The gunner swung his cannon away from Patrick after only a quarter-second burst, choosing to concentrate fire on the armed stranger and assuming Patrick would go down under the barrage of gunfire. That gave Patrick his chance. As the Mi-24 cruised over the highway, Patrick used his thrusters and leaped at it. He landed on the left side of the helicopter right between the gunner and pilot’s cupolas. Patrick drove his left hand through the bow in the pilot’s forward windscreen, drove his left foot through the gunner’s left window, then punched through the pilot’s left window with his right fist.

The pilot screamed. Patrick grabbed the pilot’s throat with his armored right hand. “Wa’if! Awiz aruh hena, ala tuli” he said over the roar of the huge rotor overhead through his electronic translator. “Stop and land it right here.” The Mi-24’s flight engineer, seated right behind the pilot in a small jump seat, tried to pull Patrick’s hand off his pilot’s neck—Patrick finally knocked him out with a bolt of electricity from his shoulder-mounted electrodes. Threatened with having his throat crushed, the Libyan pilot set the big gunship down, and Patrick knocked him out too with an electric shock.

Meanwhile, Chris Wohl rolled to his feet and checked over his rail gun—still operational. He was going to line up on the second Mi-24, which was wheeling back around for another pass. “Sarge! The tank!” He saw that the Libyan tank’s crew members had almost reached the entry hatch. He fired one shot that blew the driver’s upper torso apart, spattering the entire top of the tank with blood and gore. The other tankers froze and raised their hands in surrender.

Hal Briggs tried to make a jump for the road, but his thrusters wouldn’t push into the sand, and he could only jump a few feet into the air. But suddenly, behind him, Muhammad Sanusi’s Humvee roared toward him. Without slowing, Sanusi steered right for Hal. With perfect timing, Hal jetted up just before the Humvee reached him, and Hal landed on the Humvee’s hard top. He clutched onto the roof as the Humvee roared toward the highway. Just before reaching the highway, Hal jetted off the roof and landed on the easternmost armored personnel carrier just as the last man was climbing aboard. He took command of the 12.7-millimeter machine gun on the commander’s cupola, swung it around, hit and killed one APC commander who was covering his men, then raked machine-gun fire over the heads of the other APCs beside him until the crews froze with their hands in the air.