A Devil Is Waiting - Jack Higgins [69]
“See the gift I bring you,” she called in Pashtu. “I’ll kill myself and my friends, but also every man in a fifteen-meter radius.”
She released the bars, and there were cries of dismay. They turned and fled as she lobbed the grenades, chasing them. The effect was catastrophic, men blown from their feet. Dillon had her by the arm and across the street, kicking the nearest door open, Holley following them.
There was no one at home, although a fire smoldered on a stone hearth. Dillon and Holley had taken Uzi machine pistols from the bag and passed another to Sara. They all went down to floor level as a storm of bullets few in, splintering the wooden shutters at the windows.
“I’ll check the back,” Dillon said.
He reached the kitchen as the outside door opened and a man appeared, whom he knocked backward into the yard with a quick burst of fire, then closed and barred the door. He returned to the others, crawling as bullets reduced the shutters to matchwood. Firing stopped for a moment, and Holley peered out cautiously.
“I can see at least twenty out there. I think they’ll try to rush us at any moment.”
Indeed, there was the chatter of the Raptor’s machine gun, and in that instant, Holley saw seven or eight men go down in the street. He looked the other way at the Raptor.
“It’s Colonel Hamza doing the firing. Maybe we could make a run for it.”
There was the unmistakable rattle of a helicopter approaching, and Holley peered out to see another Raptor swoop in, a machine gun poking out of it, a man standing behind it, ready to fire, just too late, as Greg Slay boosted engine power to lift off with extraordinary rapidity, causing the other Raptor to take immediate evasive action to avoid a midair collision, exactly what Slay had intended.
The other Raptor needed to fly parallel to be able to bring its machine gun to bear, but Greg Slay, his skills honed by years of flying in combat zones, put the Raptor through a dazzling sequence of avoidance turns, during which Hamza’s attempts to bring the machine gun to bear on the other craft proved as fruitless as his opponent’s.
Slay half cursed, aware of Miller in the far corner, clutching a bloody shoulder, and shouted to Hamza, “This is getting us nowhere. Try an RPG. I’ll increase speed and look as if we’re fleeing while you get ready, then we’ll turn and take him head-on. Don’t forget your safety harness.”
Hamza took it down from a peg, slipped it on and buckled it, the webbing strap with the hook hanging. He dropped to his knees beside Miller and the box of grenades beside him.
As he opened it, he shouted above the cacophony, “How bad are you?”
Miller had his scarf tucked inside his tunic. “I’ll survive, don’t worry about me. Just blow these bastards away.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do.”
He had the launcher out, inserted a grenade, then hooked himself on by the machine gun and waited. They curved round and went headfirst for the approaching Raptor, whose pilot panicked, turning away and exposing his blind side so that Hamza, trusting his restraining strap to hold him, was able to lean out to fire.
The hit was a direct one. There was a colossal explosion, the other Raptor a great ball of fire as it mushroomed in the rain, pieces of the wreckage flying all over the place and then descending through a pall of smoke.
Slay half turned again and laughed harshly. “Bloody good show, Colonel. That’s given Ali Selim something to think about.” Hamza stepped back, unhooked his safety belt, and Slay added, “If you look in that locker above Major Miller, you’ll find a pretty comprehensive medical kit. While you’re attending to him, I’ll take us back to Amira, and we’ll see what the situation is there.”
Ali Selim had stayed in the porch to watch the air battle far out over the plain, recognized the undoubted superiority of Greg