A wash of heat enveloped Ethan and he looked over his shoulder to see the wadi enveloped in an expanding fireball and a veil of thick black smoke. Lopez’s motorcycle hung on grimly behind him, and he could see horses galloping out of the maelstrom and splitting up into different directions, the bodies of several militants and their mounts strewn across the desert.
‘They’re not taking any prisoners!’ Amber yelled. ‘We should have stayed with Huck Seavers!’
‘Seavers probably called the Saudis in!’ Ethan snapped back. ‘Forget about him!’
Ethan’s shirt was drenched with sweat, his hair and eyes thick with windblown sand, the motorcycle slipping and sliding as Ethan sought out the line of least resistance toward the main road.
A deafening crackle burst the air around Ethan as the Apache opened fire with its cannons on the fleeing horses and vehicles, a loud buzzing sound as the cannons whirled and bullets ripped across the dunes. He saw one animal go down in a tangle of limbs as one of the militants fired an RPG up at the helicopter. Ethan saw the grenade miss but burst into flame just alongside the Apache, the pilot yanking the craft clear of the lethal blast as he turned back toward the militants still concealed within the wadi’s mouth.
‘This is our chance to get clear!’ he shouted to Lopez.
Ethan swerved toward the open desert, Amber hanging on grimly behind him as they fled. The motorbike weaved on the dunes and Ethan closed the throttle to give the bike a chance to steady itself as he looked ahead and saw a line of low hills. He yelled over his shoulder to Lopez.
‘Head for those hills and stay sharp!’
Ethan looked over his shoulder toward the wadi rapidly receding behind them. The Apache was firing its cannons into the wadi’s depths, while Ethan could see the last of the horses galloping out into the wastes in all directions, mere specks now trailing plumes of golden sand into the morning air.
He turned back to the controls, and then saw a plume of sand billowing up from the far side of a dune directly ahead of them. He felt his blood run cold in his veins as from behind the dune a second Apache rose up, its cockpit glass glinting in the sunlight searing the horizon behind it and its fearsome weapons array pointing directly at Ethan and Lopez’s motorbikes.
‘Enemy front!’
Ethan hauled the motorbike to one side as he changed direction, Lopez peeling away to his right just as the Apache’s guns opened fire with a whirring crescendo like screaming demons as a hail of bullets churned the dunes around them. Ethan plunged over the crest of a dune and down into a valley of sand on the far side, out of sight of the Apache’s crew.
‘We can’t get away from them!’ Amber yelled. ‘The bikes aren’t fast enough!’
Ethan concentrated on guiding the bike down the gulley between the dunes, trying to head as much as possible toward the metalled road in order to give them a decent chance at putting some distance between themselves and the Apaches.
He heard the thumping of the gunship’s blades nearby and then the whining sound of the cannons firing once more, and he knew that Lopez had come under attack. Fear for her coursed like ice lightning through his body as the motorbike crested a low dune and then descended down alongside the road once more.
Ethan squeezed the brakes and the motorbike shuddered to a halt on the sand as he turned to look over his shoulder.
‘Can you ride?’
‘Sure, but why …?’
‘Take the bike,’ Ethan said as he leaped out of the saddle and grabbed the grenade launcher from his shoulder. ‘When I’m in position, ride, and let them see you.’
Amber blanched. ‘They’ll open fire!’
‘I’ll hit them first,’ Ethan promised. ‘If they’re not taken down, get off the road again and get into the dunes, okay? Keep running, no matter what!’
Ethan didn’t give Amber the chance to argue and instead dashed out across the main road to the far side, then began running hard to the east. He could hear the Apache nearby, the occasional burr of its machine guns as it tried to kill Lopez and Stanley. Ethan had no choice but to draw the Apache out. He kept running until he was a hundred yards further up the road, and then he hurled himself down beside the sandy edge of the road, driving himself down into the sand like a snake trying to bury itself, hurling handfuls of it over his back to conceal himself. Then, satisfied that he would remain out of sight until it was too late, he signalled to Amber to start riding.
Amber burst out onto the road into plain view of the Apache, which was circling back for another pass at wherever Lopez was pinned down. She rode the bike out into the centre of the road and gunned the throttle wide open, the bike accelerating wildly toward Ethan as Amber ducked down over the fuel tank, her black hair flying in the wind.
The Apache swung around almost immediately as its crew spotted the fleeing motorcycle, and as Ethan had hoped the pilot instinctively used the road itself to line up on the target, the helicopter moving directly overhead the road and descending as it tilted forward. Ethan pulled the RPG launcher into his shoulder, activated the sights and settled them on the gunship as it surged forward, the blades hammering the desert air as it rocketed in pursuit of Amber.
Ethan saw the two pilots in their tandem seating cockpit, and in the intense moment he saw the gunship’s seeker assembly beneath the nose following the movements of the pilot’s head as he sought to aim at Amber’s motorcycle, saw the gunship’s wicked cannons being brought to bear as the pilot gently pulled the nose up, tracking the centre line of the road. Ethan knew that the pilot would squeeze the trigger just before his gun sights tracked onto Amber’s position, sweeping the road with high velocity, armour piercing shells that would shred the asphalt and anything else that got in their way.
Ethan kept his aim steady, the Apache bearing down upon him almost head — on and presenting a perfect target with minimal lateral motion and its swirling rotors and gearbox assembly in full view.
Ethan squeezed the trigger and the launcher shuddered amid a cloud of acrid gray smoke that stung his eyes as the projectile screeched like a banshee out of the barrel and rocketed toward the Apache.
The gunship pilot saw the launch the moment Ethan squeezed the trigger and Ethan saw the gunship pull up and to the left, but at such close range there was no time for even the finest pilot to avoid the weapon.
The grenade impacted the gunship just starboard of the rotor assembly with a brilliant explosion that Ethan glimpsed just before he ducked down to avoid the shrapnel blast that he was counting on to do most of the damage as it smashed into the helicopter’s spinning rotors and they flew apart in a lethal cloud of blades and debris.
Ethan covered his head with his hands and pulled his legs up protectively as shrapnel hammered the asphalt road and the helicopter’s engines shrieked with an ear piercing whine as the Apache banked away out of control and spun a complete revolution. Ethan squinted up through a cloud of billowing sand as the Apache’s engines and rotors tore themselves apart in a frenzy of rending metal. The gunship plunged down into the desert with a crash amid a plume of sand and the engines split open and ignited their fuel.
The Apache exploded in a brilliant fireball that blossomed like a second sunrise against the desert before it was swallowed by black smoke and flames. Ethan dragged himself to his feet and back up onto the road as Lopez’s motorcycle burst into view with Stanley clinging to her for dear life as they rode up to Ethan’s side.
‘We need to get the hell out of here before the other gunship comes back,’ Lopez informed him breathlessly as she skidded to a halt.