Quite a package. Suleiman’s prayers grew frenzied, a garble of pleas in which Dare could distinguish only one word, Allah. The trucks and men remained hidden in the gallery forest, but the Land Rover was parked in the open. The chopper crew had to see it. Then some fool, tempted beyond endurance by the low, slow-flying gunship, opened fire. That gave everyone else the go-ahead, rifles and machine guns ripping through the trees, sending down flurries of shredded leaves. Stung but otherwise unhurt by the swarm of bullets, the helicopter swooped away. Kasli screamed at the soldier who’d shot first, smacked him in the face with his pistol, and kicked him, his lesson in military discipline cut short by the gunship, which looped around and let loose with its miniguns, firing so quickly—four thousand rounds a minute—that the three-second burst made a noise like a millsaw cutting a log. There was a loud whump as the Land Rover’s fuel tank burst. Michael’s troops were firing without restraint. Now a thousand feet up, the chopper wobbled—it had taken a solid hit—and flew off again.
Two men, one with a SAM-7, another with a spare launch tube and missile strapped to his back, sprinted into the open—the trees must have prevented them from taking their shot. Rising to a crouch, Dare peered over the bank. Ten yards in front of him the men lay, the SAM’s launcher resting on a flat boulder. Flames engulfed the Land Rover; smoke funneled upward, a perfect aiming point for the gunship. And if it didn’t serve, the missile-gunner’s outfit would: He was one of the army’s cross-dressers, garbed in a pink housedress.
A mile to two miles out, the MI-24 orbited the savannah. The last burst of ground fire had given the crew something to think about before trying another strafing run. The chopper finished its circle, started another. The missile-gunner got up, his outfit standing out amid the duns and greens, shouldered the launcher, and lined up the fore and rear sights but held his fire.
“Well shoot, for Christ’s sake!” Dare shouted. The trucks had survived the first strafing; they wouldn’t survive the next one. “They’re in range! Shoot!”
Doug said, “What the hell’s wrong?”
“The guy’s dressed like a girl for one, and for another, he was carrying a spear two months ago, that’s what. There’s a two-stage trigger on a SAM. Pull it back once, a green light tells you you’re locked on, the second pull fires the booster. Somebody must have put that thing in his hands with a set of instructions he couldn’t read.”
The gunship banked and came on, nose canted slightly downward, rotors flashing in the sun. Now everyone was yelling in Nuban and English—“Shoot! Shoot!” Doug bounded out of the riverbed, snatched the launcher from the gunner’s hands, shouldered it, and aimed. There was a brief pause; then he fired. The booster rocket flamed and fell; the warhead rocket ignited. A red ball streaked on a trajectory parallel to the gunship’s flight path before the warhead sensed the heat from the engine and curved toward it. The pilot saw the missile. Dare knew he did because he deployed decoy flares. As they hung in the sky like incandescent carnations, the pilot pulled into a turn and roll to throw the missile off course, but the infrared sensors would not be seduced, either by the flares or by the maneuver. The warhead rammed into the jet engine’s exhaust. Dare felt the blast, a punch of wind. The main rotor blew off, twirling away as debris flew in all directions and the fuselage flipped over and crashed upside down, the bombs erupting, the miniguns’ rounds cooking off in the inferno. Everyone lay flat in the riverbed as a maelstrom of shrapnel cracked through the trees above.
When it was over, Michael’s soldiers jumped up and fired celebratory shots into the air. They whooped and cheered. They poured out of the riverbed and mobbed Douglas, chanting his name, “Dug-lass! Dug-lass!”
He was breathing hard, and when he turned to Dare, his eyes had a weird glitter.
“Payback, Wes,” he said.
“And payback is a bitch,” Dare said. “Who taught you to shoot a SAM?”
“You did.”
“You’re a quick study, Dougie my boy.”
Michael elbowed through the crowd, clasped Doug’s hand, then pulled his arms overhead and turned him in a circle, calling out, “Douglas Negarra!” The troops echoed, “Dug-lass Negarra!” and hoisted him on their shoulders and carried him around. Even now Doug maintained his air of self-assured serenity, as if this