“My twelve—” Ritzik heard Sandman’s voice in his earpiece. It was followed by one-two-three three-shot bursts. Now he stepped up and entered the chopper cavity. Moved quickly but smoothly heel-toe, heel-toe over the greasy decking, easing to his right along the bulkhead following in Doc Masland’s trail, his pistol’s field of fire centered on the far-side rear corner of the fuselage.
Doc shouted, “My two—” and fired two three-shot bursts.
There was movement at Ritzik’s ten o’clock. His pistol came up and he put one-two-three-four shots into the target. It wasn’t clean shooting but it was effective.
And then Ritzik’s weapon locked back. He’d forgotten to count rounds. He was empty. Like some damn greenhorn on his first day in the shoot house. He was a freaking overpaid RTO. He shouted, “Cover!”
Without removing his gaze from possible threats, Ritzik dropped the magazine out of the well, slipped to one knee, retrieved a fresh fifteen-rounder from his thigh and smacked it into place with the flat of his hand, then released the slide with his right thumb. He shouted, “Okay!” and stood.
Just in time to catch movement at his twelve. Ritzik and Masland shot simultaneously and a Chinese soldier went down. Masland was moving now, using his foot to kick weapons away from dead hands. Quickly, he checked the bodies for signs of life. He found none. He shouted, “Clear!”
Mickey D vaulted into the chopper and made for the cockpit. He reached over the bodies for the power switches and shut the engines down. “Bill, gimme a hand.” The pair of them pulled the dead pilot and his number two out of their shoulder harnesses and seat belts. They dragged the corpses aft and rolled them out of the hatch. The pilot slapped the HIP’s airframe. “I’m going to see if it’s still fly-able,” he said to his partner.
Ritzik helped Doc Masland pull six Chinese soldiers out of the HIP’s cargo cabin. With the door gunner, the two pilots, and the other three from the ladder, there were ten in all. Ritzik pressed the transmit button on his radio. “Rowdy, Loner — sit-rep me.”
Rowdy’s voice came back strong. “We got fourteen hostile DOAs and one aircraft down, Loner. No friendly casualties.”
That was good news. And there was more: Bill Sandman reported that HIP One’s machine gun was operational, with two seven-hundred-round ammo containers secured adjacent to the doorway. Rowdy discovered a third box undamaged in HIP Two.
He watched for a few seconds more, then struggled back up to the crest of the ravine to find Wei-Liu. She was still where he’d left her. She sat, hunkered, her arms tucked around her knees, her face and neck still smeared with cammo cream, although it was obvious to Ritzik that she’d tried to remove it. She didn’t look happy.
“What’s up?”
“You just … killed them all … “ she said. Ritzik was not in the mood for clichés. “What’s your point?”
Wei-Liu started to say something. But Ritzik cut in first. “People like you think war is sterile,” he said, “because that’s the way you’ve seen it, on television. Oh, you see wounded kids. You see the casualties of suicide bombers. You see victims. God, how good television is at showing victims. But that’s not war. War is chaos. War is nasty stuff. It’s about killing people. Killing people and breaking things. War is not nice, Tracy. It’s not a computer game, or a movie. It’s horrific. It’s blood and pain and violence and confusion, and mistakes that cost lives and idiots issuing orders that get people killed. But when it comes down to the real nitty-gritty, war is about killing other human beings, before other human beings kill you.”
He looked down at her. “So, yes, we killed them all. What would you have me do? Declare a time-out? Ask them to leave us alone? Make ‘em promise not to tell anybody we were here and send ‘em on their way? For chrissakes, Tracy, we’re violating China’s sovereignty. That’s a bloody act of war. Can you imagine the consequences if one of us was captured?”
“I hadn’t thought about it in that way.”
Why the hell hadn’t she? She was a freaking high government official. She should have “thought about it that way.” Ritzik bore down on her. “Why not? After all, you had a hand in designing the sensors — and they’re the reason we’re here.”
“But that’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. The sensors are technical tools. They’re no different from a satellite, or the kind of SIGINT or TECHINT the National Security Agency gathers.”
“Except for one element,” Ritzik said.
“Which is?”
