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• • •
LOCSIN WAS IRATE at getting tossed off the roof and not only losing the Picasso but failing to kill Cabrillo.
He saw the chopper approaching and ordered several men to go after Cabrillo and the others to retrieve the cache of RPGs. As soon as they had them in hand, they were to keep firing until the rogue helicopter was lying on the cavern floor in pieces.
Locsin was going to take out that helicopter one way or the other, so he raced to his own chopper. The rotors were already spooling up.
“Get this piece of junk in the air now!” he screamed at the pilot as he jumped in the back.
This helicopter already had the minigun mounted on the floor. He flicked the switch to on and was ready to cut the other chopper to ribbons.
• • •
“THERE’S GUNFIRE coming from the base of that building,” Gomez said as he cranked the MD 520N to full speed.
Linc sat in the front passenger seat while Eddie and Raven took the outer seats in the back with Beth squeezed in the middle with the pile of painting tubes. The doors of the chopper had been removed prior to the flight just in case they needed to fire weapons in flight. As soon as Eddie saw that Juan was under attack, he knew they’d made the right decision. His assault rifle was now fully rearmed with one of Linc’s magazines.
Juan was pointing to the opposite side of the building and said over the radio, “There are unwanted guests coming up the ladder.”
Gomez circled around the building, and Eddie and Linc each took out two men scrabbling up the ladder. They fell to the ground, and no more tried to go up, though they did take potshots at the helicopter as it came in to land on the roof.
Gomez touched down, and Juan handed the Picasso tube to Beth as he heaved himself into the helicopter on Raven’s side. Beth gleefully added it to her collection, which she cradled like they were her newborn children.
Since there wasn’t another seat, Raven slid up and let Juan take hers. With nowhere else to go, she sat on his lap. Eddie noticed that Juan didn’t seem to mind the discomfort of the close quarters. Juan leaned his head back for a moment as he put on a headset.
“You okay?” Eddie asked as they lifted off. “You look like you had the snot beat out of you.”
“And a bunch of other stuff,” Juan replied.
“Hey, guys,” Gomez said, “we’re not out of the woods yet.” Then he banked wildly, and Juan had to grab Raven around the waist to keep her from falling out.
Punctuating Gomez’s words was the streak of a rocket-propelled grenade as it flashed by and exploded against the cavern roof.
“There’s more where that came from,” Gomez said. “Not only that, we have company.”
Eddie looked back and saw a chopper in hot pursuit. Jutting from its left door was the nose of a minigun.
68
Two more RPGs simultaneously lanced up at the Oregon’s helicopter, but Gomez maneuvered out of their path, and the rockets went right past toward a stalactite. They smashed into the hanging rock formation and blew it in half. Juan watched as it fell hundreds of feet and crushed one of the compound’s buildings.
To avoid more of the RPGs, Gomez flew beyond their range into the far reaches of the inky cavern, using his night vision equipment, but the other chopper stayed on their tail. Three flares were sent up from below, lighting up the massive cave.
“What’s the ETA on the eye wall?” Juan asked.
Gomez was too busy flying to answer, so Linc replied, “Estimated to arrive in two minutes.”
“Then I suggest we get out of here.”
“Working on it,” Gomez said as he yanked the stick again to dodge minigun fire from Locsin. Its tracers added to the illumination from the flares.
Although he was now belted in, Juan struggled to keep Raven in his grasp as Gomez weaved back and forth. If Locsin were a skilled tactician, he would simply have his pilot hover sideways and provide a stable platform for the minigun, which had sufficient range to reach a thousand yards. But because Juan had outwitted him, Locsin was too enraged to think clearly and so he had his pilot stupidly chasing them from behind.
Gomez swung around in a wide turn so Locsin wouldn’t get a clean angle on the helicopter and headed back toward the hole in the roof. More light from the rising sun was streaming through, but darkness would be coming soon.
“I hate to tell you this,” Gomez said through gritted teeth, “but I’m going to have to go straight up to get out of here. No yanking and banking during that time, so it’s going to leave us exposed for about ten seconds.”
He meant they’d be vulnerable to both the minigun and additional RPG fire. It would be a lethal combination for a hovering helicopter.
