"Maloney, Mack - Wingman 05 - The Twisted Cross UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maloney Mack)

He pushed up his coat collar again, and tried to wipe the

dampness from the bill of his baseball cap. He was glad he had taken the precaution of wrapping the M-16 in plastic before setting out for this place. The moisture would have done a job on his tracer ammunition.

They're here . . .

He strained both his eyes and ears and concentrated on the darkened skies to the north. He heard them before he saw them. The unmistakable whirring sound of a chopper engine; the clean powerful whistling sound made only by the Cobra . . .

The Cobra attack helicopter was a frightening piece of machinery.

Forty-eight feet long, fourteen feet high, the insect-like chopper could haul ass at 175 mph. It carried a three-barreled 20-mm M197 cannon in its nose turret, and a variety of gun pods, rocket pods, missile launchers and even flame-throwing equipment on its two side pylons. Yet even with all this firepower, the Cobra could maneuver like a hummingbird. Up, down, sideways, backwards. All very quickly, and, fairly quietly.

Its very name did it justice: long and thin with a lethal snout. From Viet Nam to World War III to the post-war American battles, the Cobra had served well. Just thinking about the chopper and what destruction it was capable of delivering-against ground troops, tanks, gun emplacements, ships -caused many an enemy of America fits, if not nightmares.

And no one flew Cobras with more skill and daring than the famous Cobra Brothers ...

A few seconds later he saw them.

Still two blinking red lights way off in the distance, but undoubtedly the people he'd been waiting for. He hunched up his coat again and retrieved a small flare from one of its many pockets. A quick strike on the fuse and the flare came alive with a brilliant red glow.

Two minutes later, the pair of two-seat helicopter gun-ships came in for a perfect landing on the soft, marshy field. Another two minutes went by until both chopper rotors wound down. Then three men - a pair from Cobra Two and a single from Cobra One - emerged from their cockpits and walked over to Hunter, who was waiting at the edge of the clearing.

"Hey Hawk, Baxter's all upset that he couldn't come along." The man doing the talking was Captain Jesse Tyler, the commanding officer of the four-man non-related Cobra Brothers. His partner, the pilot of Cobra Two, was Captain / Bobby Crockett. He and Tyler had been friends and allies of Hunter ever since before the first Battle of Football City. Both Texans, when Hunter first met the Cobras, they had been supporting themselves as free-lance gunship jockeys. But since those first continental battles, the Cobras had been in the employ of the democratic forces exclusively. Tyler and Crockett were joined on this trip by Crockett's gunner, Lieutenant John "John-Boy" Hobbs.

"How was it that Bax stayed behind?" Hunter asked as he shook hands with all three men. "

"He pulled the low card," Crockett said. "Says you owe him a bottle of good stuff when you get back . . ."

Hunter laughed and said: "If we do the trick down here, and find out what we need to know, I'll gladly give him a Jug-"

Hobbs produced a thermos and soon all four of them were drinking thick black coffee.

"So what's the situation, Hawk?" Tyler asked. "We had to leave pretty quick in order to make our refueling connections and get down here in reasonable time. So Jones really didn't have much time to fill us in . . ."

Hunter shook his head. "As usual, it's complicated," he said. Then he quickly told them an abbreviated version of Peg's saga, adding in the assassination attempt and his own investigation of the cruise liner. It was this last part that found the Cobra team most surprised.

"You mean we've been fighting our asses off up north and the folks down here have been taking vacation cruises?"

Tyler said. Goddamn, we're in the wrong line of work . . ."

"They've been taking cruises all right," Hunter said. "But not ordinary, down-home folks. From what I can see, the passengers on that boat are almost all drug dealers. And I'm not talking about the kind of guys who stand on street corners and begin every conversation with: 'Psst, hey buddy

"So we're talking about big-timers," Tyler confirmed. "People with millions who want more millions . . ."

"That's the animal," Hunter confirmed. "The passenger list is very exclusive, and, I'm sure, a ticket to Cokeville, Colombia doesn't come cheap."

Each man took a long swig of coffee.

"But how in hell do they make the trip?" Crockett asked. "Either they're going around South America the long way or your old captain's been at sea too long . . ."