NO TIME to react. Not that he could have done anything to prevent the Skycrane from crashing. One second he was lurching to one side from the force of the explosion; the next he found the ground rushing up to greet him. All that saved him from being killed on impact was the Sikorsky’s manic air dance; just before striking the pines, it had pirouetted and tilted upward so that the damaged tail section touched down first. When the front end followed suit, the branches of the charred pine helped cushion the landing. Still, the impact was jarring enough to throw McCarter against the front windshield. The glass cracked but held in place as he bounded back into his seat, dazed, blood streaming down his face from a scalp gash.
The Sikorsky had come to rest at an odd angle, tilting slightly upward and sideways just enough to throw off McCarter’s equilibrium. When he tried to stand, his head began to spin. He grabbed for the copilot’s seat to steady himself, but his legs gave out underneath him and he keeled forward, dropping the carbine and toppling to the cockpit’s floor. He struck his head again, this time against the instrument panel. The blow was forceful enough to render him unconscious. The last thing he recalled was the smell of leaking engine fuel.
MANNING STARTED to rush toward the fallen chopper, but his strained hamstrings refused to cooperate, slowing him to a quick hobble. Compounding matters, the ground around him came to life as a stream of gunfire chewed at the dirt and the now-slack length of chain reaching from the ATV to the charred pine. Driven back, he took shelter behind the ATV, kneeling beside Encizo, who’d already retrieved the driver’s Uzi subgun.
“Bastards,” Encizo growled. “Some of them must’ve veered off before they reached the meadow.”
“That or they’ve got a camp around here somewhere,” Manning speculated. He ignored the fiery sensation in his legs and drew his 15-round M-9 Beretta from its shoulder holster. He could no longer see the downed Skycrane, but he could smell smoke and the rank odor of fuel.
“We need to get David out of that chopper before it blows,” he told Encizo, speaking above the gunfire.
“I know,” Encizo said, “but how? They’ve got us pinned down.”
“What about the jalopy?”
“After what it’s been through, I doubt it’s running,” Encizo said, “but let’s give it a—”
Encizo pitched forward, suddenly attacked from behind. The vehicle’s driver had regained consciousness and sprang forward from the front seat armed with a combat knife. The blade bit sharply into Encizo’s shoulder as the Basque knocked him to the ground.
The Basque quickly pulled the knife free and was about to stab Encizo a second time when Manning intervened, instinctively lashing out with the butt of his pistol. He caught the other man just below the right cheekbone, breaking a few teeth. Stunned, the man dropped his knife and his eyes began to roll up inside his head. Before he could collapse on top of Encizo, Manning grabbed hold of him and jerked him back to his feet with so much force the driver reeled backward. He was still trying to catch his balance when he ran out of ground and vanished as quickly as if a trapdoor had just opened under his feet.
Leaning against the ATV for support, Manning slowly limped forward to the edge of the precipice. With both hamstrings out it felt as if his legs had turned to jelly, and each step was an agony. By the time he reached the edge and peered downward, the driver had landed in a contorted, bloody heap at the base of the cliff.
“That’s one down,” Manning murmured.
He turned and headed back toward Encizo. The Cuban had pulled himself to his feet. His shirt was soaked with blood where he’d been stabbed. He ripped the fabric aside and inspected the wound. “He took a nice chunk out of me.”
“Let me take a look,” Manning said.
“Later.” Encizo moved past his teammate and slid into the front seat of the ATV. “Come on, let’s go get David.”
“Easier said than done,” Manning replied, struggling to pull himself into the passenger’s seat. Encizo reached out with his good arm and helped him up.
“Hammies?”
“Yeah,” Manning groaned. “Messed them up playing tug-of-war with the truck here.”
“That sucks,” Encizo told him. “What happened to the good old days when we came through these firefights without a scratch?”
“Times change, I guess,” Manning said. He started to tell Encizo about the gunshot wounds Calvin James had sustained in the meadow when the next stream of gunfire rained on them from the mountains. The crate blocked most of the shots, but a few bullets found their way to the front hood, leaving navel-sized holes. The men knew if they didn’t move they would end up sitting ducks.
Encizo quickly keyed the ignition. The engine turned over several times but wouldn’t catch.
“Come on, you freaking piece of garbage!”
He tried again; this time the engine turned over.
Encizo was shifting into Reverse when their attackers fired another mortar round their way. Manning caught a fleeting glimpse as it whizzed by, missing the ATV by a few yards. It wound up exploding in the gorge behind them, and the sound of the blast echoed through the mountains like a death knell.
“I guess the good news is we must not be carting those nukes after all,” Encizo speculated. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to blow us up.”
“In other words, they don’t have to pull any punches going after us,” Manning replied.
“That’s the bad news,” Encizo said. “Hang on. Here goes…”
The ATV’s front end had been knocked out of alignment during its downhill plunge, and as Encizo guided the vehicle backward, it crabbed sharply to one side. He worked the steering to compensate, and with each turn his wounded shoulder felt as if it were about to fall off.
Encizo backed up the ATV a few more yards, then put on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a stop several yards short of the pine tree Manning had used to winch the ATV from the edge of the precipice. One of the Sikorsky’s main rotor blades extended out over them, and smoke drifted past the front of the vehicle.
“Okay,” Encizo said, shifting the ATV into neutral. “Let’s try to get to David before he gets fried.”
Manning tried to climb out of his seat. He couldn’t. “No good,” he told Encizo.
“Take the wheel, then,” Encizo said. “I’ll go.”
“I can manage that,” Manning stated.
Encizo climbed out of the driver’s seat, leaving it drenched with blood, then disappeared from view. Manning drew in a deep breath, then braced himself and struggled to duck under the front end of the crate. The effort drained him.
Beretta in hand, Manning scanned his surroundings, looking for signs of the enemy. The gunfire, which had stopped, at least for the moment, had all come from behind him, and all he could see to his right were rock formations, trees and the occasional shrub. As he was turning to his left, he rammed his cheekbone into the crate’s front end.
Muttering an epithet, Manning grabbed the top of the box and pulled himself up until he was sitting on the seat’s headrest. He could see Encizo now. The little Cuban had grabbed hold of the downed chopper’s rotor blade and was swinging his way, hand over hand, toward the cockpit, feet dangling just above the limbs of the charred pine. The tree had been set aflame by burning debris and the flames were crawling along the trunk, racing Encizo toward the aircraft. Manning could see fuel leaking from a rupture in the boom tank. It would take a miracle for Encizo to get to the cockpit and rescue McCarter before the flames reached the fuel and turned the chopper into a fireball.
Manning knew he had to do something. He prepared to fling himself to the ground, hoping he could crawl to the flames and hopefully smother them. Before he could dive forward, however, another volley of gunfire ripped through the pines and pinged along the side of the ATV, forcing him