Operating at the limits of their range, the Hinds would have settled in a defensive line, landing to conserve fuel, hiding in the forest and sweeping with their pulse radars, listening in the silence for the sound of the Hercules" engines.
Almost certainly they had guessed he would use the river as a navigational landmark. There would probably be other gunships waiting further upstream, forming an intercepting ring around the Renamo lines, but, erring too far south, Sean had run headlong into this one.
It leaped out of the forest, rising vertically on the silver blur of its rotor, the deformed nose drooping like a minotaur lowering its head to charge, blotched with leprous camouflage, obscenely ugly and deadly.
It was still below them but coming up swiftly, swelling in size as they converged. Within moments its Gatling cannon would bear; already it was training upward. Sean reacted without thought.
He rammed all four throttle controls fully open, and the great turbos screeched as he thrust the nose down, diving straight at the helicopter.
He saw the rockets leaving the weapon pods under the Hind's wings, each one a black dot in the center of a white wreath of smoke as it dropped clear. He remembered the statistics Job had read him only minutes before. The Hind carried two AT-2 Swatter imssiles and four 57-men rocket pods.
He dived the Hercules through the barrage of rockets. They flashed past his head, a storm of smoke and death, and the Hind was only two hundred meters ahead, still rising to meet him, firing rockets at point-blank range but not allowing for his violent maneuver.
"Hold on!" Sean shouted at Job. "I'm going to ram the bastard."
The killing rage was on him, sweet and hot in his blood. There was no fear at all, just the marvelous urge to destroy.
At the last moment, the pilot of the Hind guessed his intention.
They were so close that through the canopy Sean could clearly make out his features below the helmet. The Russian's face was doughy white and his mouth a shocking red slash like an open wound. He flicked the Hind over on its side, almost inverting it completely, closing down his collective so the gunship fell like a lead weight, trying to duck under the Hercules" outspread pinions. Got you, you son of a bitch!" Sean exulted, and the Hercules" wing hit the tail of the gunship. The shock of impact threw Sean against his shoulder straps, and the Hercules shuddered and lurched. The airspeed was knocked off her and she quivered on the edge of the stall, only two hundred feet above the forest top.
"Come on, pussycat," Sean whispered like a lover. He was babying the controls, coaxing her with gentle fingers. Her damaged wing was down, tatters of torn metal hanging from it, whipping and banging in the slipstream, and the forest tops reached up like the talons of a predator to claw them out of the sky.
"Fly for me, darling," Sean whispered, and the four engines, howling with the effort, held her up, then gradually lifted her clear.
The needle of the rate-of-climb indicator rose jerkily; they were climbing at two hundred feet a minute.
"Where's the Hind?" Sean yelled at Job.
"She must be down," Job called back, both of them screaming at each other with terror and excitement and the triumph of it.
"Nothing could take a hit like that." Then his voice changed.
"No, there she is, she's still flying. My God, will you look at that mother?"
The Hind was hard hit, skittering out to one side, the tail rotor and rudder torn, almost completely gone. Obviously her pilot was fighting for her life as she lurched and rolled and wallowed about the sky.
"I don't believe ill She's still shooting at us!" Job cried, and a smoking rocket trail blazed across their nose.
"She's steadying." Job was watching her through the side window. "She's coming round, she's after us again."
Sean met the Hercules'climb and aimed for the pass through the hills. The rocky cliffs seemed to brush their wingtips, and the foaming white waterfall flashed beneath them.
"He has fired a missile." As Job called the warning, the pass through the hills opened up ahead of them, and Sean lifted the Hercules" maimed wing high in a maximum-rate turn.
The huge aircraft hugged the cliff face, turning the corner just as the Swatter missile locked onto the infrared emissions of her exhausts and sped down the gut of the pass. The Hercules cut the turn so finely that Sean had to use full power to hold the nose level, j; and looking upward through the skylight of the canopy, he felt as ! though he could have reached out and touched the rock face as the Hercules stood on one wmgt1p. The missile tried to follow her around, but at the critical instant the Hercules disappeared from its line of sight and the rocky corner blocked the infrared emissions of her exhausts.
The missile crashed into the cliff face, gouging out a great fall of rock and filling the pass behind the Hercules with dust and smoke.
Sean brought the Hercules back on an even keel once again, gentling her, favoring her damaged wing.
"Any sign of the Hind?"
"No-" Job broke off as he saw the dread shape materialize through the dust and smoke. "She's there, she's still coming!"
The entire rear section of the Hind's fuselage was twisted askew, and half her rudder was missing. She staggered and lurched through the air, only barely under control and falling rapidly behind the fleeing Hercules. The pilot was a brave man, serving her, keeping her in action to the end.
"WS-fired again!" Job cried as he saw the missile drop from under the stubby wing roots and boost toward them on a tail of smoke.
"She's down!" Job watched the tail rotor of the gunship break away and spiral upward while the body dropped like a spine-shot buffalo bull and hit the trees, breaking up in a tall burst of flame and smoke.