But in a last-ditch effort, they fired anyway, rifles popping and echoing behind them as Mitchell and Diaz shifted to the left, around the external fuel tank and reached the open bay door. Brown was there to accept Diaz, and Mitchell spun around and returned fire until Brown called, "Captain!"

Mitchell turned back, just as one of the minigun operators collapsed forward on his gun, blood pooling down his face and neck. "Portside gunner's down," Mitchell cried.

"Captain, get on that gun," snapped the pilot.

With rounds sparking and clinking off the chopper as he climbed aboard, Mitchell cried, "Go! Go! Go!"

Brown and Ramirez had already unbuckled and were lifting the wounded gunner from his seat, and Mitchell immediately slid into his place, two-handing the Gatling gun and utilizing the AIM-1 laser pointer as he guided the six barrels back onto the hillside. He shifted his aim once more, easing the weapon left as the chopper pitched forward and gained altitude.

Showtime. He began hosing down the insurgents as they leapt forward, crashing onto their bellies to avoid his bead. Tracer rounds flashed from the spinning barrels like glowing arrows fired from a hundred bowmen until they burned out at 900 meters.

At the same time, all those hot brass casings were funneled out from the gun through a tube mounted on the fuselage, and as the pilot brought them around, they left long trails of clinking and tumbling brass in their wake.

The gun's reverberation sent chills rushing up Mitchell's spine. It was hard to imagine that he was firing roughly fifty bullets per second. He needed to carefully select his targets, too, since he only had 4,000 rounds of linked ammo in the box before he'd have to reload.

But the pilot didn't seem to care about that. "Come on, Captain, keep up that fire!"

Mitchell obliged, sewing a jagged seam in the hill, his HUD and the AIM-1 putting him on those red diamonds that quickly turned white as his hailstorm of fire left behind walls of flying dirt and snow and death.

As he and the other gunner maintained fire, Ramirez and Brown worked on Saenz and the wounded guy, though they were probably using hand signals since the racket inside the helicopter made voice communication impossible.

Reminding himself of all the good people who had been lost in Waziristan, Mitchell kept the minigun on target, drawing more lines through hordes of fighters before the Black Hawk rolled right and descended over the hill, on a course due east for the border.

He released his white-knuckled grip on the gun and slumped in his seat. Every muscle ached. He could sleep for a year.

A hand came down on his shoulder. It was Ramirez, who pointed to the wounded gunner, then to Saenz, and flashed a thumbs-up; both guys would make it.