by Craig Thomas
Then the village whose name they did not know.
'Down!' snapped Ilya, and the pilot pushed the stick forward and the nose of the MIL sagged. Figures moving, light flickering across the snow as torches and lanterns were wobbled in gloved hands — a stream of light from a doorway.
And behind a house, stiff, cold dark spots — too familiar to be anything other than dead bodies.
'What the hell is going en here?' Maxim barked, grabbing the pilot's arm in his shock. The MIL wobbled, slewed sideways, and as the pilot's arm was released and he righted the chopper, he snapped in a high voice:
'Don't touch me! Do you want to kill yourself, you stupid bastard?'
Then the intercom crackled in his ears. The cabin speaker had been left on, and the two passengers heard the pilot of one of the MIL-24s ahead of them say:
'North Star 92 to unidentified helicopter — identify yourself, and state mission.'
'North Star 86 to North Star 92 — mission to assist search,' their pilot replied, the gun digging painfully into the back of his neck.
'Acknowledged North Star 86. What in hell's name have they sent you for?'
'I have troops on board — hi the event. Any sign yet?
'No. Ground radio claims five of our men dead. It should be a sizeable party, but no sign of anything. Over and out.'
Ilya released the pressure of the gun-barrel, and patted the pilot on the shoulder.
'Good,' he said. 'Nice touch, that, about the troops. Now — what is going on?'
'Enemy agents, I should think. Firefight of some land, not long ago by the look of it. They're looking for the agents.'
'This is bloody Finland, not Russia!' Ilya exploded.
The pilot turned his head. Ilya could see the humour around the mouth, the contempt displayed in the nostrils, the eyes. The pilot was pitying his ignorance.
He sat back, the gun relaxing from the pilot's head. It was — he could not explain the pilot's moods a frightened man who yet talked as if they were flying over Russia, not a neutral neighbour.
Then, ahead of them, they saw the red lights of one of the MIL-24s dip down below their view.
'Follow him!' Ilya snapped, and pressed the gun back against the neck, which wrinkled with disgust and fear. The cabin seemed to alter its angle suddenly, and the ground moved up to meet them. The road was a ghostly ribbon now, but along it, headlights blazing, an open vehicle was moving at perhaps fifty miles an hour — a suicidal speed.
'What the hell is that?'
'It must be them!' the pilot shouted, his caution swallowed in excitement.
'Who?'
'Enemy agents — the bastards!' It was as if they were no longer with him, or he their prisoner.
Ilya could not believe what happened in the next moment. The MIL-24 which had swept down upon the jeep on the road below them launched two of the small missiles slung beneath its stubby wings, then pulled ahead of the racing jeep.
Flickers of fire beneath the wings, then bright bursts of flame, gouts of snow and packed earth ahead of the jeep — almost in the same instant. It was incredible; his mind refused to countenance what it perceived. He watched the jeep.
It bucked wildly, then swung off the road, leaping like a mad horse across the ditch, and disappeared under the trees. The headlights flickered off. In the moment before it slid under the trees and under the belly of their chopper, Ilya saw a white face looking up, then obscured by something dark held out — and he realised, ludicrously, that the passenger in the jeep was taking photographs of them.
The MIL-24 was flicking round on its course, to make another run at the road. Then the intercom crackled in the cabin.
'You'll have to put your troops down and cut them off!' the pilot said without introduction or call-sign. In his voice there was an aftermath of dangerous elation, and a rising panic. 'Follow me!' The MIL-24 slid away from alongside them, stretching to a lead of two hundred metres, flying less than fifty feet above the trees. It was a dark bulk ahead of them, lights flashing, the carpet of trees below them revealed nothing of the whereabouts of the jeep or its two occupants.
A beam of light flicked down from the MIL-24 ahead, bathing the tree tops in white light. They glistened with ice and snow. It was an affecting scene, brilliant and harmless. Ilya shook it off.
'What happens when they find out we have no troops to put down?' Maxim asked.
'We'll have buggered off, won't we!' He prodded the gun into the neck again. 'Time to go!' he snarled. 'We have a long way to go before any of us gets to sleep tonight.'
'Where?'
'Murmansk, brother! All the way, no stops!'
'What?'
'You heard. After all,' he added turning to Maxim, 'we have a star witness here, haven't we? After what we've just seen, together with what they can get out of him at the Centre…' He chuckled. 'We're home and dry, eh?' He laughed, infected with the same excitement they had heard in the pilot's voice a little earlier. A pendulum of success had swung in their direction now.
'And what is going on ? 'I don't care to think about that,' Ilya said flatly. 'Someone else can find that out. I don't think it bears thinking about, do you?'
'I agree.'
'Right, alter course, Comrade Pilot! Take us just a little south of your HQ — and fly very very low! Understand?'
The pilot nodded. The chopper banked, sliding across the trees to retrace their outward course.
When they were settled on course, Maxim said, 'And what are we going to do to make sure that we aren't followed and overtaken by those gunships — or the other two I spotted at HQ? Those aren't fireworks they carry under those silly little wings, you know.'
'We're going to fake a forced landing — give our position, and then get the hell out of there while they spend their time looking for us!' Ilya spoke in an intense whisper, his face gleaming with pleasure. He tapped his forehead with the forefinger of his left hand.
'Mm. Do you know, I actually approve,' Maxim said, his face breaking into a rare smile. He was a man not without humour, but who often appeared to lack the necessary facial muscles to smile or laugh.
'I knew you would you dear old thing,' Ilya said.
They flew just to the south of the village, and crossed the border at an unmanned point. They reached the first trees on the Russian side, the MIL flying barely twenty feet above them. They were travelling fast, over a hundred miles an hour perhaps.
He said, 'Now, comrade, a little fault is about to develop. Radio in a convincing fault that will mean you have to force-land. And radio a position…' He reached forward and picked up the pilot's map which lay on a tiny folding rest at his side. He glanced at it, then:'… a position on the other side of the wire. Understand? Be very careful of what you say.'
The pilot nodded, opened the channel, and said, 'North Star 86 — North Star 86 to base. I have developed turbine surge. I have to set down quick. Repeat — turbine surge, am forced to land. My position is — ' The gun pressed more attentively against his stiff neck. He gave the position, and repeated it quickly. Ilya strained to read the coordinates on the pilot's map, gave up the attempt, and nodded to Maxim as if he had checked the position. Neither of them knew that the pilot, who was beginning to sweat with relief, had given their present position.
'Down there!' Ilya snapped, motioning towards a small white patch in the darkness.
'What for, man?' Maxim asked. 'We've sent them the wrong way. Let's get going 1'
'No! Just in case we're spotted going the wrong way. Sit tight for a little bit, then up and away.' Maxim looked doubtful, and Ilya shouted, 'We can't afford to cock it up now! As you said, those gunships don't carry fireworks. We can't afford to be seen, from the air or the ground!'
Maxim looked down. The chopper was circling the tiny clearing, and its landing light had flicked on. The snow appeared rutted, lunar, beneath them.
'All right. We don't move until they're looking the other way.'
'Down!'
The chopper settl
ed slowly, nose slightly up. Snow began to blow in the downdraught, fanning out beneath them, whirling up alongside the cabin as they sank lower. Gently, the MIL seemed to be coming to rest. Fifteen feet, twelve, ten The pilot moved the stick suddenly, and the tail boom of the helicopter dropped. It thumped into the surface snow, and there was a tearing sound, the magnified noise of a pencil snapping as the whole tail boom broke away under the impact.
The incident happened so swiftly that Ilya and Maxim were entirely its victims. They were not observers, but sufferers. The pilot, seizing his one opportunity, had sabotaged the helicopter.
The fuselage immediately began to wobble from side to side without the appropriate balancing effect of the tail rotor, in the half-second before it, too, hit the ground at an angle. The undercarriage buckled, and the cabin began to tilt. Then the rotor struck the frozen snow and earth.
The cabin felt like a barrel which was being kicked once a second. The rotor blades churned against and into the ground, hurling up snow and earth as the cabin tilted ever more crazily over on to its side. Then one blade snapped, then another, then a third. The vibration was incredible, seeming to rattle the brains in their skulls, possess their whole bodies.
Maxim felt his whole spine jar against the metal frame of the webbed seat. Then the cabin was completely on its side, and there was a silence. The churned cloud of snow settled, audibly, like a snowstorm, on the perspex.
Ilya sat stunned, head hanging over towards the ground, the straps of his seat restraining him from rolling against the perspex which had now become the floor of the cabin. Only the single thought that he was still alive filled his mind. He moved, almost by instinct, fingers, arms, legs. All of them flexed and stretched as they should. Only the pain of bruises.
He watched, without moving, as the pilot killed the switches in front of him, then threw off his straps, and began sliding back the canopy above him. He reached up, and pulled himself out of the window. The cold air rushed in, chilling Ilya. The pilot's legs dangled for a moment, then he was smearing the settled snow over Ilya's head as he crawled across the perspex. Ilya heard him drop to the ground.
Then, and only then, did he move, galvanised as if by electric shock. He clambered on the back of the pilot's seat, lifting his head out of the cabin. The pilot was standing, looking back, only ten yards away. It was as if he felt no urgency, or was perhaps stunned like Ilya. Then they saw one another.
The Makarov was stiff in Ilya's grip, as if the impact of the crash had moulded it to his flesh and bone. He shifted it to a two-handed grip, and leaned his elbows on the perspex.
'Back inside,' he said. He heard Maxim groan below him. 'Inside, you clever bastard! You did that on purpose!' His finger tightened on the trigger. His next words were strangely high, almost falsetto. 'Get back in this bloody deathtrap before I blow you to pieces!'
The pilot hesitated, and then he turned and began to run through the deep snow, stumbling over the frozen surface, floundering into small drifts where the surface ice gave way.
Ilya felt very tired. He could not run through that. And he felt lightheaded. He aimed, feeling sorry that the pilot was having so much difficulty moving away.
He fired twice, while Maxim's second outburst of moaning drove up his emotional temperature and he hated the pilot.
He watched the sprawled figure on the snow for a moment or two, and when it did not move, he dropped awkwardly back inside the cabin of the MIL, pulling the window shut above him.
Maxim's face was white with strain. His eyes were filled with terror at guessed injuries, and they closed with two spasms of pain even as Ilya watched. Ilya could see each wave leave him weak and terrified, his eyes darting from side to side as if seeking some escape from the next assault.
'What is it? he asked gently.
'I can't feel my legs. Not at all. Can't feel anything below my waist. Can't move anything…' A further spasm crossed his face, crumpling like a discarded ball of paper. He groaned, teeth clenched. When it passed, he opened his eyes only to see the depth of Ilya's concern. He wanted to avoid the information on the face above his own, and he tried to smile. 'Tell me — has my dick dropped off?' As he laughed, the pain came again and he screwed up his eyes.
Ilya winced. Maxim had an impacted spine. He touched the seat-belt. He hadn't been strapped in very securely, and the base of the spine must have been jolted against the metal bar at the back of the seat. He couldn't move him.
He said, feeling the nausea sharp in his throat, 'I found it on the floor by your seat. I threw it away.'
'Just as well,' Maxim muttered through clenched teeth. 'Bloody thing only ever got me into trouble…'He almost fainted as the next wave of pain took him. 'Like having bloody labour!' he groaned as it passed, Ilya moved away, rooting in the first-aid box which had remained secure on the wall behind their seats during the crash. He found the flask of vodka and unstoppered it.
Kneeling over Maxim, he poured the liquid against his lips. They opened gratefully, and he swallowed. He coughed once, then motioned to be settled on the floor of the cabin. Ilya released the slack belts, then moved the stiff form awkwardly. By the time he had stretched Maxim on the curving floor of perspex, he saw he had fainted.
'Sorry,' he murmured. 'Sorry, sorry, sorry…'
When Maxim recovered consciousness, he said, 'Why haven't you gone?'
'Where?'
'Anywhere! They will come, won't they?'
'I expect so. I'm not very good at reading pilots' maps. I expect he gave our present position.'
'You've — got to go, then!' Maxim moved an arm with difficulty, gripped Ilya's sleeve. Ilya shook his head.
'Not bloody likely! I might as well freeze with you as out there by myself!' And he added a silent prayer that they would come soon, and get Maxim to a hospital.
'Get going! You have to report to the Major — to someone!'
'Bugger the Major! Bugger someone? He poured vodka against Maxim's lips, and he swallowed with the instinctive guzzling of a baby. 'I got you into this, finessing the bloody idea until it didn't work out any more! So — who the hell cares? When they find us, then I'll think about getting out of it…' He laughed. 'Besides, I need a vehicle — they've got them!'
They talked then, for perhaps an hour or more — Maxim slipped in and out of consciousness, and his lucid moments became fewer. Ilya subsided into a dull monotone which scrabbled for subject-matter to distract Maxim. The only thing, he began to believe, was to distract Maxim from the pain he had caused him.
His first awareness that others had arrived was of the dull concussion of a 122 mm gun mounted on a T-62 battle tank. Its infra-red sighting equipment had picked out the two figures in the now-clear perspex, the snow having slid away to reveal them. As soon as it was determined that both SID men were in the chopper, the order came from the regimental commander, acting on instructions from Murmansk, to open fire.
Ilya's world exploded an instant after his head lifted in response to the noise of the fin-stabilised shell. He did not hear the second and third rounds being fired.
When the chopper had been reduced to smouldering rubbish, the T-62 retreated again into the forest.
Nine: Safe Return
'Charles — all I wish to ascertain at this time, before my people get back with what I hope will be proof, is this: if I can offer evidence, concrete evidence, of a Soviet incursion into Finland, what will you do with the information?'
Aubrey and Buckholz, Deputy Director of the CIA, had sat in the second-floor office of the American Consulate in Helsinki, overlooking the rock-strewn park of the Kaivopuisto, for almost two hours longer than the American had expected, while Aubrey explained the business he had called Snow Falcon. Buckholz, his back to the window, settled deep in his armchair behind the big desk, had said little, rubbing occasionally at the white hair he still wore cropped close to his skull, though now pink skin showed through. Aubrey sensed, almost from the beginning, that he was disturbed, even half-convinced — but t
hat his concern rested on his respect for the teller and not the potentialities of the tale.
Now, in the silence that Aubrey had anticipated after he posed the question, he saw Buckholz as uncomfortable, restless, perhaps even at a loss.
'Kenneth — my standing. That's the problem. I'm going out to grass this year. The Admiral's made that more than clear.' Aubrey nodded, unhelpfully silent. 'I'm a cold war warrior who embarrasses the Company. Y'know, three Senators have spoken to the President personally, asking he demand my resignation?' There was something affronted, and amused, in Buckholz's voice. 'Three liberal Democrats, sure — believers in the Kennedy myth, who've forgotten all the dirty tricks we used to play in those days.' He shook his head — Aubrey thought it only an imitation of the wisdom of resignation; a hawk's deception.
'I, too, have my detractors, Charles,' Aubrey remarked quietly. 'But, arthritis may get me before they do.'
Buckholz laughed, a bull-like roaring that sounded as if it lacked genuine amusement, but which Aubrey knew was sincere.
'OK. We both got troubles. I'm here to oversee security for the Treaty signing. Maybe this comes under that head, maybe not.'
'I have lost — '
'Two men, yes. Two good men?'
'Yes.'
'Your government — they in on any of this?' Aubrey shook his head, and Buckholz shrugged, as if about to say something, then relapsed into silence again.
'I have to have proof. But, do you support the hypothesis ? 'It's possible — but unlikely, especially in the present circumstances.'
'Exactly my original thoughts.'
'Look, Kenneth — this is the Man's ticket to another term, this Treaty. Checks and balances that work, real reductions — his social programme can go ahead just as soon as the ink is drying on the paper. Closer cooperation between the Soviet Union and the West. Man, it's the reallest thing in Washington at the moment! And you want to know if I want to tell him that it may all go down the tubes? Hell, I don't want to tell him — I want my pension.' He stared at Aubrey, eyes glinting. 'But I'll tell him, if there's anything to tell.'