River of Ruin (26 page)

Brains were boiled within skulls, blood within tissue, skin within clothing and finally the aluminum body of the helicopter began to melt. The blinding arcs of electricity and the pop of air exploding from the thermal onslaught erupted from behind a mist of ozone, charred metal and flesh. The chopper burned like a meteor when it finally dropped from the power line and plowed into the storm-swollen stream in the valley’s floor.

The Gazelle and the second gunship were forced to break away to avoid the flaming wreck, giving the Legionnaire team a few moments’ respite. Carlson, Bruneseau, and Mercer each congratulated Lauren for the maneuver even if it was the pilot who’d pulled it off.

They linked up with the Chagres River, the main source of water that fed the Panama Canal, about two miles before it spilled into the man-made waterway. They were still twenty-five miles from Panama City and no one felt the earlier confidence that the choppers would break off the chase once they reached the town.

“Oh,
merde
!” Foch screamed as the second gunship flashed into view. It flew at a slight angle so the door gunner could bring his .30 caliber to bear.

The first blast missed the JetRanger by a few feet. The second came almost immediately and ripped into the tail, producing the metallic snarl of hardened ammunition meeting delicate machinery. By the time Foch leaned out to look for the gunship, it had swooped out of view.

“Mercer, your side.”

Mercer felt more than saw the black shape settle in off the starboard side of the helicopter. Before he was certain, he fired anyway. His assault rifle felt puny compared to the barrage that slammed the chopper again. Heavy rounds passed right through the open cargo door and several more ripped into the metal that protected the JetRanger’s critical main transmission.

“Lauren, get us on the deck,” he yelled, changing out an empty magazine.

In a gut-wrenching dive, the chopper raced for the swollen waters of the Chagres, coming level only when they were mere feet from its boiling surface. Almost immediately Carlson popped up again as they leaped over a trestle bridge that supported the trans-isthmus railroad and one lane of automobile traffic. Had a train been on the bridge they would have smeared themselves against its side.

About to turn to the left toward the Gaillard Cut and Panama City, Carlson saw that the Gazelle had managed to cut him off and hung just above the canal with a cluster of armed troopers at its open door. Six assault rifles opened as one, six bright eyes that continued to wink as the first of the 5.8mm rounds found their mark. He jinked as bullets cut through the Plexiglas canopy, managing to keep everyone alive for a moment longer.

Here the canal was flanked by gentle slopes that had been recently peeled back in an effort to stem the remorseless avalanches that had plagued the waterway since its construction. It resembled a lazy river more than an engineering marvel. Still, Carlson couldn’t trade off his speed for altitude to pull them out of the canal.

He cut right, away from civilization, and had to swing around a massive container ship headed toward the canal’s choke point at Gaillard.

From the door of the chopper hurtling just fifteen feet above the green water, the container ship appeared to be a solid wall of black steel and multicolored containers that seemed to stretch to the horizon. The cargo vessel’s wing bridge towered sixty feet above them. A burst from the gunship missed the JetRanger and exploded in a blossom of ricochets against the ship’s thick hide.

While the canal’s locks were one thousand feet long and more than a hundred wide, her builders had envisioned several ships at once passing into them, not vessels built to the lock’s monolithic proportions. Even with the widening of the Gaillard Cut to 624 feet, the original plan of continuous two-way traffic had been abandoned. Navigation was too tricky to allow the PANAMAX ships, those vessels designed specifically to maximize the space in the locks, to pass each other in the canal’s tightest point. As a result, PANAMAX freighters, tankers and even the new fleets of super cruise liners transited in daylight hours and only in one direction at a time, while smaller ships used the canal at night and could transit in either direction.

No sooner had the JetRanger rocketed past the stern of the container ship than she had to swing wide to avoid a tanker headed straight for her. Rising from the mist beyond was an eighty-thousand-ton cruise ship glistening like a white wedding cake. It was a procession of Goliaths.

“Where now?” Carlson asked over the intercom, his voice tight even as his hands on the controls remained relaxed.

“Stay away from the cruise ship,” Lauren answered. “We can’t risk them getting caught in a cross fire.”

Bruneseau grunted as if he thought using the passenger vessel as cover was a good idea.

“Right,” the Aussie said.

“How about Gamboa?” Mercer suggested. He’d seen the town on the map and knew it was the headquarters for the canal’s dredging operation. He hoped there was a chopper pad or field nearby where they could set down.

Lauren agreed. “Better than anything else out here.” The recently leveled banks were too exposed to gunfire from above to risk a landing.

In the five-hundred-yard gap between the tanker and the cruise ship, the Chinese helicopter came at them again. This time the chopper angled in so the door gunner could fire down at the JetRanger. Much of the barrage hit the water like so many pebbles tossed into a pond, but enough bullets hit the helo to cause a skip in the engine.

“Oil pressure dropping,” Carlson said. “That burst was fatal.”

Gamboa was a half mile farther up the canal.

Resisting the urge to fire up at the gunship because his bullets would hit their own spinning rotor, Mercer was impotent as another blast of .30 caliber sprayed across the JetRanger. Like magic, small holes appeared in the ceiling and floor of the helo as rounds passed right through. One was only three inches from where he crouched and he could smell the scorched metal before the odor was whipped away. The turbine’s steady whine deepened. It was grinding against itself, unbalanced and ready to come apart.

Trailing a dilating plume of oil smoke, they streaked past the eight-hundred-foot cruise ship. Like fans at a stadium, a wave of arms shot up along the ship’s rail as stunned passengers watched the JetRanger’s progress, then turned in unison as the two choppers chasing her came into view.

With a quick scan, Lauren checked the cockpit gauges and knew that they’d never make Gamboa. The only alternative was setting down on the water. They might be able to hover long enough for her and the men in the hold to get clear but Carlson would surely die when the blades hit. And then what? They would be stuck without cover while the gunship stood off and machine-gunned them one by one. There had to be another alternative.

She looked up just as another massive cargo ship rounded a corner in the meandering canal and Lauren knew what she had to do. “Carlson, there!” She pointed ahead.

The vessel lumbering through the canal was a utilitarian box set on an unstreamlined hull. Without porthole or window, she rose from the waterline to her top deck in sheer walls of steel—a height of 87 feet, making her barely wider than she was tall. Her single deck was an expanse of metal measuring 750 feet long by 106 wide, punctured by a one-story pilothouse hunched close to her blunt bows. Her hull was painted in rust-streaked green while the deck was a faded yellow. By the thick red band showing above the waves, Lauren could tell she was running near empty.

She’d spent enough time in Panama to recognize the ship as a car carrier, probably deadheading back to Japan or Korea from Europe. Within the enormous box of her hull would be between eight and twelve decks, connected by ramps, for her load of automobiles. Some of these ships, she knew, could carry up to seven thousand cars and their holds resembled the parking garage at an urban airport, only fully enclosed and capable of traversing the globe at twenty knots. There would be loading ramps at her stern and starboard midships that could be lowered like medieval draw-bridges to allow vehicles to be driven directly to their assigned parking spaces.

As they got closer to the auto carrier, she saw where the ship’s funnel rose like a pimple at the vessel’s stern. Near it was an access box for a staircase. If they could land close enough to the stairs they might make it into the steel confines before the gunship cut them down.

Another rattle of autofire hit the JetRanger and suddenly she could no longer feel Carlson’s hands on the controls. She looked over. The Aussie pilot had let go of the sticks and clutched at his thigh, his fingers already slick with blood. Contorted with pain, he met her eye and nodded.

“I have the controls,” she said.

“How bad?” Bruneseau asked over the intercom, leaning farther into the cockpit to check on his man.

“Leg,” Carlson panted. “Bullet’s still in there. Oh, Jesus.”

Mercer hadn’t seen what had happened. The gunship had swung across the side of the JetRanger right into view. He fired a full clip, joined by a long burst from Foch, who was still strapped in at the other door. The gunship broke off, turning her tail to gain distance before twisting back again, her door gun pounding.

“Where’s the Gazelle?” Mercer shouted, a fresh magazine ready to be slapped home.

“I don’t know!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lauren cut in as the struggling chopper clawed its way up to the deck of the car carrier. “Prepare for a crash landing.”

“Gather the weapons,” Bruneseau added. “Run for the stairs as soon as we hit.”

The engine coughed again as Lauren fought to gain enough altitude to clear the ship’s railing, still thirty feet above the helicopter. They were less than a hundred yards from the slab side of the car carrier, and it seemed the vector she’d chosen wouldn’t be enough. She goosed the engine again, wincing as it skipped, her concentration solely on getting them down safely.

Like a thoroughbred taking a fence, the JetRanger gathered itself at the last moment and flashed over the railing just as the engine quit. The rotor’s momentum gave just enough lift to avoid a fatal crash but the skids hit the deck hard enough to snap one strut and pitch them forward. Sliding across the rain-slicked surface, the aircraft hit a stanchion and stopped dead. Carlson managed to shut off the fuel as the men in the hold scrambled out into the storm. The Gazelle was closing fast from two hundred yards off, while the gunship was out of sight below the side of the ship.

Ignoring the plight of the others, Bruneseau ran for the staircase door. Lauren had already hit the quick disconnect on her safety harness, so when Mercer yanked open her door, she jumped down, ducking because the chopper’s lop-sided position allowed one arc of the turning rotor to cut just three feet from the deck. He pushed her toward where Bruneseau held open the stairway door and swung around to help Foch, who’d just eased the pilot out of the chopper.

Without warning, the gunship appeared over the railing. Her rotors kicked up a tornado whirlwind that drove sheets of rain across the deck. Because of the wall of swirling water, the gunner’s aim was off by a few feet. He had to muscle the .30 caliber to correct. Mercer was holding up Carlson’s right arm, which left his own right hand free. The range was fifty feet and even one-handed he couldn’t miss. He raised his FAMAS on its sling and began firing even before he had centered his aim. Sparks exploded along the ship’s railing in a trail leading toward the hovering chopper. The Chinese door gunner was almost set when the trail reached him. His body bucked against his safety straps and jerked like a marionette as Mercer poured in the fire. He only went slack when the gunship heaved itself away from the auto carrier.

“Come on,” Lauren’s alto sounded over the rain and the echo of combat. The Gazelle was fast approaching.

With Carlson between them, Mercer and Foch ran for the stairs, hunching under the rounds Bruneseau sprayed over their heads to keep the Chinese troop copter at bay. Once safely inside the stairwell, Mercer slammed the door. The stairwell was a steel shaft that dropped straight down for eleven decks, with scissor stairs that cut the distance in steep zigzags. Heavy doors led to each of the separate decks. Mercer passed Carlson off to Rene and reached for the fire ax clipped to the wall. He turned back and with one perfectly placed blow wedged the blade into the gap between the door and the jamb.

“That’ll hold them for a few minutes.” His breathing was already returning to normal as adrenaline drained from his bloodstream.

“I got us here, boys.” Lauren’s face glistened and her eyes shone with the triumph of her successful landing. “It’s up to you to get us out again.”

“There should be a lifeboat one deck above the waterline,” Mercer informed them, hoping the auto carrier was outfitted the same as the super tanker he’d once been on near Seattle. “It’s launched down a rail like a bobsled. If we can reach it we might be able to get away.”

“If the Gazelle lands, it won’t be able to take off in time to catch us before we reach shore, but what about the gunship?”

Bruneseau had a valid point. Mercer was about to say that he suspected the other chopper would clear out. The crews on all three ships that had witnessed the aerial duel would be contacting the Panamanian authorities. He didn’t think Liu could afford to answer the kinds of questions they would ask if his chopper was identified. Before he could voice his reply, bullets pounded the door and harmlessly bounced away.

“Later.” Foch rebraced Carlson and started down the stairs. “Let’s go.”

They’d descended just two decks when an explosion blasted down the shaft, a heavy wall of hot air that was immediately sucked back up due to pressure change. The door had just been blown from its hinges by a grenade or satchel charge. A dozen rounds were fired into the antechamber at the head of the stairs, and when the Chinese received no return fire, they’d come pouring down the stairs like banshees.