Operation Southern Cross - 02 Read Free Page B

fire. “Sixteen onboard besides us!”
    Eliot heard the pilots’ cry down on the deck. The process of people escaping the copter had taken on an almost surreal turn: For every person to crawl out of the wreck, another appeared, like circus performers endlessly climbing out of a compact car.
    And what strange characters they were! They didn’t look like soldiers, and certainly not Special Ops forces. Almost all of them had longer-than-regulation hair and all of them were sporting unshaven faces. Not beards—simply unshaven. Their uniforms were torn and ragged.
    They look more like rock stars, Eliot thought.
    Finally the strange parade ended. The sixteen passengers were all accounted for, plus the two pilots. Some of the survivors had severe burns, but none looked life threatening.
    At that point in the confusion, a member of the fire team ran up to Eliot and literally pulled him to the back of the wrecked helicopter. The Chinook’s hindquarters were fully engulfed by flames, and the heat was growing tremendous. The crewman pointed to what was left of the rear end of the copter.
    There was a line of massive holes torn right through the copter’s skin. Each one was large enough to put a fist through.
    “Cannon shells?” Eliot thought aloud.
    “That’s my guess,” the crewman replied.
    But both knew what this meant: the Chinook didn’t crash on the Lex due to mechanical problems.
    It had been shot down.
    As this was sinking in, Eliot saw another fire fighter pointing up into the sky, off the rear of the boat. Another Chinook was up there, coming right for the deck. It was on fire too.
    Only those who saw it would believe what happened next. The second Chinook came in right over the first, cleared the last of the burning wreckage and slammed onto the deck just as the first one had, blowing out all four tires and intentionally sticking itself into the carrier’s landing surface.
    Both its escape hatches blew even before it crashed onto the deck—but this aircraft was burning worse than the first. It was almost totally engulfed at this point, and for a moment, it looked like everyone would be caught inside—the flames were moving that fast.
    Suddenly, a third copter appeared out of the darkness. It was a small, buglike craft and it was hardly making any noise. It came down right on top of the second burning Chinook, and by turning 25 degrees on its axis, directed its massive downwash back toward the rear of the stricken craft. It was a risky move—it could have fanned the flames and hastened disaster. But not this time.
    The downwash served to hold back the fire long enough for everyone on board the second Chinook to get out. They were as wet and steamy as their colleagues, but as a whole, in better shape.
    Suddenly the sky above the carrier was filled with helicopters. They seemed to be coming in all directions, slamming down onto the carrier as if some giant were swatting them out of the sky.
    The last copter in the flurry, a UH-60 Black Hawk bristling with weapons, ran out of gas just as it reached the Lexington . It came down the hardest of them all, up near the carrier’s control island. It bounced so violently, it nearly went right off the ship. Only by luck were the pilots able to balance it long enough for some of the Lex ’s crewmen to rush to the scene and literally pull it away from the edge.
    Dodging his way around the men in black jumping off the newly arrived copters, Eliot huffed his way back toward the control island to help the survivors of this third crash. He noticed that nearly all of the black helicopters had gaping holes in them, more evidence that the Special Ops unit had been attacked in midair.
    Eliot’s head was spinning by this time. One moment they had been happily floating through the Caribbean like a celebrity cruise ship—and now his deck was awash in smoke and flames and chaos.
    What had happened here? Where had these copters been? And what would have happened if the Lex hadn’t