On cue, a hydraulic motor whirred to life, and the steel bulkhead at the rear of the helicopter slowly angled down from the ceiling and exposed a tapestry of pitch black behind them. All three SEALs turned to look over the heads of the other passengers.

“What’s going on?” one of the SEALs shouted.

“A helicopter,” Dave replied. “Not sure if it’s hostile, but we have to assume it is.”

“How long?”

Dave echoed Charlie’s assessment. “Not long.”

The SEALs turned for their respective doors and slid them open. With the two side doors and the ramp open, wind whipped through the cabin and jostled those still huddled protectively over the Agency officer. But they ignored the distraction and immediately went to work clipping into their safety tethers and swinging the miniguns out over the water to make them ready.

Dave looked down at Ron caring for his patient, then strode aft to clip into the safety line on the ramp. He removed the pin securing his minigun to its mount, then pivoted it left and right and prepared for a target to appear behind them. He hated that they wouldn’t have advance notice of the enemy helicopter’s approach, but he figured it would become apparent soon enough.

* * *

Charlie’s muscles in his upper back tensed up as he continued flying the Hip on toward Scarborough Shoal. The red light on the radar warning receiver flickered occasionally to indicate they were still only detecting the side lobe of the HQ-9’s surveillance radar, but that was no longer the immediate threat. Even the J-15 Flankers from Lingshui had taken a back seat to the rapidly closing helicopter.

Low on fuel, enemy fighters chasing us, a surface-to-air missile targeting us, and now an enemy helicopter? Charlie shook his head. He should have taken the Life Flight job in North Carolina instead of going to the dark side. Closest alligator to the canoe, Charlie.

“Five miles,” Roger said.

“What the hell is it?”

Roger keyed the microphone again to call on their support network operating from the safety of Clark Air Base. “Scar Nine Nine, do you have any tipper on this helo yet?”

The pause was shorter this time. “We’re not certain, but we think it’s likely a Z-10.”

“A what?” Charlie asked.

“It’s an attack helicopter,” Roger said.

“Armed with what?”

“It was designed for the ground forces as an anti-tank helicopter. Think of it like the Chinese version of the Apache. We can count on it having a chain gun, but it’s also capable of carrying air-to-air missiles.”

Super, Charlie thought.

Suddenly, the darkness just left of their nose tore open with the bright staccato of gunfire aimed in their general direction, and brilliant balls of fire streaked past them on their left side. Charlie flinched, but he gripped the controls firmly to avoid driving them into the water — the instinct to duck under the gunfire was almost overpowering.

“Get ready!” he yelled over his shoulder, though he knew the SEALs wouldn’t be able to hear his warning over the wind noise in the cabin. He just hoped they had seen the incoming tracer fire and knew what was coming.

The gunfire stopped, and Charlie angled his nose toward the incoming helicopter in hopes of taking it close aboard to prevent it from articulating its nose-mounted chain gun after the merge. The one advantage they had over the Z-10 were the three Navy SEALs manning the miniguns.

Suddenly, the blinking red light on the dash flared brighter and was accompanied by an alarm that drowned out every other sound in the cockpit. Charlie saw the flickering light burn solid and didn’t have to ask. He knew a fire control radar was now targeting them, and it didn’t really matter whether it was from the helicopter or surface-to-air missile battery.

It’s showtime.

A flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye drew Charlie’s attention to an ominous shadow filling the left side of his windscreen. He abruptly shoved the collective toward the floor while yanking back on the cyclic, compensating for the reduced torque with left pedal before pivoting to fly underneath the merging attack chopper. It was a pure instinctive reaction, and he felt a bubble of fear catch in his throat.

He yanked up on the collective to arrest their descent toward the water, but before he could shout another warning over his shoulder to the gunners, the night split open with a buzz saw of fire from the left minigun.

Get ’em, squids!

41

Mace 201

Navy FA-18E Super Hornet