“Get the bridge … Get the bridge … Get the bridge … ”
Arkady chanted softly.
The crosshairs fixed on the gunboat’s wheelhouse.
“Illuminating … got designation. Missile’s hot!”
“Taking the shot,” Arkady keyed the radio. “Zero One … missile away!”
He squeezed the initiator, fixing his eyes on the instrumentation so he wouldn’t be blinded by the Hellfire’s exhaust flare.
Riding the dials, Arkady started his turn away, anti-IR flares kicking out into Zero One’s wake. He heard Nancy Delany call her own round away, then another sharp cry.
“We’re hit! Zero One, we are hit!”
“Ah, shit!”
Arkady racked the helo through the remainder of the turn. Aimed north again, and skimming twenty feet over the river’s surface, he took a split second to look out into the night again.
“Gus, try and pick up on Zero Two. Did you see a fireball out there?”
“Negative, negative. I’m not seem’ nothin’!”
“Zero Two, Zero Two, talk to me! Nancy, state your status?”
“We’re still in the air, Zero One,” a weak return came back. “We are hit. I think a single twenty-five-millimeter round. Smoke in the cockpit and all kinds of systems failures. Nothing left but basic cockpit and engine instrumentation. Nothing will reboot. I think that one of the subsystems bays was blown right out of the aircraft.”
“Can you stay in the air?”
“I have flight and engine control, and the airframe appears intact. I have no fire control and no night vision except for my low-light goggles.”
“Then get out, Nancy! There’s nothing more you can do here. The Duke is engaged. Head for the Task Force. You should be able to stretch your fuel far enough to reach the missile trap cruiser. If you can’t, ditch as far off the coast as possible. They’ll pick you up.”
“Zero One, I—”
“Zero Two, the only thing you can do is to leave me one less thing to worry about! Goddamn it, Nancy, take departure now!”
“Zero Two, taking departure. My round hit, sir. I’m sorry I can’t do more.”
“I know, Nancy. Thanks for doing what you have.”
Arkady flared Zero One around again.
“Okay, once more into the breach, of’ buddy. Let’s see what we’ve done to this guy.”
“We got a hit on him too, Lieutenant.”
The image on the targeting screen panned around as the Sea Comanche completed its turn, picking up the Chinese gunboat once more. Fires were burning amidships and astern. The aft 57mm mount was clearly destroyed and its mainmast canted off center, but the 190-foot war vessel still stood resolutely downstream. It had closed to within a mile of the two drifting Moondog aviators.
“This guy is going to take a little more discouragement, Gus.”
“I guess so, sir. How you want to work this?”
“We try for the wheelhouse again. Only, this time we follow the Hellfire in. We close to point-blank range, then we shove the last four Hydras right down his throat.”
“Oh, man!”
“The shock effect of the Hellfire hit will throw them off long enough for us to close the range. Set us up. We’re going in!”
The Sea Comanche skated in across the river, the surface glittering like hot dark oil beneath her belly. The Hainan’s forward mount challenged again. Tracers arced over the canopy, descending as the Chinese gunners sought for the range.
“Illuminate!”
“Illuminating target … We got laser lock!”
“Taking him out!”
Arkady’s finger closed on the actuator. There was a faint lurch. But there was no hot flame in the night.
“Shit, Gus, we got a misfire! Reset!” Arkady yelled, futilely crushing down on the actuator trigger again.
“Negative! She’s gone! The fucker dropped off the rail! She didn’t ignite!” Grestovitch’s voice lifted an octave. “Lieutenant, pitch out! This isn’t going to work!”
“It’s got to!”
Arkady fought the rudder pedals and the collective lever, playing death tag with the twinned fire streams lashing at them, attempting to sidle out of the way while still maintaining his headlong charge toward the enemy. All he had left were the Hydra rockets. They were superb antipersonnel weapons, but they were no damn good for ship killing. Not unless you got so close that you could shove them right through the side of the hull.
They were hit.
A flash of light, a crash like they’d been broadsided by a pickup truck, and a pattern of cracks on the right side of the canopy. The Sea Comanche roared out of the far side of it, still a viable aircraft. Arkady could feel a change in the flight dynamics, but he didn’t have time to sort it out now.
The image of the gunboat filled the targeting screen, overfilling it, scurrying figures of crewmen throwing themselves on the deck as a screaming, rotor-winged hunterbird dove on them. Arkady fought off the weird, deadly mindlock of target fixation and sent the Hydras on their way. The fire trails of the four 2.75-inch rockets momentarily linked the helicopter to the gunboat before vanishing within the hull. Arkady rocked hard back on the collective and sought sky.
The rockets exploded within the gunboat’s engine room.
Diesel oil is normally not a particularly volatile substance. But shred the tanks and fuel lines that contain it, aerosol it through the atmosphere with multiple hypervelocity impacts, ignite it by exposure to the star-temperature flame of high explosives, and it can be.
A massive chunk of the Hainan’s midships weather deck blew off its framing, a massive, incandescent wound bleeding fire into the night.
“Yeah! We are living!”
“I’ll take your word for it, Lieutenant.”
Arkady backed off the power and circled to get back over the estuary. Twisting in his seat harness, he tried for a damage inspection. “We caught something back there. How bad are we hit?”
“The MAD pod’s gone. I think the right wingtip, too.”
“We’re okay, Gus. I think we’re okay. I got green boards.”
“We gonna have to do that again, Lieutenant?”
“Hell, old buddy. We can’t. The cupboard’s bare.”
Another voice abruptly intervened over the CSAR link.
“Retainer, Retainer, this is Moondog, do you copy?”
“Roger, Moondog, we’re still out here. Just having words with a Red gunboat.”
“So I see, Retainer. Thanks, guys. But we got another little problem here.”
Oh, shit. “Go, Moondog. Whatcha got?”
“We’re getting small-arms fire from the beach again. Not too close yet, but we need you to lay a little more nasty on these guys.”
Oh shit! “Roger, Moondog. We’re on our way.”
Both pilot and systems operator tuned out the darkness beyond their cockpit and refocused themselves on their job and their instrumentation. As a result, neither of them noticed the faint, chromatic blurring begin on the outside of the canopy.
The rotor wash was whipping an almost microscopic spray of oily fluid through the air. The transmission pressure warning alarm would not trip for several minutes yet.
Like an enraged mountain cat, the Cunningham clawed back at her attackers. Her SPY-2A radars traced the incoming artillery rounds to their points of origin, and her Aegis battle management system apportioned death and destruction among the guns of the Chinese battery.
A Sea SLAM burned down out of the sky like a vengeful comet, diving full into one of the open gun pits. Its quarter ton warhead scooped the big twin mount and the vaporizing remnants of its crew into the air. A microsecond later the wreckage was scattered farther afield as the ready-use ammunition in the adjoining bunker succumbed to its torment, the entire emplacement area erupting like a miniature volcano.