“Son of a bitch!” shouted Tony Ruth, who, struck by the loudness of the strong, resurrected “beep” being amplified over the Chinook’s internal bay speaker, declared, “We must be on top of the mothers!”
“We are!” confirmed the loadmaster.
“Gonna be tricky!” opined Aussie, looking down at the wide, marshy margin between the lake proper and the edge of the woods.
“That’s what we do,” riposted Freeman. “We do tricky.” He glanced down at Prince, who was panting, sensing the excitement and hearing the soft stream of defensive flares that the Chinook was dropping prior to landing. “That right, Prince?” said Freeman. “We do tricky, right?” Prince’s tail was thumping a bulkhead.
“When we land,” began Freeman, “I want every—” He glimpsed a bluish tail of exhaust at the edge of the woods.
“Missile!” yelled the pilot.
They felt the helo jink sharply right, then—
The explosion was earsplitting, and for several moments neither the general nor the rest of the team, who were slammed hard against the fuselage in their H-straps, could hear anything. Then the high whine of the rear rotors’ portside engine took over the world, screaming as it fought to compensate for the loss of power from the knocked-out starboard engine.
“Going down!” yelled the loadmaster.
Nothing sounded or smelled right anymore, the usually loud but reassuring sounds and odors of a Chinook in steady flight now replaced by decidedly out-of-whack noises and the nauseating smell of leaking hydraulics as pilot and copilot fought to get the machine under control, flares still popping through gray stratus and mist. For a moment the big helo rose promisingly against a violent wind shear, but then they began to plummet.
“Hard landing!” shouted the loadmaster, and Choir, holding the spaniel close to him, could hear Prince whine.
They were out of the gray world, the metallic sheen of the lake sliding downhill, the helo’s nose rattling like crazy and rising insanely, the forward rotor spinning, the rear blades slowing arthritically before stopping altogether, fuselage gyrating in the pilot’s unequal battle with gravity; then they saw a long streak of dark woods west of them along the shoreline now seeming to run uphill. An eagle was glimpsed, then a darker, softer green than the woods was racing up at them, getting bigger, then WHUMP! — walls of reed-scummy water erupted all around and a sound like hail as a downpour of dead stalks and other lakeside detritus struck the Chinook’s skin.
They had come down about a quarter mile from the shore in five feet of water, marsh to the left, open lake to their right.
Young Prince was whimpering like a puppy, but no one said a word. Every one of the eight-man team had braced for a tailbone-smashing crash, but the water and marshy margin of the lake here on the southwestern end afforded them if not a soft landing, then at least a less violent one than they had any right to expect.
Tony Ruth looked the most shaken. Prince’s bright and alarmed eyes were looking up at Choir for reassurance. The pilot and copilot were shouting to each other above the noise as they shut down all ancillary systems that could quickly catch fire if the gas tanks had been perforated. In addition, there were still some of the supposedly anti-missile flares aboard, and they too posed a fire hazard.
“What happened with those damned flares?” Freeman demanded.
The pilot and copilot glared at the general. They had managed, against extraordinary odds, to bring the Chinook to a crash landing in marshland about fifty yards east of the dark line of thick woods, no one seemed badly hurt, and what was Freeman saying? Not “thank you, boys,” but what happened to the fucking flares?
“How do we know!” said the helo captain. “They’re supposed to sucker missiles into thinking they’re our exhaust, but something went wrong. Sure as hell wasn’t our flying — sir!”
“Sorry, gentlemen. You did a great job, but we all nearly bought it because—”
“Captain,” cut in the copilot, “we’re still getting the radio signal from that beeper. It’s up ahead of us about three clicks, on the lake. They’re definitely on the water, General.”
“You hear that, guys?” Freeman shouted to the team, who had already dislodged the two six-man Zodiacs from the webbing and were ready to slide them down the rear-door ramp out to the marsh, from which cold mist was blowing into the helo like smoke. “Their beeper puts them about three clicks from here on the lake, so let’s—” Rounds were thudding into the side of the helo, and through the open ramp door, Aussie could see winks of light coming from the woods about two hundred yards from their position.
“Damn!” said Freeman, “they must have split up. We can’t use the Zodiacs on the lake. They’ll pick us off like flies. Captain,” he enjoined the chopper pilot, “can you stay here and give us their bearing for as long as possible?”
“Will do.”
“Good man. Aussie, you and Sal have got the longest-range weapons. Stay with the two pilots. Hunker down, return fire. We’re going to have to wade through the marsh to the shoreline, get through the woods to that road, and hit those bastards from the rear. No other way.”
“I’ll radio for reinforcements,” said the pilot, “if the helo’s box is still working.”
“Good,” said Freeman, who then ordered everyone to lighten their packs. The copilot informed him that while the radar was still functional, the chopper’s radio was out. The best the pilots could do was keep Aussie and Sal informed of the getaway boat’s position so that as well as being able to return fire with their longer-range weapons, the SpecFor commandos could notify the rest of Freeman’s team via their MIR headsets.
“Good enough,” said Freeman. “So, Aussie, you and Sal are CNN.”
“Roger that,” confirmed Sal.
The volume of incoming fire zipping above their heads and tearing into the fuselage was increasing and, despite his enthusiasm, Freeman realized that there was no way he could have his team wade through the marsh and expect any of them to be alive by the time they reached the shore, let alone the edge of the woods.
“We’ll use the Zodiacs after all,” he told them. “Aussie, you and Sal get ready to throw everything you can at that bunch in the woods. The rest of us’ll drive the Zodiacs across the marsh toward the line of woods. Reeds’ll screw up the outboards’ props, but they should get us there.” The reeds, Freeman hoped, would also dampen the outboards’ noise.
The general shifted his AK-74 to his left hand and grabbed hold of the Zodiac’s pull cord, as Choir, with Prince at his side, came over the gunwale. Ruth, Johnny Lee, Gomez, and Eddie Mervyn were already in the second Zodiac. The best they could hope for was to use the body of the helo for cover, keeping it between them and the enemy’s position as they headed for shore.
Aussie reached for his G36 and Sal positioned his heavy-hitting machine gun with his sling.
“Go!” yelled the general. Aussie and Sal opened up, aiming at the winks of the enemy’s small-arms fire coming from about two hundred yards away to the northwest, the hot gases from Aussie and Sal’s weapons bending the reeds close to the helo, the two Zodiacs, on full power, speeding across the fifty yards of thigh-deep marsh between the downed chopper and the line of pine, fir, and golden-yellow larch. Aussie and Sal’s fire was not only loud but accurate, and in the melee of return fire, Aussie’s “Fritz” was almost knocked off by a ricochet caught in the helo’s rotor. He and Sal heard a cry as one of the enemy “winks” was suddenly eclipsed.