Fire Force(62)

‘OK - hold it right there,’ shouted Ollie. ‘Just bloody hold it.’

In an instant, he had raised the RPG and slammed a missile straight into the wall. This time, with the boat steadied, it exploded just where the pipes went in. At his side, Ganju had done the same. Another direct hit. The pipes broke open, sending water flying everywhere, and the wall above was starting to splinter. Ollie reloaded, fired, then reloaded again. The KPV was filling the wall with a constant barrage of lead, spitting and chewing at the concrete.

Then, a crash.

The defences were broken.

A cloud of dust kicked upwards, as a section of wall five yards wide collapsed onto itself. The debris was instantly soaked by the rain, creating a sodden mess of rubble. As the dust started to subside, beaten down by the rain, there was a flurry of activity behind the wall, as a group of soldiers rushed into position.

Chris lined up the KPV. ‘Get your head down!’ he bawled towards Nick.

Nick threw himself to the ground as Chris opened up with the huge machine gun. He could feel a solid wall of hot lead fly over his head. The bullets sprayed into the wall, cutting down the men who had fallen into the breach. The rattle of the gunfire mixed with the screams of the dying men, the pitiful sound echoing out across the stormy lake.

‘Another RPG round,’ shouted Ollie.

He put a missile into the breached wall, then another. Mounds of brick spat into the air as the explosions blew chunks of the defences apart. More screams howled upwards, as the detonations and then the shrapnel sliced chunks out of the men desperately trying to defend the fort.

‘Charge the bastards,’ Ollie ordered. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, and without waiting for any replies, he gripped hold of his AK-47 and started to run towards the wall.

David sensed immediately what the trouble was. A bullet had smashed the gearbox to pieces. A lucky shot? he wondered grimly. Probably not. The soldiers down there knew what aircraft the Government forces had, and they knew their weaknesses. The unit should have thought of that, and used a machine they weren’t familiar with, he realised now. Too late.

The Alouette was finished.

There was still enough power in the engine to climb up to 800 feet. The cabin was starting to fill with grimy black smoke. The carbon monoxide was swirling everywhere but, with the doors open, there was little chance of suffocating. David felt strangely calm. He knew precisely what he was going to do. Now all he had to do was finish it.

He kicked as much power as he could into the rear rotor and steered the chopper out towards the lake. The main blade was still turning but spluttering badly. The rear rotor was doing its job, but as the main blade lost power, there soon wouldn’t be enough power to steer by. He could see the fort, a mix of smoke and fire, beneath him. He could also see the patrol boat, tethered to the jetty now, and Ollie leading his men into the breach in the wall. And then he could see the rough waves of the lake, its surface whipped up by the wind.

The main blade was weakening all the time, turning slower and slower. You could hear the shot-up gearbox grinding, sparks flying as metal scratched against metal. It wasn’t generating enough power to maintain its altitude any more.

Any second now, the Alouette would literally drop out of the sky.

Taking one long, hard breath, and then, without even looking down, David Mallet tossed himself from the side of the Alouette and started to fall towards the lake.





Steve watched the chopper tumble out of the sky and into the lake, spitting smoke and flame as it started to break up. ‘There goes our exit, boys,’ he said sternly. ‘We stay and fight here, and we’ll die if we have to, because our bus home just crashed.’

He took a brief, anxious second to assess their situation. Totally fucked? No, not yet. Not while they were still standing, anyway.

The fort at least was in total disarray. They had landed towards the back of the parade ground, close to the main entrance. Ten yards to their left, there was a shooting range that would provide some cover. At the back, the dust and noise kicked up by the RPG rounds suggested Ollie had breached the wall. A dozen men had come out to rush them as the chopper landed, but the stun grenades had done their work with lethal efficiency. The troops on the ground had been so overwhelmed by the sudden power of the attack, their first response had been feeble and confused, and the few men who had tried to counter-attack had been easily cut down by the guns of the men bailing out of the chopper. Their corpses were lying all around them, wounds cut open in their faces and chests, the sodden ground already red with their blood. A couple were still alive, moaning pitifully, but there was no way anyone could help them now.