“You got a reading?”
“Look like Iranian gunships to me. The old Hueys from Nam we sold them.”
“Shoot ’em out of the fuckin’ sky, son.”
“Not in range yet, Dad.”
“Then get us there! Fast!”
Yakov was among the first wave of those within and on the barricade who fell to the barrage blistered down from the Huey gunship as it swept overhead. A few atop the debris turned upward and bravely fired on it, only to be sliced apart by the machine gunners spewing bullets out both sides. Evira managed to find cover during the first pass and slid back outward as a second gunship came in for its attack run.
“Not yet, you bastards!” she raged. “Not yet!”
A surface-to-air rocket launcher lay just before her. She grabbed for it, strapped it round her shoulder, and climbed to the first platform of the barricade. The second gunship was coming fast as the first swung back around and made tracks in its wake. Orange began to spit from the machine gun bores of the now lead Huey as it crossed over the head of the barricade. Evira had time only to steady herself and raise the launcher to her shoulder before the chopper’s fire pinpointed her. She fired without time to properly aim, fired up and to the right in the desperate hope the heat-seeking missile would launch close enough to lock on. There was a whomp! and the Huey’s tail exploded, pitching it into a swirling dive.
But there was no time to celebrate. The second Huey roared overhead and she had no second rocket to fire its way. She saw a launcher on the platform to her left and leaped for it just as the orange flashes tore into her. She felt a series of kicks to her ribs and chest and then she was falling, tumbling, still searching for something to grab onto.
Evira felt no pain and maintained firm hold on her vision long enough to record the impossible sight of the second Huey being blown out of the sky as it hovered directly over the barricade. She tried to turn toward what she knew must be the Apaches, but her head wouldn’t move and neither could the rest of her.
“Got him, sir!” The pilot beamed exuberantly after his Hellfire missile impacted squarely in the Huey’s side.
“There’s more where that came from.”
“Can’t wait to meet them.”
“Just step on the gas,” Blaine said, reaching for his binoculars with the barricade a mere ten seconds away.
The barricade was a shambles tumbling over upon itself. Well over a hundred dead and dying lay piled in heaps, some crawling back to their posts with weapons in hand and trails of blood left behind them. Those the battle had thus far spared clung to whatever positions they could forge out of the remnants of their fallen fortress, firing upon the onrushing soldiers until their bullets ran out or a stray shot found them.
Kourosh had been trembling in shock behind a fallen section of the barricade when Evira had tumbled. He screamed her name and rushed to her side as the smoke and bullets surged by him. Blood had splashed on the rags he wore for clothes, and its coppery scent was thick in his nostrils even before he reached Evira. Whether she was alive or dead he could not tell. He only knew that she was bleeding very badly. He spoke her name softly and stroked her hair, then wailed again.
The resistance within the barricade was breaking down due to the loss of leadership and manpower. The next wave of soldiers was closing, coming fast through the smoke. Catching a glimpse of them, Kourosh grabbed the closest rifle he could find and burst through a jagged hole in the crumbling barricade before him.
Blaine tore the binoculars from his neck, not believing what they had shown him as the Apache had passed over the remnants of the barricade.
“Circle back,” he ordered the pilot. “The Indian and I are making an unscheduled stop here.”
“Say again, sir.”
“You heard me.”
“I have no orders to—”
“I don’t give a shit, son. You do what I say or I’ll drop you into that corpse field and drive this thing myself.”
“What about the others?”
“Order ten of them to proceed with Operation Firestorm as planned. Have three or four others cut off the far end of this street from the rest of the world. You maneuver around above us and use your chain gun to help cut down anything in uniform.”
“Whatever you say, sir. But it’s your funeral,” the pilot warned, bringing the agile Apache around.
“Save your flowers.” He turned to Wareagle while he strapped the Vulcan minigun over his shoulder and attached its harness to his gunbelt. The Kevlar bodysuit he’d just donned was already baking him, the sweat clammy on his flesh. “Let’s call ourselves a taxi, Indian.”
The buffer between the waves of Revolutionary Guardsmen and the barricade was shrinking rapidly to nothing. There were simply too few defenders left to do the job adequately, and many of those that remained lacked the strength to fire, or even reload.
Blood rushed down Yakov’s face from his spill off the barricade. He had managed to climb back up to a fortified position, firing out with a mere pistol. Two shells were left when a single bullet split his skull and killed him. Of the Iranian leaders, only Rashid remained, untouched in his roving position, still giving orders up and down the lines to fewer and fewer fighters.
Kourosh hadn’t fired his rifle when he emerged from the barricade. Unexpected terror had kept him still and hunched, and for a few moments that saved his life. Then a band of soldiers spotted his quivering form, saw the gun in his hands, and prepared to fire. The boy cringed and closed his eyes to the certainty of his own death. Instead of gunfire, though, he heard a powerful metallic clanging and felt himself being shoved backward against the remnants of the barricade.
McCracken and Wareagle had slid down from the specially adapted lead Apache on a pair of drop lines just seconds before, under cover from the attack ship’s 30-millimeter chain gun. Blaine had glimpsed the fallen Evira through his binoculars and clung to the hope she was still alive. She was his only chance of ever seeing Matthew again, and he found that well worth facing off against a thousand soldiers charging headlong up the street.
He and Johnny allotted only one hand to guide their slide down, the other already steadying their Vuicans to assure they wouldn’t be cut down upon landing by the soldiers nearest. Blaine’s landing placed him between a boy wielding a gun almost as big as he was and a group of charging guardsmen. He was able to shove the boy backward behind the shield formed by his body without missing a beat on the Vulcan. It felt surprisingly light and maneuverable, and after a few seconds he forgot about the weight altogether.
McCracken had never known such a battle, such a feeling. Virtually none of the onrushing swarm of guardsmen had noticed his drop. From a distance it had been camouflaged by the black smoke and soot filling the air. The soldiers must have thought the Apache was one of theirs until it opened fire on them. Furthermore, their attention was too focused on the remnants of the barricade and its defenders to notice anything else. They charged forward in an unstoppable wave. He and Johnny had landed within ten yards of one another and were firing in the controlled bursts Gunny Tom Beeks had advised. Bodies didn’t just fall in the paths blazed by the Vulcans’ 20-millimeter shells and the 30-millimeter rounds coming from the Apache; they rocketed backward, limbs blown off or huge cavities left where chests had been. Death came fast enough to leave the guardsmen without even an expression of shock or pain, just an open, glazed stare as body piled atop body.
The Vulcans continued to clang metallically, hell on the ears, with the large shells speeding from their six rotating barrels. As Blaine and Johnny swept the area before them, wave after wave of dark-clad soldiers fell to their onslaught. Those trying to circle for better position were cut down by the Apache’s gunner hovering above, who made all those not directly in the Vulcans’ line of fire his targets.