HUMANS. Igor Yevtishenkov

a sign. But how? A shot towards the sky? His brain was frantically looking for a solution, but he had neither a rocket launcher nor a spare tracker, unfortunately.

      At this time, there was the noise of an engine on the other side of the hill. Harry crawled to the edge and looked down. He could see the familiar silhouettes of Toyota pickups down there. Damn, the decision was so easy! Go by car!

      He could not remember how he climbed down from the cliff and began to move down the slope hiding behind the rocks. It was far from running or even jogging, it was more a frightened turtle race that he called this rescue leap. The nearest pickup was no more than twenty meters walk away from him when three men appeared. By bad fortune they came up to the hood and began to discuss something whilst glancing at the sky. The planes were still up there. So, he was sure the pilots were waiting for his signal. Harry felt nervous. He could wait for a short while, but not very long. Worst of all was the fact that he had no concept of time. Seconds seemed to him hours, and this felt like panic. In this situation, he could take only one decision – take advantage surprise the enemy and attack first.

      He bent and unbent his fingers – they were moving freely as if it was just an exercise. His arms and legs were not trembling. Breathing was calm. His thumb slowly unlocked the trigger lock and he fed a cartridge into the chamber. The only thing left for him to do now was to stand up and do what he had to do.

      Harry quietly crawled around the stone, stood up, stretched out his arm forward, and took the first step. Through narrowed eyes, he saw the muzzle-sight overlapping the first target and pulled the trigger. Recoil habitually pushed his hand and went into his shoulder. A second bullet followed the first one and the third found the second victim in mid-stride from the fallen first. At this point, the signal from the eye went to his brain and Harry realized that he could see only two bodies. The third was not there! On the move by inertia he put two more bullets into the second terrorist, later thinking that it was unnecessary. He had to conserve ammo. Squatting by the bumper he quickly examined the dead and then looked out of the hood. The third bandit turned out to be smart. He had seemingly departed in one of the cars. When he heard the shots, he did not want to risk his life, so quickly jumped into the truck and hit the gas. Harry had nothing to do but follow him with his eyes: a cloud of dust was rapidly moving along the hill, heading most likely to the place where he could drive around it and be on the other side. The terrorist was in a hurry to flee the rest of the group. Staying here and signaling the jets was dangerous. Harry looked up and saw that the jets disappeared. This wasn’t good news. He had to leave. Later, somewhere on the plain, he could stop and draw a word with wheels in the sand but then he had to hurry.

      One of those killed was about his size. Harry quickly pulled off his clothes, pulled them on over his flying suit, took both the guns, six magazines and threw everything on the seat of white Toyota. A thought flashed in his head that terrorists could come back and chase after him on other machines. He quickly went round all pickups and shot the tires. Then he jumped behind the wheel and froze, feeling the hair on the back of his head slowly standing on end. He was looking at the ignition lock and felt that the pressure skyrocketed and his ears were blocked. There was no key.

      «Stop! Don’t panic! The keys must be in the other vehicles!» he said to himself. However, he failed to find them neither in the pickups, nor in the corpses’ clothes. Harry again went round the cars hoping that at the very least one of them would have push-button starting but it was in vain. Out of desperation, he stuck his head against the door of white Toyota and began to think what to do. All he could do was wait for the terrorists to come back and battle here on the ground. Maybe satellites would notice that…

      He dragged over the boxes from other trucks to this one, checked the gun and fired a test shot. It worked! The burst echoed a little unusually, and the crackle of gunfire grew louder, until it turned into a noise of helicopter blades. Harry was frantically twisting his head, swallowing saliva, and trying to get rid of unpleasant sensation in the ears. When a grey egg-shaped silhouette appeared from behind the rocks, he was prepared to fire. There was no doubt that it had arrived to help terrorists. Judging by the housing, the model was Russian MI-8 or something similar. But Russians didn’t fly here, nor did the Syrians. So who could fly so low being aware of MANPADS? Only them. So it was the terrorist’s helicopter!