“Me? Hardly, darling. Common as muck.”
But she had a point. Ahead of them, the rebels’ chopper looked ridiculously small as it hung in the air above the unimaginably vast landscape, but Hawke powered forward without fear.
The rebels suddenly lunged down toward the valley and began turning sharply to the right.
“Looks like the bastards don’t like being chased,” Scarlet said.
Hawked lowered the collective, pushing the Bell into the same diving pattern and making the same turn. “Have to stay on their tail or they get the advantage.”
“Shouldn’t you be levelling off around now?” Scarlet said, nervously eyeing the Urubamba River as it rushed up towards them.
“You’re not scared are you, Cairo?” he said.
“Of course not,” she said not too convincingly.
Just as he heard her gasp through his headphones he gently raised the collective and levelled off, also completing the turn at the same time. The rebels’ more powerful helicopter was still in front of them.
Ahead of them they watched as a goon in black began to climb halfway out the rear window.
“They’re firing!” Scarlet yelled.
“Yes, thank you, Cairo,” Hawke said. “For a moment I wondered if he was leaning out to invite us to Kruger’s next birthday bash, but now I can see I was wrong.”
“Tit,” she said in a whisper, but it was clear enough through the headphones.
He looked at her.
“What?” she said.
“Well, are you going to shoot back, or what?”
“Oh, yeah. Natch.”
She slid back her window and they were instantly buffeted by the wind, but she didn’t flinch as she pulled out a Glock and smacked a fresh round into the grip. “Always a pleasure to give back what you receive.”
And with that she began firing, but so did the other guy. Hawke swerved the chopper from port to starboard and back again to avoid being hit, but he knew he was also reducing Scarlet’s chance of hitting the rebels.
The other chopper slowed and pulled alongside them and the rear portside door slid open to reveal a rebel staring back at them. In his hands was a handheld M320 grenade launcher. He fired a round at their Bell and it shot through the air toward them. He had timed it wrong, and it exploded twenty yards short, blasting the Bell over to port but no more pain than a small correction on the cyclic which Hawke made with a gentle touch, and then he raised the collective to gain elevation.
The Venom followed suit, pulling up and maintaining the same altitude as their much smaller Bell 47. The rebel fired another round, and it tore through the mountain air en route to the Bell. Hawke pulled hard to port and descended but this time the rebel had improved his aim and the explosion was much closer, blasting the Bell much harder to port and almost tipping her over.
The Venom pulled around and followed them down as they raced toward the bottom of the ravine.
Hawke saw the rocks racing up toward them but didn’t raise the collective. “When I was leaving the SBS I thought about working as a pilot doing helicopter tourist rides.”
“I think security guard was a better choice,” Scarlet said, eyes widening as the rocks raced closer. The Urubamba River was now so close she could make out the reeds being pulled along by the current. “And now might be the time to get us out of this dive.”
“Not yet.”
She made no reply but gripped the sides of the seat.
And then Hawke lifted the collective and scooped the tiny Bell out of the dive before levelling her off less than twenty feet above the Urubamba. “A spot of low-level flying is in order.”
“You trained for that, right?”
He glanced at her. “Er, yeah…”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no.”
She shook her head as she reloaded her Glock. “Bloody fantastic, Hawke.”
“There has to be a first time for everything,” he replied. “You’ll know that when you make your first funny joke.”
She flicked her eyes at him but said nothing. She loosened her belt and turned in her seat. She opened the small window and leaned her head out. “Bastards right on our six o’clock, Josiah.”
Hawke lowered the Bell to ten feet. They were so low now the rotorwash was flicking up spray from the Urubamba as they flashed over the top of it, following its meanders with the mountains high on either side of them.
Scarlet fired at the Venom, striking the cockpit windshield and puncturing bullets in a neat line across it. The rebels swerved the larger helicopter to starboard and shifted her out of Scarlet’s sights. “Balls… he’s gone again.”
With the sound of their rotors echoing off the sides of the mountains rising high above them on all sides, Hawke weaved the chopper deftly around the twists and turns of the river in a bid to evade more rounds from their grenade launcher but it was too late and the next thing he knew there was a massive explosion in front of the chopper.
The rebels had fired a grenade over the top of them and now Hawke had no choice but to fly right through the middle of the fireball as it burned out in the air ahead of them.
“Holy shit!” Scarlet said.
“Seconded!”
For a couple of seconds they were surrounded by the fireball, their vision cut off by a raging cloud of flames all around the Perspex bubble cockpit, but then they were through and back in the clear air.
“They really do not like you,” Scarlet said.
“Eh? It’s you they want!”
Hawke saw a narrow pass almost hidden on the right, tucked in behind the western ridge of a mountain, and without warning he banked hard to starboard and left the river behind.
Scarlet screamed and gripped the grab handle as they tipped over on their side. As Hawke raised the collective she felt the extra Gs for a few seconds and watched through Hawke’s window as they skimmed the canopy of the rainforest on the river’s east bank. “I’m going to say no thanks to your tourist idea.”
He smiled but made no reply as he focussed on levelling the chopper and zooming into the narrower ravine. “How are our friends?”
Scarlet looked out her window and sighed. “Bastards sticking to us like glue.”
“The goon?”
“He’s leaning out for another go.”
She aimed her gun and fired at the rebel, striking the port skid of the chopper and forcing him back inside. “We’re going to need to bring this situation to an end, Josiah. I’m down to my last three rounds.”
“I think I see our way out up ahead.”
She turned in her seat and almost screamed. Racing up to meet them was a large waterfall, maybe two hundred feet high. “Please tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do.”
“Sorry… no can do.”
Hawke was not a gambling man, but now he was gambling that the Venom couldn’t see past the Bell because of the heavy canopy above the tributary, and so the waterfall would make a nasty surprise… a nasty unavoidable surprise if he could just hold his nerve for long enough.
He tightened his grip on the cyclic and collective and slowed his breathing as the waterfall grew ever bigger ahead of them. It was so close now they could both make out the slabs of granite through the white water as it rushed over the upstream retreats of the falls and tumbled over the overhang on its way down into the Urubamba’s tributary.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Joe?”
“Of course I’m bloody not!” he said, flicking her a nervous glance. “I find in situations like this it’s usually better not to think.”
“Oh, how very reassuring to hear your pilot say that.”
Hawke raised the collective, altering the angle of the main rotor blades and lifting the chopper into a climb. At the same time he pushed his right foot on the rudder and changed the angle of the tail rotors to move the chopper to the right. The Bell shot up away from the top of the waterfall and zoomed off to the right, clipping the leaves on the top of the canopy for a second before he levelled the machine up.