Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (72 page)

Alex Garabanda stood behind the open right door.  “Maybe, and maybe not. If they saw us, they’d be right on top of us.  They’re not on top of us, so maybe they’re just fishing.”

The noise of one helicopter was steady, directly in front of them, and then they saw it, turning slowly and descending, directly in line with the road that was their runway exit out of the woods.

“Oh my God!”  Logan blurted out, “They
must
see us!  That’s probably as close as they can land—”

“Maybe, but where’s the other one?” asked Alex, stepping out from beneath the wing and scanning above them through the treetops.

From behind them Ranya shouted, “Alex, shut your door and get out of the way!”

He turned around to her, saying, “What?”  She was kneeling behind the Cessna’s tail.  Her rifle’s long barrel was lying across the horizontal stabilizer, aimed along the side of the plane, directly at him.

“Shut the door Alex! Shut the door and get out of the way!”

He slammed it shut and jumped away from the plane.

***

She had been watching
the sky-blue open space above them, and down the green corridor toward the opening at the end of the trees.  She had seen the Blackhawk dropping through the leafy slot at the end of their tree cover.  She instinctively knew that it was going to land in the open space of the former strip mine, alongside their runway road. As soon as the helicopter touched down, it would disgorge a dozen troops.

Outrunning the Falcons in these woods would be impossible, especially when they had helicopters scouting above them and directing their pursuit.  Other helicopters would drop off more troops ahead of their escape route.  They would soon be cornered, and then killed or captured. To Ranya it was not an option to go down without fighting.  She crouched low behind the plane’s tail, with her right knee on the ground and her left foot forward.  The plane’s horizontal stabilizer made a perfect bench rest, her left hand supporting the bottom of the Dragunov’s wooden forestock.

While the helicopter was still above the Cessna’s high wing as seen from her perspective, there were too many tree branches in the way to risk a shot.  She was also aware that the rifle’s scope lay above its barrel, and a clear view through the scope might send a bullet into the Cessna’s wing, straight into its gas tank.  Most importantly of all, she knew that her first shots had to be perfect.  Once warned of their presence by ineffective fire, all four Blackhawks would swarm down upon them, eventually bringing the entire Falcon Battalion.  Finally, she silently said a prayer that the South African had kept his rifle accurately sighted in, perfectly matched with his Russian sniper grade ammunition.  If the scope was not sighted in, her shots would mean nothing.

The helicopter continued its descent, after slowly turning until it was facing her.  Then the descending Blackhawk disappeared momentarily from her view, blocked by the Cessna’s wing.

She pressed her right eye against the soft rubber cup at the back of the Dragunov’s scope.  Its unusual range-finder was useless to her; she had no experience with it.  She guesstimated that it was one hundred yards to the tree line, and another two hundred to the clearing where the helicopter was landing.  Three hundred yards.  The scope was only four power, but that was plenty of magnification for the relatively short distance.  If the helicopter landed safely, it would unload a dozen troops.  She knew that the Falcons were by no means cowards, that they could run far and run fast, and that they could shoot their new M-16s very, very well.  So it must not be allowed to land...

The Blackhawk appeared beneath the Cessna’s high wing, facing directly toward her, bug-like.  The apparent distance was only two hundred feet through the scope, an easy shot.  Dust and debris swirled up and around the helicopter, whipping the tree branches.  The Dragunov was operated like a stretched-out AK-47.  Its first round was already chambered and she pushed the safety lever down, keeping the scope sighted on the Blackhawk.  The pad of her right index finger slowly took up trigger pressure, holding low, and waiting for the helicopter to descend onto her aiming point.  Instead of a crosshair, the scope showed four upside-down V chevrons, one above the other.  She guessed that the tip of the second chevron from the top would keep her on target at this range.  

She saw the Blackhawk’s two fat wheels and its underbelly, and the three-part Plexiglas windshield.  Through the window glare, she could even make out the helmeted pilot’s outline.  She put the tip of the scope’s second black chevron just under the helmet, squeezed the trigger, and let off a shot that erupted with a resounding blast.  She immediately moved her shoulder and swung the chevron aiming point to the opposite windshield and fired again, reacquired and made another shot at the same spot.  The recoil and the muzzle blast were now unnoticed and unheard; she was in the zone, in the bubble, her entire universe encompassed within the Dragunov’s scope.  She swung the chevron sight back across to where she had made her first shot, but before she could fire again, the helicopter rolled on its side and dropped from her scope’s view behind the curtain of trees, too quickly for her to follow.

32

Orbiting above the old strip mine
, Comandante Ramos watched as Puma 2 descended into the clearing between the rusty metal buildings and mining equipment, churning up dirt and leaves with its rotor wash. When it was about twenty meters above the ground Puma 2 suddenly lurched and rolled to the left, then dropped like a stone while he stared in horror.  The spinning rotors struck first and exploded, flying off in all directions like broken missiles.  The helicopter impacted the ground at an angle on its nose, crumpled and finally came to rest lying on its left side, in a sickening but possibly survivable crash landing  What in the hell?  Had Puma 2’s rotors hit a wire or a pole on its way down? It must have!  It was a cluttered landing zone, too full of potential obstacles.  He should have known better than to permit their landing attempt, which had ended in complete disaster.

“Get down there!” he yelled to his pilot over the intercom, “Can you get down near them—is there enough room anywhere else?”

“I don’t know…no, no, I don’t think so!”

“Well try, try dammit!—Puma 2, Puma 2, do you read me over?” Ramos paused, and repeated his message—there was no answer but static. “Puma 3 and Puma 4—
atención, atención
—Puma 2 is down, I repeat, Puma 2 has gone down!  Come on, get moving, get out here now!”

While his pilot maneuvered toward the clearing, he saw that the Blackhawk had crashed partly on a road running through the jumbled-up mining operation, a stretch of road he had not noticed before.  The paved road led in a straight line, directly into a thick stand of pines, directly into the trees, and he thought he saw something white in there, something…then he looked back down at the wreckage of Puma 2 below him.

***

“Oh dammit,
now
look!”
yelled Alex, “It’s right across the road!”  The broken helicopter lay on its side, straight ahead of the Cessna.  The men were still standing on either side of the plane.  “Logan, can you do it, can we make it out?”

The pilot stared straight ahead of the airplane, estimating distances and heights, and then he answered, “No, we can’t make it.  It’s too close, too high—it can’t be done!”

“Then what?” implored Alex.

Logan didn’t hesitate.  “Turn her!  Turn her around again!  Come on!” He jumped back to the Cessna’s horizontal stabilizer, where it joined the narrow taper of the fuselage beneath the swept back tail.  “Come on, push it down!”

Ranya slipped the Dragunov over her back, held by its necktie sling. The three of them leaned over the stabilizer, pushing down on the back of the airplane until the nose wheel lifted from the roadway, and Logan led them in walking the plane in another tight circle, until they had again turned 180 degrees and were facing deeper into the woods.  He didn’t wait but ran for the left door and climbed in, standing on the toe-brakes as he switched on the engine, the propeller an immediate roaring blur in front of them.  Ranya had to climb into the back seat through the right side door, and it was a small opening.  The copilot’s seat was in the way and she couldn’t find the catch to tilt it forward.  Logan was screaming at her to get in, and Alex was pushing her from behind, but her four-foot-long Dragunov rifle was catching against the wing and the fuselage as she tried to climb inside!  

Logan reached across the cockpit with something bright orange in his right hand, some kind of emergency rescue tool.  He swiped it across her chest and the long rifle fell free.  Then he flipped the copilot’s seat forward and Alex shoved her into the back onto her face, and as soon as he had put one foot inside of the Cessna, Logan let off the brakes and they began to roll forward.

Ranya squirmed into an upright position looking forward, and could see only trees.  She looked behind, through the Cessna’s sloping rear window back at the way they had come, and she saw a second Blackhawk hovering above the wreckage that she had created.

***

They were thirty meters above the smashed helicopter.
  There had scarcely been enough room in the landing zone for one Blackhawk, or as it had turned out, not even enough room for one.  Ramos leaned out the open troop door behind the Blackhawk’s crew chief.  He could see a pair of camouflage-clad figures below him, trying to climb up and out of the crashed fuselage.  Think! To rescue his men, they would need to rig for fast-roping.  He hoped that the fast-ropes had been packed, as his squads had been briefed to do.  Did his men all bring their thick leather fast-roping gloves? Or could the pilot bring the Blackhawk down close enough to the wreck for his medic to jump directly onto its hulk? Could they descend low enough to jump, without the rotors striking one of the rusty metal obstacles that had brought down Puma 2? Alternatively, they could look for another nearby landing zone, but then his troops would need to make their way back to the wreck on foot, which would take more time.  Think! Think!

He tried to remember where the closest possible landing zone might be, based on his memory of their recent over-flights.  Little of this area was flat enough to land on, and most of it was covered in trees.  Beyond the woods ahead of them, it became clear but very steep, descending sharply toward sheer cliffs and down into a wide valley with an intricate system of side canyons.  He was about to ask his pilot over the intercom where they could land, while he leaned out the open side door.  Down the road toward the woods, he saw movement, a flash of white, something that did not belong.  What was that?  What? A truck? A car? No.  What? A plane?

“There!  There, do you see that?” Ramos screamed to his pilot over the intercom.  “In the trees, do you see it?”

“Uh, roger, I see...something.  What are your instructions?”

Ramos hesitated.  Should he leave his injured or even dead Falcons, to pursue what might be an optical illusion, a mirage?

***

The Centurion taxied forward, bumping over cracks and ruts. 
The road curved ahead of them as the trees thinned out and became sparse. They were skidding down slope now, then the road turned hard to the left, and there before them was an almost straight run of road, but it was very short, less than a hundred yards and beyond it there was only sky as the mountain fell away.  Logan measured the distance, guess-timated the slope, computed his current and required speed and made his decision.  He had already set 20 degrees of flap in readiness, now with his right hand he pushed the throttle knob in all the way, committing them to flight.  The hot engine immediately revved up to full emergency power, all 320 turbocharged horsepower screaming, causing the plane to vibrate madly as it leaped forward down the rutted trail. 

***

“Falcon leader, this is Puma 3.
We’re on our way—we have you in sight.  ETA one minute, over.”

Ramos sighed, grateful that the other pilots had been alert and anticipated his emergency call.  “Roger Puma 3.”

A new voice broke into the net.  “Falcon, this is Condor.  We have a truck patrol in your area.  They should be arriving in about ten minutes, over.”

Ramos cursed silently.  “Condor” was Carlos Guzman, Comandante of the 5th Battalion. His troops were serving as perimeter guards, patrolling the roads on and around the Vedado Ranch.  Ramos knew that it was imperative that he get down to Puma 2 before that power-hungry Peruvian bastard arrived on the scene and usurped his authority.  On the other hand, he knew that in order to salvage the fiasco that had unfolded below him, he would have to quickly pursue and either capture or destroy the aircraft that he thought he had seen hidden under the trees.  

He made his decision.  Ramos switched to “intercom only,” and gave his pilots their orders.  “Let’s find the airplane.  Follow the road through the trees.  Machine gunners: open fire as soon as you have a shot.”

The Blackhawk dipped its nose, gaining speed racing toward the tree line, leaving the survivors trapped within Puma 2 to await rescue from the other helicopters.  In seconds they were over the trees, tracing the ribbon of asphalt that was now clearly visible beneath them.  Ramos crouched behind the pilots in the middle, in order to see out of the front windshields as they accelerated across the treetops above the mining road.  The trees thinned out, and the mountain ended ahead of them, the land abruptly dropping away.  And there it was, just below and ahead of them, a white airplane on the ground, going straight for the edge of the precipice!

***

The Centurion, already rolling downhill,
swiftly picked up speed.  In seconds, the indicated airspeed was fifty knots as the road made another sharp leftward turn directly ahead of them.  They couldn’t possibly follow the turn at this speed, so Logan pulled back on the yoke, and the Centurion staggered drunkenly into the air, its wheels clearing a rusty guardrail by inches.  The stall warning horn began blowing even as he pushed the yoke back in, nosing over into the yawning vastness of the red and brown space that opened up below them.  He immediately brought the wheels up, and the Cessna began piling on air speed, as it hurtled down toward the earth a thousand feet below.