The Kill Zone by Chris Ryan Read Free Book Online Page B

chopper. The sky was much lighter now, and he could see the desert below. As they flew over the brow of the hills, the ground grew much closer. And it was just then that Jack saw them.
    Even from a height they were easy to distinguish. They wore black and white keffiyehs and khaki camouflage jackets; on their shoulders each man carried a weapon. From this distance Jack couldn’t make out the weapons precisely, but he had a pretty good idea what they were.
    ‘We’re going to take a hit!’ he yelled at the pilots up front, but with their headsets and the noise of the engines they perhaps didn’t hear him. ‘ We’re going to take a hit! ’
    Jack saw the rockets coming towards them. They didn’t hit the chopper, but they starburst all around like some colourless, metallic firework display. It only took a second for pieces of that showering shrapnel to make contact with the heli, but that moment happened in horrible slow motion. Jack instinctively grabbed hold of the webbing on the side of the chopper, listening to a hailstone sound of metal on metal. He braced himself.
    A massive explosion as more shrapnel hit the undercarriage of the aircraft.
    A high-pitched warning alarm that started beeping inside the helicopter.
    A thunder of fire as the side gunner started manically discharging his Minigun.
    A sickening jolt.
    A burst of heat that felt like it was scorching the skin from Jack’s face.
    They started to spin.
    The chopper filled with smoke – thick, black smoke that it was impossible to see through. Jack heard himself choking as they continued to spin blindly towards the ground. Instinctively he grabbed harder on to the webbing, but then, through the smoke, he saw Pixie. The wounded man was rolling across the floor of the Black Hawk towards the opening at the side.
    ‘ Get him! ’ he shouted, but in the noise and confusion Jack didn’t know if anyone had heard him. He moved almost without thinking, hurling himself at Pixie’s body as it continued to tumble towards the side. He grabbed him by the ankle and tried to pull him, but the forces were too great and instead he found himself slipping towards the exit along with his comrade.
    Suddenly Pixie’s body was half out of the chopper, and he was bringing Jack with him. Jesus, he could see the fucking sand. Twenty metres and getting closer. He yanked at his mate’s ankle in one final, desperate attempt to get him back into the chopper, but it was no good.
    Pixie fell.
    And then, in a moment of sudden terror and panic, Jack realised he was falling too . . .
    A moment of freefall. A second? Five seconds? In Jack’s confused mind he didn’t know. Hell, he could barely tell which way was down. But the smoke cleared from his eyes just as Pixie hit the ground and Jack slammed immediately into him, feeling his friend’s body mash and crunch beneath him. He ignored the pain that shrieked through him, rolled off Pixie’s contorted limbs and crouched in a foetus position, protecting his head from what he knew was about to come.
    The blast.
    The noise came before the heat – a great, crashing explosion that didn’t just shake Jack’s body, but the very ground underneath him. When the heat came, though, it was like a wave of fire crashing over him. Jack screamed as he felt his clothes burn fiercely against his flesh.
    After a couple of seconds, the first wave of heat subsided. Jack unfurled himself, not fully knowing what kind of damage he’d sustained from the fall. To his surprise his limbs, though painful, were in working order. He managed to push himself on to his feet and look around. His mind was dizzy and unfocused, almost as though it was refusing to take in what was going on.
    The first thing he knew was that Pixie was a goner. Then, to his right, he saw figures. Keffiyehs and khaki. Maybe ten of them, maybe more. They carried guns and they were standing about twenty-five metres away. To his left was the chopper. What remained of it, at least. Jack could