98
The Black Hawks came in from the northeast, through a gap in the hills, reaching the airport at the terminal end, a mile and a half from the hangar. McCabe’s plane was already on the runway, moving toward them, picking up speed for takeoff.
Major Dave Gretsch ordered the pilots to form up in line abreast, just over the runway, blocking the plane’s way. But the jet kept coming.
One of the choppers was a Direct Action Penetrator model, armed with a Gatling gun. Gretsch ordered it to fire a warning burst over the plane. It had no effect. Now the gap between the plane and the choppers was closing at over two hundred feet per second.
“Shoot to kill!” Gretsch commanded.
The Gatling’s rotating barrels spewed an unrelenting hail of bullets at the onrushing machine, but it hurtled onward, taking on the helicopters in an airborne game of chicken as its nose lifted up off the ground and arrowed toward the night sky.
“Break! Break!” screamed the pilot in the command helicopter, and the three choppers threw themselves sideways, scattering before the roaring plane, not like predatory black hawks, but panic-stricken, fat gray pigeons, their rotors clawing for purchase in air torn asunder by the jet engines’ wake.
The bomb-disposal team was hurled from side to side and buffeted up and down before the pilot was able to regain control.
One of the men shouted, “What the hell was that?”
Kady Jones was still trying to stop her stomach from turning cartwheels.
“I guess that was our bomb,” she gasped. “And I think it was saying good-bye.”