Clive Cussler - Shock Wave

Stokes stole a glance sideways as he leveled out the floatplane and picked up speed. The helicopter hard veered off. The copilot was slumped sideways in his seat behind several bullet holes in the plastic bubble of the cockpit. Stokes was surprised to find that the Beaver still responded to his commands. What surprised him even more was the look on Pitt’s face. It was sheer disappointment.

“Damn!” Pitt muttered. “I missed.”

“What are you talking about? You hit the copilot.”

Pitt, angry at himself, stared at him. “I was aiming at the rotor assembly.”

“You timed it perfectly,” Stokes complimented him. “How did you know the exact instant to give me the signal and then shoot?”

“The pilot stopped smiling.”

Stokes let it go. They weren’t out of the storm yet. Broadmoor’s village was still thirty kilometers away.

“They’re coming around for another pass,” said Pitt.

“No sense in attempting the same dodge.”

Pitt nodded. “I agree. The pilot will be expecting it. This time pull back on the control column and do an Immelmann.”

“What’s an Immelmann?”

Pitt looked at him. “You don’t know? How long have you been flying, for God’s sake?”

“Twenty-one hours, give or take.”

“Oh, that’s just great,” Pitt groaned. “Pull up in a half loop and then do a half roll at the top, to end up going in the opposite direction.”

“I’m not sure I’m up for that.”

“Don’t the Mounties have qualified professional pilots?”

“None who were available for this assignment,” Stokes said stiffly. “Think you might hit a vital part of the chopper this time?”

“Not unless I’m amazingly lucky,” Pitt replied. “I’m down to three rounds.”

There was no hesitating on the part of the Defender’s pilot. He angled in for a direct attack from above and to the side of his helpless quarry. A well-designed attack that left little room for Stokes to maneuver.

“Now!” Pitt yelled. “Put your nose down to gain speed and then pull up into your loop.”

Stokes’ inexperience caused hesitation. He was barely coming to the top of the loop in preparation for the half roll when the 7.62 millimeter shells began smashing into the floatplane’s thin aluminum skin. The windshield burst into a thousand pieces as shells hammered the instrument panel. The Defender’s pilot altered his aim and raked his fire from the cockpit across the fuselage. It was an error that kept the Beaver in the air. He should have blasted the engine.

Pitt fired off his final three rounds and hurled himself forward and down to make himself as small a target as possible in an act that was pure illusion.

Remarkably, Stokes had completed the Immelmann, late to be sure, but now the Beaver was headed away from the helicopter before its pilot could swing his craft around 180 degrees. Pitt shook his head in dazed incredulity and checked his body for wounds. Except for a rash of small cuts on his face from slivers that had flown off the shattered windshield, he was unscathed. The Beaver was in level flight, and the radial engine was still roaring smoothly at full revolutions. The engine was the only part of the plane that hadn’t been riddled with bullets. He looked at Stokes sharply.

“Are you okay?”

Stokes slowly turned and gazed at Pitt through unfocused eyes. “I think the bastards just shot me out of my pension,” he murmured. He coughed and then his lips were painted with blood that seeped down his chin and trickled onto his chest. Then he slumped forward against his shoulder harness, unconscious.

Pitt took the copilot’s control wheel in his hands and immediately threw the floatplane around into a hard 180-degree bank until he was heading back on a course toward Mason Broadmoor’s village. His snap turn caught the helicopter’s pilot off guard, and a shower of bullets sprayed the empty air behind the floatplane’s tail.

He wiped away the blood that had trailed into one eye and took stock. Most of the aircraft was stitched with over a hundred holes, but the control systems and surfaces were undamaged and the big 450 Wasp engine was still pounding away on every one of its cylinders.

Now what to do?

The first plan that ran through his mind was to make an attempt at ramming the helicopter. The old take ’em with you routine, Pitt mused. But that’s all it could have been, an attempt. The Defender was far more nimble in the air than the lumbering Beaver with its massive pontoons. He’d stand as much chance as a cobra against a mongoose, a fight the mongoose never failed to win against the slower cobra. Only when it came up against a rattlesnake did the mongoose go down to defeat. The crazy thought running through Pitt’s mind became divine inspiration as he sighted a low ridge of rocks about half a kilometer ahead and slightly to his right.

There was a path toward the rocks through a stand of tall Douglas fir trees. He dove between the trees, his wingtips brushing the needles of the upper branches. To anyone else it would have seemed like a desperate act of suicidal madness. The gambit misled the Defender’s pilot, who broke off the third attack and followed slightly above and behind the floatplane, waiting to observe what looked like a certain crash.

Pitt kept the throttle full against its stop and gripped the control wheel with both hands, eyes focused on the wall of rocks that loomed ahead. The airstream blasted through the shattered windshield, and he was forced to turn his head sideways in order to see. Fortunately, the gale swept away the trickling blood and the tears that it pried from his squinting eyes.

He flew on between the trees. There could be no misjudgment, no miscalculation. He had to make the right move at the exact moment in time. A tenth of a second either way would spell certain death. The rocks were rushing toward the plane as if driven from behind. Pitt could clearly see them now, gray-and-brown jagged boulders with black streaks. He didn’t have to look to see the needle on the altimeter registering on zero or the needle on the tachometer wavering far into the red The old girl was hurtling toward destruction just as fast as she could fly.

“Low!” he shouted into the wind rushing through the smashed windshield. “Two meters low!”

He barely had time to compensate before the rocks were on him. He gave the control column a precisely measured jerk, just enough to raise the plane’s nose, just enough so the tips of the propeller whipped over the ridge, missing the crest by centimeters. He heard the sudden crunch of metal as the aluminum floats smashed into the rocks and tore free of the fuselage. The Beaver shot into the air, as graceful as a soaring hawk released from its tether. Unburdened by the weight of the bulky floats, which lay smashed against the rocks, and with the drag on the aircraft decreased by nearly half, the ancient plane became more maneuverable and gained another thirty knots in airspeed. She responded to Pitt’s commands instantly, without a trace of sluggishness as she chewed the air, fighting for altitude.

Now, he thought, a satanic grin on his lips, I’ll show you an Immelmann. He threw the aircraft into a half loop and then snapped it over in a half roll, heading on a direct course toward the helicopter. “Write your will, sucker!” he shouted, his voice drowned out by the rush of wind and the roar of the engine’s exhaust. “Here comes the Red Baron.”

Too late the chopper’s pilot read Pitt’s intentions. There was nowhere to dodge, nowhere to hide. The last thing he expected was an assault by the battered old floatplane. But here it was closing on a collision course at almost two hundred knots. It came roaring at him at a speed he didn’t believe possible. He made a series of violent maneuvers, but the pilot of the old floatplane anticipated his moves and kept coming on. He angled the helicopter’s nose toward his opponent in a wild attempt to blast the punctured Beaver out of the sky before the imminent crash.