by Cap Daniels
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Norikova still unconscious on the seat. “Wouldn’t it be nice if just once everything went the way we planned?”
In spite of the pain, Clark laughed. “Oh, grasshopper, you have so much to learn. I’ve been on three dozen real-world missions in my life, and never—not once—has it gone as planned. Something always gets screwed up. Somebody always gets hurt or killed. There’s no way to plan for everything that might go wrong. The key to staying alive is what I’ve seen you do every time things start to fall apart. You stay calm, think, plan, and execute. That’s all we can do. It’s never going to go as planned. Never.”
“I thought it was just me,” I said. “I thought I was a bad luck charm.”
“Bad luck charm? Ha! That’s funny. We haven’t had any real bad luck yet. We were only captured once, and only two people tried to kill us. Those border guards, or whoever they were, screwed up when they just knocked us out instead of shooting us, and Kitty-Kat back there messed up when she got too close. All in all, this has gone pretty smoothly.”
I shook my head and sighed. “If this is smooth, I’m not looking forward to rocky.”
“Speaking of getting rocky,” he said, “you might want to see if you can get the girls on the phone.”
I immediately dialed Ginger.
Skipper answered. “Are you there?”
It was nice to hear her voice. “Yeah, I’m here, and we’re okay.”
She hit me with a barrage of questions about why we weren’t on the boat and how we ended up so far off track and going so fast.
I tried to explain it to her, but the noise in the chopper made it challenging. “What can you do about paving our way through Estonian airspace? We don’t have the gas to go around if we’re going to make Ruhnu.”
“I have no idea how to do that, but I’ll tell Ginger. How about if we get you some fuel in Estonia? Would that help?”
“I’d rather not stop,” I yelled into the phone. “I think we have fuel to make it, and I don’t want to risk anything else going wrong on the ground.”
“Okay, I’ll see what we can do, and we’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”
I clicked off and went back to work on my fuel burn calculations. “It’s looking pretty good. Did we pick up a tailwind?”
Clark scanned the instrument panel. “Yeah, a little one. Eight or nine knots.”
“That’s enough to make a big difference,” I said.
We crossed the Baltic Sea and watched the lights of the Estonian coast fall beneath our nose.
“I really hope they don’t start shooting.”
Clark peered over the panel at the few ground lights scattered across the landscape. “Estonia is an ally.”
“Yeah, so is Finland,” I said. “And we saw how well that worked out.”
Chapter 17
No Ground Fire
“Okay, the ambassador said nobody’s going to be shooting at you, but we owe him a big favor.”
I was thankful for even a little bit of good news. “Thanks, Skipper. I knew you’d come through for us. I’ll let you know when we’re feet dry on Ruhnu.”
We flew across the entire peninsula of Estonia without so much as a flashlight shining up at us. I checked on Norikova to find her wincing and licking blood from her lips.
“It looks like sleeping beauty has finally awakened,” I said. “I think I’ll go say hello.”
Clark glanced over his shoulder and chuckled. “Don’t get too close. You know how she gets.”
I crawled from the cockpit and knelt safely away from her. “Welcome back. How does your face feel?”
“You know I had to try, yes?”
“Yes, I know, but it didn’t work out for you, and I’m going to recommend you not try again.”
“You are still taking me home, yes?”
“We’ll see about that.”
“I saved your life. I could have left you there to die, but I did not.”
“No, that’s not what you did. You saved your life, and then you got greedy.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you shot four or five guys and chopped the heads off of a couple more. You could’ve flown away and made Saint Petersburg in an hour, but you decided to pick up some trophies for your wall. Did you think bringing home American operatives would get you off the hook for screwing up?”
“My nose is, I think, broken.”
“I think so, too,” I said, “and from where I sit, you’re pretty lucky that a broken nose is all you got for the stunt you pulled. I told you we’re pretty good at this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”
She refused to look at me.
I leaned a little closer, but still well outside her reach. “Regardless of your reasons, thank you for not leaving us back there.”
Her eyes met mine, and although her expression wasn’t a smile, it wasn’t a frown, either.
“How’s she doing?” asked Clark when I’d settled back into my seat.
“She’s in a lot of pain.”
“Yeah, I bet. A broken nose will do that. We’ve got some morphine in the kit if you’re in the mood to show some mercy.”
“I’m running low on mercy for people who point guns at me,” I said.
“I know, but it might make her a little easier to deal with when we get back on the ground…if we make Ruhnu.”
I climbed back into the cabin. “I have some morphine. It’ll help with the pain of your broken nose if you want it.”
She seemed unsure of how to respond. “This drug will make me sleep, yes?”
“Sometimes it makes people sleepy, but I can give you as much or as little as you want. You don’t have to sleep.”
“Why are you kind to me?”
“It’s not me,” I said. “It’s Clark. He’s the one who thinks I should give you the morphine. I told him I didn’t like the idea of helping people who point guns at me…especially when the gun is mine.”
She dropped her gaze to the floor. “I am sorry for pointing gun at you, and I would like to have drug to stop pain. Please.”
I pulled the med kit from my gear and stuck a syringe into the vial of morphine. “How much do you want?”
“I would like same dose you would want in same circumstance.”
That was a pretty good answer. I drew up enough morphine to make an elephant dream of unicorns, capped the needle, and tossed the syringe to her.
She let it land on her lap and then pulled the top from the needle. With one swift motion, she pierced the cloth of her pants and the muscle of her thigh, emptying the syringe with a long, slow press of the plunger. She capped the needle and awkwardly tried to toss it back to me in spite of her cuffed hands.
“Spasibo, Amerikanec.”
“You’re welcome, Russian.”
Those words echoed in my head. An almost identical exchange took place between me and Anya the night we first kissed aboard Aegis—the same night I shot off her toe.
Back in the cockpit, I was pleased to discover my fuel calculations had been a little too conservative. It appeared we would make Ruhnu with fuel to spare.
“Did you save any morphine for me?” asked Clark.
“You know you can’t have morphine after a head wound.”
“You spoil all the fun.”
A few small lights came into view on the horizon ahead, and I checked the GPS. “Look at that. That’s just how I expect Ruhnu to look in the middle of the night. I think things are finally going our way.”
“Don’t get excited just yet. We still have to find a place to land in the dark, and my head feels like somebody’s beating a bass drum inside it.”
“Believe it or not, there’s an airport on the southern end of the island. I can’t think of a better place to land a helicopter. Can you?”
“You’re just full of good answers tonight,” he said, “but with my head thumping and my blurred vision, I’m not sure I can make much of a landing. You’ll either have to put us back on the gr
ound or get your dream girl look-alike back there to do it.”
I glanced into the cabin. “The first runner-up for Miss Russia 2001 is dancing with Sugar Plum Fairies back there on her morphine trip, so I guess it’s up to me.”
He rubbed his temples. “Just try to keep all the big parts on the helicopter, okay?”
I was comfortable landing almost anything with real wings, but helicopters weren’t my strong suit. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any promises.”
The GPS, even in Finnish, would get us to the unlit airport on the frigid island in the Gulf of Riga, so finding the airport would be the easy part. Getting us back on Earth, in one piece, in the dark, would be the challenge.
We flew south along the eastern shore of the island until the coastline fell away to the west. The GPS showed the airport at the extreme southern tip of the island.
I slid my boots onto the pedals and gripped the cyclic and collective with my gloved hands. “I have the controls,” I said, a little less confidently than a competent pilot should.
Clark muffled what sounded like a nervous laugh. “You have the controls.”
“Let’s get the searchlight on and the instrument lights dimmed,” I ordered as I settled on the controls.
Clark adjusted the lights. The clearing where the airport was supposed to be looked like a postage stamp—probably a mile long and a quarter mile wide—but I would’ve preferred a South Georgia peanut field. There were no buildings under the searchlight, so that left trees as my only obstacles. As we approached the airport, I saw the vague outline of a runway, but I had no illusions about actually being able to hit it. I’d be happy just keeping us out of the tree line and icy water.
I pulled the nose up to bleed off some airspeed as we approached from the south. The ink-black sea gave way to uncertain terrain, and finally, the barren airport.
The nose kept coming up, and the speed kept bleeding off. Everything was going far too well. I had to be on the verge of hitting Bigfoot or a flying unicorn—which were just as likely as me pulling off the landing.
I brought the chopper to a condition resembling a hover at treetop level, and I was pleased to see the beam of the searchlight holding relatively still on the ground. I slowly lowered the collective to descend toward terra firma, but as we settled, the world beneath me started spinning. I stomped the pedal, and the spinning turned into spinning and swaying in the opposite direction. After four or five, or maybe fifty attempts to get the chopper under control with wild combinations of hands and feet moving in every direction, I realized I was chasing the helicopter, overcorrecting, and generally doing everything wrong. I had to calm down and get ahead.
I felt Clark on the controls, and the aircraft finally stopped trying to tear itself apart.
“There you go. Just hold on to her,” he said. “I’m going to bring the light up a few degrees. That’ll give you something to focus on. Don’t chase her. If she gets out of control again, we’ve got plenty of clearing ahead to climb out and give it another shot.”
I took a long, slow breath and relaxed the tension in my arms. The beam of light gradually settled and then came to a stop in front of us. As I relaxed and decreased my death grip on the controls, the aircraft settled until we were, what I believed to be, only inches above the ground. In fear of having to do it all again, I dumped the collective, and the skids hit the ground in a bone-jarring collision. Everything stopped moving. I rolled off the throttle and watched the gauges spin down. It wasn’t pretty, and we were far more than a few inches above the ground when I committed to the landing, but we were safely on deck, and I believed the chopper was still intact and relatively undamaged. I wasn’t sure I could say the same for my pants.
Clark clubbed my left shoulder. “Well, I’ll be damned! I can’t believe you did it. I was sure we were all going to die.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but we can’t die today. We’ve got too much work to do.”
An old flight instructor once told me, “There’s no such thing as a crash landing, kid. You either crash or you land, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.” I wasn’t sure which category the last two minutes of my life fell into, but for reasons I can’t explain, I was glad Ekaterina Norikova wasn’t awake to witness my so-called landing.
“It looks like Kat’s still sleeping like a baby back there,” Clark said. “How much morphine did you give her?”
“Enough to ensure her cooperation.”
We finished shutting down the chopper, and all the moving parts became stationary. As we stepped from the cockpit, a single bobbing light approaching from the south caught my eye.
I grabbed Clark’s arm and pointed toward the light. “What’s that?”
“I can’t tell, but let’s get some cover until we find out. I don’t want to be out in the open when whatever it is gets here.”
“What about her?” I asked, pointing to an unconscious Norikova.
“She’s not going anywhere. Follow me.”
We moved to place the chopper between us and the approaching light, and then, with pistols drawn, sprinted for the tree line, where we took cover behind some fallen trees. We were able to conceal ourselves almost entirely while still seeing the opening well enough to watch our quarry. The dim light continued its approach but stopped bouncing five hundred feet beyond the chopper.
“Did it stop?”
I squinted and tried to focus on the light. “No, it’s still coming, but it’s on the runway now.”
As the light grew closer and finally stopped beside the helicopter, I heard a man’s voice with a decided French accent call out, “Monsieur Fulton! Monsieur Johnson! Where are you?”
“It’s the Frenchman,” I said as we climbed over the tree trunks and headed back for the chopper. Neither of us holstered our weapon, but we were happy to hear a friendly voice.
As we approached the helicopter, we kept the fuselage between the Frenchman and us. Clark maneuvered to come up from behind while I rounded the nose of the chopper.
I raised my weapon to bear on the man’s feet and hit his eyes with the beam of my flashlight. “Show me your hands!”
He calmly held out his empty hands, palms up. “I am Pierre Arnoult, monsieur. I am armed, but I mean you no harm. If I were trying to assault you, do you think I would have ridden that old bicycle?”
I cast my light toward his bike and lowered my pistol. “I’m sorry for the scare,” I said, “but we’ve had a rough night.”
“That is what I heard from your analyst, Elizabeth. She says you had a little trouble with some Finns. Ah, their bark is worse than their bite. I thought you were coming by bateau, not avion.”
His French accent was amusing, but I was starting to believe it wasn’t completely authentic. “Yeah, well, we opted for the chopper instead. It was a little more exciting, and a lot warmer and dryer.”
“Ha ha! Exciting, it was. I saw the landing—if that’s what it was…a landing.”
Clark stepped from the shadows.
I said, “Our pilot took a nasty blow to the head, so his skills aren’t at their peak tonight.”
Clark scowled. “Yeah, you might even say someone else was trying to fly the thing.”
Pierre pulled a penlight from his pocket and shined it into the cabin of the 412. “So, this must be the guest of honor I am to entertain, no?”
“Yeah, that’s Ekaterina Norikova, and she’s a handful. She’s currently sleeping off a big-boy dose of morphine, but she’ll be feisty when she wakes up and gets her wits about her.”
“Ah, I know how to deal with feisty. She will be no problem for me.”
“Don’t be so sure. She’s a well-trained assassin and as crafty as they come.”
“Oh, my boy. I have been dealing with Russians for thirty years. They are all well trained and crafty, but not so much so as to outwit Pierre.”
It finally hit me. Pierre sounded like the crazy cat man from Malory Square in Key West. His bizarre act with the two dozen cat
s every night at sunset was only slightly more insane than Pierre. I don’t think his accent was authentic either, but he nailed the crazy part.
“So, where do you want her?” I asked.
“I will take her in the motor car. It is just down by the water.”
Pierre disappeared on his ancient bicycle without another word. By the time he’d returned, Clark and I had Norikova unlocked from the seat frame and resting comfortably on the floor of the chopper.
What Pierre had called a motor car turned out to be a black Land Rover with a bicycle rack affixed to the rear. We hefted Norikova into the vehicle, ensuring her cuffs and shackles were still securely in place, and climbed into the truck. Clark took the front, and I sat in the back seat with Norikova’s head in my lap. I fully expected her to wake up at any moment and chew through my thigh.
“If you don’t mind,” said Pierre, “I would like to hover your helicopter out of the way—just in case someone else happens to need the runway before you leave.”
“Knock yourself out,” I said. “You can’t do any worse than I did.”
“I don’t believe I will have any troubles.”
We sat in the warmth of the Land Rover while Pierre expertly hovered the chopper clear of the runway.
When he returned, I said, “You’re just full of surprises, Pierre.”
“Don’t be surprised, my boy. When you are my age, you will have more skills than you can count.”
“So, where are we taking our guest?”
“There is a very old church, beneath which is a very old cellar. We are taking her there.”
We wound through the narrow dirt path that apparently passed for a road on Ruhnu, and pulled up in front of what was, indeed, a very old church. I wished the sun would come up so I could see the building in the daylight.
“This is the Ruhnu wooden church,” Pierre said. “It was built in the sixteen-forties and is the most likely the oldest wooden building in all of Estonia.”
“I’m not sure what day it is, and I’m even less sure how long we’ll need you to hold her,” I said. “Won’t the parishioners get a little nervous about a Frenchman holding a Russian spy in the basement of their church?”