by Rob Jones
The Venom pulled around and followed them down as they raced toward the bottom of the ravine.
Hawke saw the rocks racing up toward them but didn’t raise the collective. “When I was leaving the SBS I thought about working as a pilot doing helicopter tourist rides.”
“I think security guard was a better choice,” Scarlet said, eyes widening as the rocks raced closer. The Urubamba River was now so close she could make out the reeds being pulled along by the current. “And now might be the time to get us out of this dive.”
“Not yet.”
She made no reply but gripped the sides of the seat.
And then Hawke lifted the collective and scooped the tiny Bell out of the dive before levelling her off less than twenty feet above the Urubamba. “A spot of low-level flying is in order.”
“You trained for that, right?”
He glanced at her. “Er, yeah…”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no.”
She shook her head as she reloaded her Glock. “Bloody fantastic, Hawke.”
“There has to be a first time for everything,” he replied. “You’ll know that when you make your first funny joke.”
She flicked her eyes at him but said nothing. She loosened her belt and turned in her seat. She opened the small window and leaned her head out. “Bastards right on our six o’clock, Josiah.”
Hawke lowered the Bell to ten feet. They were so low now the rotorwash was flicking up spray from the Urubamba as they flashed over the top of it, following its meanders with the mountains high on either side of them.
Scarlet fired at the Venom, striking the cockpit windshield and puncturing bullets in a neat line across it. The rebels swerved the larger helicopter to starboard and shifted her out of Scarlet’s sights. “Balls… he’s gone again.”
With the sound of their rotors echoing off the sides of the mountains rising high above them on all sides, Hawke weaved the chopper deftly around the twists and turns of the river in a bid to evade more rounds from their grenade launcher but it was too late and the next thing he knew there was a massive explosion in front of the chopper.
The rebels had fired a grenade over the top of them and now Hawke had no choice but to fly right through the middle of the fireball as it burned out in the air ahead of them.
“Holy shit!” Scarlet said.
“Seconded!”
For a couple of seconds they were surrounded by the fireball, their vision cut off by a raging cloud of flames all around the Perspex bubble cockpit, but then they were through and back in the clear air.
“They really do not like you,” Scarlet said.
“Eh? It’s you they want!”
Hawke saw a narrow pass almost hidden on the right, tucked in behind the western ridge of a mountain, and without warning he banked hard to starboard and left the river behind.
Scarlet screamed and gripped the grab handle as they tipped over on their side. As Hawke raised the collective she felt the extra Gs for a few seconds and watched through Hawke’s window as they skimmed the canopy of the rainforest on the river’s east bank. “I’m going to say no thanks to your tourist idea.”
He smiled but made no reply as he focussed on levelling the chopper and zooming into the narrower ravine. “How are our friends?”
Scarlet looked out her window and sighed. “Bastards sticking to us like glue.”
“The goon?”
“He’s leaning out for another go.”
She aimed her gun and fired at the rebel, striking the port skid of the chopper and forcing him back inside. “We’re going to need to bring this situation to an end, Josiah. I’m down to my last three rounds.”
“I think I see our way out up ahead.”
She turned in her seat and almost screamed. Racing up to meet them was a large waterfall, maybe two hundred feet high. “Please tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do.”
“Sorry… no can do.”
Hawke was not a gambling man, but now he was gambling that the Venom couldn’t see past the Bell because of the heavy canopy above the tributary, and so the waterfall would make a nasty surprise… a nasty unavoidable surprise if he could just hold his nerve for long enough.
He tightened his grip on the cyclic and collective and slowed his breathing as the waterfall grew ever bigger ahead of them. It was so close now they could both make out the slabs of granite through the white water as it rushed over the upstream retreats of the falls and tumbled over the overhang on its way down into the Urubamba’s tributary.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Joe?”
“Of course I’m bloody not!” he said, flicking her a nervous glance. “I find in situations like this it’s usually better not to think.”
“Oh, how very reassuring to hear your pilot say that.”
Hawke raised the collective, altering the angle of the main rotor blades and lifting the chopper into a climb. At the same time he pushed his right foot on the rudder and changed the angle of the tail rotors to move the chopper to the right. The Bell shot up away from the top of the waterfall and zoomed off to the right, clipping the leaves on the top of the canopy for a second before he levelled the machine up.
Behind them, the Venom had no time to react and a second later it smashed into the hard rock at the top of the waterfall behind the overhang. It exploded into a massive fireball and sprayed gas-fuelled flames all over the rainforest canopy.
Scarlet hung out her window and yelled with glee as the wrecked chopper dropped like a dead fly into the plunge pool and disappeared under the foam and spray of the falling water. “Not confident Kruger’s getting his deposit back on the Venom.”
Hawke grinned. “I take it that my little plan worked?”
“This time, you total idiot, you got lucky.”
“And I thought Dirk was the lucky one…”
Hawke lifted the chopper away from the canopy and turned it south toward Machu Picchu.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Vincent Reno was starting to think he was getting too old for this line of work. True, he found strength by recalling his French Foreign Legion days, but those days were a long way behind him now. Some argued you never really stopped being a legionnaire, but that wasn’t true for him.
When he left the hardened ranks of the legion, he took his training and experience into Francophone Africa where he worked as an independent mercenary. After that he was the proverbial lost soul, drifting around from odd job to odd job and trying to stay on the straight and narrow to give his kids a decent life in the south of France.
Then his life took a radical change of direction when his old friend Scarlet Sloane had called him one day and drawn him into the Poseidon mission. Then, things had changed in a big way. He’d learned things about a world he thought he knew… things that had shocked him to his core, but, he thought with a Gallic shrug, nothing Vincent Reno couldn’t handle.
He wasn’t scared by what they had learned in Atlantis and the Seastead. If anything, it had given him a new lease of life. If it was true, and they really were facing a corrupt cabal of people who possessed the power of immortality, then he wanted to get to the bottom of it. If what they had learned was real, then the Athanatoi and its various chapters were like a crust of scum keeping the rest of humanity in eternal darkness and ignorance. Smashing that crust and letting the daylight flow in was his kind of day job.
More than that, breaking through their ranks and getting to their dark heart promised more than simply ending their grip on global power and understanding how they worked their magic with the elixir. It also meant discovering something they had kept behind a veil for millennia… something about the origins of humanity that his heart told his head he had to know, for himself, his wife, his twin boys and everyone else in the world.
He respectfully removed the dead pilot from the Mi-171 and fired up the engine as the others climbed in, put on their helmets and buckled up. He raised the collective to a
scend the chopper into a hover above the ruins of the ancient citadel. Immediately the main rotor started vibrating and they began to lose altitude.
“What’s going on?” Lea asked.
Vincent noticed the sink rate increase and the vibration on the main rotors get worse. “It’s called a vortex ring state,” the Frenchman replied. “It’s when the rotors are engulfed by an air vortex.” As he spoke, he adjusted the cyclic and corrected the problem. “It’s fine now.”
“I don’t think so!” Lexi yelled, pointing out the rear starboard window. Kruger’s chopper had turned in the sky and was now flying toward them. It slowed to a hover above the citadel’s ancient Prisoners’ Area and that’s when they saw the side door open.
“What the hell are they doing?” Lexi asked.
She got her answer when Mauricio Balta’s dead body was thrown out into the wind. His clothes and hair flapped about in the downdraft as he tumbled out of sight in the ravine.
“Animals,” Lea said.
“And they’re not stopping there,” Reaper said.
They looked to see Rajavi shoulder an RPG7 while Corzo loaded a rocket into it. “They’re not playing games.”
“Damn it!” Reaper said. “Thanks to the VRS we’re too low!”
Rajavi hung outside the chopper and then a flash of smoke puffed out the back of the RPG launcher sending a rocket racing toward their helicopter. It left a trail of twisting white exhaust smoke drifting in a thin line above the citadel’s cemetery.
“Flare!” Reaper yelled through the comms, and then swung the chopper around to face the missile, reducing their overall target area.
Lea instantly pulled the flare dispenser from under her seat and grabbed the latch on the window. She slid the window open, and fired a decoy flare out the portside.
Reaper tipped the chopper hard to the right, almost pulling her on her side as the rocket screeched past them and struck the countermeasure. They all felt the explosion as it blasted against the bottom of the chopper but Reaper used his experience to bring her level and true. “We need altitude!”
He pulled her up to the maximum climb rate of eight meters per second and swung her one-eighty out over the valley. A second ago they were fifty feet above Machu Picchu, but now they were hundreds of feet above the Urubamba River.
Reaper sighed with relief. “Thank those guys for me, will you Lexi?”
The Chinese assassin nodded. She slid open her window and began spraying the two-man RPG crew with gunfire, but Kruger was an excellent pilot and easily dodged the line of fire.
Reaper dropped the collective and made the chopper dive down the western slope of the mountain. Machu Picchu flashed past them and was gone in a second, replaced by the lush green of the rainforest. Lea screamed and reached out for the grab handle as the Frenchman brought the machine under control, his mind split four ways between the collective, the cyclic, the rudders and the control panel. At over one hundred and twenty miles per hour and racing through a narrow valley while trying to avoid incoming fire from Kruger’s chopper, it took every ounce of his concentration.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Ryan said.
“Bien sûr,” Reaper replied. “The last time I flew one of these the instructor said I was one of his best students.”
Lexi gasped. “The last time you flew a helicopter was with an instructor?”
He nodded.
“So you’re not qualified?”
He shook his head. “Sadly, no.”
“Oh, shit!”
“Ah,” Reaper said, smiling at the memory. “1984 was a great year.”
Ryan and Lexi shared a horrified glance. “1984?”
“Mais, oui.”
“So let me get this straight,” Lea said. “You’re not qualified to fly a helicopter and the last time you flew one was before any of us was born?”
Reaper gave his famous Gallic shrug. “You really know how to make a guy feel old, you know that?”
He plunged the chopper into another dive. No one in the chopper could believe what they had just heard, but Lexi moved first and begun to load her gun.
“I don’t think you can hit Kruger from this range,” Ryan said.
“It’s not for Kruger,” she said coldly. “If Monsieur Reaper loses control of this thing I’m going out with a bullet, not in a burning heap of twisted metal. Would you like me to extend the same courtesy to you?”
Ryan swallowed hard and widened his eyes as he stared at the muzzle of her gun. “No thanks, you’re all right.”
Kruger’s chopper was directly behind them now, and dived down in pursuit of them as they opened fire once again. Rajavi was leaning out the sliding door with one hand looped around the handle while he fired his submachine gun with the other hand. Wild sprays of bullets traced all over the ECHO chopper as Reaper swung the cyclic from side to side to dodge the flying rounds. If they struck the gas tank they would be a fireball half a second later, and then nothing but burning debris raining down into the jungle canopy below.
Ahead of them the Urubamba River was racing up into their faces at a terrifying rate of knots. The Frenchman responded with a whispered curse and then a hefty pull back on the collective.
He was late and the chopper’s skids broke the surface of the river and ripped through the rushing torrent, spraying water up on both sides of the helicopter. For a second the chopper was destabilized and Reaper pushed his left boot down hard on the rudder to avoid tipping over and losing his lift.
They spun around like a speeding car on a greasy skid pan and a second later it was facing the opposite direction.
Kruger was now bearing down on them, so close that an impact was almost inevitable, but he pulled up on the collective and shot over the top of them at high speed. Its skids barely missed the speeding rotors of the ECHO helicopter, but then it was clear.
Reaper was still trying to bring their helicopter under control and stop the spin, which he did by careful use of the rudders and then pushed forward on the cyclic stick to get his forward momentum back. He lifted the collective and they shot up into the air again, leaving the rushing Urubamba far below them.
“That was thirty seconds I hope I never have to repeat,” Lea said.
“What are you talking about!” Lexi said. “It was great!”
Lea turned in her seat and gave her a sideways glance. “If you say so.”
“I do! What do you think, Ryan?”
“I think I need to change my underwear.”
Reaper was now following Kruger and rising up behind him like an Exocet missile. “Now the bastards are running from us.”
Lea opened her window and opened fire with her handgun, and from where they were sitting they could see her bullets striking the rear of the chopper’s main body.
Kruger responded in a heartbeat, spinning around to the right and ascending in order to fly over the top of a series of drumlins before climbing more sharply and reaching a smooth plateau.
Reaper pursued, and the two choppers were now racing in the Peruvian sunshine across the rocky scree-covered plateau on their way to a higher ridgeline.
Lea fired again but this time she missed and now she was out of bullets. She cursed and shook her head, but Lexi took over. Trying to bring a helicopter down with a handgun was a long shot at the best of times but at this speed it was almost impossible.
Lexi tried her best but she too was out of bullets in seconds and then the game was almost over. When Kruger flew up into the clouds and disappeared out of sight, the game was completely over.
“We can still find them!” Lea said.
Reaper shook his head. “Not now… not in these clouds. Not without any weapons. We’re out of luck.”
“So what now?” Lexi said, the frustration clear in her voice.
“Now we find Joe and Scarlet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Hawke tapped the fuel gauge and sighed. The problem with these small helicopters is they had small fuel tanks, and t
his one wasn't full to start with. He looked out into the world’s biggest jungle and surveyed an empty horizon with concern.
“What is it?” Scarlet asked, noticing him tap the gauge once again.
“Nothing we can do anything about, put it that way.”
“Oh, how very reassuring,” she said. “Don’t ever train to be a commercial airline pilot, for fuck’s sake.”
“Don’t worry – I won’t,” he said.
And then the radio crackled. “What’s up?”
It was Reaper’s voice, calling over the comms from the other chopper. They had coordinated their positions over the radio and were now flying side by side.
“Just a little low on fuel,” Hawke said. “Nothing serious.”
“How low, Joe?”
Lea’s voice now, and she didn’t sound impressed with the nonchalant way he had reported the fuel situation.
“We’re fine, but we might need a ride home with you guys if that’s okay.”
“Always happy to give Scarlet a ride,” Reaper replied.
“In your dreams, Vincent,” came the crackly reply.
Hawke smiled as the banter unfolded over the comms between the two helicopters. They were thundering their way from Machu Picchu to the location where they all hoped they would find Paititi, the Lost City of the Incas, and keeping their spirits up was essential to any successful mission.
“You’re sure you can remember the location, mate?”
No response from the other chopper.
“Ryan?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“Good,” Hawke said. “We need to send the coordinates to Lund in case there’s trouble.”
“You’re sure, aren’t you, Ry?” Lea said. “Cause this ain’t the sort of place we want to get lost.”
“I said I could remember it,” he snapped.
Hawke left it there. He knew Saqqal and Kruger had a head start on them, but there was no doubt in his heart at all that his friends in the ECHO team wouldn’t be able to turn it around to their own advantage. They had never failed on a mission yet and they weren’t about to start now…. except maybe the Seastead.