The threat scope had come alive a few minutes later as the CV-22 crossed the coastline-the search radar at Liepaja got a solid skin paint on them when they climbed to their highest altitude, three hundred feet, when Fell yanked the aircraft up to avoid a transmission tower that the AN/APQ-l 74 terrain-following radar suddenly detected directly ahead. Soon afterward plenty of VHF radio transmissions and fast-sector radar scans were detected.

The bad guys had spotted them.

The Marines had sprinted off into the forest as soon as the helicopter appeared. Lobato dragged RAGANU along after him as though the young CIS Army officer had been a sack of dirty laundry. Quickly, the Marines had turned the tables on the chopper pilot-eight sets of MP5 submachine guns were trained on the helicopter's cockpit and engine compartment, ready to send it crashing to earth in a blazing fireball. The chopper, a Kamov-27 "Helix-B"

amphibious-warfare helicopter, was fitted with a rocket pack on one side and a 12.5-millimeter gun pod on the other. Seconds after it popped on its searchlight on the group, it suddenly sped off into the night, extinguishing the searchlight and all other external lights.

"Move out!" Lobato shouted. "Scatter!" There was something else he remembered about the Helix-it had a bomb bay. With one hand firmly under RAGANU's left arm, and his other hand holding his MP5, Lobato scrambled off into the forest.

Just then the chopper could be heard coming back. Lobato quickened his pace, his pulse thrumming in his ears. When he heard the chopper almost directly overhead, he wheeled left, ran hard until the throb of the chopper's rotors seemed to replace the heartbeat in his chest, then dived behind a tree opposite the sound. He dragged RAGANU behind the tree with him, closed his eyes tightly, and yelled "Cover!" just before a series of loud explosions tore into the forest. The Helix had dropped two

explosive mine canisters and the four hundred tiny bomblets began ripping the foliage into green shreds.

RAGANU was screaming like a wounded lamb, and Lobato had to put a hand over his mouth. "Shut the fuck up!" yelled Lobato. RAGANU seemed to understand-Lobato wanted RAGANU alive, but he would not put himself or his squad in any more danger because of the Lithuanian soldier; the Marines had RAGANU's briefcase, the contents of which were probably as important as the man himself. As he listened for a follow-on attack, Lobato followed RAGANU's hand up his arm and felt blood.

Lobato unrolled a thick field-dressing pad from a pouch on his web belt, pressed it onto where he thought the center of the wound was, put the Lithuanian soldier's free hand on the wound, and tightened the man's fingers around it. "Press hard," Lobato ordered. "Hard!"

Once Lobato was convinced that RAGANU was finally helping himself, he raised up to a knee and tried to scan the area with his night-vision goggles. The device was useless, broken in a desperate race to get away from the mines. Unaided vision was an exercise in futility. Still, Marines had fought for decades without them. .