jumper buildings. Like a ghetto, a slum. Like what I remember of Saigon, just before we left ... Hayes was lagging behind, his people already in the buildings as he crossed the open ground in front.
A burst of small arms fire caught him then. He screamed and went down. The horror of what he saw drove out all the words for an instant. I saw the remnants of his body as he did. We both knew, even as the pain hit and the vision started to go.
...let it end, God, just let it end please ... can't believe they actually shot me, all that time in Nam and not a scratch ... still see my hands all slick and warm ... there was so much blood, so much, too much and all mine ... cold and black ... they always said that there'd be light and voices and family, but there's only blackness ... blackness ... Marge? ...
Video was screaming, an endless sobbing agony. I don't want to see it anymore, I don't want to see it ...
But nothing could erase the sight in her mind. She projected it helplessly. In her mind, it overlaid everything, the reality of the mud in which she was sitting, the cold fog that wrapped around her, the ugly chunks of raw meat covered with tattered olive cloth that she very carefully avoided looking at but that kept intruding into her thoughts.
Video cried. She wailed. It did no good. There was no way to block out the scene.
Like a movie stuck in a pathetic, awful loop, Video replayed the scene she'd witnessed:
The sound came first, a loud erratic whine, then as she turned to look, the chopper came careening across the foggy bay. The craft was obviously in trouble, tilted way over and out of control. She thought for a moment it was going to make it, but even as she glimpsed the frightened dark face in the cockpit, one of the rotor blades tore into the earth, and the chopper slammed itself into the Rox. It disintegrated and exploded, transforming itself into a rolling blazing hell that left a trail of burning fuel and scattered broken corpses like gory seeds. Then the entire glowing incandescent ball slammed into the makeshift homes near the docks. They went up like tinder, roaring and throwing sparks.
There was no way to tell the nat screams from those of the jumpers, and the burning bodies all looked alike.
...Eavesdropping on Chickenhawk, I could hear him giving Kien the tale about the Egrets' last shipment of rapture, but every time Kien opened his mouth to reply, strange discordant sounds came out: sirens, explosions, an insistent rhythmic pounding. Kien kept talking through the din, waving his hands as if he were really saying something, only now they weren't in Kien's office at all but out in a field somewhere, and helicopters were circling...
Hell! Those are real choppers! Damn, I've been asleep ...
Chickenhawk, in his tower perch high above the Rox, rose cautiously to his feet and looked down at the Rox.
Omigod
The shock seared the images into his mind so that I saw them as well. Thunder roared from the jumper side of the docks. An impossible gout of orange and yellow flame tumbled into the dwellings there. The Rox was the set of a war movie, a night battle scene. Two helicopters had landed near the west wing, another in the front court; more were sweeping in from the bay. Flares dripped in the sky, searchlights tore bright holes in the darkness. Chickenhawk could see muzzle flashes and hear the chattering gunfire.
Choppers were landing on the jumper side of the island too.... full-scale assault ... makes sense. They'd've been told how the jumpers chewed up the cops. Best tactic would be to hit them fast, hard, and with lots of people ... fuck, two more choppers coming in from the east ... gotta see Bloat, see what he needs me to do ...
Chickenhawk launched himself from his roost, but somebody below must have seen the motion and shot at him, for suddenly his thoughts were panicked and strange, ...can't move the wing. ..falling ... oh dear God, it hurts ... all the wingbones snapped ...
He fell most of the way.
Panic leaked like bitter syrup from Blaise's mind. There are too many of them. I can't control them all. It was a spoken thought, and I knew that he was talking to Durg, for I also sensed that odd emptiness that was