The Delta Read Free Page A

came up behind the Land Rover again. With no visible or briefed ground-to-air threat, he cut his airspeed and brought the helicopter down, until he was no more than thirty metres above ground level. At this height and speed, and from a distance of no morethan two hundred metres from the target, there was little chance of the gunner missing.
    â€˜Firing now.’
    The first pair of rockets left their pods and scribed two trails of white smoke across the sky. One landed to the left of the vehicle and the other detonated just behind the moving target. For a moment, the truck was obscured in a cloud of earth, stones and smoke.
    â€˜It’s hit,’ the pilot said, ‘but still moving. Gunner, fire another salvo.’
    The vehicle was crabbing badly, its right rear tyre shredded by the blast.
    Sibanda had to admit a grudging respect for the assassin. If it was him, though, he would have tried to escape on foot.
    Two more rockets rushed away from the Hind and this time the gunner’s aim was true. One of the projectiles smashed its way through the glass of the rear door of the Land Rover and detonated inside it. The vehicle ploughed to a halt, ablaze and smoking.
    â€˜Set me down,’ Sibanda said to the pilot. ‘I need to check what’s left of the body.’
    The Javelin was an anti-armour weapon and had not been designed to take out an aircraft, but Sonja saw no reason not to give it a try, especially as the pilot was now bringing the Hind gunship down to land.
    The laser range finder reading on the screen put the helicopter at twelve hundred and forty-three metres from her, well within the missile’s killing range.
    She had planned for a number of different eventualities, but not the presence of a helicopter gunship. She’d needed a sizeable, convincing and moving target to take the helicopter’s attentionaway from her, which was why she had set the Land Rover’s hand throttle to about four kilometres per hour, tied the steering wheel in place and then jumped out of the moving vehicle.
    Had the gunner and pilot not been concentrating so intently on the four-by-four they might have spotted the lone figure, or the flattened path she had left. But like typical men they had been too intent on finding something to blow up.
    A fire had started in the grass, ignited by burning fuel from the vehicle. Smoke, combined with dust and grass thrown up by the chopper’s downwash, had temporarily obscured it from view. This wasn’t a problem, however, as the Javelin also boasted an infra-red detection function, designed literally to see through the fog of war. Sonja selected IR on the screen and the glowing image of the Hind, lit up by the heat of its exhaust, materialised from the gloom in front of her eyes. She selected top attack. Even if it missed the body of the machine the warhead would take the Hind down through its spinning rotors.
    â€˜
Fambai Zvakanaka
, you bastards,’ she whispered, bidding the crew goodbye in Shona as she squeezed the trigger.
    Kenneth Sibanda had slid open the door of the small cargo compartment in the rear of the Hind and was sitting in the hatch, his legs dangling outside and ready to jump to the ground as soon as the wheels met terra firma. The helicopter bucked.
    He still had his headphones on and heard the pilot shout, ‘Missile inbound!’
    Sibanda looked over his shoulder and saw the smoky track of the weapon, arcing up into the sky. The grass was no more than four metres below him. He ripped the headset off and launched himself out into space.
    The Hind started to rise above him as Sibanda hit the ground and executed a parachute landing fall, his feet and kneestogether and his elbows tucked in beside his body. He rolled as he landed, spreading the impact down one side of his body, and moving clear of the shadow of the helicopter. At that instant the missile screamed down from heaven and smashed its way through a rotor blade, then the metal