Page 37 - Archangel

fury under fire

They started taking fire from several shooters, the muzzle flashes
blinking like satanic fireflies. Seconds later, rounds started thudding into
the bateau’s thick wooden gunwales and, worse, pinging off the Honda
outboard motor cowling. Forced to compartmentalize Layla’s loss for later,
Skye and Ndara were fighting for their lives, here and now.
Relying on his special operations training, Ndara had started the motor
but then hit the deck as tracers streaked inches over their heads and buried
themselves in their hapless craft. Reaching up and guiding the stick from
below the gunwales, the Kenyan artfully reversed course 180 degrees
and pointed the bow back from whence they came without swamping
themselves. But the fire was intensifying. While helping screen themselves
from the bullets, the exposed outboard motor upon which their survival
depended could not deflect many more rounds and still get them home.
Over the motor’s roar, Skye screamed, “Change course 90 degrees. The
Hutu bastards pre-vectored our approach. Come about 90 degrees. NOW!”
In an incredible show of seamanship, Ndara changed the yawing,
groaning bateau’s course to a new heading running parallel to the beach.
Reaching again into his captain’s bag under the bench seat, Skye this time
retrieved the HK-91 and stood beside a shocked Ndara at the stern as a
barbering bullet blew a lock of Skye’s hair airborne.
At their new course, most rounds from the shoreline shooters finally
started falling short. The deadly exception came from a sniper in a
high tree nearest the shore’s waterline. Skye signaled Ndara for a brief
deceleration. Knowing the H&K’s limitations from a distance, Skye
slammed in a new extended ammo clip, then arose slightly from his
crouch and started walking a lightning–like stream of fire into the tree’s
crown of vegetation. The last muzzle flashes ceased, as MacIain’s blanketed
barrage of fire must have at least wounded the sniper, but not before a
final, lucky round glanced off the motor cowling. Peering back at his
colleague who had worked navigational miracles, MacIain noticed a
‘through and through’ hole in Ndara’s lucky bush hat still tethered to his
neck but blown from his head. A superficial wound now furrowed through
the curly gray hair on his scalp.

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