"Sean will be here soon," she told him. Don die, Job. Fight, please fight. I'll help you."
Sean and Matatu crouched below the parapet, ducking lower as the storm of cannon fire flew only inches over their heads and filled their eyes and nostrils with dust from the ripped sandbags.
The instant the firing Ceased, Sean bobbed up, just in time to see the stricken Hind fall tail first against the rocky hillside and tear itself to pieces as it rolled down the slope.
"Well, blow me down, those damned Stingers actually work!"
g high on his own fear. Beside him Matatu he laughed, still flyin giggled and clapped his hands. "Like shooting sand grouse with the577 bandukil" he cried in Swahili, then leaped to his feet to follow Sean over the Parapet.
Three Frelimo troopers bolted out of their dugout as they saw them coming, and Sean fired the AKM from the hip, a short tap that caught one of them low in the back and flung him facedown.
The other two threw down their rifles and fell to their knees, gibbering with terror, hands held high over their heads. Sean ran on past them, and they collapsed with relief as he ignored them.
Sean was through the outer defenses and into the laager proper with its service areas and hardened helicopter emplacements. The workshops and fuel dumps were heavily sandbagged and covered with camouflage netting. Stray mortar shells were still falling among them, kicking up geysers of dust and gusts of whistling shrapnel. One of the Hinds had fallen near the far perimeter of the laager and was burning fiercely, oily black smoke billowing back over the workshops.
In the confusion, human figures scurried about without apparent purpose, unarmed technicians in baggy gray overalls who flung up their arms when they saw Sean, most of them dropping onto their knees to emphasize their surrender. In full camouflage paint and with the bloodlust and elation of battle contorting his features, Sean cut a ferocious and terrifying figure.
"Down!" Sean gestured at them with the barrel of the AKM and with transparent relief they fell facedown in the dust and clasped their hands behind their heads.
Just ahead he made out the long, drooping rotors of a Hind protruding above the sandbagged wall of its emplacement.
"One didn't even get up," he thought as he raced toward it, but at that moment the rotors began to revolve slowly, swiftly building up speed. Somebody was attempting to start the machine.
Sean darted through the narrow entrance and into the deep circular emplacement. He checked his charge for a moment to survey the interior.
The Hind in its blotched camouflage towered over him, its rotors whirling over his head as they built up to start speed on the Isotov turbo engine. Three RtIssian ground crew were crowded around the front of the timchine, and incongruously Sean noticed the crimson arrow emblem painted on the Hind's nose that designated them an "Excellent Crew," one of the cherished performance awards of the Soviet air force.
The ground crew turned their white faces toward Scan and gaped at him. He jerked the muzzle of the AKM at them, and they fell back.
ckpit of the helicopter was still The canopy of the weapons co open, and one of the flight crew was clambering up into it. Only his plump backside in gray flying overalls protruded. Sean reached up between his legs and seized a handful of the man's genitals. The Russian squealed shrilly as Sean used them as a handle to drag him backward and threw him against the sandbagged side wall of the emplacement.
The spinning rotors whistled shrilly as the turbo engine caught, and Sean jumped up onto the boarding step of the helicopter. The pilot's canopy was also open, and Sean thrust his AKM forward.
The pilot at the controls was young and thin, with pale blond hair cut very short. In his haste to get the Hind away he had not even donned his flying helmet. He turned his head to look at Sean.
His complexion was marred by angry purple and red acne and his eyes were very pale blue. They widened dramatically as Sean touched the tip of his acne-scarred nose with the muzzle of the AKM and said, "Party is over, Ivan. Let's go home."
It was apparent that this helicopter had not been scheduled for the dawn sortie that morning and the pilot and his crew had only begun their attempt to get the machine airborne once the attack had begun. It was less than ten minutes since the first mortar shells had fallen into the laager, not enough time, though they had almost made it.
"Kill the engine," Sean told the pilot. He enforced the order by jamming the muzzle of the AKM into the pilot's nose with sufficient force to bring a smear of blood from one nostril and tears from both of the pale eyes. Reluctantly the pilot pushed the fuel mixture control to fully lean and cut both master switches. The whistle of the turbo died away.
"Out!" said Sean. The pilot understood the gesture and tone, if not the word. He unclasped his safety belt and climbed down into the laager.
Sean lined up the pilot, the flight engineer, and the three members of the ground crew against the sandbagged wall. "Welcome to the capitalist world, comrades," he greeted them, then looked back at the helicopter. "Jackpot!" He grinned, still euphoric with the adrenaline in his blood. "We've got ourselves a real live, working Hind, Matatu!"
Matatu was having a grand time. "Let's kill them now," he suggested merrily. "Give me the banduki. Let me shoot them for you." Sean had seen Matatu fire only one shot in his entire life, when as a joke Sean had let him fire the double.577. it had lifted Matatu clear off his feet and deposited him ten feet away.
You couldn't hit one of them even at this range, you bloodthirsty little bugger." Sean grinned down at him, then once more concentrated all his attention on the Hind. The magnitude of the prize he had taken began to dawn upon him.