
"Danny, I have a pickup truck and a sedan, mid-size, coming out of one of the buildings across the road, about a hundred and fifty yards north of your position," said Zen.
"Roger, we heard it."
"I can nail them."
"Negative. They may have hostages. Follow it for now."
Zen slipped the Flighthawk farther along the road. The Romanians had forces on the highway about three-fourths of a mile away, though there were several places the guerrillas could turn off. He tucked back, then decided to try and spook them by flying toward them low and fast, pickling a few flares into their windshields as he pulled up.
As he came out of the turn and started in, he spotted a small bridge over a stream ahead of the vehicles and got a better idea.
The bridge was little more than a few wooden planks over a culvert pipe. He climbed a few hundred feet, then pushed in, twisting the Flighthawk so its nose pointed almost straight down at the road surface. He mashed the trigger of his cannon, then waggled his plane left and right, chewing the wood up with his bullets.
The pickup appeared as Zen cleared. His attack had damaged the bridge so severely that it slid sideways as soon as the truck started across. The vehicle skidded but managed to get to the other side as the bridge collapsed behind it.
The car that was following, however, was stranded. Seven men hopped out and ran across the culvert to the truck. From the air, it looked like a circus routine, though without the humor.