“I understand,” said Hammad. “You’re not the terrorists, then, right?”
“I know it’s hard to tell who the good guys are these days, but Allah’s on your side.”
“Yes, always.”
Hammad kept several pairs of binoculars on board for sightseers. Fisher grabbed a pair and focused on the train, just a metallic serpent chugging forward across the broad plains of desert. Twin headlights reached out into the gathering dust. Fisher panned up toward the haboob and regretted that decision.
The storm was a living, breathing creature of wind and sand, consumed by hunger and unaffected by politics, religion, or any other differences men used to justify killing each other. It was motivated only by the laws of physics, a perfect killer.
“All right,” Fisher told Hammad, shaking off the thought. “Come back around and descend hard and fast. You’re like an old fighter pilot in World War II, coming in to strafe the enemy, got it?”
“Holy shit, yes. I got it.”
Briggs had finished stripping down to his tac-suit and was double-checking their pistols and spare magazines. He handed Fisher his Five-seveN and SIG P226, then holstered his own weapons. Next he handed Fisher his submachine gun with attached sling and clutched his own tightly to his chest.
“Good to go,” Briggs said over the intercom. “Nothing beats the smell of factory-fresh ammo in the evening.”
Fisher almost smiled, then glanced to Hammad. “You’re doing great. Keep descending. Okay, now over there, we need to get lower, that’s right, bank right . . . right . . . descend again! You see it now?”
Hammad swooped down like a vulture, then he pitched the nose and descended even more aggressively. Fisher found himself clutching the seat with one hand as they came within five meters of the desert floor before Hammad pulled up and leveled off to check his altitude. Not two seconds later, he descended a few more meters.
“That’s how to do it,” Fisher said. “That’s perfect. You could be a military pilot.”
“Yeah, man,” said Hammad, sounding only half as confident as Fisher.
The helicopter was on a straight and level path directly behind the train, with the rail ties ticking by. Despite being jarred by the train’s wash, Hammad kept them less than two meters above the railway, with only the caboose container’s tiny red taillights as a reference point.
Their approach was about as stealthy as Fisher could’ve hoped for, but he still wasn’t sure how loud the locomotive and HEP car were and if they’d been noisy enough to conceal the chopper’s engine and rotors to anyone posted outside the train. The plan, of course, was to go in ghost.
Fisher lifted his binoculars. The tank cars themselves were as expected—long black cylinders with well-rusted bellies and ladders both fore and aft. There were grab irons mounted to the sides and narrow, flat upper decks with railings that allowed maintenance workers to pass from car to car.
“Okay, great job, Hammad,” he said. “Stand by to get us up top.”
As Fisher unbuckled and climbed toward the backseat, ready to give Hammad his final instructions, gunfire ripped across the canopy—
And suddenly Hammad was jerking the stick, throwing Fisher backward.
“Get above the last car!” shouted Briggs. “Don’t pull away!”
“He’s shooting at us!” cried Hammad.
Fisher crashed into the backseat and then whipped his head around, catching the barest glimpse of a man posted between the caboose and the next tank car. He repeatedly swung out from the side of the train, single-handedly firing his rifle, the muzzle flashing—but oddly not a single round struck the chopper. Was he the world’s worst shot?
Fisher squinted for a better look.
“Oh, you’re kidding me!” cried Briggs.
In that instant oil began spraying across the canopy, mixing with the swirling dust and clouding Hammad’s view as the agent continued spraying the oil container with bullets, releasing more streams of oil.
“Pull up now!” Fisher cried.
Hammad shook his head. “I can’t see!”
The oil kept splashing and bleeding off, the streaks beginning to blur like a kaleidoscope. One false move by the pilot, and they’d either plow into the back of the train or smash into the tracks—and Fisher’s imagination took him through both of those scenarios in an instant.
“Come on, Hammad, do it!” Fisher cried, slapping his palm on top of the pilot’s and ready to take over if Hammad backed out.
Hammad’s eyes bulged. “Okay, I got it!” He gasped, shuddered, then pulled back and brought them above the oil spray, coming directly above the container car. He was leaning forward now, staring through a meager opening on the canopy no more than twelve inches wide and not yet stained with oil.
“Here,” shouted Briggs, handing Fisher his pair of trifocals.
With his goggles on, Briggs threw the latch and yanked open the door.
The wind literally screamed into the compartment.
And the sand came in needle-like torrents.
Hammad coughed and cried, “Hurry!”
“Just hold position!” Fisher told him. “You’re a hero today, my friend!”
“Holy shit, yes!”
Briggs leaped from the chopper and hit the container hard, falling forward, sliding for a second, then latching onto one of the railings. One hand slid loose and he was thrown back by both the train’s velocity and the storm, but he leaned forward and returned that hand to the rail.
Ignoring the desert blurring by and the sand beginning to rip through the rotors, Fisher couldn’t help himself. He chanced a look at the sandstorm—perhaps a quarter mile away and barreling toward them.
Oh my God . . .
The diminutive train and even tinier chopper lay directly in the path of what resembled a thousand-foot-tall tidal wave as murky and thick as the ocean itself.
Chilled, Fisher flicked his gaze back on the oil container, focusing on his upper deck landing zone.
Then, with a curse that really meant no, I’m not too old for this shit, he pushed away from the helicopter and plunged two meters to the top deck.
As his boots made impact, they gave way on a thin coating of oil that had whipped up from the rotor wash and was dripping off the railings.
He hit hard on his rump and began slipping off the deck, a hairsbreadth from being blown right off the container—when Briggs’s hand latched onto his, just as Fisher went swinging off the side and across the oil-slick surface.
Suspended now, Fisher caught another glimpse of the man who’d been firing at them, illuminated in the pale green glow of his trifocals. He was an Iranian MOIS agent, Fisher assumed, with balaclava tugged over his head, Kevlar vest strapped tightly at his chest and waist, and baggy combat trousers. Two pistols were holstered on his right side, one at the waist, the other on his lower hip. The rifle was an AK-47—and it popped again as Briggs dragged Fisher up and onto the deck.
Another salvo cracked from the AK, and Fisher swung back toward the chopper.
Hammad was just pulling away, taking heavy fire now from the agent, rounds sparking and ricocheting off the fuselage, a few punching into the side window.
Salvo after salvo tracked him.
He banked hard to the right. Too hard. Blood splashed across the side window. He lost control of the bird—
And before Fisher could open his mouth, the helicopter flipped onto its back, pitched slightly, then crashed with a thundering explosion into the desert behind them, the flickering fireball sweeping into the rising gale. Secondary explosions lifted into the first, with contrails of black smoke instantly shredded by the sand.
With the picture of Hammad’s little girls abruptly and permanently etched in Fisher’s memory, he gritted his teeth and sprang to his feet.
Thoughts of payback did not blind him with rage, but the anger did trigger a massive adrenaline rush. There wasn’t a combatant in the world who could stop him now.