Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (45 page)

 
          
Annie
unclipped the parachute risers from Dev’s harness, then retrieved his survival
pack, laid it on his chest, then grabbed his parachute harness near his
shoulders and pulled. Although Deverill was tall, he wasn’t very big, but he
wouldn’t budge. She pulled harder, throwing her weight into it. and finally
broke him out of the crust of snow so he would move. But she could only move
him a few inches at a time, and soon found that she couldn’t keep him from
sliding down the embankment toward the road. This w'as not going to work. If
she kept on moving him, he’d eventually slide all the way down, and then
whoever was in the truck, or whoever might follow them toward the Vampire’s
crash site, would ...

 
          
A
flashlight beam swept across her. They were coming! They were a couple dozen
yards away, but they were getting closer by the second. She heard voices, angry
men’s voices. They were tracking her.

 
          
There
was nowhere else to go but down the embankment. Annie turned Dev’s body so his
head was facing downhill. He moved much easier now, so she pulled faster. The
flashlight beam swung in her direction again, much closer now. She crashed
against a tree, swore gently, maneuvered Dev’s body around the tree, and
continued to pull.

 
          
Excited,
frantic voices now. Annie guessed they had found the parachute. It was only a
matter of time now. .. .

 
          
Unexpectedly,
Annie reached the bottom of the embankment, fell, and landed hard on the frozen
dirt road. She twisted an ankle trying to land on her feet and couldn’t help
but cry out in pain. The flashlights again swung right in her direction.

 
          
They
had them now....

Borispol Air Base,
Kiev
, Bepublic of
Ukraine

That same time

           
The landing was anything but
pretty—in fact, it was more of a controlled crash than anything else. With most
of his hydraulic system gone. Major John Weston had no control of most of the
flight surface, engine nacelle control, or landing gear systems. He was able to
use the emergency blow-down system and got one good main landing gear and the
nose gear out of the spon- sons. But it didn’t matter—since he had no control
of the engine rotating system, he couldn’t switch to helicopter mode. They were
going to hit hard no matter how good the Trash Man was.

 
          
Borispol
Air Base was a large combined Ukrainian air force and army aviation base.
Weston got a general layout of the base from his flight information
publications. The northeast side of the base housed the army aviation
eskadriyls,
with Mil-8 and Mil-6 heavy transport helicopter squadrons and one Mil- 24
attack helicopter squadron; the south side had a mixture of fixed-wing air
defense, attack, bomber, and transport planes. Weston used the large runway to
get oriented, then slowly, carefully, diverted over to the taxi way opposite
the blast deflectors beside the mass helicopter parking ramp. If he lost any
pieces of his Pave Hammer aircraft, at least they probably wouldn't hit any
Ukrainian aircraft, and he wouldn’t close the runway by crash-landing on the
main runway.

 
          
“Hang
on!” Weston shouted behind him over the roar of the windblast and engine
noises. “Prepare for a hard landing!”

           
Normally he would've said, “Prepare
for a copilot landing,” but he didn’t think the shades of his dead copilot
would appreciate the humor As he touched down, traveling at least thirty knots
beyond normal approach speed to maintain controllability, the first to arrive
were the tips of his rotors, chewing huge double gouges into the taxiway. As
soon as the rotors stopped, all lift ceased, and the MV-22 slammed into the
pavement. The landing gear collapsed instantly, and the Pave Hammer aircraft
began a long, ugly belly-slide, stopping four hundred feet later in the dirt
between the taxiway and runway.

 
          
Weston
had all of the major systems shut off several seconds before they landed.
Ignoring the emergency escape system in the cockpit, he leapt out of his seat,
stepping carefully over the body of his copilot in the aisle, and went to
assist his surviving crew members in the evacuation. But Wohl, Briggs,
Fratierie, and the surviving PJs had quickly evacuated Linda Mae Maslyukov out
of the already-extended aft cargo ramp the moment the aircraft stopped, and had
moved her several hundred feet upwind from the crash-landing site.

 
          
The
aircraft was not on fire, just smoke belching from each seized engine, so
Weston accepted the grisly but important task of carrying his copilot’s body
out of the aircraft. He half dragged, half carried him as far upw
ind
as he could, then laid him on the grass as
carefully as possible. Exhausted, shaking from the buckets of adrenaline
coursing through his bloodstream, very glad to be alive, Weston collapsed on
the grass upwind of the aircraft. His job was over for now. All he needed was a
beer and his wife and kids by his side.

 
          
Ukrainian
soldiers and airmen were running over to them, jabbering excitedly. Several of
them spoke English, and they hurried to help the PJs attend to Siren. They
started an intravenous drip to try to rehydrate and nourish her, and a
Ukrainian medic began dressing her wounds. Ukrainian firefighters knocked down
the smoldering engine fires quickly. Weston was introduced first to the
security forces first sergeant, and then to a progressive string of
higher-ranking officers, until the base commander himself finally appeared.

 
          
Hal
Briggs and Chris Wohl, looking like some sort of sci-fi Starship Troopers,
walked up to them. Since they had just landed on a Commonwealth air base and
might still be pursued by the Russian Air Force, both of them were on guard:
Briggs had his helmet on, scanning the sky and the base for any sign of a
threat; Wohl had his huge electromagnetic antitank rail gun out and ready.
“Guys, this is the base commander, Brigadier- General Mykhaylo Sakhan,
commander of the Second Aviation Division here at Borispol.” Briggs saluted;
Wohl stood silently, his rail gun at port arms.

 
          
“And
who are you, sir?” Sakhan asked, after he returned his salute, staring in
amazement at both their strange outfits and their weapons.

 
          
“Our
code name is Tin Man, sir,” Briggs replied in his electronically synthesized
voice. “We are American military personnel. That’s all I am authorized to
reveal to you.”

 
          
“
Neechoho,
” Sakhan said. “Wc were warned by your American state department that you would
be arriving, although they said nothing about arriving spacemen.”

 
          
“We
need one of your helicopters to return to
Russia
, sir,” Briggs said simply.

 
          
“What
happened?” Weston asked.

 
          
“Our
guardian angel took a hit. Terminator is down. We’re going in after them.”

 
          
“Damn.
I wish I had my ride.” And he meant it—all thoughts of relaxing with his family
and a cold one were gone. Dewey and Deverill had risked their lives to save
his. “You guys get out of here. We’ll be okay.”

 
          
“Unfortunately,
I cannot help you,” Sakhan said. “I have not received authorization from my
superiors to assist you in violating Russian territory. I understand lives are
at stake, but your government has not made the reason for all this activity
clear to us. Perhaps you can explain who you are and what you were doing in
Russia
, and I can pass this information along to
my superiors.”

 
          
“Unfortunately,
that's not possible, sir,” Briggs said. “But I assure you, my government will
take full responsibility for our actions and reimburse you in full.”

 
          
“Would
you sell me your strange outfit, or allow me to rent it for a while, or accept
my assurance that whatever I might do with it would not be your
responsibility?” Sakhan asked with a smile.

           
“No, sir.”

 
          
Sakhan
raised his hands. “So there we have it. You can expect a representative from
your embassy to arrive shortly, and we will secure the wreckage of your
aircraft and assist your injured in any way we can.”

 
          
“I’m
sorry we couldn't get any authorized assistance, sir,” Briggs said.

 
          
Sakhan
narrowed his eyes. “This means what, soldier?”

 
          
Briggs
and Wohl walked down the taxiway and made their way over to the mass helicopter
parking ramp. Sakhan and several of his officers and personnel followed. They
walked down the middle of the ramp until they saw a Mil-8MTV twin- turboprop
helicopter gunship readying for takeoff, with a machine gun mounted on the nose
but its weapon outriggers empty. “We'll take this one,” he said.

 
          
“
Pereproshooyoo?"
Sakhan exclaimed, the rising anger apparent in his voice. “You will ‘take' this
helicopter? What do you mean?”

 
          
“I
mean, sir, that I will take this helicopter to
Russia
on a rescue mission, or my associate will
destroy it.”

 
          
“Destroy
it? How dare you?”

 
          
Briggs
turned to Wohl. “Demonstrate,” he ordered.

 
          
Wohl
turned and, shooting from the hip, fired a depleted uranium projectile into
another parked helicopter about a hundred yards away. The projectile created a
bright one-inch contrail through the moist predawn sky that was very visible
under the ballpark lights illuminating the ramp. Several large pieces of the
helicopter’s engine compartment flew off, and the rotor mast listed sideways so
far that one rotor blade tip sagged all the way to the ramp.

 
          
“
Gavnuk.!
That little display of false bravado just cost your government five million
dollars, and cost you a year in prison!” Sakhan shouted. He turned to two of
his security men standing behind him and issued an order in Ukrainian.

 
          
But
when the guards leveled their assault rifles on Briggs and Wohl. Briggs
immediately sent both of them to the tarmac with one quick electric blast each
from his electrodes. Wohl covered Briggs with the big rail gun but did not aim
it at anyone. The other officers around Sakhan were stunned, not daring to make
a move. Briggs nodded toward another helicopter. “Now that one.”

 
          
“Nee!
Zhoda! Zhoda!
Very well, very well,” Sakhan said angrily, holding up his
hands. “If you wish to kill or maim dozens of my men just so you may sacrifice
your lives and the life of one of my helicopter crews over
Russia
, I cannot stop you. But I wish you to know
that you are in violation of Ukrainian law and I will see to it that you are
punished.”

           
“Thank you, sir,” Briggs said. He
and Wohl trotted over to the helicopter that had just started engines:
meanwhile, Sakhan had issued orders over a portable radio to the crew. As the
two Americans approached, several crew members departed the helicopter. When
Briggs and Wohl climbed aboard, only the pilot and copilot remained.

 
          
Briggs
strapped into the flight engineer’s seat behind the copilot, then swiveled the
seat so he sat between the two pilots. He saw their shocked reactions as they
stared at the weirdly outfitted man. “Stand by for instructions,” he told the
pilot. He nodded in return—obviously he understood English and could hear
Briggs’s synthesized voice. Briggs activated his satellite transceiver: “Briggs
to Luger secure.”

 
          
“Go
ahead, Hal.”

 
          
“Me
and the master sergeant just got a ride,” Briggs said. “We might need to smooth
things over with the Ukrainian army, but we’ll deal with that problem later. I
need a heading and as much intel as you can give me to the shootdown point.”