“You’re late, Polly,” Kane replied, swiveling his head to watch the Deathbird perform a figure eight from east to west. From the east, a dark speck chopped its way through the sea of limitless blue.
“Better than never. Besides, it couldn’t be helped. Took Salvo a little while to come around and issue orders. He said you might come back here.”
“He give any reason?”
“Guess he figures jolt-brains don’t need reasons.”
“That what he told you?” Kane asked mildly.
“Among many other things. A jolt-walker is the least of it.”
“What were his orders?”
“Oh, the usual, you know.” Pollard sounded cheery. “Chill your ass, flash-blast you and everybody with you to cinders. Garden-variety stuff.”
The chopper described a wide, high circle above the gully. The second Deathbird fast approached its position.
“Hey, Kane?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember what you said to me just last night? You said, ‘We’re both heeled, right?’ Remember?”
“I remember. It was right after I called you an overstuffed dipshit. But I was just teasing.”
“Good. So am I.”
Rotors spinning, both Deathbirds dived from the sky, zooming in from the rear. Automatic fire spit from the mini-guns in the chin turrets. Twin streams of .50-caliber slugs slashed long trenches on the gully floor, dirt gouting up in high fountains. Kane loosed a short burst with the mini-Uzi just as the choppers ascended, correcting for the decreasing range. One of the bullets twisted the struts of a landing skid out of shape.
The Deathbirds swooped overhead, and he dropped down, back into his seat. A spray of bullets banged loudly on the Sandcat’s hull. The choppers roared past, a bare ten feet above the roof of the wag. Domi instinctively ducked as the rotor wash drove a strong puff of grit-laden air down into the wag. Hugging the steering wheel, she threw him a frightened, questioning glance.
“Keep going,” he ordered.
He popped back up through the hatch, transferring the mini-Uzi to his left hand and filling his right with the Sin Eater. The choppers climbed several hundred feet and hovered, hanging in the sky, their foreports facing each other, listing slightly from side to side. Kane heard nothing more over the comm link. Pollard had probably blocked the frequency and was communicating with Zack with hand signals.
Kane had known Pollard for years and had never really liked him. He was a simple, brutal, uncompromising man. In Pollard’s mind, he made the ideal Magistrate, and more than once he had evinced jealousy of his and Grant’s reputations. Therefore, he figured Pollard wouldn’t want to end this too quickly. He would make another pass or two with the machine gun, and if that had no effect, he would deploy the rockets. He was no doubt relying on Zack to follow his lead.
The Deathbirds slowly revolved in the sky, then dropped. Kane bent his knees so only his head, shoulders and arms were out of the hatch. The Birds descended quickly, and one leaped ahead of the other. Zack and his gunner were too anxious, too excited. His chopper’s rate and angle of descent were a bit too sharp, his airspeed a bit too high. Pollard’s craft fell behind.
Zack’s gunner opened fire before the proper range and trajectory were established. The stream of bullets flayed rock and soil, but none came within twenty yards of the onrushing Sandcat.
Kane fixed the foreport of the Deathbird in the sights of both of his blasters, held his breath and pressed the triggers. The two streams of subsonic rounds ripped across the gully at 375 meters per second. Spent shell casings fell down the hatchway, bounced across the hull. Over his helmet comm link, he heard a garbled, screaming voice.
The Deathbird met the double streams of steel-jacketed lead halfway. A series of starred holes appeared in the curving port, and the craft lurched as Zack tried to bank. A few bullets from the chin turret skimmed the Sandcat’s hull, gouging shiny smears in the armor. Kane felt their impacts, but he didn’t relax his fingers on the triggers. The chopper heeled to starboard and struggled to rise out of range of the blasterfire. .
The whirling blades sliced into the bank of the gully, digging out pounds of rock and dirt in dust-filled eruptions. Sparks showered as steel struck stone, and the main rotors snapped with a painfully high-pitched, musical chime.