The needle of the rate-of-climb indicator rose jerkily; they were climbing at two hundred feet a minute.
"Where's the Hind?" Sean yelled at Job.
"She must be down," Job called back, both of them screaming at each other with terror and excitement and the triumph of it.
"Nothing could take a hit like that." Then his voice changed.
"No, there she is, she's still flying. My God, will you look at that mother?"
The Hind was hard hit, skittering out to one side, the tail rotor and rudder torn, almost completely gone. Obviously her pilot was fighting for her life as she lurched and rolled and wallowed about the sky.
"I don't believe ill She's still shooting at us!" Job cried, and a smoking rocket trail blazed across their nose.
"She's steadying." Job was watching her through the side window. "She's coming round, she's after us again."
Sean met the Hercules'climb and aimed for the pass through the hills. The rocky cliffs seemed to brush their wingtips, and the foaming white waterfall flashed beneath them.
"He has fired a missile." As Job called the warning, the pass through the hills opened up ahead of them, and Sean lifted the Hercules" maimed wing high in a maximum-rate turn.
The huge aircraft hugged the cliff face, turning the corner just as the Swatter missile locked onto the infrared emissions of her exhausts and sped down the gut of the pass. The Hercules cut the turn so finely that Sean had to use full power to hold the nose level, j; and looking upward through the skylight of the canopy, he felt as ! though he could have reached out and touched the rock face as the Hercules stood on one wmgt1p. The missile tried to follow her around, but at the critical instant the Hercules disappeared from its line of sight and the rocky corner blocked the infrared emissions of her exhausts.
The missile crashed into the cliff face, gouging out a great fall of rock and filling the pass behind the Hercules with dust and smoke.
Sean brought the Hercules back on an even keel once again, gentling her, favoring her damaged wing.
"Any sign of the Hind?"
"No-" Job broke off as he saw the dread shape materialize through the dust and smoke. "She's there, she's still coming!"
The entire rear section of the Hind's fuselage was twisted askew, and half her rudder was missing. She staggered and lurched through the air, only barely under control and falling rapidly behind the fleeing Hercules. The pilot was a brave man, serving her, keeping her in action to the end.
"WS-fired again!" Job cried as he saw the missile drop from under the stubby wing roots and boost toward them on a tail of smoke.
"She's down!" Job watched the tail rotor of the gunship break away and spiral upward while the body dropped like a spine-shot buffalo bull and hit the trees, breaking up in a tall burst of flame and smoke.
"Break right!" Job called desperately. Although the Hind was dead, her terrible offspring blazed across the sky, bearing down on them mercilessly.
Sean put the Hercules over as hard as she would go. The missile almost missed the turn and went skid din2 wide in overshoot, but it corrected itself and came around hard, spinning out a long billow of silver smoke behind it, and fastened on the starboard number two motor.
For a moment, they were blinded as the smoke of the explosion swept over the canopy and was as suddenly swept away. The Hercules convulsed as though in agony. The missile blast threw her wing up, miraculously knocking her back onto an even keel, and adroitly Sean held her there.
He looked across in horror at the damage. The number two engine was gone, blown out of its mountings, leaving a terrible gaping wound in the leading edge of the wing. It was a mortal blow. In her death throes, the Hercules careered across the sky, dragged around by the asymmetrical thrust of her five engines, the damaged wing flexing and beginning to fold backward.
Sean eased back the throttles, trying to relieve the strain and balance the thrust. He looked ahead, and there was the river, wide and shallow and tranquil above the turmoil of the falls. The first rays of the sun were buttering the tops of the trees on either bank and the crocodiles lay black on the white sandbanks.
Sean flipped on the intercom and spoke over the loudspeakers into the cargo hold. "Hold on! We are going to hit hard!" he said in Shangane, and pulled his own harness adjustment in tighter.
The Hercules lumbered down heavily, both wings so ( am aged that Sean was amazed that she was still airborne. "Too fast," he muttered. She was dropping like an express elevator. They would hit the trees short of the river. He braced himself for losing a wing and the accompanying disruption of air flow, and gingerly pulled on full flap to slow her down.
Far from destroying herself, the Hercules responded gratefully to the additional lift and floated in with a semblance of her old elegance. She skimmed the treetops on the riverbank and Sean switched off the fuel pumps, mains, and magnetos to prevent a fire.
He held the nose high, bleeding off speed, and the needle on the airspeed indicator wound back sharply. The stall warning buzzer sounded, then the deafening klaxon of the landing gear chimed in, trying to warn him that his wheels were stiff up.
The controls went sloppy as the Hercules approached a stall, but they were out in the center of the river, twenty feet up and dropping fast. The crocodiles slid off the sandbar directly ahead, chummg the green water in panic, and Sean kept feeling the control column back and back, fending her off until the last possible moment.
He felt the tail touch the water. The airspeed indicator was right down to forty knots. Mie Hercules stalled and belly-flopped into the river. A solid green wave broke over the nose and washed the canopy, spurting in1hrough the bullet holes.