Ghost Flight

82

‘Congratulations, Mr Raffara,’ the Black Hawk commander announced. ‘You have been happy to see four of your friends die. So, the last candidate for the death ride – it is Ms Leticia Santos! Oh yeah – and we all know how those Brazilian ladies love to ride. Alter course, Mr Raffara. Obey my orders. Or the death of the delightful Ms Santos will haunt you for the rest of your days.’

The satphone bleeped: Response?

Jaeger stared at the screen, his mind whirling at breakneck speed. Whatever way he looked at it, he was all out of options. The killing had to stop. He would not let Leticia be thrown to the wolves. But what alternative was there?

Involuntarily his free hand went to the carnivale scarf that he had knotted around his neck. A sudden idea flashed briefly through his eyes, coming back to centre itself more solidly in his consciousness. It was a crazy, warped idea, but right now he figured it was about the best they’d got.

He punched out a message on the Thuraya’s keypad. Act as if complying. Alter course. Standby.

Raff’s voice came up on the air. ‘Affirmative, we are complying with your orders. Altering course to bearing 0845 degrees. ETA at your grid as given in fifteen – repeat one-five – minutes.’

‘Excellent, Mr Raffara. I am glad to see you are finally learning how to keep your people alive…’

Jaeger didn’t wait to catch the last words. He grabbed Narov, unbolted the door leading into the Ju 390’s hold, and sprinted for a cargo crate lying in the far reaches of the aircraft’s shadowed rear.

He bent over the long packing crate that held the Fliegerfaust shoulder-launched missiles. For a moment he reached for his knife, before remembering that he’d given it to Puruwehua. An instant later Narov was beside him, hacking at the crate with her seven-inch Fairbairn–Sykes blade.

The tough rope fastenings fell away, and – having prised the nails out with the blade – the two of them wrenched the wooden lid aside.

They reached in and lifted out the first of the two crated rocket launchers. It was surprisingly light, but it wasn’t the weight that concerned Jaeger right now. It was the weapon’s mechanism. Most modern shoulder-launched missiles used a battery-operated electronic firing system. If the Fliegerfaust employed something similar, the batteries would have long gone flat and they were done for.

Jaeger was banking on the launcher working on a simple mechanical system, in which case it should still be usable. He ran his eye over the forward handgrip and the trigger mechanism to the rear. He placed the launcher on his shoulder and laid his eye against the cold steel of the sight: it consisted of a basic metal rail running the length of the dorsal surface, to look along and aim.

Just as he’d hoped, the Fliegerfaust’s operating apparatus appeared to be one hundred per cent mechanical. The rocket launchers had been left well oiled and there didn’t appear to be a speck of rust upon them. Even the multiple barrels seemed smooth and crystal clear. After seven decades in a box, there was no reason why they shouldn’t work just fine.

Narov reached into the crate and fished out the nine-round missile set – each a 20 mm projectile measuring about eight inches long. As Jaeger held the weapon steady, she slotted the rounds into the launcher’s tubes; they gave a resounding thunk as they slid home.

‘You pull the trigger, it fires two salvoes,’ Narov explained, her voice tight with urgency. ‘One of four, followed by one of five – the second a split second after the first.’

Jaeger nodded. ‘We need both launchers locked and loaded. You good to operate the second?’

Narov’s eyes blazed with a killer smile. ‘With pleasure. They were right to nickname you the Hunter.’

They readied the second launcher, then moved across to the cargo door set in the Ju 390’s hold. Only an hour or so earlier, Jaeger had closed it in preparation for their lift out of the jungle. Little had he imagined that he’d need to throw it open again any time soon, and for the kind of action that he now had in mind.

He grabbed his Thuraya and typed a message. Engaging Black Hawks from rear of Ju 390. Will not hit Santos aircraft. Stand by.

His phone beeped once. Affirmative.

Jaeger eyed Narov. ‘You ready?’

‘Ready,’ Narov confirmed.

‘I’ll go for the one at nine o’clock, you go for the one at three. Do not hit Santos’s aircraft.’

Narov nodded curtly.

‘Soon as we kick the doors open,’ Jaeger added, ‘let rip.’

He reached out and unlatched the cargo door, then sat back on the floor of the warplane and braced his boots against his side. Narov did the same. Jaeger didn’t believe for one moment that the Black Hawk commander knew there was a force manning the Ju 390.

He was about to learn otherwise.

‘NOW!’

Jaeger booted hard, and Narov did likewise. The doors flew open and Jaeger raised himself on one knee, the Fliegerfaust braced on his shoulder. The nearest Black Hawk was no more than two hundred yards away. He lined the simple iron sight up with the cockpit, said a brief prayer that the launcher would work, and pulled the trigger.

Four missiles streaked away, the backblast from their eruption punching a fiery cloud of choking fumes into the Ju 390’s hold. Jaeger held his aim, and a split second later the five remaining projectiles blazed towards their target. Beside him, Narov unleashed with her weapon, nine missiles blasting through the heavens towards the second Black Hawk.

Armour-piercing and high-explosive, each rocket was stabilised by a set of small holes drilled around its tail. A tiny amount of the rocket’s exhaust fumes voided through those holes, spinning the projectile along its axis. It was the spin that ensured the rockets would fly true to their target – in the same way that a bullet fired from a gun was set to spin via the barrel’s rifling.

Jaeger saw five of his veer wide of the mark, but four struck home. The 20 mm projectiles sparked grey puffs of smoke along the Black Hawk’s flank as the armour-piercing tips sliced through the metal skin. A split second later, the high-explosive charges detonated, raking the inside of the aircraft with a storm of burning-hot jagged shrapnel.

The blast punched out the windshield of the cockpit and shattered the side windows, shrapnel lacerating the bodies of those riding inside. Moments later, the helo veered off course and fell into a steep dive, trailing a column of angry grey smoke in its wake.

To its rear, target number two had fared even worse. In the moment of maximum need, the sniper – the assassin? – within Narov had come to the fore. Eight of her missiles had struck home, just one lone projectile veering wide of the target.

At least one of the 20 mm rockets must have pierced the Black Hawk’s fuel tank. Full enough to complete a 600-kilometre combat sortie, there was fuel in there to burn and burn. A gout of angry orange flame erupted from the helicopter, and a moment later it disintegrated in a massive, blinding fireball.

Jaeger felt the heat of the blast wave wash over him, as fingers of burning shrapnel reached out from the epicentre of the explosion. For a moment, the fiery conflagration seemed to menace the Airlander above, before the plumes of burning debris tumbled towards the cloud bank far below and were lost from view.

The blasted carcass of the second Black Hawk plummeted to earth like a stone. All that remained of the two aircraft was a dark cloud of smoke drifting on the hot tropical air.

They were down to one Black Hawk versus an Airlander/Ju 390, thundering through the open skies.

The surviving Black Hawk had veered off sharply, putting a safe distance between it and any further rocket salvoes. Not that Jaeger and Narov could unleash any: they were all out of Fliegerfausts. In any case, Leticia Santos was aboard that helicopter, and Jaeger for one was not willing to see her life sacrificed too.

‘Mr Raffara, you will wish you hadn’t done that!’ screamed a voice wild with rage. ‘Now I start shooting out your engines!’

‘You do that, we’re going down,’ Raff countered, ‘and with us your precious aircraft. It’ll smash into the jungle—’

A burst of deadly-accurate fire from the surviving Black Hawk’s GAU-19 drowned out Raff’s words. Rounds tore into the Airlander’s front starboard propulsor. The instant they did so, Jaeger felt the Ju 390 lurch horribly to the right, as one of the airship’s four giant rotors was torn to pieces.

Inside the Airlander, the crew would be struggling to keep her airborne on three propulsors, adjusting thrust direction and power to try to even up the stricken aircraft’s load, and pumping helium back and forth between the airship’s three giant hulls.

‘Airlander to Black Hawk.’ Raff’s voice came up on the air. ‘You shoot out another propulsor, we are no longer airworthy with this load, and we will be forced to jettison the Ju 390. Ten thousand feet straight down. Back the hell off.’

‘I don’t think so,’ the Black Hawk commander countered. ‘You have a team aboard that aircraft, and I really don’t think you’ll let them fall. Comply with my instructions, or I will shoot out a second engine.’

A message bleeped on Jaeger’s Thuraya: Response?

Jaeger didn’t know how to respond.

Now they really were all out of options.

Stalemate.