Peretz took one look and realized it was true. The rocket pod had been shorn away, leaving the tangled metal of the wing completely bare. But the Hind did not need its wings for stability; they were merely for armaments.
"Well, so what? I wasted the fucker, whoever he was." He tried a smile, sending a web of lines through his tan as the lights of the weapons panel played across his face. It was the way he always disguised nervousness.
Damn you, Ramirez was thinking. An Israeli cowboy. I would kill you on the spot except that I need you. It was an arrogant mistake, and I can't let it happen again. It won't happen again.
He turned and moved back up to the cockpit. "What's our status?"
"Sideslip is nominal," Salim reported grimly, his dark eyes glancing down at the churning sea only a couple of hundred meters below them. "I think we're going to be all right."
"We have just had an example of how an oversight can destroy an operation," Ramirez declared, turning back to the main cabin. "We will not succeed if we get careless, lose discipline. I have planned this operation down to the last small detail. You have all been briefed, over and over." He paused and examined the men. Sometimes he felt as if he were lecturing children, but these were no children. "Each of you knows what his job is. I expect you to do it with exactness and precision. The next oversight anyone here makes will be his last. Am I understood?"
There was silence, then finally a voice came from the litters in the darkened cabin aft, barely audible above the roar of the twin engines. It was Jean-Paul Moreau, the Frenchman. He hated flying, and he particularly hated flying with an Iranian at the controls.
"What the hell happened?"
"Someone on . . . presumably a raft of some kind. We took a couple of rounds of small-arms fire." He glanced back, making sure his voice reached Peretz in the weapons station. "The last Swatter was left turned on, armed, and it must have been hit. Probably the detonator. A stupid oversight."
"Looks like the mistake was mine," came the voice of Peretz, trying, unsuccessfully, to sound contrite. "Can't win them all, baby."