Hellfire. Ed Macy

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       FACING TOMMO

      I only had one place left to look. I told Andy that the tanks had to be hiding behind the small hillock in the dry wadi bed.

      ‘Easier said than done…’

      Andy wasn’t wrong. We’d been up here training with Striker armoured fighting vehicles a couple of days before and the terrain was distinctly unfriendly: a network of narrow valleys cutting through steep-sided hills. The Strikers had fired their wire-guided anti-tank missiles from the ridgelines as we brought in fast jets. It was like a giant game of splat-the-rat. If we got pinged, we’d have to come to a hover, spot turn and fly back the way we’d come.

      ‘If we get caught here, the tanks will kill us. Keep it low and slow and use the pedals to boot us round if you see anything.’

      ‘Pedals? While we’re still flying?’

      I’d forgotten Andy Wawn was a brand spanking new pilot.

      ‘I’ll follow you through on the controls and take over if we get caught with our pants down. If I shout “I have control” I want you to cut away faster than lightning because we won’t have time to hand over properly.’

      I made a mental note to teach him how pedals could assist a turn. It was a tricky manoeuvre that wasn’t officially in the manual-and with good reason. The nose drops and tail rotor authority teeters on out-of-control; get it wrong and the tail breaks away. You’d end up spinning out of control and smashing into terra firma.

      Andy flew us up the valley, just below the skyline, fifty feet off the deck and high enough to spin us round and drop the nose without crashing. I held the controls lightly; the light wind from behind us made them slightly sloppy and unresponsive. We both looked anxiously at the bend 500 metres ahead.

      We were both expecting the worst. The enemy tanks could be just behind the bend. We’d be so bloody sharp that the boss had refused to come in with us. He was waiting at the mouth of the valley to bring in artillery and fast jets should we get zapped. We’d know if we’d been shot down because the BATUS Asset Tracking System (BATS) box in the back would register a hit and we’d have to land.

      With 400 metres to go I craned my neck to the right to see that extra foot around the bend.

      I caught a splinter of light to my left, at the periphery of my vision. No sooner had I picked it up than it was gone again.

      With 300 metres to go I heard a very light swishing sound. I glanced at Andy. He made more weird noises through his microphone than Darth Vader; it was one of his party tricks.

      He glanced back. ‘What?’

      ‘Look where you’re goi—’

      Before I had time to finish the swishing sound turned into a high-pitched screech. By the time I’d turned to see what it was, it had become a blood-curdling banshee wail. I could hear it over the sound of the Gazelle’s whining gearbox and engine, and my helmet’s hearing protection. Whatever it was, it was less than a foot away from me. It was as if the devil himself was running his fingernails down the world’s biggest blackboard…

      ‘I HAVE CONTROL,’ I yelled, and flicked my head forward again, fast enough to rattle my eyeballs.

      I knew then that what was trying to kill us had us so firmly in its grasp that there really was no escape.

      We were at thirty knots, with the valley walls pressing in on both sides. The ground was strewn with boulders fifty feet below.

      Hundreds of white strands were suspended in the air in front of us, and more were joining them with every passing nanosecond. We were caught in a giant web. The homing aerials on the Gazelle’s nose had been bent back until they were touching the windscreen.

      ‘SWINGFIRE WIRE,’ I bellowed.

      The Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) on the ridge must have fired a wire-guided missile. As these things shoot down range they spew out a thin but incredibly strong metal wire; this one had been left draped across the valley in front of us. Our blades had picked it up and spun it around the Gazelle, winching us in towards the hillside.

      I flicked on the radio. ‘Mayday…Mayday…Mayday…’

      As I fought to cut back our speed the screeching intensified then was punctuated by a series of high-pitched pings as the tension in the wire increased. I prayed we wouldn’t lose control of the main rotor.

      I was barely keeping us airborne. First we’d been netted; now we were being reeled in. It was only a matter of time before the wires would tighten on the exposed tail rotor drive shaft as it spun at over 5,000 rpm; we were about to be garrotted.

      I snatched a glance to our right. The hilltop was too far away; I pointed the nose towards the slope, using a rock as a marker, and shoved the cyclic forward.

      Prairie grass ten feet in front of us filled the bubble cockpit. We were going in, head on.

      Andy went СКАЧАТЬ