The machine gun the Germans had brought was a Rheinmetall MG3. It was basically a modernized version of the same exact machine gun the Nazis had used during World War II, so Franks had been shot at by a few of these things. A long belt of 7.62 hung out the side. Franks looked at the machine gun, then at the helicopter, and back at the machine gun . . . The idea made him happy.

With a cyclic rate of over a thousand rounds a minute, Myers wouldn’t have to wait that long.

Franks got behind the machine gun. He knew from experience how tough a Blackhawk was, and even if he forced it to crash, at that altitude the passengers could survive, especially soldiers based on his own nearly invulnerable physiology, but no system was perfect, and bullets were persistent.

The machine gun roared.

His eardrums were damaged, but he heard that. A line of orange tracers filled the air. Franks manhandled the heavy weapon, guiding it with an artist’s touch. Franks could write his name in cursive with one of these. He started with the vulnerable tail rotor and didn’t stop until he was positive he’d seen pieces flying off of it. Then he tracked bullets along the chopper’s body, through the open door, and all through the compartment. The angle changed as the pilot tried to maneuver away, so Franks switched to pounding the engines. The chopper spun wildly and a Nemesis soldier was hurled out the open door.

The Germans had attached a few hundred-round belts together and the MG3 just kept on dragging armor-piercing death out of the ammo can and spitting it out the muzzle at twenty-seven hundred feet per second. The rain hit the machine gun and hissed into steam. Smoke was coming out of the Blackhawk’s engines, but Franks just kept on hammering them just to be a dick. It rotated as something broke, giving him another angle on the open door. Bullets ripped through the crew compartment again, piercing Nemesis soldiers. Then he must have gotten lucky and tagged the pilot, because the chopper suddenly lurched sideways. The rotor blades caught the edge of a cargo crane and exploded. The Blackhawk dropped like a stone, disappearing behind one of the warehouses.

That had been . . . satisfying.

Now back to work. Strayhorn would be taking Myers to the nearest hospital, and Franks knew exactly where that was. The Germans’ boat had a radio. He had to protect Myers until legitimate authorities were involved. He owed him that much.

There was some splashing and thrashing off the side. He had not been lying to the German Hunter earlier. It had been Hessian mercenaries who had taught him to act human, so Franks tossed a life preserver overboard for the two Hunters, slightly lessening their chances of drowning. That was his good deed for the year.