by Jack Du Brul
Two hundred feet above him, the flaming carapace of the Apache gyrated out of control, streamers of greasy smoke belching from its engine, its tail rotor assembly coming apart like a shrapnel bomb. One of the rebels had fired a surface-to-air missile into the helo and scored a direct hit. The gunship crashed close enough to throw Mercer again, fiery sheets of aviation fuel raining around him, but incredibly none landed on his clothes or skin.
When he stood, the ribs that had first taken a pounding under Hofmyer’s fists and later by Mahdi and the tunnel walls had finally given out. He felt a sharp stab of pain that reached all the way to his heart, and the agony of the broken bones forced him to his knees. He had taken so much physical abuse that he wondered just what he hoped to accomplish. The Marines were here. They would handle the rebels. He was putting his life in danger for absolutely no reason.
Deciding that maybe it was best to wait this one out, he was searching for a good place to hole up when bullets kicked up erratic fountains of dirt at his feet. Clutching his ribs with one arm, Mercer ran as best he could, reaching cover behind a big portable generator. He squinted into the haze created by the dozens of smoke grenades, their clouds of smog cutting visibility to almost nothing. He didn’t see who had opened up on him, but spotted a Sudanese ambush set up for a squad of patrolling Marines. The American soldiers were alert and moved well, but they were about to be diced in a surprise cross-fire.
The AK bucked in his hands, stitching two of the guerrillas and then the clip ran empty. Mercer fumbled to slam home a fresh one, dodging to the other side of the mobile generator as rounds pinged off its metal hide. The Marines dropped to the ground, entering the melee and killing three more Sudanese. Mercer was joined a second later by the four young Americans.
“Thanks, pal,” the leader of the patrol wheezed, slumping against the Ingersoll-Rand.
“My pleasure. Can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”
“You’re Mercer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“We were briefed to look for you when we landed, but weren’t you buried or something?”
“I was until about ten minutes go.” Mercer took a protein bar the Latino corporal offered and devoured it in three bites. “What’s the situation?”
“Shit, you know more than we do. Briefing said about fifty armed troops guarding this camp with minimum equipment and arms. Bastards capped an Apache just a minute ago with a portable SAM, and there seem to be a lot more than fifty.”
“The number’s about right,” Mercer countered. “But these guys have been fighting for years in the Sudan. They’ve got combat experience to spare, and their former commander was one mean son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, we’ve taken heavy losses. If it weren’t for all the civilians mixed up with the bad guys, the captain would’ve called in some close air support and bombed the shit out of this place.”
Any chance for a continued conversation was shattered by a chain of detonations at the fuel tank farm. The eruptions of flame and smoke towered into the leaden sky, building and blooming like deadly flowers. The ground shook so hard that Mercer felt his teeth were going to loosen from his jaw.
As he was recovering, the Marine seated on the far side of the corporal jumped spastically and the paintwork of the generator behind him splattered with clots of blood and the back of his skull. The Marines reacted even before they knew where the shot had originated, sending out a scathing return fire and racing from their cover. Mercer had no choice but to follow. He ran in a doubled-up position, aiming the AK behind his hip and unleashing a fusillade of his own.
They slogged up a mound of overburden, the soldiers slowed by the pounds of equipment each carried and Mercer by his own condition. Another shot blew a geyser of dirt just an inch to the left of Mercer’s shoulder, grit lashing his face as he clawed his way to the summit. In the protection of the artificial hill’s flat peak, he realized just who was shooting at them and why.
The Israeli team was still here. The two shots were so accurate that they could only come from a sniper rifle. They were either firing to add to the confusion so they could slip into the mine or they were planning on an evacuation and wanted to keep the combatants occupied while they escaped. For Mercer, both options were unacceptable.
Chancing a look over the parapet of their earthen fortress, he could survey the entire camp and the clusters of men fighting below. It looked as if the Sudanese’s numbers were greatly diminished. He could see a few holdouts near Gianelli’s big transporters. In the distance, there were figures running away from the battle, but he guessed they were Eritreans. Of the bodies he could see littering the ground that weren’t dressed in American desert BDUs, two were white, but from this range he couldn’t tell if either was Gianelli.
“Say again?” the corporal was shouting into the radio built into his combat helmet. “Roger that, Sky Eyes. Keep us posted.”
“What’s happening?” Mercer clipped his last banana magazine into the well of the AK-47.
“AWACS plane circling off the coast reports a low-level contact about six klicks east of here and moving in at a hundred miles an hour.”
“Shit!”
“What is it?”
“There’s a team of Israelis in the area. They’ve been after this mine for a while, but I think they’re cutting their losses and bugging out.”
“Well, they’re going to make it,” the Marine said, not really interested in another enemy with his hands so full of Sudanese. “We don’t have any more gunships to go after it, and if that AWACS only now just spotted it, you can believe it’ll disappear just as easily.”
Mercer knew the soldier was right. Flying nap of the earth, a good chopper pilot could evade even the most sophisticated airborne radar systems. He got an idea. “How’d you guys get here?”
“Blackhawks. There are a half dozen of them on the ground about ten miles north. We hoofed it the rest of the way in.”
“Can you radio for one to pick us up?”
“Yeah, but it won’t do any good. Those birds are just troop ships. No guns.”
“Just get one. We’ll be the firepower.” Mercer tapped the corporal’s M-16A1 with the butt of his AK.
The corporal switched the channel on his radio. “Captain Saunders, this is Chavez. I’m with Mercer. He says the bogey Sky Eyes just painted is an evac chopper for some uglies. I want permission to go after it in a Blackhawk.” He paused, his gaze on Mercer. “Yes, sir. I know. We’re on top of a hill, and it looks like things are dying down in our sector… Yes, sir, I’ll keep an eye on him… No, sir, I’ll ask him. Dr. Mercer, where are the rest of the Eritrean nationals?”
“Still trapped in the mine. There’s a woman in the main tunnel who knows exactly where they are.”
The soldier nodded and activated his mike again. “In the mine, sir… Yes, sir, we’re standing by.”
“Well?”
“The captain’s calling a chopper. We’ll pop some green smoke when the bird gets here. We’re going to drop you at our staging area and go after the Israelis ourselves. It’s not my place to ask, but what kind of international situation are we getting ourselves into here?”
“Think of the deepest pile of shit you can imagine and then double it,” Mercer grunted. “Only bright spot is, we’re the good guys for a change.”
The soldier carrying the heavy Squad Automatic Weapon spotted a target and ripped off about fifteen rounds, empty brass arcing from the 5.56mm in a tight necklace. Chavez and the other Marine scanned the camp for more targets but only indistinct shapes moved in the smoke and they couldn’t chance a friendly-fire kill.
“Whad’ya have, Moose?”
“Two of them with AKs at ten o’clock, moving clockways. They’re behind that ten-wheel truck.”
“Keep ’em pinned,” Corporal Chavez ordered. Moose gave the SAW’s trigger another long pull. “But watch your ammo discipline.”
“How long till the chopper gets here?”
Chavez clicked to another frequency on his radio. “Inbound helo, this is Charlie One. Give me an ETA to sector seven, about eight hundred yards north of the mine entrance… Copy. We’ll pop green when we hear you.” He turned to Mercer. “About six minutes.”
Moose fired another barrage with the SAW and the two other Marines started to pour lead down the hill, screaming unintelligible curses. Mercer saw half a dozen rebel soldiers advancing from their left flank. Four were armed with AK- 47s and two carried RPG-7 rocket launchers. One went down before he could fire; the other took a snap shot with the bazooka-like weapon and a section of the hill erupted like a miniature Mount St. Helens.
The Squad Automatic Weapon fell silent. Moose had been killed by blast debris. Mercer, Chavez, and the other Marine dodged for cover, and even as dirt continued to rain down, they fired back. When Mercer emptied his last clip, he tossed aside the AK and reached for the SAW. The machine gun was huge, almost too heavy to carry into combat, but its effectiveness was unquestionable.
Three charging guerrillas were hit in the hail of gunfire, snapped back by the pounding gun in near perfect sequence.
“Keep the fuckers back!” Chavez screamed as he worked on a gash in the leg of the other soldier. The man’s desert camo uniform was soaked through with blood from a point just below his groin.
Mercer continued to fire the weapon, traversing the barrel in tight sweeps to keep the Sudanese pinned. Another rocket slammed into the hill, and part of its peak blew away, exposing their flank. He had no idea how many rounds were in the boxy magazine clamped under the SAW, but he prayed it was enough to cover them until the chopper arrived.
“Evac flight.” Chavez was on the radio with the helicopter again. “We need some help here… Roger.”
Chavez unclipped a smoke grenade from his combat harness, slipped the ring, and tossed it to the other side of the hill’s summit. A second later, putrid green clouds boiled off the mountain, marking their location to the approaching Blackhawk.
Bullets raked the top of the hill, explosions of dirt and lead that sent Mercer and the two surviving Marines reeling. Yet over the din they could still hear the chopper as it came in, its rotors whipping the smoke in violent eddies. The copilot had opened the helicopter’s side door, but as they began their hover for the pickup, he was forced to return to the cockpit.
“The pilot can’t land, not enough room up here. You’ll have to jump in first,” Chavez screamed over the rotor blast, his dirty hand still clamped over the entrance wound in his squad mate’s leg. “I need to hold pressure on this dressing.”
Mercer emptied the SAW’s clip, a further thirty rounds chewing up the camp. He commandeered the wounded soldier’s M-16 and, as the Blackhawk lowered even closer to the hillock, leaped for the open door.
A surge of air grabbed the chopper at that instant, and Mercer’s chest slammed into the bottom of the door frame. In the split second before the pain struck, he felt the ends of his ribs grind against each other like corroded machine parts. The Blackhawk had been pushed away from the mountain of overburden, and Mercer found himself dangling above seventy feet of empty space, his legs bicycling uselessly as the pain loosened his grip on the door sill.
The pilot must have seen what happened. Ignoring the turbulence and the whirling blades’ proximity to the ground, he heeled the nimble chopper nearly onto its side, throwing Mercer bodily into the aircraft. By the time Mercer recovered enough to crawl to the doorway, the Blackhawk was once again on station over the hill. Chavez was ready to pass the wounded Marine up to him.
They came under renewed and intense fire, the chopper taking a dozen rounds, ricochets scoring the cabin like hot coals. Mercer fired his M-16 one-handed, the stock braced against the helo’s body as he lay half in and half out to help Chavez. He had his free arm under the young Marine’s limp arms when a third RPG rocket hit the top of the hill. The Blackhawk lurched with the explosion and the Marine slid from Mercer’s tentative grip. The soldier and Corporal Chavez disappeared in a hellish world of flame and smoke and debris.
The Blackhawk pilot lifted his craft away from the hill and out over the open desert, well beyond the range of any weapons the Sudanese might have. Mercer sat numb, unmoving, staring downward as if he could bring back the two dead soldiers by freezing his position. It took all of his strength to blink, to wash away part of the horror he saw in Corporal Chavez’s eyes in the instant of his death. He sat immobile for two minutes before he could reach up and slip a pair of headphones off the firewall that partially protected the cockpit.
“How’s the ship?” His voice sounded as if it came from someone else, a different person who could still function, still think rationally, still care about what happened next.
“We’re okay,” the pilot responded. “I’m sorry about your buddies back there. There was nothing I could do.” It wasn’t really an apology, just a statement of fact in war.
“What’s the status of that bogey?”
“Hold on,” the pilot said, and Mercer guessed he was switching frequencies to talk with the circling AWACS. “Bogey vanished from radar about five minutes ago roughly a mile from the camp, then was spotted again moving eastward about two minutes later. Sky Eye lost the signal right after that. Sounds like someone made a pickup.”
“Start flying east as fast as this thing can go. I suspect the helicopter we’re chasing is much bigger than this one, a cargo ship that won’t have your speed.” Mercer’s assumption was based on the Israelis’ deluded plan to recover the Ark of the Covenant. He had no idea how big the artifact was reported to be, but he guessed that the Israelis would provide a large enough machine, no matter what its size.
Mercer ducked his head into the cockpit.
“Who in the hell are you?” The pilot was startled that his passenger was a civilian.
“Philip Mercer. I’m the guy you were brought in to rescue.”
“Hey, we’ve got orders to drop you at the staging area,” the copilot said.
“Fine by me, but you do that and there’s no way we’ll catch that other chopper. Chavez told me the AWACS can’t track it, and we’re the only other pairs of eyes in the area.”
The twin General Electric T700s screamed at their maximum rating, pushing the lightly laden utility helicopter at over two hundred miles per hour. The ground under the roiling sky rushed by in a nauseating blur. Mercer buckled himself into the seat closest to the open door, acting as another observer for the pilots, scanning their starboard side for the fleeing Israeli craft.
The pain in his chest was excruciating. He found an emergency medical pack under his seat and choked down some painkillers. He then used the pocket knife from it to slice off two seat belts. He tied the cut ends together and wrapped the belts around his chest, using the buckle mechanism to ratchet his makeshift binding tight. It was a dangerous mend, but for the first time since the Apache had exploded over his head, he could breathe with a degree of normalcy. He wiped sweat from his face and no longer feared mercury poisoning. He didn’t think he’d stopped sweating since his first mad dash into the mine with Selome and the diamonds.
“There!” the copilot called out. “At our one o’clock position about two miles ahead.”
The Blackhawk was fast approaching the Red Sea coast, and the weather had deteriorated. Wind whistling into the back cabin of the craft carried a deluge of rain, and drops peppered the wind screen like pebbles. The massive escarpment that protected the African coast from the ravages of the ocean dropped from under the helicopter in a gut-wrenching swoop, and the pilot mirrored the dramatic plunge perfectly. In another minute they would be over the Red Sea and shortly after that, if the fleeing helicopter didn’t change direction, they would fly into Saudi Arabian airspace south of Mecca.
The American chopper was gaining on the Israeli Super Stallion, but the huge khaki helicopter had a big head start and Mercer knew they couldn’t catch it until they reached the Arabian peninsula.
“If we maintain pursuit, we’re g
oing to have to alert the Saudi Air Force,” the pilot pointed out.
“So do it,” Mercer replied, exasperated by the details.
“I’ve got a transmission on an emergency channel,” the copilot called. “I think it’s from the Super Stallion.”
The voice over the radio was accentless and the transmission was clear. “American helicopter, American helicopter, this is Mercy Flight One en route to Mecca with victims from the Sudan famine. Why are you pursuing us?”
“You want to handle this?” the copilot asked Mercer.
“Yes,” he replied tightly. “I’ve got it. Mercy Flight One, this is a United States Marine Corps helicopter. We do not wish to open fire, but you are carrying international fugitives wanted for terrorist acts. Over.”
“Negative, Marine flight. We are contracted to the relief agency Médecins Sans Frontiers. We are carrying starving children to a hospital in Mecca.”
“If you do not return to Eritrean airspace and land at Massawa, we will have no choice but to shoot down your craft. Over,” Mercer bluffed. With just an M-16, he couldn’t do more than dent the fleeing craft.
The coast of the Arabian peninsula was fast approaching, and the Blackhawk pilot was reluctant to broach the sovereignty of a friendly nation.
A new voice came over the net, one Mercer recognized immediately. Anger boiled up within him. “Dr. Mercer, how good to hear from you again,” Yosef said. “I was hoping you were listening. I’ve learned that you may be erratic, but you can also be very predictable too.”
“You are going to die, you son of a bitch,” Mercer seethed.
“I don’t think so,” Yosef replied mildly. “You see, we’re still holding your friend.”