Still cursing, Lanyard came up to one knee, shouldered the fifty-pound rifle, and sent a pair of 25mm explosive armor-piercing rounds streaking into the engine compartment of Kai’s racing boat. The detonations blew apart the port-side engine and ripped the port-side drive shaft loose, skewing the boat sideways and catapulting Kai and his driver into the water.
Shaking off the recoil effects of the rapid two-round volley, Lanyard stood up and quickly sent a third AP explosive round into the engine of the outboard motorboat hovering near the Avatar’s bow — shredding the engine cowling and killing the two cowering occupants — and then instinctively swung around and sent the last two rounds in the M109’s magazine arcing across the water and into the engine compartment of the Forestry Division patrol boat that suddenly appeared, accelerating past the western edge of the island at flank speed with searchlights sweeping.
The explosive impact of the two AP projectiles inside the confined space of the patrol boat’s small engine compartment brought the coastal vessel to a surging halt, cutting off all power to the single propeller shaft and the two glaring searchlights in the process; but not before their final sweep revealed Kai pulling himself into the smoking cockpit of the mini-cig boat and fumbling for the. 50-caliber machine gun.
Too busy to curse now, Lanyard tossed aside the spare magazine of armor-piercing rounds he’d instinctively pulled out of the blue-striped ammo box, grabbed instead the single magazine of anti-personnel rounds, slammed the heavy box magazine into the M109, pulled back on the arming bolt, thumbed the weapon’s computerized BORS ranging system to the new ammo, and came up to one knee with the payload rifle already on his shoulder.
He triggered the first anti-personnel round at the moment Kai — visibly stunned and bleeding profusely, but still furiously intent on destroying the fishing yacht and anyone on board — was bringing the. 50-caliber machinegun around to bear again on the Avatar’s bridge.
The ‘slow-velocity’ 1-inch-diameter bullet, electronically controlled by the M109’s optical ranging system, detonated against the breach of the. 50-caliber weapon into hundreds of extremely-high-energy fragments, dislodging the heavy machinegun from its mount and literally vaporizing Kai’s upper torso — just as the blinding searchlights from a rapidly approaching Blackhawk helicopter switched on, illuminating the Avatar and flaring-out Lanyard’s night-vision goggles.
Reacting instinctively, Lanyard flipped his recycling night-goggles up and away from his eyes, winced against the searing glare of the searchlights, and fired the M109 twice in the general direction of the hovering helicopter.
Distracted by the barrage of AK-47 rounds ricocheting off rocks in a fifty-foot radius around his position, and only vaguely aware of the big-caliber firestorm that had erupted on the far side of the distant Avatar, Jack Gavin was having a much easier time with his assignment.
In the time it took Quince Lanyard to empty the first magazine of M109 explosive rounds into the three approaching boats, dodging nearly a hundred. 50-caliber bullets in the process, Gavin had dispatched seven of Kai’s wildly-firing assault team. He was waiting for the last pirate — a grizzled older man with enough common sense to take cover when he saw or heard the effects of Gavin’s first few shots — to make a run for one of the boats when he heard the M109 fire again; and then saw the searchlight from a rapidly approaching Blackhawk helicopter suddenly light up the Avatar.
Gavin cursed as he reached down, grabbed a small rock, and threw it in the approximate location where he thought the last of Kai’s pirates was hiding. He waited until the old man broke away from his hiding place in a desperate run for the water, dropped him with a pair of shots to the chest and head, and then raised the rifle and began firing at the Blackhawk just as the two anti-personnel rounds from Lanyard’s M109 detonated against the left side of the helicopter’s armored windshield.
Not designed to penetrate armored glass, the high-energy metal fragments simply scarred and blackened the Blackhawk’s windshield; shredding and disabling, instead, the unarmored searchlight mounted beneath the transport helicopter’s nose. But the pilots reacted instinctively, and understandably, by wrenching the Blackhawk away from the unexpected flack.
In doing so, they inadvertently exposed the Rangers in the main cabin — many of whom were already standing up, in anticipation of the helicopter’s imminent beach landing — to the incoming bullets from Gavin’s rifle.
Colonel Kulawnit and Major Preithat, intent on being the first Rangers on the beach when they landed at Tanga Island, were standing in the open doorway of the Blackhawk’s main cabin, holding onto safety straps, when the nose of the armored helicopter suddenly veered to the right in response to the M109 projectile explosions. The two men were still trying to regain their balance when the first bullet from Gavin’s rifle ricocheted off the titanium plate in Preithat’s armored vest, staggering him backwards into the arms of another Ranger.
The next four bullets hit Colonel Kulawnit’s Kevlar vest — in the high chest area, just to the right of his protective titanium plate, one bullet slicing in between the thick-meshed panels — and his unprotected left arm, sending him spinning him around and tumbling to the floor of the heaving helicopter next to the dangling body of the port-side crew chief who had been hit in the vest by the sixth bullet and then struck fatally in the throat by the seventh.
“Prathun!”
Gedimin Bulatt saw Kulawnit fall, yelled out as he released his seat harness, and dove for the sprawled body of his Interpol friend, trying to pull him away from the exposed open doorway. At that moment, two more anti-personnel rounds from the M109 payload rifle exploded against the tail rotor of the Blackhawk.
Built to withstand the glancing impacts of. 50-caliber anti-aircraft rounds, the Blackhawk’s tail rotor mechanism was no match for the explosive power of the M109 projectiles. Torn and jarred out of alignment, the tail rotors shuddered and then failed, wrenching the powerful transport helicopter away in an uncontrollable tail spin that flung Bulatt and Kulawnit out the door and tumbling down into the warm waters of the Tanga Island cove.
Gavin was in the reflexive process of reloading his rifle with a full 30-round magazine, his attention fixed on the wildly spinning helicopter as the Blackhawk pilots fought for control, when he realized that Lanyard was yelling in his earphones.
“What?” Gavin said.
“Get your arse down to the beach and into the bloody dinghy, you daft idiot! The Rangers are coming in with Blackhawks and machineguns. We’ve got to get out of here, now!” Lanyard repeated as he set the payload rifle aside, grabbed up his night-vision-scoped M4 carbine, and began scanning the water for more targets.
CHAPTER 15
The first thing Bulatt saw after he thrashed to the surface — coughing and choking, with Kulawnit still grasped tightly in his left arm — pulled the inflation tabs on both of their vests, and then quickly readjusted the night-vision goggles over his eyes, was the Blackhawk helicopter crashing into the water a hundred yards away.
Then he turned and saw one of Kai’s low-riding outboard motorboats drifting in the water halfway between his position and the anchored Avatar with what looked like a pair of lifeless bodies dangling over the side.
After pulling a military bandage out of a pouch on his vest, and then tightening it as best he could around Kulawnit’s badly wounded arm — all the while struggling to keep the unconscious Colonel’s face out of the water — Bulatt quickly pulled off and discarded his armored vest, lifejacket and boots, and then started kicking and stroking the classic one-handed lifeguard tow in the direction of the drifting boat.