Project Cyclops Part 6

7:54 P.M.

"We're taking fire!" Peretz shouted from the weapons station down below.

"What? That's impossible." Ramirez whirled, then stepped in behind him to look. Lights from the control panel winked over his shoulders, while below them the Aegean was dark and gray. "Check the look-down radar."

Peretz flipped a switch on his left and scanned the screen.

'There's something down there. Maybe a fishing--"

"Idiot, n.o.body's fishing here now. Not with this weather." He looked up and shouted to the c.o.c.kpit. "Salim, take her about, one-eighty, and we'll strafe the son of a b.i.t.c.h."

The 12.7mm nose cannon was slaved to the radar, another of the Hind's many well-designed, and lethal, features. While Ramirez watched--he would have moved back into the gunnery seat himself, but there was no time--Dore Peretz switched on the nose cannon. When the target locked on the radar, he pushed the fire control under his right hand.

7:55 P.M.

A flare of machine-gun fire, hopping across the churning sea, caught the side of _Odyssey II_ and sprayed flecks of wood around him. But the swell was making him an elusive target. The line of fire had not really done any damage, not this time.

They knew he was there, though. Now the chopper was banking and returning for another pa.s.s.

Maybe, he thought, they're going to stick with the nose cannon. They won't bother wasting rockets or a multi- thousand-dollar Swatter missile on the wreckage of a raft. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are just having some target practice, a little fun and games.

He saw the flames from the nose cannon begin as the ma.s.sive Hind started its second pa.s.s. This was it. _Odyssey II _was about to be history.

But not before he gave her one last blaze of glory.

Holding to the gunwale and readying himself, he took careful aim at the starboard Swatter, still perched like a thin white bird on the stubby wingtip. He steadied the Walther, on semiautomatic, and began firing-- oblivious to the line of strafing coming his way.

He saw the rounds glancing off the armored wing, and the sparks guided his aim. The clip was going fast, but then . . .

Bingo.

A flare erupted, then an orange fireball, neatly severing the starboard wingtip. The missile had detonated, but just as it did, the Hind's strafing caught _Odyssey II_ right down the middle, shearing her in half.

7:56 P.M.

"Stabilize her!" Peretz felt himself flung against the bulletproof bubble that shielded the weapons station. A blinding explosion jolted the Hind, and the accompanying shock wave from the detonating Swatter spun it around thirty degrees. Several gauges in the instrument panel had veered off scale.

Salim reached up and cut the power to the main rotor, then eased the column and grabbed the collective pitch lever with his left hand. In less than a second the Hind had righted herself. Slowly the instruments began coming back as the electrical system recovered from the impact.

"Tail rotor's okay," he reported, checking the panel. "Altimeter reads five hundred meters." He looked up. "What in the name of G.o.d happened?"

"Our last Swatter detonated. The question is, why?" Ramirez answered.

He was staring angrily out the high-impact plastic of his bubble at the wreckage of the starboard wing.

Dore Peretz, now in the weapons station in the nose, was talking to himself. "I got the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

7:57 P.M.

_

_He shoved the Walther into his belt and dove into the swell, the cold waters crashing against his face. The _Odyssey II _was reduced to debris. His labor of love, half a year's work, all evaporated in an instant. The Zen masters were right: never get attached to physical things.

He avoided the deadly shards of wood, then seized onto a section of the mast that had blown in his direction. The Hind was banking and turning now, a.s.suming a heading due south. That, he realized, was the direction of Andikythera, site of SatCom's new complex. Was it their next target?

That didn't make any sense. Bill's project was commercial; it had no military value. Or at least none he could imagine.

But now he had only one thing on his mind. He secured his life vest tighter and held on to the mast, the salty Aegean in his face. The current was taking him due south, the same direction the chopper had headed.

CHAPTER TWO

7:58 P.M.

"d.a.m.n it!" Ramirez looked down at the weapons' readouts. "Did you have the Swatter armed? The system should have been off. If it was on, he could have detonated it by impact."

Peretz stared a second longer at the wreckage of the vessel below, then glanced back at his instruments and paled. "I thought it was . . . it must have malfunctioned. No f.u.c.king way--"

"Carelessness. Stupid carelessness." Ramirez bent his head and examined the wing, then checked the status readouts on the weapons system. "We lost the starboard rocket pod, too."

Peretz took one look and realized it was true. The rocket pod had been shorn away, leaving the tangled metal of the wing completely bare. But the Hind did not need its wings for stability; they were merely for armaments.

"Well, so what? I wasted the f.u.c.ker, whoever he was." He tried a smile, sending a web of lines through his tan as the lights of the weapons panel played across his face. It was the way he always disguised nervousness.

d.a.m.n you, Ramirez was thinking. An Israeli cowboy. I would kill you on the spot except that I need you. It was an arrogant mistake, and I can't let it happen again. It won't happen again.

He turned and moved back up to the c.o.c.kpit. "What's our status?"

"Sideslip is nominal," Salim reported grimly, his dark eyes glancing down at the churning sea only a couple of hundred meters below them. "I think we're going to be all right."

"We have just had an example of how an oversight can destroy an operation," Ramirez declared, turning back to the main cabin. "We will not succeed if we get careless, lose discipline. I have planned this operation down to the last small detail. You have all been briefed, over and over." He paused and examined the men. Sometimes he felt as if he were lecturing children, but these were no children. "Each of you knows what his job is. I expect you to do it with exactness and precision. The next oversight anyone here makes will be his last. Am I understood?"