Charm School v1_0

by Nelson DeMille

  No one laughed, and O'Shea said, “It's funnier on the ground.”

  Hollis looked at the instrument panel clock. It was 6:59. Sunrise was in twenty-three minutes, after which time the freighter was to turn off its landing lights, making it indistinguishable from any other freighter in the area. At their present speed they could cover about sixty kilometers before sunrise. But for the last ten minutes of the flight they would have to reduce their speed to eighty kph, according to the instructions. Hollis said to O'Shea, “Our options are two: We can decrease speed, conserve fuel, and we'll probably make it to our rendezvous, but it will be well after dawn. Or we can increase speed and our rate of fuel consumption, which is the only way we could possibly make our rendezvous before dawn. Of course, if we increase fuel consumption, we may not get that far. What's your professional opinion, Captain?”

  O'Shea replied as though he'd given it some thought. “I'm betting that there's more fuel left than we think. That's just my gut feeling. I say full speed ahead.”

  Mills said, “I vote to cut speed and conserve fuel. Our primary obligation is not to get to that freighter before dawn—it's to get out of the Soviet Union, and out of the reach of the KGB. I want to make sure we reach the gulf. I'd rather go into the drink than have them get their hands on us. We know too much.”

  Hollis replied, “You have no vote, Bert. This is a technical matter. But your opinion is noted. Lisa?”

  “I'm with Bert. I'd rather drown than run out of gas over land.”

  Hollis nodded. “Should we wake Brennan for his opinion?” Hollis heard the sound of popping bubble gum, followed by Brennan's voice saying, “We dead yet?”

  Mills replied, “We're working on it.”

  Brennan stretched and cleared his throat. “Hey, Colonel, glad to see you up and around. How you doing?”

  “Fine. I'm a general.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Hey, did we do a tit for tat on them, or what? I mean to tell you, we kicked some ass. Right?”

  “Right. Did you hear our problem?”

  “Yeah. That's a tough one. Whatever you guys decide is okay with me.”

  Hollis wished everyone was as unopinionated.

  Brennan added, “I hate flying. Glad we'll be down soon.”

  O'Shea said, “Your call, General.”

  The disembodied voice said again, “Your fuel reserves are nearly gone. Make preparations to terminate your flight.”

  “Full speed ahead.” Hollis pushed forward on the cyclic stick, dropping the craft into a nose-down attitude, and simultaneously increased the throttle and adjusted the collective stick. The airspeed indicator rose to 180 kph with a corresponding rise in ground speed. Hollis said, “Never believe a Russian.”

  They continued north. The fuel warning light glowed steady red, and the recorded voice gave its warning in the same indifferent tone. Hollis had always thought that these cockpit recordings should get shriller each time they came on. But tape players did not fear death.

  O'Shea called out, “Look!”

  Hollis, Mills, Lisa, and Brennan looked to where O'Shea was pointing. Slightly to starboard of their flight path, on the black distant horizon, they could see a faint glow. Hollis announced, “Leningrad.”

  O'Shea said, “About twenty klicks. Maybe seven minutes' flight time.”

  Hollis looked at the clock. It was 7:04. Eighteen minutes to sunrise. If they got to Pulkovo in seven minutes and changed heading, they would get to the lighthouse in about another five minutes. Then a ten-minute flight to the rendezvous point with the freighter. That sounded like twenty-two minutes.

  O'Shea said, “We're racing the sun now, General.”

  Hollis replied, “I thought it was the fuel gauge. You're confusing me.”

  O'Shea smiled grimly.

  Hollis increased the craft's speed to two hundred kph.

  O'Shea observed, “We're operating at full power at the end of a long flight. Do you trust these turbines?”

  Hollis glanced at his instruments. The turbine outlet temperature was redlined, and so was the oil temperature. “Never trust the reds.” Hollis called back to Brennan, “So what made you come back for this, Bill?”

  “Oh, I don't know. Seth Alevy said you were in trouble. That's why Captain O'Shea volunteered too. Right, Captain?”

  “Right.” O'Shea said to Hollis, “I want you to reconsider my evaluation report.”

  “I'll think about it.” Hollis began a long sloping descent. O'Shea said to him, “How many hours of rotary wing do you have, General?”

  Hollis glanced at the clock. “Counting the last thirty minutes, one hour.”

  O'Shea said, “Seriously.”

  “I don't know… ten or twelve. Is this a test?”

  “No. I'm just wondering who should put it down.”

  “If it's a power-off landing in the freezing gulf, you can do it. If it's power on, on the deck of the freighter, I'll do it.”

  “Okay.”

  The Mi-28 continued descending, and Hollis noticed its ground speed bleeding off, indicating increasing headwinds. At five hundred meters its airspeed was still 200 kph, but its actual speed relative to the ground, which was the speed that mattered, was not quite 130 kph. Hollis knew they were encountering those infamous winter winds from the Gulf of Finland, winds so strong and steady that they sometimes caused the gulf to rise as much as five feet, flooding Leningrad. He thought about heavy seas and their freighter rising, falling, rolling, and pitching in them.

  Hollis could now see the main arteries leading into the city and saw some predawn traffic below.

  Leningrad. The most un-Russian city in Russia. A city of culture, style, and liberal pretensions. But a city where the KGB was reputed to be particularly nasty, a counterweight to the westward-looking populace. Hollis had sometimes liked Leningrad and felt some sense of loss as he flew over it for the last time.

  O'Shea said, “I think that's the Moscow highway down there. So Pulkovo should be to port.”

  Mills said, “I haven't heard the recording for a while.”

  Hollis replied, “I think he gave up on us.”

  O'Shea said, “Is that it?” He pointed out the left side window.

  Hollis looked and saw the familiar blue-white aircraft lights. “Yes.” He added, “That was a remarkable piece of land navigation, Captain.”

  “Thank you, sir. I tried to allow for wind drift, but I wasn't sure how much we were being blown off our heading.”

  “Apparently not enough to miss a whole city.” Hollis banked left as he increased the rate of descent. The altimeter read two hundred meters, and he leveled off. He estimated he was a kilometer south of Pulkovo's tower, and he took a heading of 310 degrees. They were so low now that Hollis could make out passengers in a bus below. He saw a few factories slide by and saw a train speeding away from the city. To the north, the great city of Leningrad seemed to grow brighter minute by minute as it wakened from its long autumn night.

  O'Shea said, “I think I see the gulf.”

  Hollis looked out and could see where the scattered shore lights ended and a great expanse of black began. “Another few minutes. Look for the lighthouse at the end of the jetty.”

  The minutes passed in silence. The coast slipped below them, and they were suddenly out to sea. Hollis looked at the clock: 7:14.

  Mills said, “That's it. No going back.”

  Hollis nodded. If they went down and survived the crash, survival time in the near-freezing gulf would be about fifteen minutes.

  O'Shea pointed directly ahead. “Lighthouse.”

  “See it.” Hollis continued on and within a half kilometer of the lighthouse began to throttle back and pick up the nose. The ground speed hit eighty kph as he passed over the lighthouse on the end of the two-kilometer-long concrete jetty. He swung the nose around to the new heading of 340 degrees and noted the time on the clock: 7:17. “Captain, keep the time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hollis watched the compass and maint
ained the northwesterly heading but had no doubt that the north wind was blowing them off course. He tried to calculate how much drift there might be in a ten-minute flight if the wind was as strong as thirty to forty knots. He had a sudden desire to meet Mills' flight advisers. He said to Mills, “What air force was that?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The guys with whom you consulted.”

  “Oh… what's the problem? Besides fuel, I mean?”

  “Navigation. Two moving objects. He has to contend with the seas; we have to contend with the air.”

  O'Shea observed, “Sort of like threading a moving needle.”

  “In the dark,” Hollis added.

  Mills didn't reply.

  Brennan said, “I guess we only have one shot at this rendezvous.”

  O'Shea said, “If that many.”

  A voice said in Russian, “Fuck you… I'll kill you all.”

  Hollis inquired, “Is that a prerecorded announcement?”

  Brennan chuckled. “I think that's our passenger in coach. What did he say?”

  “He said he needs another shot of sodium pentothal,” Hollis replied. “Bert, shut him up.”

  Mills made his way to the rear and looked at Burov. He called out to Hollis, “He's in bad shape already, General. I don't want to kill him.”

  Burov said indistinctly through swollen lips, “I'll have you all back in the cells.”

  The recorded warning came on again, and Burov said, “You see? Land this helicopter immediately.”

  Hollis called back in Russian, “Shut your mouth, Burov, or I'll throw you out.”

  Burov fell silent.

  Mills looked Dodson over and announced, “Our other passenger seems okay.”

  O'Shea said, “Time, seven-nineteen, two minutes elapsed.”

  Mills looked out the rear window toward the southeast. “The sun is coming up.” He added, “They won't take us aboard if it's light.”

  Lisa asked, “What choice do they have?”

  Mills replied, “Well, they have the choice of shutting off their landing lights. Then we wouldn't know what ship it is down there. All I know is that it's a freighter. I don't know anything else about the ship, not even its nationality. We're not supposed to know anything for security reasons, and I guess also so that we can't make a landing in the daylight and endanger the ship. All we know is to look for three yellow lights on a freighter.”

  Hollis said, “Maybe your friends in Washington picked a Soviet ship for us.”

  Mills smiled weakly. “That's not funny.”

  Burov spoke in English through his broken teeth. “Listen to me. Listen. Land this helicopter and let me out. You can make good your escape. I will guarantee you that no harm will come to the men and women at the school. You have my word on that.”

  There was a silence in the cabin, then Hollis said to O'Shea, “Take the controls.” He made his way to the rear of the cabin and stood over Burov, whose wrists were bound to the chair with steel flex. Hollis stared at Burov, and Burov stared back. Finally Hollis said, “Would you like something for the pain?”

  Burov didn't respond for a second, then shook his head.

  “Are you thirsty?”

  “Yes. Very.”

  Hollis turned around. “Anything left to drink?”

  “Just this,” Mills said, handing him a flask. “Cognac. Real stuff.”

  Hollis took the flask and held it to Burov's blood-encrusted lips. Burov's eyes stayed on Hollis, then his mouth opened, and Hollis poured half the flask between Burov's lips. Burov coughed up dried blood, but got most of the cognac down. Hollis saw tears forming in the man's eyes and assumed it was because of the burning alcohol on his split lips and gums. Hollis said, “We have no water.”

  Burov didn't reply.

  Hollis put the cap back on the flask and said to Burov, “It's over, you know.”

  Burov said nothing.

  “Within a few minutes you will be either a prisoner on a ship or will be dead in the water. There's no other fate for you.”

  Burov nodded.

  “Do you pray?”

  “No. Never.”

  “But your mother taught you how.”

  Burov didn't reply.

  “You might consider it.”

  Burov seemed to slump further into his seat, and his head dropped. “I congratulate you. All of you. Please leave me alone.”

  Hollis looked at Dodson's battered face, then looked back at Burov. Hollis said to Burov, “You've got a lot to answer for. I'm going to see to it that you answer directly to Major Dodson on behalf of the other airmen.” Hollis moved to the port side windows and looked out to the southeast. He saw a small red rim poking above the flat horizon, casting a pink twilight over the city of Leningrad. But out here, in the gulf, the waters were black. He went back to the copilots chair and sat. “I'll take it.”

  Hollis looked at the clock: 7:21. About six minutes' flight time to their rendezvous site, but only one or two minutes to first light. They weren't going to reach the freighter before dawn.

  O'Shea was looking intently out the front windshield. Mills and Brennan were looking out the port side, Lisa was looking out to starboard. They all searched the dark sea below. There were lights down there, Hollis saw, boats and channel markers, but no triangle of yellow lights.

  As Hollis watched, the water became lighter, and he could see its texture now, the rising swells picking up the new sunlight. At least, he thought, he'd seen the dawn, and regardless of what happened, it was a better dawn than it would have been in the Charm School.

  O'Shea announced, “It's seven twenty-seven. Elapsed flight time since the lighthouse is now ten minutes.”

  Lisa said, “I don't see it.”

  Brennan said, “I guess they've shut off their landing lights. Maybe we should just put it down on any ship. You see that big tanker out there? About ten o'clock, half a klick.”

  Hollis could see the massive flat deck in the grey morning light. It was inviting, but like a woman beckoning from a dark doorway, it was not necessarily a safe bet. Hollis said, “It may be a Soviet or East Bloc ship. We can't tell.”

  Mills concurred. “We agreed that we wouldn't fall into their hands. We owe that to our country as well as to ourselves.”

  Brennan nodded. “You're right. It could be a commie ship. I guess you find a lot of those here. I'd rather drown.”

  Burov spoke. “You can't be serious. Wouldn't you all rather live than die horribly in the cold water?” Lisa replied, “No.”

  Brennan turned and said to Burov, “I don't want to hear your voice again.”

  Another few minutes passed, and the sky went from grey dawn to morning nautical light. Hollis could see the heavy cloud bank overhead now and the gulf mist below. Sea gulls and terns circled over the water, and in the distance he saw a rain squall. A typical dreary day in the Gulf of Finland.

  Mills said, “Well, he's killed the lights by now. He won't risk a Soviet ship seeing an Aeroflot helicopter land on his deck. I can't say I blame him.”

  Lisa said, “But I don't see anything that even looks like a freighter. I see a few tankers and a few fishing ships. I saw one warship with guns back there. We've missed him.”

  O'Shea said, “Maybe he's still in Leningrad, trying to clear red tape. Maybe he's off course or we're off course. An air-sea rendezvous with radio silence is hit or miss.”

  Hollis looked at his flight instruments. The Mi-28 had been pushed beyond its limits, and he found it ironic that the last Soviet product he would ever use was the best. Every component had performed admirably except the fuel gauge. He said to O'Shea, “You were right about the fuel.”

  “I figured that the gauge was an extension of Soviet life. They don't trust people to make rational choices, so they lie to them for their own good.” O'Shea smiled, then added without humor, “But I think by now that empty means empty.”

  Mills stopped looking out the window and sat back on the floor between the seats. “Well, g
ood try though.” He produced the flask, took a swig, and handed it to Brennan. Brennan drank and gave it to Lisa. She offered it to Hollis and O'Shea, who declined, O'Shea saying, “I'm flying.” Lisa, Brennan, and Mills finished the flask.

  Hollis looked out at the water below. The seas were high, and he could see white curling breakers rolling from north to south. At two hundred meters' altitude, his range of vision encompassed an area large enough to insure that he wouldn't miss the freighter even if he was two or three kilometers off course. Something was very wrong, and the thought crossed his mind that this was yet another Alevy double cross, a joke from the grave. But even if Alevy had wanted O'Shea, Brennan, and Mills silenced, he had apparently promised to deliver Burov and one American, so it couldn't be that. Hollis realized just how much Alevy's thinking had affected Us thinking for him to even consider such a thing. Yet, he would wager that the same thought had passed through everyone's mind.

  O'Shea said, “See those buoys? We've crossed out of the shipping lane.”

  Hollis nodded. He suddenly put the craft into a steep right bank and headed southeast, into the rising sun, back toward Leningrad.

  Mills asked, “What are you doing?”

  Hollis began a steep descent. Ahead, he could make out the lights of Leningrad about fifteen kilometers away.

  Mills repeated, “What are you doing?”

  Hollis replied, “I'm going on two assumptions. One is that the freighter did not reach the rendezvous point in time and is still steaming out of the harbor. Two, if that holds true, then the skipper of that boat feels some sense of failed duty, and if he sees us, he will do what any sea captain would do for a seacraft or aircraft in distress—he will come to our aid.” Hollis leveled the helicopter at less than one hundred meters above the churning sea and cut the speed to a slow forty kph.

  O'Shea said, apropos of nothing, “I feel fine. We did good.”

  Mills concurred. “We beat most of the odds, didn't we? We're here.”

  Brennan said, “We stole this chopper, got into the Charm School, rescued Dodson, kidnapped Burov, shot our way out, flew cross-country over Russia, and got to where we were supposed to be. Shit, as far as I'm concerned, we made it.”