One of the ghouls working the flatbed's cranks slumped against its wheel, its head a dark smear and the flatbed slewed to one side. The Russian's troops retaliated by spraying bullets across the fuselage of the helicopter and shattering one of the porthole-like windows on the port flank. 'Again, and closer this time,' Ayaan shrieked as she slapped a full magazine into her rifle and tested its iron sights.
'I'll take you right up his nose if you like, and leave you there,' Osman replied but he wheeled around for another pass. He brought the aircraft in low and fast, almost losing his landing gear as they brushed the top of the yurt. Ayaan's rifle snapped and spat with tight, perfectly-controlled bursts of three bullets each. The ghouls dragging the flatbed scattered away from her fire but not fast enough. Heads burst, bodies spun and fell. One of the machine gunners slipped and fell onto the sand, his blood jetting from his ruptured chest.
Sarah stared at the boy standing on the flatbed. He looked like the soul of calm. The fusillade of bullets hadn't even ruffled his thin white hair. There was something, something not quite right about his energy. It was dark, of course, the boy was undead, a lich among liches and his energy swallowed light like a black hole, but... what was it? Sarah couldn't quite decide. But something was wrong.
Bullet holes appeared in the floor of the helicopter and Leyla hurried to throw a armored blanket of rubberized Kevlar across the deck plates to give the soldiers a little protection. As the helicopter swung out and away from the flatbed and beyond the range of the remaining machine gun Sarah clipped her safety line to a tie-down on the floor and tried to grab Ayaan's arm. 'Whoa, whoa,' she said, trying to roll with the helicopter as it banked, hard, 'there's something'' she shouted, but her poorly-fitted helmet had gone askew on her head and she couldn't hear her own voice over the engine roar. 'Ayaan!' she shrieked.
Ayaan wasted no more time. On the third pass she switched her weapon to full automatic and emptied a clip into the Russian boy, her arms tracking him with the precision of the machine. The wooden flatbed around him splintered and spat dust but he didn't even glance at Ayaan. No, his eyes were still fastened on Sarah's. He was still looking at her. Into her.
In the cockpit lights blared on Osman's control boards and a bell clanged urgently. The machine gunner on the flatbed had scored a real hit, blasting open one of the Mi-8's fuel pods. Automatic fire control systems and self-sealing bladders in the fuel system shunted into action and kept the helicopter from exploding but blue flames lit up the starboard flank of the fuselage and burning spatters of kerosene leapt into the open crew cabin.
'Ayaan, he's not'he isn't'' Sarah had trouble concentrating on the words. The boy's gaze compelled her, made her look at him again. She saw so much intelligence in his cheekbones, so much sorrow in his bluish lips. He was hypnotizing her, she knew it, and she knew how to fight it but it made it difficult to talk.
She looked up and saw that Ayaan had picked up an RPG-7V from the weapons rack. She slammed a bulbous rocket-propelled grenade into the launcher and lifted the optical sight to her eye.
Sarah glanced behind her and realized that the port-side crew door was still closed. If Ayaan discharged the RPG inside the helicopter the exhaust blast would blow back against the door and fry them all with super-heated gas. Focused so completely on her target Ayaan had transcended such concerns.
Unclipping her safety line Sarah pitched across the width of the cabin and pulled hard on the door release just as Ayaan acquired her target and squeezed her trigger. Exhaust bloomed out of the conical jet at the back of the launcher and blew away on the wind. Sarah looked down through the open door and watched the grenade jet toward its target. Finally the boy looked away from her, instead turning to face the projectile. He raised his wand as if he could ward off the explosive. It didn't work.