Chapter 18 - THE CONVOY IN THE STORM
The deafening storm of lead shredded the desert terrain, sending shards of rock flying like razor-sharp shrapnel. Miller curled into a tight ball behind the rock outcropping, her hands clamped over her ears as the stone groaned under the kinetic onslaught.
Claire, however, remained low, her eyes scanning the rock shelf above them.
The helicopter banked hard to the left, circling to establish a secondary firing vector that would bypass their cover. The minigun barrel was smoking, spinning down momentarily as the pilot lined up his second pass.
"Sergeant!" Claire yelled over the wind and the deafening rotor wash. "Give me your flare gun!"
"What?" Miller shouted back, coughing on the stone dust filling the air.
"The emergency signal flare in your survival vest! Give it to me!"
Miller scrambled, ripping the orange plastic launcher from her tactical pocket and slapping it into Claire’s waiting hand along with a single 12-gauge red phosphorus flare cartridge.
Claire broke the barrel, loaded the flare, and snapped it shut. She didn't look at the helicopter; she looked at the mountain wind blowing through the scrub oak fifty yards down-slope.
"The pilot is using fourth-generation thermal imaging," Claire explained with rapid-fire clarity. "His optics are set to peak sensitivity to track our heat against the cold rock. If a high-intensity thermal source detonates directly in front of his sensor housing, it will cause an optical feedback loop, blinding his avionics for four seconds."
"You can't hit a moving helicopter with a plastic flare gun at seventy yards!" Miller screamed.
"I don't need to hit the helicopter," Claire replied. "I need to hit the rotor downwash."
She stepped out from behind the granite boulder, fully exposing herself to the circling gunship.
Inside the cockpit, the gunner laughed. "Target acquired! Standing out in the open! Engaging—"
Claire raised the orange flare gun with both hands. She waited for the helicopter to bank thirty degrees into the crosswind. She didn't aim at the cockpit. She aimed forty feet above and to the left of the aircraft, into the swirling aerodynamic vortex created by the heavy rotor blades.
She pulled the trigger.
The flare shot into the sky in an arching trail of white-hot phosphorus. It didn't strike the fuselage; instead, the massive vacuum of the main rotor sucked the flaming flare directly through the intake of the left turbine engine.
A blinding fireball erupted from the exhaust cowling. The turbine shrieked as its compressor blades disintegrated. The aircraft pitched violently to the right, alarms blaring inside the cabin as thick black smoke poured from the housing. The pilot fought the cyclic, desperate to maintain altitude, but the sudden asymmetric thrust threw the tail rotor out of balance.
The black helicopter spun out of control, clipping the edge of the quarry cliff with a catastrophic screech of twisting aluminum, before tumbling over the precipice and exploding into a violent orange fireball at the bottom of the canyon.
The shockwave rattled the stones beneath Miller’s boots. She slowly stood up, staring in absolute disbelief at the burning crater below.
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Claire was already moving, tossing the spent flare launcher into the dirt. "Move. That explosion bought us three minutes before their ground sweepers reach the ridge."
***
