The Charm School

by Nelson DeMille

  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 maintained 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 copilot’s 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 sq
uall. 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, good 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 his 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.”

  Hollis said, “I find it hard to refute that logic, Bill. If we had a bottle of champagne, I’d say pop it.”

  Mills said, “Damn, Seth was supposed to buy champagne at the Trade Center.”

  At the mention of Alevy’s name, there was a silence during which, Hollis thought, everyone was probably cursing him and blessing him at the same time. Such was the fate of men and women who move others toward great heights and dark abysses.

  Lisa said to Mills, “Change places with me.” She got out of her seat and knelt on the floor to the side of Hollis. She said to him, “I know you can’t hold my hand now. But if you don’t have to hold the controls in a minute or two, can you hold my hand then?”

  “Of course.”

  O’Shea took the controls. “I’ve got it, General. Take a stretch.”

  Hollis released the controls and took Lisa’s hand.

  The helicopter continued inbound, toward Leningrad, and no one spoke. The steady sound of the turbines filled the cabin, and they listened to that and only to that, waiting for the sound to stop.

  O’Shea cleared his throat and said in a controlled voice, “Twelve o’clock, one kilometer.”

  Brennan, Mills, and Lisa stood and looked out the front windshield. Steaming toward them was a medium-sized freighter, and on its fantail were three yellow lights.

  Hollis released Lisa’s hand and took the controls. He figured they needed about thirty seconds’ flying time if he brought it in straight over the bow. But if they flamed out, they could smash into the freighter, and neither the freighter nor its crew deserved that.

  He banked right, away from the oncoming ship, then swung north, approaching the freighter at right angles, flying into the strong wind for added lift. He noticed that the three yellow lights were off now, which probably meant they’d seen him making his approach.

  O’Shea said, “General, we have to get some altitude for a steep approach.”

  Hollis knew that a shallow approach from a hundred meters was not the preferred way to land a helicopter on a moving deck. But a flame-out during an ascent was no treat either. All his instincts and what was called pilot’s intuition told him that his remaining flight time could be measured in seconds. “Relax.”

  “Your show.” O’Shea scanned the instrument panel as Hollis concentrated on the visual approach. O’Shea called out airspeed, tachometer readings, torque, and altitude. He said, “Ground speed, about thirty.”

  Hollis saw that the freighter’s stern was going to pass by before he reached it, so he put the helicopter into a sliding flight toward port as he continued his shallow powerglide approach.

  He adjusted the rudder pedals to compensate for the decreased torque, keeping the nose of the helicopter lined up with the moving ship, while continuing a sideways flight.

  He tried to maintain constant ground speed by use of the cyclic pitch, coordinating that with the collective pitch and the throttle.

  O’Shea called out, “Ground speed, forty.”

  Hollis pulled up on the nose to bring down the speed.

  O’Shea said, “Altitude, fifty meters.”

  Hollis kept the nose lined up amidships. The distance to the freighter was about one hundred meters, and he estimated his glide angle would take him over the stern for a hovering descent.

  “Ground speed, thirty; altitude, thirty.”

  A horn sounded, and O’Shea said, “Oil pressure dropping. We must have popped a line or gasket.”

  The recorded voice, which had stayed inexplicably silent about the fuel, said, “Imminent engine failure. Prepare for autorotative landing.”

  They were within ten meters of the ship’s upper decks now, and Hollis picked up the nose of the helicopter, reducing ground speed to near zero. The ship slid past, and the aft deck was suddenly in front of him. The deck was pitching and rolling, but never had a landing zone looked so good to him. He felt his way toward the retreating deck, and as he passed over it, the helicopter picked up ground cushion and ballooned upward. “Damn it.” The stern was gone now, and he was over the water again. Without the ground cushion, the helicopter fell toward the water.

  Hollis quickly increased the throttle and the collective pitch of the blades, causing the helicopter to lift, seconds before the tail boom would have hit the churning wake. Hollis turned the nose back toward the stern and followed the ship, focusing on its stern light, trying to hold it steady in the strong crosswind. He felt like a man trying to grab the caboose rail of a moving train.

  Written in white letters across the stern of the ship was its name, and Hollis
noted it irrelevantly: Lucinda.

  The recorded voice said, “Imminent engine failure. Prepare for an autorotative landing.”

  Hollis pushed forward on the collective stick, increased the throttle, and literally dove in, clearing the stern rail by a few feet. He pulled back on the collective pitch, and the helicopter flared out a few meters from the rising quarterdeck.

  O’Shea shut the engines down as the rear wheels struck the deck and the Mi-28 bounced into the air. The pitching and rolling deck fell beneath them, then rose and slammed the two starboard wheels, nearly capsizing the aircraft. Hollis yanked up on the brake handle, locking the wheels.

  Finally the helicopter settled uneasily onto the moving deck. Hollis looked up at the ship’s mainmast and saw it was flying the Union Jack.

  No one spoke, and the sound of the turbines and rotor blades died slowly in their ears, replaced by the sound of lapping waves. A salty sea scent filled the cabin, and the relatively smooth flight was replaced by the rocking of a wind-tossed ship. Hollis saw that there were no crew in sight and assumed that all hands had been ordered below.

  O’Shea cleared his throat and said quietly, “I don’t like ships. I get seasick.”

  Brennan said, “I fucking love ships.”

  Mills said to Hollis and O’Shea, “You both did a splendid job. We owe you one.”

  Hollis replied tersely, “If ‘we’ means your company, Bert, then we all owe you one too.”

  Lisa suddenly threw her arms around Hollis’ neck. “I love you! You did it! Both of you.” She grabbed O’Shea’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you both.”

  O’Shea’s face reddened. “I didn’t do… well, talk to him about my efficiency report.”

  Hollis smiled. “I’ll reconsider it.”

  O’Shea said to Hollis, “Right before I shut the engines down—”

  “I heard it.”

  “What?” Mills asked.

  “One of them,” O’Shea replied, “went out. There isn’t enough fuel in the tanks to fill a cigarette lighter.”

  “Well, we don’t need any more fuel. See, it worked out fine.” Mills reached under his seat and pulled out a plastic bag filled with black ski masks and handed it to Brennan. “Here, everyone put on one of these. No talking to the crew, no names.”