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"But, Colonel Vega," Miguel protested mildly, "all of the soldiers have
been killed or already have run away to the fields to hide."
Vega fixed his driver with a steely stare. "Miguel, do you enjoy the
privilege of driving for me?"
"Si, mi comandante!" Miguel snapped smartly.
"Then please do not argue with my orders. I want this town leveled to
the ground as a lesson to the other towns that stand between us and
Mexico City. Tonight, after we bivouac for the evening, I will print up
hundreds of copies of the pictures and have one of the helicopters fly
ahead and drop them on the towns to the north of us."
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Miguel nodded, as if he understood what his commanding officer was
saying and the advanced reasoning behind it. He did know that every
night the colonel downloaded the pictures that had been taken of him in
various leadership roles to a laptop computer and printed them out for
his scrapbook.
Miguel thought this quite silly, but then he knew little of the thought
processes of officers and their need for constant aggrandizement.
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Herman Bundt, who, unlike Colonel Vega, flew in the lead helicopter,
leaned forward and stared through the Plexiglas of the front windshield
of the big Chinook chopper.
They were only a few miles from the neighboring towns of Luchitan and
Salina Cruz that lay on the shores of the Gulf of Tehuantepec.
His eyes, experienced in the art of warfare, noted that though the
region was mountainous and jungled inland, it leveled out into a
relatively flat area near the shores of the gulf. It was a perfect
staging point to test his mercenary troops in their first under-fire
battle under his command.
He leaned over and pointed downward to the pilot. "Drop us off right
there, where the jungle thins out and becomes a sandy plain on the
outskirts of Luchitan."
"Roger," the pilot said, nodding his understanding. He spoke briefly on
the ship-to-ship radio to let the other pilots know the plan.
"Have the Kiowas fly low over the town to draw any fire while we unload
the troops. That's our most vulnerable time," Bundt ordered.
The pilot nodded, and relayed his orders to the pilots of the Kiowa
gunships accompanying them.
The pilot grabbed Bundt's arm and pointed toward the west. Three dark
shapes rose like huge buzzards from a tiny airstrip north of the town.
"Skids," the pilot said over the intercom.
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"What?" Bundt asked, not familiar with the term.
"Skids. Old Huey helicopters, the kind that flew in Vietnam. They
must've picked us up on their radar."
The pilot spoke again into his radio, and Bundt saw the Kiowas that were
escorting them peel off into attack formation.
"Those ships must be forty years old," Bundt said. "Our Kiowas will make
short work of those antiques."
The pilot turned his head to glance up at Bundt. "Don't be too sure. The
skids are big, slow, and clumsy, but they're tough to bring down. 'Bout
the only way to down one is to hit the prop or to kill the pilot and
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copilot."
"How are they armed?" Bundt asked, more out of curiosity than out of any
worry about the Kiowas.
"Main weapon is a fifty-caliber machine gun in the side hatchway. The
gunner is strapped to the chopper walls so he won't be thrown out when
the chopper dives and banks," the pilot answered shortly.
As the Chinooks hovered feet above the ground and the assault troops
bailed out of them like ants from a disturbed mound, Bundt couldn't help
but stand and watch the air battle taking place in the skies over Luchitan.
The Hueys moved forward in a modified-V formation, with the two lead
choppers flying almost sideways so the big fifty-caliber machine guns in
their hatches could be brought to bear, while the back chopper at the
apex of the V gave them cover on their flanks. Evidently the men flying
the big helicopters were experienced in combat, unlike the men Bundt had
flying his Kiowas, who were barely out of flight school.
First Lieutenant Gunter Kalb, pilot of the lead Kiowa, saw the lumbering
Hueys and almost laughed. "No need to waste one of our missiles on
those," he said on the intercom to his copilot. "I'll just rake him with
our Minigun and blow him out of the sky."
The copilot, Hans Gruber, laughed into the mike. "Look how slow they
are," he said. "It's a wonder they don't fall from the sky like bloated
cows."
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Kalb jerked up on the collective in his left hand and advanced the
throttle, and the Kiowa put its nose down and screamed through the air
at the Hueys, who were going so slow they almost seemed to be hovering,
as if waiting to be slaughtered.
When he got within range, Kalb depressed the trigger on the 20mm Minigun
in the Kiowa's nose, and grinned at the vibration from the gun as it
spewed forth death at a thousand rounds a minute.
Kalb felt an almost sexual thrill as he saw the tracers in his ammo
stitch a line of holes across the body of the Huey, expecting it to
burst into flames and fall from the sky.
His thrill turned to panic as he saw the Huey shudder under the impact
but remain otherwise unaffected.
As his ship rapidly closed on the Huey, he jerked back on the collective
and tried to turn, but it was too late.
He could almost see the gunner's teeth in the wide-open hatchway of the
Huey as he grinned and opened fire with his big fifty.
The gun jumped and shook in the gunner's hands, flame shooting from the
barrel along with hundreds of molten lead bullets that had the Kiowa's
name written on them.
The Plexiglas windshield of the Kiowa shattered, sending hundreds of
razor-sharp shards of plastic into Kalb's and Gruber's faces and eyes.
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Kalb let go of the collective and the throttle to cover his ruined face
just as the stream of fifty-caliber bullets tore into the Kiowa's fuel
tanks.
The chopper exploded in a ball of flame and smoke, sending pieces of the
ship and its pilots floating toward earth.
"God damn it!" Bundt screamed on the ground when he saw the ship
disintegrate above him. "You stupid bastards," he growled to himself,
"use your missiles."
Almost as if the other pilots heard Bundt's plea, they peeled off from
their attack and climbed out of range of the other
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Hueys's machine guns. They made a wide circle overhead, able to stay out
of range due to their crafts's superior airspeed. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]