Victor O'Reilly - The Devil's footprint

Oshima drew her 9mm Makarov pistol and placed the tip of the barrel against the pilot's scrotum.

"Listen, you fuckhead," she snarled. "If you don't do what I tell you, I'm going to shoot this decoration off. Whatever it contains, it certainly isn't balls."

The pilot started shaking. But he landed.

Amid the destruction and the carnage, the Yaibo barracks was still miraculously intact. Oshima felt a surge of pride as she approached. Though the perimeter guards had been vanquished, the force she had trained was made of tougher stuff. There might be casualties, but most would have survived, she was sure of it. Two minutes after she entered the building, over the background sounds of conflagration and the moaning of the wounded and the sharp crack of exploding ammunition, the pilot heard the most terrible bloodcurdling scream. It was piercingly loud and it rose to a crescendo before it fell, and then this dreadful cadence was repeated again and again.

It was the most awful sound he had ever heard in his life.

Five minutes later, Oshima staggered out the front door and then collapsed. The pilot went to help her, and as he lifted her to her feet he saw with horror that her clothing was completely saturated in blood.

She clawed at him and he pushed her away in panic, but she clung on to him and would not let go. Her fingernails ripped his face, and he could feel his flesh tearing.

"They're all dead!" she screamed. "Everyone! Everyone! Everyone! Everyone! They're all dead!

"There's nothing but blood! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!"

The words hammered out of her. Her spittle showered his face. He wanted to retch. At first he thought Oshima was experiencing some kind of breakdown, but then he realized that what he was witnessing was nothing of the sort.

It was an uncontrollable rage.

Outside the Devil's Footprint,

Tecuno, Mexico

Seven minutes had passed.

Fitzduane was methodically searching the terrain around them with the FLIR, but there was no sign of Calvin. Behind him, Cochrane was doing much the same thing with his night-vision equipment.

Three mercenary soldiers ran out of the black smoke that had now settled over the perimeter road and stopped in shock as, at the last minute, they saw the menacing black wedge shape that was Shadow One.

In their initial panic as the road column was shot up, they had dropped their weapons. Most were campesinos – young men, peasants, wanting no more than to go home and be with their families.

They stared at the Guntrack, frozen with fear, uncertain what to do.

Let them live, said Fitzduane's heart. They are the enemy, but they can do us no harm.

Kill them, his mind said. They have seen us and they just might say something that could help the opposition, and I owe it to my people to see they are given every chance.

I have no choice.

He fired the pump-action grenade launcher that was kept clipped beside the driver's seat and the three soldiers shot backward as a swarm of hundreds of miniature flechette darts ripped them asunder.

He felt nauseated.

A laser beam cut through the darkness and settled on him. He could imagine the enemy gunner registering his aim and he knew, at that precise moment, that he was going to die. He thought of Boots and he felt a great sadness that he would never see his young son grow. He thought of…

The laser flicked out and then on again, and there was an irregular rhythm to the beam. Then the beam slowly rose to the vertical and cut into the night sky pointing at the stars.

Morse code: ‘C-A-L-V-I-N.’

The exhilaration that follows despair gripped him. He gunned the engine and drove toward the source of the light. He'd been an idiot. The light was the type that only Team Rapier could see through special filters. This was not the enemy.

A skirmishing line of enemy troops showed up ahead of them just beyond the light source. Through his night vision goggles, Fitzduane could see they were armed and purposeful and that this was a different problem to the three he had just killed.

He accelerated and turned slightly to the left so that he would break ground above the light source and have a clear shot at the enemy.

The mercenaries had no night vision goggles, but the heard the rapidly approaching engine noise and opened fire. Flashes could be seen in the darkness, and there was the zip and crack of rounds passing over and around the Guntrack.

An aiming laser flashed out from Cochrane's GECAL and a moment later the weapon began to fire. Fitzduane halted the Guntrack and emptied the magazine of his grenade launcher. In just five seconds, the area occupied by the mercenary patrol was hit by more than a thousand metal projectiles. Their firing ceased.

The friendly laser flashed on again. Fitzduane zigzagged down the hill toward it and at last Calvin could be seen. He lay there on his back tied to the wing with carabiners, but there was no sign of the fuselage.

Fitzduane leaped out while Ross kept watch, cut the aviator free, then bundled him into the front gunner's seat, gave him a headset, and plugged him into the intercom.

The entire exercise took no more than forty-five seconds. Calvin was bruised and had a broken ankle and was in some pain, but otherwise he seemed in reasonable condition. Fitzduane felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He contemplated giving the aviator morphine but decided against it.

The grim fact was that someone might need it more urgently later. The shooting was not necessarily over. They had to exfiltrate successfully, and that, in special-forces operations such as this, was always the hardest part. The element of surprise was gone and now they were the hunted.

He talked to Calvin as he drove to distract him from the pain. "You went up with an engine, Calvin," he said as he sped through the night toward the RV point, "but came down without one. What gives?"

Calvin forced a laugh.

"After I got the helicopter gunship with the RAW, I got chased by a much smaller machine. It wasn't armed as such, but someone inside it had a weapon and went after me as if it was personal.

"Well, I maneuvered every which way and my whole machine started coming apart. The struts had already been damaged over the airfield and jury-rigged, and these kind of gymnastics were just too much. The fuselage and engine decided to go their own way, and I had no parachute. And I was a couple thousand feet up. In addition, AK-47 rounds were pinging off the engine. It was a little hairy."

Fitzduane could imagine the reality behind the dry account. "So what did you do, Calvin?" he said. "Wake up?"

"I went back in aviation history a bit," said Calvin through clenched teeth as the Guntrack hit a rough patch. "The chopper was shooting at the fuselage for the obvious reason that that is where the pilot sits."

"So?" said Fitzduane encouragingly.

"Flex flying all started with the wing alone," said Calvin. "Suspending a fuselage for the pilot to sit in and to hold an engine came much later. Well, that being the case, the solution was obvious."

"Not to me, it isn't," said Fitzduane. Wearing PNV goggles, his world endless shades of green, he was driving over the appalling terrain as fast as the terrain would allow, and his concentration – to put it mildly – was not entirely on Calvin's story.

"I clipped my harness to the wing and then cut free the fuselage and engine," said Calvin. "The helicopter followed the fuselage down and blew it apart as it fell, and I just flew the wing down like a hang glider. It worked fine. I didn't need a parachute. I don't know why I was worried.

Fitzduane nearly choked with laughter and reaction.

"Fucking A!" said Cochrane.

Fitzduane recovered and then started to laugh again, and the Guntrack slithered and bucked and jumped and raced across the shale and gravel toward the RV, and up in the sky their salvation flew toward them.