“Well, they’re going to make it,” the Marine said, not really interested in another enemy with his hands so full of Sudanese. “We don’t have any more gunships to go after it, and if that AWACS only now just spotted it, you can believe it’ll disappear just as easily.”
Mercer knew the soldier was right. Flying nap of the earth, a good chopper pilot could evade even the most sophisticated airborne radar systems. He got an idea. “How’d you guys get here?”
“Blackhawks. There are a half dozen of them on the ground about ten miles north. We hoofed it the rest of the way in.”
“Can you radio for one to pick us up?”
“Yeah, but it won’t do any good. Those birds are just troop ships. No guns.”
“Just get one. We’ll be the firepower.” Mercer tapped the corporal’s M-16A1 with the butt of his AK.
The corporal switched the channel on his radio. “Captain Saunders, this is Chavez. I’m with Mercer. He says the bogey Sky Eyes just painted is an evac chopper for some uglies. I want permission to go after it in a Blackhawk.” He paused, his gaze on Mercer. “Yes, sir. I know. We’re on top of a hill, and it looks like things are dying down in our sector… Yes, sir, I’ll keep an eye on him… No, sir, I’ll ask him. Dr. Mercer, where are the rest of the Eritrean nationals?”
“Still trapped in the mine. There’s a woman in the main tunnel who knows exactly where they are.”
The soldier nodded and activated his mike again. “In the mine, sir… Yes, sir, we’re standing by.”
“Well?”
“The captain’s calling a chopper. We’ll pop some green smoke when the bird gets here. We’re going to drop you at our staging area and go after the Israelis ourselves. It’s not my place to ask, but what kind of international situation are we getting ourselves into here?”
“Think of the deepest pile of shit you can imagine and then double it,” Mercer grunted. “Only bright spot is, we’re the good guys for a change.”
The soldier carrying the heavy Squad Automatic Weapon spotted a target and ripped off about fifteen rounds, empty brass arcing from the 5.56mm in a tight necklace. Chavez and the other Marine scanned the camp for more targets but only indistinct shapes moved in the smoke and they couldn’t chance a friendly-fire kill.
“Whad’ya have, Moose?”
“Two of them with AKs at ten o’clock, moving clockways. They’re behind that ten-wheel truck.”
“Keep ’em pinned,” Corporal Chavez ordered. Moose gave the SAW’s trigger another long pull. “But watch your ammo discipline.”
“How long till the chopper gets here?”
Chavez clicked to another frequency on his radio. “Inbound helo, this is Charlie One. Give me an ETA to sector seven, about eight hundred yards north of the mine entrance… Copy. We’ll pop green when we hear you.” He turned to Mercer. “About six minutes.”
Moose fired another barrage with the SAW and the two other Marines started to pour lead down the hill, screaming unintelligible curses. Mercer saw half a dozen rebel soldiers advancing from their left flank. Four were armed with AK- 47s and two carried RPG-7 rocket launchers. One went down before he could fire; the other took a snap shot with the bazooka-like weapon and a section of the hill erupted like a miniature Mount St. Helens.
The Squad Automatic Weapon fell silent. Moose had been killed by blast debris. Mercer, Chavez, and the other Marine dodged for cover, and even as dirt continued to rain down, they fired back. When Mercer emptied his last clip, he tossed aside the AK and reached for the SAW. The machine gun was huge, almost too heavy to carry into combat, but its effectiveness was unquestionable.
Three charging guerrillas were hit in the hail of gunfire, snapped back by the pounding gun in near perfect sequence.
“Keep the fuckers back!” Chavez screamed as he worked on a gash in the leg of the other soldier. The man’s desert camo uniform was soaked through with blood from a point just below his groin.
Mercer continued to fire the weapon, traversing the barrel in tight sweeps to keep the Sudanese pinned. Another rocket slammed into the hill, and part of its peak blew away, exposing their flank. He had no idea how many rounds were in the boxy magazine clamped under the SAW, but he prayed it was enough to cover them until the chopper arrived.
“Evac flight.” Chavez was on the radio with the helicopter again. “We need some help here… Roger.”
Chavez unclipped a smoke grenade from his combat harness, slipped the ring, and tossed it to the other side of the hill’s summit. A second later, putrid green clouds boiled off the mountain, marking their location to the approaching Blackhawk.
Bullets raked the top of the hill, explosions of dirt and lead that sent Mercer and the two surviving Marines reeling. Yet over the din they could still hear the chopper as it came in, its rotors whipping the smoke in violent eddies. The copilot had opened the helicopter’s side door, but as they began their hover for the pickup, he was forced to return to the cockpit.
“The pilot can’t land, not enough room up here. You’ll have to jump in first,” Chavez screamed over the rotor blast, his dirty hand still clamped over the entrance wound in his squad mate’s leg. “I need to hold pressure on this dressing.”
Mercer emptied the SAW’s clip, a further thirty rounds chewing up the camp. He commandeered the wounded soldier’s M-16 and, as the Blackhawk lowered even closer to the hillock, leaped for the open door.
A surge of air grabbed the chopper at that instant, and Mercer’s chest slammed into the bottom of the door frame. In the split second before the pain struck, he felt the ends of his ribs grind against each other like corroded machine parts. The Blackhawk had been pushed away from the mountain of overburden, and Mercer found himself dangling above seventy feet of empty space, his legs bicycling uselessly as the pain loosened his grip on the door sill.
The pilot must have seen what happened. Ignoring the turbulence and the whirling blades’ proximity to the ground, he heeled the nimble chopper nearly onto its side, throwing Mercer bodily into the aircraft. By the time Mercer recovered enough to crawl to the doorway, the Blackhawk was once again on station over the hill. Chavez was ready to pass the wounded Marine up to him.
They came under renewed and intense fire, the chopper taking a dozen rounds, ricochets scoring the cabin like hot coals. Mercer fired his M-16 one-handed, the stock braced against the helo’s body as he lay half in and half out to help Chavez. He had his free arm under the young Marine’s limp arms when a third RPG rocket hit the top of the hill. The Blackhawk lurched with the explosion and the Marine slid from Mercer’s tentative grip. The soldier and Corporal Chavez disappeared in a hellish world of flame and smoke and debris.
The Blackhawk pilot lifted his craft away from the hill and out over the open desert, well beyond the range of any weapons the Sudanese might have. Mercer sat numb, unmoving, staring downward as if he could bring back the two dead soldiers by freezing his position. It took all of his strength to blink, to wash away part of the horror he saw in Corporal Chavez’s eyes in the instant of his death. He sat immobile for two minutes before he could reach up and slip a pair of headphones off the firewall that partially protected the cockpit.
“How’s the ship?” His voice sounded as if it came from someone else, a different person who could still function, still think rationally, still care about what happened next.
“We’re okay,” the pilot responded. “I’m sorry about your buddies back there. There was nothing I could do.” It wasn’t really an apology, just a statement of fact in war.
“What’s the status of that bogey?”
“Hold on,” the pilot said, and Mercer guessed he was switching frequencies to talk with the circling AWACS. “Bogey vanished from radar about five minutes ago roughly a mile from the camp, then was spotted again moving eastward about two minutes later. Sky Eye lost the signal right after that. Sounds like someone made a pickup.”