“Falcon Leader, do you hear me, over?”
“Yes, loud and clear.”
“The drone is hostile, repeat hostile, and it has crashed, repeat, crashed, over.”
“Crashed? What does that mean? Over.”
“It’s down, I don’t know the reason. I did isolate its control channel before it went down. It was directed by a ground radio, not by satellite. It was using data compression and frequency hopping, but I found it, over.”
“Were you able to fix a location for the ground radio? Where are they?”
“I don’t have a precise location. It was line-of-site from the drone to its ground control, and there are mountains in between. I estimate fifteen to twenty kilometers southwest, over.”
“That’s the best you can do for a location, over?”
“Sí, Comandante. The drone’s radio is no longer transmitting, but it was sending from the azimuth 220 degrees from here, over.”
Ramos redirected his words via intercom to the pilot in front of him. “Puma 1, did you copy that location?”
“Yes sir,” responded the helicopter pilot, nodding his helmeted head a yard in front of the Comandante. “Range is fifteen to twenty kilometers, along the bearing two-two-zero degrees.”
“That’s right, now let’s go! Puma 1 and 2, we will begin to search for the transmitter. Puma 3 and 4, you will orbit above the ranch center, above the meeting places. But be alert: this drone might have been a diversion, to pull us away.”
The two Blackhawks on the right side of the apron pulled pitch on their already spinning rotors, their tails rose, they began to roll forward and in moments, they were lifting skyward and banking to the Southwest. Ahead of them, mountain ridges rose thousands of feet above their ground level, to a maximum height of over eleven thousand feet. Their quarry was only a matter of minutes away, if they could locate them in the search area Teniente Almeria had provided, before they escaped.
The helicopters passed in front of Wayne Parker’s stone mansion at an altitude of four hundred feet above ground level. Ramos briefly observed the Very Important Persons, gathered on the wide reception gallery overlooking the pastoral valley and its alpine lake. On the radio, he heard (in English) that the drone had crashed, “resulting in one fatality.” Although the Falcons were serving as the Quick Reaction Force, the actual security around the VIPs was being provided by gringos, private “contractors” paid by Wayne Parker. How the crash of an unmanned drone could result in a fatality was a complete mystery to the Comandante. A long line of SUVs and vans were pulling into the driveway in front of the mansion, while men in dark suits and a few women in shimmering dresses scurried for vehicles, crouching among their bodyguards. Whatever had happened with the drone had evidently been enough to spoil the party.
The pair of Blackhawks continued to climb for altitude, and in a few minutes they crested a treeless ridgeline, and dipped into the first of a series of valleys. The two helicopters flew abreast, spread apart by one kilometer, to be able to search a wider corridor on their first pass. It would be a miracle if they could find the transmitter team in this rugged terrain, now that their radio had gone silent. As long as they flew along the bearing of 220 degrees, they might find something, perhaps a vehicle, or a squad of men hiking out. Of course, if their adversaries committed an error and made another radio transmission, they would be located almost instantly. This was Comandante Ramos’s greatest hope.
Behind him, the ten Falcons from Beta Platoon’s 1st Squad sat strapped to the aluminum and canvas seats, armed and eager for action, the troop doors all the way back to permit a rapid egress upon landing. Puma 1’s crew chief and gunner sat on each side of the Comandante facing outboard, wearing green aviation helmets with their visors down, and also connected on the intercom. Their gloved hands clutched the twin vertical grips of their external pintle-mounted M-60D machine guns, as they leaned out through their square gunners’ ports, searching for targets. A green steel box full of linked ammunition was racked up on the mount beside each machine gun, ready to fire.
***
Aboard the Cessna Centurion, the encrypted radio transmissions between the Falcon officers and the Blackhawk pilots had been heard as squeals and static. Logan attempted to decrypt the noise into intelligible speech, but he was unsuccessful. The frequency being used and the length of the comms told them that the state guard Blackhawks were on the alert, and might even now be on the hunt—for them. The Pelican’s laptops and radio were hurriedly disconnected, and the men slid them into soft cases, and passed them over to the rear of the aircraft.
While the UAV had been aloft, they had seen the Blackhawks parked in a line outside of the main jet hangar, and had seen the troops waiting around them. If the helicopters were now searching from the air, their pilots would not know precisely what they were looking for, but a white airplane parked on a straight road would certainly draw their interest.
With recovering the destroyed Pelican UAV no longer a concern, the men rushed to reinstall the right side door while Ranya stood guard, with the Dragunov across her chest at port arms. Just before they could all climb back into the Cessna, they heard the distant rumble of rotors beating the air, and the whine of turbines. The Blackhawks! The three conspirators froze in place by the plane, as the sound of the helicopters grew louder and closer, and then actually passed over them, crossing their hidden road at an angle, one on each side of them. Parked beneath the thick cover of the concealing spruce and maples, they never saw the helicopters in that narrow slice of blue sky between the pine branches directly above them, but there was no mistaking their hostile intent.
***
“Falcon Leader, this is Puma 2. We’re at twenty kilometers from base now. What are your instructions, over?”
Ramos considered his next move. He had great faith in Lieutenant Almeria’s expertise at radio direction finding. Someone had been transmitting from this area. Perhaps because of the intervening mountains, Almeria was slightly off in either his range or bearing, or both. “Puma 1 and 2, return along the same azimuth, but let’s open our separation distance to two kilometers, over.”
“Roger, Falcon leader.”
Both helicopters banked and circled outward, until they were again running on parallel tracks, but now back toward Wayne Parker’s runway and hangars.
***
They waited for the sound of the helicopters to fade. They were unsure if they should prepare to take off in the plane, or get ready to run into the forest, to try to escape and evade on foot. The men were climbing into the airplane when the whining turbines and thumping rotor noises once again began to build. Even through the trees, the sound of the Doppler shift of the Blackhawk engines made it clear that the helicopters were coming back for another pass.
None of them spoke or moved. They were three rabbits cowering under the shadows of eagles, in mortal fear of being seen or heard. Once again, the rumble of the rotors and the scream of the turbines passed down either side of them. Once again, by pure good fortune, they were spared the straight-down view that would have immediately betrayed the gleaming white wings and fuselage of the Cessna. Once again they waited, almost afraid to breathe, as the helicopters passed them by and continued toward the north.
***
“Puma 1, this is Puma 2. What’s that between us, over?”
The pilot of Ramos’s helicopter replied, “Puma 2, that’s an old copper mine. Do you see something there?” He had a folded air map in a clear plastic envelope, Velcroed to his thigh.
“Uh, negative 1, but there are some buildings and sheds down below. They could be hiding our targets. Falcon Leader, request permission to land and search them, over.”
Ramos squeezed the intercom switch on his wire lead, and replied, “Roger Puma 2, go ahead if you have enough space to land. Don’t take any chances if it looks too tight. I see some poles and wires, use caution. We’ll orbit in case you flush anyone into the open, over.”
Puma 2 hovered above the rutted dirt
and weed-filled clearing between corrugated metal sheds and abandoned machinery. Rusty cranes, derricks, pipes, pumps and gantries cluttered the level area along the flank of the mountainside. An old asphalt road curved downward from the edge of the mountain past the abandoned mine pits, then ran straight for a few hundred meters, and disappeared into the thick pine forest that covered most of the mountain. At an altitude of 100 meters above the ground, the pilot rotated his craft through 360 degrees above the clearing. The pilots and the crew were scanning for obstacles that might impede the landing. When they were satisfied with the landing zone, the pilot began to settle the bird down. Meanwhile Puma 1 circled overhead in a tight racetrack, banking tightly over their comrades with a clatter of rotor noise.
***
“Oh shit, they’re back! Now we’re screwed!” Logan stood by the open left-side door of the Cessna, gasping. “They can’t miss us now—they must know we’re here, they must have seen us!”
Their airplane was concealed in a leafy tunnel, facing back out the way they had taxied in, a hundred yards from the edge of the woods. The sound and vibration of nearby helicopter blades instilled terror into them.
Alex Garabanda stood behind the open right door. “Maybe, and maybe not. If they saw us, they’d be right on top of us. They’re not on top of us, so maybe they’re just fishing.”
The noise of one helicopter was steady, directly in front of them, and then they saw it, turning slowly and descending, directly in line with the road that was their runway exit out of the woods.
“Oh my God!” Logan blurted out, “They must see us! That’s probably as close as they can land—”
“Maybe, but where’s the other one?” asked Alex, stepping out from beneath the wing and scanning above them through the treetops.
From behind them Ranya shouted, “Alex, shut your door and get out of the way!”
He turned around to her, saying, “What?” She was kneeling behind the Cessna’s tail. Her rifle’s long barrel was lying across the horizontal stabilizer, aimed along the side of the plane, directly at him.
“Shut the door Alex! Shut the door and get out of the way!”
He slammed it shut and jumped away from the plane.
***
She had been watching the sky-blue open space above them, and down the green corridor toward the opening at the end of the trees. She had seen the Blackhawk dropping through the leafy slot at the end of their tree cover. She instinctively knew that it was going to land in the open space of the former strip mine, alongside their runway road. As soon as the helicopter touched down, it would disgorge a dozen troops.
Outrunning the Falcons in these woods would be impossible, especially when they had helicopters scouting above them and directing their pursuit. Other helicopters would drop off more troops ahead of their escape route. They would soon be cornered, and then killed or captured. To Ranya it was not an option to go down without fighting. She crouched low behind the plane’s tail, with her right knee on the ground and her left foot forward. The plane’s horizontal stabilizer made a perfect bench rest, her left hand supporting the bottom of the Dragunov’s wooden forestock.
While the helicopter was still above the Cessna’s high wing as seen from her perspective, there were too many tree branches in the way to risk a shot. She was also aware that the rifle’s scope lay above its barrel, and a clear view through the scope might send a bullet into the Cessna’s wing, straight into its gas tank. Most importantly of all, she knew that her first shots had to be perfect. Once warned of their presence by ineffective fire, all four Blackhawks would swarm down upon them, eventually bringing the entire Falcon Battalion. Finally, she silently said a prayer that the South African had kept his rifle accurately sighted in, perfectly matched with his Russian sniper grade ammunition. If the scope was not sighted in, her shots would mean nothing.
The helicopter continued its descent, after slowly turning until it was facing her. Then the descending Blackhawk disappeared momentarily from her view, blocked by the Cessna’s wing.
She pressed her right eye against the soft rubber cup at the back of the Dragunov’s scope. Its unusual range-finder was useless to her; she had no experience with it. She guesstimated that it was one hundred yards to the tree line, and another two hundred to the clearing where the helicopter was landing. Three hundred yards. The scope was only four power, but that was plenty of magnification for the relatively short distance. If the helicopter landed safely, it would unload a dozen troops. She knew that the Falcons were by no means cowards, that they could run far and run fast, and that they could shoot their new M-16s very, very well. So it must not be allowed to land...
The Blackhawk appeared beneath the Cessna’s high wing, facing directly toward her, bug-like. The apparent distance was only two hundred feet through the scope, an easy shot. Dust and debris swirled up and around the helicopter, whipping the tree branches. The Dragunov was operated like a stretched-out AK-47. Its first round was already chambered and she pushed the safety lever down, keeping the scope sighted on the Blackhawk. The pad of her right index finger slowly took up trigger pressure, holding low, and waiting for the helicopter to descend onto her aiming point. Instead of a crosshair, the scope showed four upside-down V chevrons, one above the other. She guessed that the tip of the second chevron from the top would keep her on target at this range.
She saw the Blackhawk’s two fat wheels and its underbelly, and the three-part Plexiglas windshield. Through the window glare, she could even make out the helmeted pilot’s outline. She put the tip of the scope’s second black chevron just under the helmet, squeezed the trigger, and let off a shot that erupted with a resounding blast. She immediately moved her shoulder and swung the chevron aiming point to the opposite windshield and fired again, reacquired and made another shot at the same spot. The recoil and the muzzle blast were now unnoticed and unheard; she was in the zone, in the bubble, her entire universe encompassed within the Dragunov’s scope. She swung the chevron sight back across to where she had made her first shot, but before she could fire again, the helicopter rolled on its side and dropped from her scope’s view behind the curtain of trees, too quickly for her to follow.
32
Orbiting above the old strip mine, Comandante Ramos watched as Puma 2 descended into the clearing between the rusty metal buildings and mining equipment, churning up dirt and leaves with its rotor wash. When it was about twenty meters above the ground Puma 2 suddenly lurched and rolled to the left, then dropped like a stone while he stared in horror. The spinning rotors struck first and exploded, flying off in all directions like broken missiles. The helicopter impacted the ground at an angle on its nose, crumpled and finally came to rest lying on its left side, in a sickening but possibly survivable crash landing What in the hell? Had Puma 2’s rotors hit a wire or a pole on its way down? It must have! It was a cluttered landing zone, too full of potential obstacles. He should have known better than to permit their landing attempt, which had ended in complete disaster.
“Get down there!” he yelled to his pilot over the intercom, “Can you get down near them—is there enough room anywhere else?”
“I don’t know…no, no, I don’t think so!”
“Well try, try dammit!—Puma 2, Puma 2, do you read me over?” Ramos paused, and repeated his message—there was no answer but static. “Puma 3 and Puma 4—atención, atención—Puma 2 is down, I repeat, Puma 2 has gone down! Come on, get moving, get out here now!”
While his pilot maneuvered toward the clearing, he saw that the Blackhawk had crashed partly on a road running through the jumbled-up mining operation, a stretch of road he had not noticed before. The paved road led in a straight line, directly into a thick stand of pines, directly into the trees, and he thought he saw something white in there, something…then he looked back down at the wreckage of Puma 2 below him.
***
“Oh dammit, now look!” yelled Alex, “It’s right across the road!” The broken helicopter lay on its side, str
aight ahead of the Cessna. The men were still standing on either side of the plane. “Logan, can you do it, can we make it out?”
The pilot stared straight ahead of the airplane, estimating distances and heights, and then he answered, “No, we can’t make it. It’s too close, too high—it can’t be done!”
“Then what?” implored Alex.
Logan didn’t hesitate. “Turn her! Turn her around again! Come on!” He jumped back to the Cessna’s horizontal stabilizer, where it joined the narrow taper of the fuselage beneath the swept back tail. “Come on, push it down!”
Ranya slipped the Dragunov over her back, held by its necktie sling. The three of them leaned over the stabilizer, pushing down on the back of the airplane until the nose wheel lifted from the roadway, and Logan led them in walking the plane in another tight circle, until they had again turned 180 degrees and were facing deeper into the woods. He didn’t wait but ran for the left door and climbed in, standing on the toe-brakes as he switched on the engine, the propeller an immediate roaring blur in front of them. Ranya had to climb into the back seat through the right side door, and it was a small opening. The copilot’s seat was in the way and she couldn’t find the catch to tilt it forward. Logan was screaming at her to get in, and Alex was pushing her from behind, but her four-foot-long Dragunov rifle was catching against the wing and the fuselage as she tried to climb inside!
Logan reached across the cockpit with something bright orange in his right hand, some kind of emergency rescue tool. He swiped it across her chest and the long rifle fell free. Then he flipped the copilot’s seat forward and Alex shoved her into the back onto her face, and as soon as he had put one foot inside of the Cessna, Logan let off the brakes and they began to roll forward.
Ranya squirmed into an upright position looking forward, and could see only trees. She looked behind, through the Cessna’s sloping rear window back at the way they had come, and she saw a second Blackhawk hovering above the wreckage that she had created.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 55