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Getting the Starship airborne was dicey. Once the slack had been taken out of the line and the drone had been lifted a few feet off the ground, the capsule began to swing back and forth, forcing Paige, who was piloting the craft, to counteract the swaying with the collective lever. This resulted in increased swaying of the Starship.
As the helicopter continued its ascent, Hail saw fear on her face. Keeping his tone calm, he instructed, “Start moving forward. The wind will create drag that should stop it from swinging around.”
Paige followed Hail’s instructions, allowing the nose of the helicopter to dip as she flew in the direction of the target’s coordinates. As Hail anticipated, the capsule dangling below the helicopter indeed stabilized, and Paige began to relax.
“You were right,” Paige yelled back at Hail. The side doors of the Huey had been removed, making communication challenging over the sounds of the wind, engines, and the blade wash. Hail ended the conversation quipping, “That’s why I won the Nobel Prize in physics. I know which way a thing-a-ma-bob will swing when it is being hauled by an overloaded chopper.”
Paige liked Hail and his self-effacing attitude. She had never known her father, but she hoped he would have had some of the qualities that endeared her to Hail.
Flight time from the airport to Kornev’s safe house complex took no longer than five minutes. As the chopper neared the property, Hail, Nolan, and Renner took their places near the open doors and used their scopes to scan for areas of trouble. It was still dark outside, and they were flying much lower than during the previous pass. Through their night vision scopes, they noted most of the men were still lying on the ground, presumably sleeping and completely untroubled by the sounds of the ‘copter.
Of course the team couldn’t see that Shallah and Kornev were holed up together in the home less than fifty yards away from them.
One person in that home wasn’t sleeping. The approaching chopper awoke him, and he had positioned himself at the window, wielding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
*-*-*
Zain couldn’t recall a time when the sound of an approaching helicopter hadn’t terrified him. When he was very young and playing in front of the cave, the distinctive sound of blades cutting through the air panicked his mother. Frantically, she would collect Zain and Naveed and usher them deep into the cave with its connecting tunnels. There they would wait. Sometimes they waited hours, other times for days.
The sound of a helicopter in Zain’s world was akin to the sound of an alarm clock. No matter the circumstance, once the distinctive sound was heard, it was time to get up and get moving.
Once Zain and his brother became older, the sound of incoming choppers signaled the end of the terrorists’ attack. He, his brother, Farwan, and the men under their father’s direction immediately retreated from their offensive positions to find the nearest building, parking structure, or sewer in which to hide. Choppers were lethal. They could rain down just about any type of ordnance with pinpoint accuracy. Yes, it was possible to take one down. However, chances were high you’d lose many men before the bird was within firing range. The best practice, if you were trying to take down a Huey, Apache, or a Russian Mil Mi-24, was to lay in wait. One man with a single RPG round could take down a helicopter. From experience Zain knew the most vulnerable area of a modern chopper; its Achille’s heel was the tail rotor. That small set of delicate blades kept the chopper from spiraling out of the sky, turning in tight corkscrew circles until it hit the ground. The tail rotor stabilized the aircraft. Without it, the chopper couldn’t fly. Without the tail rotor, while the helicopter was airborne, it would come down posthaste.
Zain was only lightly sleeping when the incoming Huey pinged off his subconscious, bringing his brain to a state of wakefulness. Zain, initially, did nothing more than listen. He was certain he had heard the sound in a dream. The home was silent as was the battlefield outside. The nocturnal sound of insects—crickets chirping like mad, masked the sound of the helicopter—almost. It was there, though, behind the sounds of crickets, a farmer’s barking dog, the heavy night air, and the cloak of darkness. Zain could almost feel the helicopter’s arrival in his bones.
Automatically, Zain had moved toward the rocket-propelled grenade launcher set in the corner of the living room. Once he had hefted the weapon off the floor, he hustled to the window, looking toward the other home. Zain set the wide muzzle of the launch tube on what was left of his window sill and waited. He had no idea what the chopper would do once it arrived. There were lots of possibilities, including: men rappelling down ropes, along with firing ordnance, and landing on the other house to extract those within the dwelling. It was problematic hitting the tail rotor of a moving helicopter with an RPG. However, hitting a slow-hovering chopper was another matter and entirely doable. Zain had taken down helicopters from a longer distance than this, and he was confident in his abilities.
Now the helicopter sounded as if it were directly above his location. Zain pressed his eye to the eyepiece and brought the crosshairs of the weapon into view. He suspected the chopper might touch down in front of the home and hover long enough for the kidnappers to climb aboard and take Zain’s son far away. Zain was determined that was not going to happen, but then something occurred that caused him confusion and made him hesitate.
When the helicopter came into view, and as Zain was setting the RPG’s sites on it, instead of landing, the Huey lowered a metal capsule towards the ground. The shape of the package was unlike anything the jihadi had ever seen.
Zain watched in stunned silence as the aluminum capsule, from 100 feet in the air, was maneuvered over the front yard. He refined his aim and set his weapon’s crosshairs on the tail of the chopper. The capsule snapped free just when Zain had committed to take the shot. The object plopped down into the dry grass, and as if the chopper was drawn upward by the release of an immense bungee cord, the loss of weight sent the aircraft skyward so fast Zain almost lost his opportunity to take his shot—almost.
*-*-*
The crew aboard the Huey thought everything was going well. They had successfully eased the Starship down in front of the home where Kara was holed up, and the line had disconnected cleanly. As Renner was busy reeling in the thick strap, Hail saw a flash from the window of the adjacent home. The flash, unfortunately, didn’t stop at the window but continued toward the chopper as if a flare was zipping up a wire connected to the Huey. Before Hail could issue a warning, the rocket-propelled grenade hit the tail rotor and exploded. The blades broke off into small carbon fiber chunks and went zigzagging in all directions. Some pieces flew upward and struck the main rotor while other shards hurled out into the countryside. The chopper shuddered and rocked from side to side as Paige struggled to maintain control. Hail reached out to steady himself, as did Nolan, but Gage Renner wasn’t as fortunate. He had been using his hands to take in the line, wrapping it from hand to elbow, and didn’t have an opportunity to brace himself. In less time than it took for Hail to glance in Renner’s direction, he watched his best friend fall fifty feet out of the helicopter. He disappeared into the night.
*-*-*
Zain was proud of his shot. Sure, the chopper hadn’t been far away, but the precise spot he had aimed for was hit. As the bird spiraled downward to earth, he was certain he saw something, or someone, fall from the aircraft. The man didn’t fall far, however. He appeared to be either hanging from the line or caught in a line. He was along for the ride—and what a wild ride!
The chopper continued spiraling as it descended. Its main blades still caught air which provided it limited lift. Once the body of the helicopter began rotating in the same direction as the main rotor, it was only a matter of time before the aircraft crashed.
Zain perversely enjoyed it, like watching a catastrophe in slow motion.
Ten seconds after it was hit by the RPG, the chopper crashed. Still under full power, and not leveled, the leading edge of one of the Huey’s two blades dug in the dry ground, snapped off, and sailed toward Zain’s face. The terrorist hit the floor as the blade sliced its way through the living room like a giant machete. If his men had been on their feet, instead of sleeping on the floor, most of them would have been decapitated. The chopper’s second blade sailed off into the darkness, and Zain wondered if it had found any of his men in the field. Not the best way to leave this world, but at least death would be quick.
The violence of the crash didn’t last long. Once the main rotors had flown clear the accident scene, the chopper landed upright on its skids. There was no fire. Its gas tanks were still intact. Its single turboshaft engine was still running.
When Zain cautiously raised his head to look out the window, he saw flashes of automatic weapon fire focused in his direction. This was a development he hadn’t foreseen. His AK was leaning up against the wall ten feet from him. He dove to the floor and started snaking toward his weapon. By now, every man in the room had been jarred awake. They were in the process of retrieving their weapons and trying to discern what had just happened. When Zain returned to the window, with the butt of the rifle pressed into his right shoulder, he focused on getting payback. Bits of cement and dust balls chattered off the window frame like a demonic woodpecker had been set loose. Two guns next to the downed chopper laid down suppressing fire with such accuracy Zain knew if he peeked over the window sill again, he would catch a round in his forehead. The thick cement-filled cinderblock exterior wall absorbed the bullets with relative ease. It now occurred to Zain that if the arms dealer built the safe houses, he would have designed them both to be fortresses.
After the gunfire ceased, Zain took a chance to pop his head up for a quick peek. The helicopter had come to a stop forty yards away from the capsule it had set down in the front yard. The chopper hadn’t caught on fire, so there was nothing to illuminate the wreckage. Other than blindly spraying bullets at it, there was nothing in the absolute darkness Zain could see, much less shoot.
Zain’s men were on their knees. Each man had secured a spot behind the house’s windows. Others had gone outside to use the corners of the dwelling for cover. Zain opened fire in the direction of the wreckage, emptying his magazine in less than three seconds. His men joined him in peppering the downed helicopter with lead.
When the rifle fire subsided, Zain was certain if anyone had survived and had remained in the chopper, they would most certainly now be dead. Zain held up a hand and commanded his men to hold their fire. They waited and watched for a moment. The sun was beginning to make an appearance over the horizon. The full-on attack would commence soon.