He took careful aim at the small white tube on the wing, still nestled on its launcher, and squeezed off a round. But at that instant Odyssey II dipped in the swell and he saw sparks fly off the fuselage instead. The chopper passed blissfully overhead, its engine a dull roar above the howl of the sea.
7:54 p.m.
"We're taking fire!" Peretz shouted from the weapons station down below.
"What? That's impossible." Ramirez whirled, then stepped in behind him to look. Lights from the control panel winked over his shoulders, while below them the Aegean was dark and gray. "Check the look-down radar."
Peretz flipped a switch on his left and scanned the screen.
'There's something down there. Maybe a fishing—"
"Idiot, nobody's fishing here now. Not with this weather." He looked up and shouted to the cockpit. "Salim, take her about, one-eighty, and we'll strafe the son of a bitch."
The 12.7mm nose cannon was slaved to the radar, another of the Hind's many well-designed, and lethal, features. While Ramirez watched—he would have moved back into the gunnery seat himself, but there was no time—Dore Peretz switched on the nose cannon. When the target locked on the radar, he pushed the fire control under his right hand.