Oh my God, Flynn realized. That smart bastard wanted to just overrun them. It was a good plan. If the attackers got in close enough to overwhelm them with superior numbers, it was all over. So he needed to stop their assault before it started. He dropped to one knee, brought his sights onto the shouting tribesman, and squeezed off three quick shots. Bright red splotches blossomed across the man’s white robes, and he went down hard.

The enemy doesn’t have body armor, Flynn thought, fighting to stay in control. Score one for the good guys.

For a second or so, the white-robed men stared down at the body of their leader in shocked surprise, but then they threw themselves prone and started firing downhill. Most of their 7.62mm rounds went high and smacked into the helicopter’s bullet-resistant armor panels, ricocheting off in all directions. One hit Bill Wade in the stomach as he scrambled out through the door. The combination of Kevlar and ceramic plates stopped the bullet from penetrating, but the impact knocked the flight engineer down. Another round ripped through his leg as he fell. More AK rounds tore up sand around where Dykstra and Kasper had already gone prone.

The two pilots shot back. Neither was an expert marksman, but they both had enough training to avoid the rookie mistake of aiming too high when firing up a slope. One more tribesman slumped over, drilled through the head. His assault rifle fell from his lifeless hands.

Suddenly, a blinding flash—brighter than the red-tinged afternoon sun—lit up the crash site.

WHAMMM.

And a huge shock wave slammed Flynn face-first into the ground with enormous force.

Blearily, he spat out blood and grit and raised his head just high enough to see a fire-laced cloud of oily black smoke rising beyond the wrecked C-130. Someone, probably another suicide bomber, had just blown the hell out of the black ops Mi-17.

Trailing smoke, a rocket-propelled grenade skimmed just over the downed Super Hercules and arrowed on to impact a couple of hundred yards beyond the HH-60W. It went off in an orange flash and a fountain of sand. The sight dragged Flynn out of his daze. Somebody out there on the other flank had an RPG launcher. And if they scored a hit on this last intact helicopter, he and the other Americans still alive at the crash site were royally screwed. Their enemies weren’t going to sit on their asses and wait while the Air Force flew another search-and-rescue helicopter all the way from Egypt.

His hearing was coming back a bit, just enough to let him pick up the harsh, staccato rattle of automatic-weapons fire coming from the other side of the downed cargo aircraft. Some friendlies over there must have survived the suicide bomber’s detonation.

On this side, the surviving white-robed attackers were also starting to stir, recovering from their own daze. Another few seconds and they’d be back in action.

Flynn scowled. The longer this fight went on, the worse it was going to get. It was time to end this—at least here. Rolling over, he tugged a ball-shaped M67 fragmentation grenade from one of his equipment pouches. Quickly, he flicked its safety clip away with his left thumb, twisted the pull ring, and yanked it out to release the pin. One swift glance over his shoulder showed him his target. Without hesitating, he reared back and lobbed the grenade high into the air, rolling back onto his stomach with the same fluid motion.