Recoil - Andy McNab [17]
By the time the carcass had thumped back into the ground, the three remaining pickups at the front were less than a hundred away. I could hear the scream of their overworked engines.
The guys in the back of them fired wildly and indiscriminately, no idea where their rounds were going.
I wondered if Sam was praying to his God. If so, he was wasting his breath. Right now, God wasn’t creator of the universe: God was a Cobra two-ship.
I waited until they’d closed to within fifty of us before I fired my first double-tap. I aimed for a windscreen. You try to get the driver every time.
Davy kicked off another RPG. He had only two left.
This time, I didn’t see where it hit. I was too busy in my own little world, checking the link, firing as best I could as the vehicles circled us like Indians round a wagon train.
I fired again. Glass shattered. The vehicle swerved. I sent another double-tap into the front passenger door at chest height.
The pickup slewed right round and I went to fire again, but the Renault rocked violently and I lost my aim.
Sam had to fight the wheel, and sand blew up around us as we were buffeted by downwash.
18
There was an instant sandstorm and the stench of aviation fuel as the Cobra two-ship swooped overhead. The gunships swivelled to face the wave of pickups and a set of 20mm cannons got on with their job.
The rapid thud of rounds was joined a second later by an endless metallic rattle as big, empty cases rained on to our wagon.
They moved forward and the sandstorm moved with them. I could see the Seahawks coming in low ahead of us, a gunner hanging out at either side.
RPGs piled in from our right and exploded in mid-air. The gunships turned and responded with short sharp bursts.
We had just a couple of hundred metres to go. The first Seahawk disappeared into its own sand-cloud as it settled on the ground. The second was hovering, looking for a landing site between the outcrops of brush.
Two more RPGs came in from our right, but this time well forward of us, and lower. The sustainer motors on both fizzled out.
When I realized what they were aimed at, the next couple of seconds passed in slow motion.
There was a dull thud as the hovering Seahawk took a hit. There were no flames, no explosions, but it tipped drunkenly, nose almost vertical, and dropped the last fifteen or twenty feet to the ground. The fuselage crumpled.
Sam rocked backwards and forwards in the driver’s seat, as if that was going to find us some more speed. He wouldn’t have been thinking about helping survivors. He was trying to get to the remaining Seahawk before an RPG did.
One of the Cobras roared overhead. Empty cases kept raining down. Whoever had fired that RPG was probably already shaking hands with the guy with the white beard.
There were still no flames from the wreckage: these things are designed to take hits. The two gunners from the other Seahawk came running out of their sandstorm as survivors tumbled from the stricken aircraft.
We halted short of the downwash. Sand and aviation fuel filled my nostrils as I followed Sam and the other wagons caught up.
The gunners’ only thoughts were to sort out their four mates, who were in a bad way. Their faces were bloody and shocked, but they were alive.
My only thought was that there was just one aircraft now, and four places already taken.
Sam yelled to get the gunner’s attention, then Standish was at his shoulder. ‘Boxes! Boxes! Boxes!’
The gunner turned, dark helmet visor covering his face. Standish mimed a rectangle with his hands. The gunner gave a curt nod. They knew what they were here for.
We shouldered the boxes from the wagon to the Seahawk, running, bent double under the weight, our sweat-soaked bodies caked with sand.
That was it then, fuck it, we were going to be leaving here cross-country. At least we wouldn’t be chased. The Cobras hit them with a few more long bursts, and flatbeds were scattered and burning like targets in a computer game. The 20mms even took on the bodies spilling out of the wrecked vehicles. They had an aircraft down: they