by Jim Case
He checked the line of flight the yellow bird took, and slanted cross-country to cut him off. The jet made another pass, firing a rocket near the bird, but not hitting it.
When he lifted over the next rise he saw the militia chopper just ahead of him and in range. He found the firing button and tried to line up his sights on the swaying helicopter. His first rocket fired but missed.
That shot let the pilot of the other bird know someone was on his tail, and he took evasive action, dropped into a narrow ravine and slammed along dangerously close to the rocky walls of the canyon.
He took a deep breath and followed, but could not get lined up for another shot. He checked the YZ-24s pods and had only one rocket left.
They came out of the gully into a wide valley, and the other bird climbed rapidly. In thirty seconds of dogfighting, Cody realized the yellow chopper was faster and more maneuverable than his.
Then the yellow bird was gone. He looked around and almost too late saw him coming in from the side for a perfect shot. Cody dumped his bird lower, but felt the impact as the small rocket blasted in the air and rained hot shrapnel through the YZ-24. He held his breath to listen, but the engine sounded the same. No real damage.
He swung upward and away, now the hunted instead of the hunter, wound into a valley, then lifted over a small rise and checked behind him. His radio talked.
“Easy, Cody chopper, he almost nailed you,” the jet pilot watching the fight said. “Want me to assist?”
“Only if I can’t get him. I owe this guy. If I buy it, you nail the S.O.B.”
“Roger. Here he comes again.”
Cody worked his controls, bucking the chopper to the left, diving toward the desert hills, sure his landing gear was going to scrape the outcropping before he could pull up, but the maneuver forced the yellow bird off his tail.
He pivoted his chopper and raced head-on at the yellow flyer. For a moment he had a target, then the other pilot, who must have spotted him coming, dove to the side.
Cody went with him and got off his last shot from the rocket pod. The round barely missed, slammed into rocks and acted almost as an air burst on the enemy chopper, less than twenty yards from the rocks. The yellow bird limped away, but Cody was dry; no more rockets, and the machine gun was out of rounds as well.
He saw a trail of smoke from the chopper and toward the other bird. It was plain now that the yellow craft was not operating at full potential. He caught it easily and pulled in behind it. He pushed the Uzi out the open doorway but could not get in the right position to fire. His chopper was a two-handed flyer. At last he got off a five-round burst, but the rounds went wild as his own bird pitched and fell away.
He was tempted to call in the Israeli jet, but he had another idea. He pursued the yellow craft, maneuvering over it, then dropped down and fired a burst of rounds through the top of the other craft.
It fell away to the left, as Cody guessed it would and he stayed right behind, sending another burst into its side, but evidently not hitting anything vital. The chores of wars past enveloped him. Then the yellow chopper wheeled suddenly, and a man showed in the open doorway with a AK-47 aimed directly at Cody, who dumped his chopper to the right and down, but not before he saw the rifle bucking in the man’s hands.
Cody felt the rounds hit his craft up front. The marksman had aimed at the engine—and hit it. Cody felt his bird’s thrust weaken, then the lift faded away as the rotor began turning slower, losing power.
Cody checked his altitude.
Three hundred feet.
Not high, unless you’re falling straight down with no power.
He rammed down the collective pitch-control lever that controlled the pitch of the rotors, flattening the blades, trying for autorotation of the blades from the YZ-24’s downward momentum. As the chopper commenced a descending glide, the air from its downward speed rushed up through the blades to keep them spinning. A glance at the tachometer told him the autorotation of the blades was climbing in rpm’s, as he worked his chopper’s collective pitch-control level and the cyclic control stick. He ripped back on the cyclic lever, with the Yugoslavian chopper descending with stomach-wrenching speed at less than fifty feet from the ground.
The chopper nosed up sharply, then Cody shoved the cyclic forward again, and the YZ-24 slammed into the crash landing with a shuddering crunch, the landing gear buckling powerfully. Then the rotors stopped.
The choppa-choppa of the terrorist bird returned overhead, hovering lower and longer than it should have, Cody decided, the pilot probably right in guessing that most of the Israeli air cover was concerned with cleanup at the mansion and had not traced them yet. The terrorist chopper must not have had any more ammunition or rockets either.
Play dead, Cody decided.
He sat there in his pilot’s seat with his head back, so he could see the other copier as it circled warily; then he saw it come in closer yet and continue to hover.
When a rifle barrel appeared out that chopper’s door, Cody ended his death scene, grabbed the unsilenced Uzi and sent a stream of parabellums at the yellow craft and saw the rifleman lunge out the door and topple in a deadfall to the ground 100 feet below.
Cody used the final rounds in the Uzi to aim into the engine section of that chopper, and was rewarded with an abrupt plume of black smoke and the winding-down sounds of the big rotor blades slowing.
The pilot of that craft knew what he was doing too, though, and he had been low enough so that he coasted his craft into a patch of rocky clearing several hundred yards away from Cody’s downed bird.
Two dead choppers.
Now it was one on one.
Cody checked his magazines and found he still had two fresh ones. He took the unsilenced Uzi and slid out the far door opening, away from the other bird. He lay behind the squat chopper and took stock of his ammo supply: sixty-four rounds in the two magazines, plus whatever was left in the one in the weapon. No grenades. One four-inch fighting knife. That was it.
He watched the other downed bird.
It bounced slightly and Cody knew a man had left it. He switched his Uzi to single shot and began crawling through a slight depression in the barren soil toward a deeper ravine.
He was twenty feet from the chopper when a grenade exploded, shattering the fuel tanks on his helicopter, erupting it into an eye-searing fireball.
He hit the gully running, downhill, in the only direction the enemy could have moved, twenty yards to where he paused to lift up to see over the lip of the ravine, to study the landscape in front of him: unrelieved desert hills. Scrub growth of some kind.
He scanned the whole scene, watching for movement, then he took it in sections, dissecting every bush, every rock. He found the man wearing a gray jacket and brown pants in the fourth section. He was about 150 yards away.
Cody lined up the Uzi, moved the selector to full auto and blasted twenty rounds into the spot where the terrorist lay. When the jarring of the Uzi quieted, he watched the spot again. The man was gone; wounded, he hoped, but not dead. He surged to his feet and raced twenty yards to a new ravine that zigzagged in the direction he wanted to go.
The heavy sound of the AK-47 on automatic fire thundered across the barren hills as Cody dove the last six feet into the ravine and safety.
His enemy was alive.
His enemy had enough ammo to fire fully auto.
He ran hard along the arroyo for two hundred yards to where it leveled out, found a small rise to hide behind and again searched for his prey. This time the man had concealed himself behind a large boulder. It was not quite big enough, and one leg and a foot with a white running shoe on it extended to the side.
Cody worked forward out of the low place, moving swiftly from rock to rock, from cover to concealment. He was halfway across the fifty yards of desert real-estate, when the shoe pulled back. Cody rested behind his own rock now, waiting for the first shot. None came.
He picked out his cover carefully this time. He was not quite
thirty yards from the terrorist. Ahead, the best protection he could find was a small boulder fifteen yards out. No sweat. Just like the coach back at Princeton telling him to get fifteen yards on a quarterback draw up the middle on a third and fifteen. He switched the Uzi to full auto again, and lifted up.
Behind the rock ahead, Farouk Hassan had not seen Cody. He knew he was out there somewhere. He massaged his knee, which was on fire with pain. He had not counted on a helicopter pursuit.
He touched his left arm where three bullets had smashed the bones. He could barely lift it.
Firing a heavy AK-47 with one hand was hard. But he had to do it if he wanted to stay alive. He needed to look around the rock, but he wasn’t sure if it would be safe. The American would be after him from that side, where the ravine ended. He shouldered the weapon, held it in place and pushed the muzzle around the rock. When he looked out, he saw the American lift away from his hiding spot and charge forward.
Farouk’s finger found the trigger and held it back until he saw the barrel begin to overheat and twist in protest. Then the AK-47 jammed. He flung it aside, pulling a knife from his boot sheath.
Cody had seen the muzzle edge around the rock, but by then it was too late; he was committed to charging forward and in the open. He darted to one side, then back and forward as the weapon fired on full auto ahead of him.
Hot lead tore into his upper left thigh. He felt the lead bore through his flesh, tear apart capillaries, cut open small arteries, then slice on through the muscle and continue into the sand. He groaned.
As the terrorist’s AK-47 began to overheat, the line of fire changed and the last four rounds out of the muzzle slanted to the right, meeting his movement, slamming into the Uzi’s receiver, blasting it apart, killing the weapon, stopping it from ever firing again.
The Uzi spun out of his hands into the sand. Cody reached for his forty-five, but remembered he had used up the last rounds in the room-to-room fighting, and now had only his knife. He pulled it and waited for the terrorist to stand up and try to claim his kill.
Nothing happened.
He lay there in the sand, his thigh bleeding, his mind computing all possible reasons why the enemy had not charged forward. Slowly, he lifted from his prone position, reversed his hold on the knife handle into a fighting one and stood so he could see behind the rock.
Farouk Hassan was binding up his left arm. “English?” Cody asked.
“Some,” Hassan said. He picked up the knife. “I am Farouk Hassan, leader of the liberation of the aircraft two days ago. I will not be taken prisoner.”
“Stupid thing to say,” Cody growled. “When you die, you’re dead. The only part of you that lives on is memories, and maybe in a history book. Forget the glorious afterlife, forget your religious fantasies of Allah. If you die here, and now, it’s like a long dreamless sleep. You simply cease to exist.”
“I feel sorry for you, American, if you truly believe that. If so, what is the purpose in life?”
Cody took the pocket-size radio and pushed the talk switch. “Rufe, I lost the bird. We have two choppers here with broken wings. Divert one of the Chinooks out here to pick us up and get started loading back there. Copy?”
“Copy. One big banana heading your way. The jets overhead will direct it. Out.”
Farouk looked at Cody as he pushed down the antenna on the radio and put it back in his fatigue-jacket breast pocket.
“You think it is so easy, American? We fight for our lives here, like you did in 1776. Eventually we will win! Palestine will have a nation!”
“Never,” Cody replied. “Not as long as you bomb airports, kill women and children, execute old men and women on airport runways, and act like animals with no morals.”
Farouk shook his head. “We will win, because we are willing to die for our beliefs!”
“Depends how many of you there are to die,” Cody barked. He walked closer. At ten feet he stopped. “Chopper should be here soon. Then I want you to put down that knife and act like a human being.”
Farouk snorted, looked away to the west, where he heard a chopper coming, then threw the knife like an expert.
The blade came point-first into Cody’s shirt front, jolted into the plastic back of the small radio and drove through it into a mass of transistors and silicone chips and two heavy-duty batteries, where the blade stopped.
Cody pulled the blade away from the radio and looked up as Farouk surged upon him. He tried to knee him in the groin, then his fingers of one hand tore at Cody’s eyes.
Half blinded, Cody struck out with his right hand, which held the Arab’s own knife. The still-sharp point drove hard into flesh, and Farouk’s hand fell away from Cody’s eyes. Cody saw the knife driven deep into the Arab’s chest. The terrorist fell into the sand on his back.
Farouk Hassan’s eyes closed and then opened.
“American, either the long sleep, or Allah’s eternal garden, I will know soon which it is to be. You will only wonder.” His head rolled to the side and his eyes stared at the sand, but saw nothing.
Sharon Adamson stood with the passenger list she had kept folded in her skirt pocket, checking off each person on the list as he or she entered the Israeli Chinooks. She had never been so glad to see a military helicopter in her life.
The Israeli were sharp, efficient, practical. They left four men from the first three choppers to serve as a backup security force.
The six U.S. Marines had given their weapons to her and went back with the passengers. Two of the Marines were given first-aid by Israeli medical corpsmen. She watched the third chopper lift off with the last of her passengers and crewmen. She said she would come out in the next bird.
She had followed Cody’s chase across the desert as best she could by the radio reports. Now she waited for the chopper to come back with Cody.
She hoped that he was still alive. She had set Mrs. Vereen’s body to one side. It would go out with the last load, along with any of the terrorists Israel wanted. An officer had set up a small table outside the mansion and had been talking to each of the Shiite captives. They had rounded up fourteen men, some of them so young they did not shave yet.
The Israeli captain came back to Sharon and smiled. He spoke perfect English.
“I’m convinced none of these people were more than backup forces for the hijacking. We don’t want to take them as prisoners. It would serve no purpose. We’ll take all of their weapons, and any ammunition they had, then release them when we’re ready to pull out.”
The whup-whup-whup of the big chopper crowded into the conversation and the bird landed on the LZ marked now with a staked-down plastic red X.
Sharon ran to the door and met Cody when he stepped out. The medic on the plane had wrapped up Cody’s thigh bullet-hole, and he was walking with only a slight limp.
She introduced Cody to the Israeli captain in charge of the pickup.
“We have the last of the former hostages well on their way to Haifa, with jet fighter protection,” the Israeli said. “No one is going to try to interfere. We need another hour or so to clear up everything here, then we’ll be moving out.”
“Captain, I’m pleased to see you,” Cody said. “Sorry I couldn’t save one live terrorist for you. I should have had the leader, Farouk Hassan, but he wanted to die.”
“Many of them are like that.” The captain paused. “We have enough sandwiches and coffee and Cokes to feed an army in that next chopper down. Would you and the lady like to have a bite of breakfast?”
Cody suddenly realized that he hadn’t eaten in over thirty hours. He nodded, reached down and caught Sharon’s hand.
“I think I just heard chow call. Would an Army brat like you like to be served for a change instead of doing the serving?”
Sharon laughed and smiled. “I could stand a sandwich or two, now that you mention it. And I would die for a good cup of coffee.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Pete Lund smiled broadly as the Presi
dent of the United States put down the phone. The President reached across the desk and held out his hand.
“The last of the hostages is safely in Haifa. Cody’s Army pulled it off without losing a man, and the Israeli’s report no casualties among their troops, pilots, or machines! Totally a beautiful, successful mission! Congratulations, Pete!”
“Thank you, Mr. President. I knew Cody could do it. He’s a valuable man to have around. What happened to General Johnson?”
The President grinned. “Well, I would think that he has found something more important to do than eat crow!”
They both laughed.
This was the first time Lund had ever been alone with the President of the United States, but he could not feel more relaxed or comfortable.
“I’ll expect a full report by Cody within two or three days, Pete. From the looks of things now, I’d say that Cody’s Army has more than met all proscribed objectives and tests on this mission. We took the hostages out without any more loss of life, we did not get a bloody international nose for overkill, and we worked closely with the Israelis in getting their people out as well. I don’t know what else we could ask for.”
“I’m sure John Cody and his men will be pleased, Mr. President. There is only one thing that I might suggest.”
The President looked up, with surprise. “More? What else could we expect of them?”
“It would be my expectation that now that the team has proved itself, that the men would be anxious to have another mission.”
The man smiled tiredly. “You tell Cody there will be more work for him and his men. There are always delicate problem-situations like this where we can’t send in a platoon of Marines to do the job, like we did back in the 1920s and 1930s. Yes, indeed there will be more missions.”
“The men will appreciate that, sir. I’ll go ahead and set up permanent quarters, then, at Andrews, so they will be close at hand. If they do want to wander, I’d think a twenty-four-hour recall would be sufficient lead time for their reporting at Andrews on future missions.”