"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Salvatore screamed as he lost his footing and slipped along the floor while the Vertibird veered, falling out the door next to Adam within a second. Because he had been lining up his shot and not holding the rail above him, when the Vertibird suddenly shifted he did not have any stable footing to remain on and simply got thrown away violently as the evasive maneuvers were taken.
It was with super human reflexes that Adam, still holding onto the overhead rail, caught onto Salvatore with his free hand.
Salvatore gripped onto Adam's arm for dear life, his rifle lost to the crowd below as it slipped out of his hand.
The gunner next to Adam, obviously seeing the situation Adam and Salvatore were in, slid the minigun off to the side and grabbed hold of Salvatore's arm and helped Adam pull him back into the Vertibird.
Salvatore was safely brought back into the aircraft a moment later, quite shaken after nearly falling to his death.
"Grab hold of something again!" Eve said as she ran to the center of the Vertibird transport, dug her steel claw into the roof to create a stable anchor and then grabbed hold of Salvatore's armor tightly since he remained on his hands and knees on the floor of the Vertibird, having just been dragged back in.
The Vertibird rocked violently to the side again as it seemed to dodge another explosion a moment later. Salvatore would have, once again, been thrown out of the Vertibird, but he was saved by Eve's robotic strength. Adam, for his sake, never let go of the overhead rail, and the gunner next to him, much like the other one, was buckled into the seats used to fire the miniguns. So after the evasion was successful everyone remained okay.
"What is going on?!" Adam asked, mildly panicked as he did not have any sight lines on whoever was shooting at them.
"That ghoul grabbed a rocket launcher, hidden in the crowd of ferals, and fired at us. He must have noticed that we spotted him, up until now he was just trying to blend into the crowd, but now that he knows we know he's trying to shoot us down." As Eve spoke these words, her head laser was already charging. She dropped Salvatore the moment her laser was charged, stuck her head out of the door and fired in the general direction of the ghoul in the crowd where she last saw him. Her laser carved a huge fiery line through the ghouls below though it was anyone's guess if she hit him.
Adam helped Salvatore up and helped him to grip the overhead rail too. He was shaken up, not yet put together. He was not completely out of it, but much like Adam after he ran through the minefield, he seemed to need a minute to put himself back together. Adam was willing to give it to him, he just hoped they had the minute to spare.
Eve scanned the crowd again and directed the gunner on her side to fire into the crowd.
With a hail of bullets, the gunner opened up a full volley from his minigun bringing death to the entire area around where Eve had directed.
Adam too ran over to the side where Eve was, to get a better look at what was going on, perhaps to help if he could too.
There, among the dead bodies of all the feral ghouls killed by Eve's laser and then the subsequent minigun fire was a single man still alive, hiding behind the rubble of a nearby building, rocket launcher in his lap, reloading. Adam saw him now. However what Adam saw nearly broke him.
It was his enemy. It was the enemy of America. The enemy of freedom, of liberty, of the pursuit of happiness. It was the red scourge, the Asian menace, the reds. It was the Chinese.
He could not mistake the look of the Chinese officer's uniform that still looked well preserved even after 200 years. The man was undoubtedly Chinese. Even after 200 years the damn reds still wanted to destroy America. He did not know why, he did not know how, nor did he even know what this Chinese man was still doing on American soil after all this time, but he knew what he had to do. He may no longer be an active member of the United States Army, but he was still a soldier. A man willing to die for his country. The country may not exist anymore but so long as there were people in danger, he would kill as many people that threatened his home as needed.
So, he pulled out his sniper rifle, throwing the laser rifle into his bag, aiming down the sight as he steadied his heart. He was getting far too emotional, the stress, the surprise, the anxiety was getting him too worked up. He needed to land his shot.
However as he was getting the scope on target the seemingly luminescent green and yellow ghoul in the chinese uniform, the ghoul stood up and fired another rocket at the Vertibird. Once more the pilot veered the Vertibird violently to the side, dodging the rocket in time so they were not shot down. Of course this meant that Adam had to lose his shot as he quickly grabbed hold of the overhead railing.
However once they leveled out again Adam wasted no time getting back down his scope. He did not plan to lose his opportunity again. He couldn't.
Adam took a deep breath, steadied his aim, lowered his scope drift as much as he could, balancing his rifle on his left forearm as he placed the crosshair right on the glowing man's head. He wanted to end this in one hit. A riskier shot, but until this man was dead there was no telling if the ferals would stop. If he hit him center mass he could just crawl into a building and then they would be forced to break in and try to gun him down in close quarters, no, this had to be the shot. It all rode on him.
So Adam, with his crosshair lined up, his mission clear, and the fate of the battle riding on his next bullet, pulled the trigger, and prayed.