by Thomas Craig
"We mean it!" Priabin shouted. "Get back, get out of our way."
Gant moved Serov like some overlarge toy being handled by a child. His feet dragged, but otherwise the GRU colonel did not resist his bundled passage down the first yards of the corridor. Gant felt the vulnerability of his own frame behind that of Serov. Priabin's shoulder rubbed against his as they moved together, Priabin still pressing the gun against Serov's head. Come on, come on, move.
The two guards retreated into the lieutenant, and together they shuffled backward reluctantly, staring at Serov's head and the gun. Gant was sweating furiously; he felt his volition draining away. To counter the threat, he offered Serovs form like a challenging flag at the three retreating men. It seemed to hurry them.
He knew they'd be in the underground garage, they'd be everywhere in the building; no one had done anything but cut off the alarm. It hadn't been canceled by an all-clear. Serov's boots dragged like brakes on the carpet.
He glanced at Priabin's face. It contained a desperation as clear as his own.
"We mean it, we'll kill him!" Priabin shouted at the guards and the lieutenant, waving the pistol, then replacing it so hard against the man's temple that Serov groaned. "Come on, get back!"
"Get away from those doors!" Gant bellowed hoarsely, his arms aching with Serov's weight, his own unwashed scent rank in his nostrils, his heart pumping wildly. "Move it!"
"Drop the rifles — your pistol, Lieutenant."
To Gant, the elevator suddenly seemed nothing more than a steel box into which they were stepping voluntarily; incarcerating themselves.
Priabin had summoned it. The rifles lay like sticks of black wood on the carpet. The three GRU men were beside the elevator doors. The lieutenant was looking down an empty staircase, hoping for assistance. Katya trained her pistol on them.
Gant slumped against the wall, Serov's weight hugged to him. Priabin stood opposite the doors of the elevator, pistol held out toward the frozen trio near the stairs. A moment of suspension, as if they all floated with some deep, slow current undersea. Then the click, the opening of the doors with a sigh.
Gant's head turned wildly.
Empty…
Empty!
Luck, incredible luck, which meant they would be down there. Priabin kicked the rifles and the pistol into the elevator, then helped Gant throw Serov after them. The colonel had begun to move, desperately but too slowly, trying to writhe out of Gant's relieved grasp. Gant flung himself against him, and they clashed dully onto the far wall of the elevator. Gant locked his arm across Serov's throat, snarling. Serov's body slumped into defeat once more.
Katya backed into the elevator, her gun still held level at the three men outside. Priabin covered her; then he pressed the basement button and held it down. Gant heard banging, already fading, on the outer doors. His own smell was suddenly more apparent in the confined, slowly moving box. His breathing and that of the others was magnified. Sweat ran into his eyes. Priabin's face was mobile with conflicting anticipations, eyes flickering again and again to the floor indicator above the doors. The lights winked on winked off, but the elevator did not stop.
Don't let it stop, don't let it, don't—
'They'll be waiting," Gant warned. Priabin nodded.
Gant gripped Serov's body more strongly, keeping one arm across the man's throat, feeling the bobbing Adam's apple against his sleeve; hearing the gurgling swallows of Serov's breathing, as if the man were drowning. Priabin placed the pistol muzzle almost ceremoniously against the blood-seeping temple.
Ground floor. The elevator did not stop. He felt the luck of it in another surge of adrenaline, but it seemed thin and ineffectual.
The elevator jerked to a stop, the doors opened. The icy temperature of the basement garage struck into the compartment, jolting Gant. He shivered. In his arms, Serov growled. Priabin jerked his head up. Serov's eyes were narrow with hatred.
"Gant?"
"I go first, sure—*
The basement was silent, apparently empty.
"Dmitri what if—?" Katya began.
"Don't think," Gant growled at her. "It has to work." He adjusted Serov's weight so that he could push him ahead. "Rifle," he added, nodding at the floor of the elevator. Their noises seemed lost in the echoing cold and concrete reaches of the basement. Gant listened. He could hear no footsteps, no running men.
Rasp of metal on metal. Glimpse of a rifle trained, resting on the hood of a car ten yards from him. Other men, perhaps five or six. Two officers, too. Men with uniforms undone but already dragooned into order and purpose.
He crushed Serov's body against him like a shield, feeling his own vulnerability; aware of every vital organ beneath the thin, stretched envelope of skin.
The noise of the first shot seemed swallowed by the low-roofed cavern of the basement, echoing harmlessly into the distance. The bullet chipped concrete flakes and dust from the wall near Gant's cheek. Dust filled his eyes, he felt his cheek sting.
"Stop firing, stop firing!" an officer bellowed through a loudspeaker, his voice distorted and booming. "You idiot, you'll kill the colonel," he added unnecessarily. Then he said, directing the open mouth of the loudspeaker toward Gant: "Stay where you are. Drop your weapons — you're outnumbered. You can't get out of here."
Gant coughed as he attempted to reply.
"There's no time to talk!" he heard Priabin shout. "We have nothing to lose — get out of our way. Don't attempt to stop us or Serov will be killed. You'll answer for that death, Captain. Think about it."
He stood alongside Gant, now thrusting the barrel of an AKMS rifle against Serov's head.
"Dmitri, the keys are in this car," Gant heard Katya call out.
"Start moving toward the car," Priabin whispered fiercely. Gant nodded, dragging Serov so violently off-balance that his legs stuck out in front of him and he became a drunk being towed rather than a shield. His heels scraped on the concrete floor. Oil stains, the smell of gasoline as Katya started the engine of the car Gant had not dared turn to see. The captain and his men made as if to move forward, their poses tense, threatening danger through reckless, instinctive action. "Serov's head will disappear if I squeeze this trigger," Priabin roared. "Stay where you are. Don't move a step."
Serov's bulk shifted against Gant, the dragging legs attempted to push the body upright. Serov cried out:
"Let them go! Don't interfere!"
Gant felt the body of the car against his back, felt the open rear door scrape against his sleeve, jab into his upper arm.
"Get in, get in," he said urgently, dragging Serov backward with him onto the seat. Serov struggled out of Gant's hold, but Priabin pushed him across the seat with the rifle and almost tumbled into the car. Gant felt exhausted beneath their combined weight. Priabin slammed the door, and the car immediately jerked forward, engine racing, tires squealing on the concrete.
The soldiers moved aside, losing their purpose and pattern as the car rushed at them. The captain jerked away from the hood at the last moment.
"Keep down," Priabin urged. Katya's form was bent over the steering wheel. "It's three kilometers, no more."
The car bucked onto the bottom of the exit ramp. Roared up into fading daylight, bouncing and skewing onto the cobbles of the square, beneath the archway and toward the dark statue surmounting the war memorial. The whole car smelled of gasoline; the engine howled. The traffic was light, Katya weaved through it out of the square onto a broad dual highway. Serov's eyes gleamed in his face. in contrast with the delicate, infirm manner in which his fingertips touched at the drying blood and the bruise on his temple.
Priabin's face was excited, elated. He laughed, the rifle held across his stomach and jabbed against Serov's ribs. He studied his prisoner with a wild satisfaction. Then looked at Gant, his features clouding. He shook his head as if to rid it of memory.
"You'll—?"
Gant was cradling his hand. It was already lividly bruised. He flexed his fingers in demonstration.
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"I can fly," was all he said in reply. Then he turned to look back through the rear window.
"Two cars and a truck," Katya said through clenched teeth.
"We're immortal as long as we have this bastard with us," Priabin replied. "Katya — turn on the radio. Let's find out what they're up to."
After the click of the switch, orders and counterorders, ideas and schemes and warnings flew like escaped birds in the car, adding to the strain of tension between its four occupants. They guessed the KGB helicopter at one point, others discounted it, they queried the use of roadblocks, voices demanded action, authority leaped and changed and was questioned and recognized. They agreed on the priority of Serov's life; agreed, too, that the helicopter was a possibility. Behind them, Gant saw the cars and the truck maintaining but not decreasing the gap between them and their quarry. In the distance, away above and beyond office blocks, the first helicopter could be discerned against a pale sky gradually being stained dark.
The modern buildings thinned, leaving gaps of sky and flatness between them, until the town opened out into low buildings, fenced perimeters, the sense of a military place. Katya turned the car off the highway onto an approach road. The first car followed, only hundreds of yards behind. Gant heard the orders, transmitted ahead, that the car was not to be stopped, the barrier was to be raised. High wire, parked aircraft. The pole of the guardhouse barrier lifted like an arm beckoning. Armed soldiers stood back, almost at attention as if for a visiting dignitary. The car swept past them, slid as it turned violently, then straightened again. Hangars, repair shops, control tower, vehicles, and aircraft.
An army truck was parked outside the hangar for which the Woman was heading, soldiers already emerged from it but loosely grouped as if given a break from some training exercise. An officer with a walkie-talkie. The cars and the truck surging closer behind them as the car slowed. White feces peering to check on them, on Serov.
Katya drove the car into the hangar, then slowed to a halt. A cramped, low building, gaps of sky visible through holes in the corrugated roof. A single helicopter, a Mil-2, unarmed and designed for aerial surveillance. Small, light, vulnerable, its top speed seventy miles an hour slower than a Mil-24 gunship. Gant felt his hands quiver with disappointment.
He opened the car door, entering the tension of the hangar, his awareness narrowing to a matter of seconds ahead.
"Can you?"
"Yes, damn you," he yelled back at Priabin. "Get that bastard in the cabin — watch them."
They were all on the side of the car away from the entrance to the hangar, shielded by its bulk from the soldiers outlined against the poor daylight; they still had a loose-limbed, uncertain air about them.
"It won't be long," Gant murmured, reluctant to move from the shelter afforded by the car, "before someone gives them an order they can't question: 'Kill them all.'" More troops in the doorway as they climbed out of the truck that had pursued them. A droning of rotors, closing. There was no evidence of any ground crew, no KGB uniforms. The helicopter required two minutes to bring its instruments and systems on-line. If they'd fueled up, if no one had had the foresight to disconnect, damage—
He had to know, yet he could not force his body into motion. Serov seemed to sense his indecision, but could take no satisfaction from it. What Gant had said had struck him forcibly. He might, at any moment, become a victim himself, as much a target as his captors.
"Got to go," Gant said softly, as if to himself. "In the cabin. I need another two minutes. You have to watch and listen for me, understand?"
Priabin nodded. "Two minutes." He was pale. Katya was shivering with cold, perhaps with reaction now that she was no longer driving.
Facing the entrance, they moved slowly away from the car, toward the fuselage of the silent Mil-2. Its metal was cold against Gant's backward-stretched hand. He fumbled for the handle to the hinged door of the main cabin, his legs against the undercarriage wheel.
"Get in."
Then he moved quickly, forgetting them, aware only of his own unarmed vulnerability. He slid back the pilot's door and clambered in — knowing his back was turned to a dozen or more Kalashnikovs for two, three seconds — then he slid the door savagely shut; as if it rendered him immune.
Polish-made, at Swidnik, under exclusive license. A cramped single cockpit, instrumentation and systems — familiar enough. A sophisticated helicopter. Two minutes. Electrics, hydraulics — on, on, on, on—
He glanced to his left, toward the hangar doors. If they blocked them—? Trucks could be used, they had two trucks out there. The instrument panel glowed, the hydraulic systems sighed as the pressure increased to operating level. They'd be bound to think of it.
Nonretractable tricycle undercarriage — height of the aircraft perhaps thirteen feet, height of a truck maybe ten, twelve feet, height of the doors no more than twenty-eight, thirty feet… just—
— unless they closed the doors… closed the doors!
Ignition.
He could not avoid watching the doors. They would think of it, had to — just as soon as the rotors began to turn, proved he was a pilot, could fly the machine. Had to.
Ignition of the second Isotov turboshaft. Throttles. The tail rotor had begun to turn, and above his head the three-bladed main rotor moved heavily, slowly, as if through a great pressure of deep water. Then quicker.
Soldiers became purposeful, hurrying. No trucks, just the sliding shut of the heavy doors. Unarmed helicopter. The rotors whirled, became a dish, roared. The Mil bucked against its brakes. Holding his breath, Gant gripped the control column with his left hand, closing it gently. It ached, was stiff, but would suffice. Satisfied, he moved the throttles above his head, nudged the column, touched at the pitch lever. Released the brakes. The Mil bobbed above the concrete floor of the hangar. The doors began to slide ponderously toward each other, like hands closing on a butterfly. He looked up through the Plexiglas at the disk of the rotors and was intensely aware of their fragility.
"Gant! They're closing the doors!" he heard in his headset. Prion's voice, rising in panic.
The gap of fading daylight narrowed measurably. The air beyond the doors was as unknown and dangerous as the lightless cave into which he had shuffled the Hind. The rotor diameter of the Mil-2 was close to fifty feet, fifty—
He thrust the column forward with a burning hand and raised the pitch lever. The helicopter leaped toward the daylight like a startled animal.
The wheels skimmed the concrete, the gap of daylight narrowed, the doors shuddered closer together, grabbing at his anticipated path. His awareness was totally concentrated on the doors, on his measurement of the shrinking air. Priabin's voice was a wordless, continuous cry of protest and warning, which he ignored.
Slowly moving soldiers, slowly gesticulating officers, the now hardly altering gap of darkening air, the blur of things to either side of him—
— so that he hardly heard the noise of shots in his headset, the shocked cry of protest, the banging of the cabin's hinged door — all of them loud, but hardly impinging, hardly real.
Not even Priabin's terrible, sobbing cry was real.
As he corrected the Mil with the gentlest touch, he saw in his mirror a figure rolling on the hangar floor, but could not identify him. The rotors, the gap, fifty feet, fifty, fifty, fifty, fifty… the scene was frozen now, the Mil its only moving part. The corrugated ribbing of the doors, their heavy bolts, the patches of rust, the rotors, the rotors, fifty feet, fifty, fifty—
— left hand, right, left, right, fifty — his breath suspended, everything about his body tensed and still in anticipation of the first wild lurch and the tearing noise of a rotor blade — fifty, fifty, fifty—
Air.
Fading daylight, level flight for a moment, and the rushing blur beside him cold and empty. The doors in the mirror—
He banked the Mil savagely, then climbed as rapidly as he could as they began shooting. His body was bathed in sweat as it returned fro
m shock. His hand began to burn with pain. His mind, no longer icy with judgments, knew they could not escape, not in this small, unarmed helicopter. He was merely alive, but not safe.
He heard—
"That bastard's shot her — shot her."
14: Last Ditch
Time itself was limited to the next two minutes. A clock had begun to register in his head, second after second. He could see no further than the two minutes' advantage he had over any organized helicopter pursuit. Eight seconds had already passed. He was becoming accustomed to the lightness, the individuality of this MiL, a type he had never flown before.
He eased the column forward, ignoring the wail of protest and horror that gathered in the tiny cockpit. Yet he could not isolate Priabin and the moans that must be the woman by switching off his headset. The ground beneath him diminished in the last of the daylight. He flicked on the radar, studying it at once, his mind closed to the sounds in his ears.
At six hundred feet — where they can see you, he told himself angrily — he slowed the climb until the Mil entered the hover; then, using the controls with new deftness and certainty, he made a 360-degree turn Eyes flickering from the radar to the scene darkening outside the Plexiglas, to the radar, to—
— the blip of a patrolling gunship already changing course, summoned back toward him. There was nothing else in the air as yet He lowered the pitch lever, and the Mil began to drop back toward the ground. He heard in his ears Priabin's plaintive cry.
"Gant — you must land the helicopter. I can't staunch the bleeding." Then something about stomachy huge loss of blood, looks pale, barely conscious — pain. "You must land, we must get Katya to a hospital."
"Serov got away!" Gant growled in accusation. He had intended a question, but it became an accusation "You let him get away — we have nothing."
"Shut up."
"Listen to me. There's no way out of here, Priabin. This airplane has no weapons. It can't outfly a crow, damn you!"
The Mil moved steadily away from the airfield, crossing boundary lights strung below like a warning. Gant flicked on the moving-map display, which glowed to life on the photo-reconnaissance main screen. The section of map surprised him with its detail. Getting lost would be easier with this much information.
