it, then if it’s all right, set her down and I’ll make a quick inspect. Safer to do that; Christ only knows if the bullets chopped an oil line or nicked a cable.” Lochart saw Scot take his eyes off the clearing to glance around at his passengers. “The hell with them for crissake, I’ll deal with them,” he said sharply. “You concentrate on the landing.” He saw the younger man flush but obey, then, trying to contain his sudden nausea, Lochart turned around expecting blood splashed everywhere and entrails and someone screaming - screams drowned by the jet engines - knowing there was nothing he could do until they reached sanctuary and landed, always the first duty to land safely. To his aching relief the three men in the backseat - two mechanics and another pilot - were seemingly unhurt though they were all hunched down, and Jordon, the mechanic directly behind Scot, was white-faced, holding his head with both hands. Lochart turned back.
They were about fifty feet now, on a good approach, coming in fast. In the clearing the surface was stark and white and flat with no tufts of grass showing through, the snow banked high at the sides. Seemingly a good choice. Easily enough room to maneuver and land. But how to judge the depth of snow and the hidden level of the earth beneath? Lochart knew what he would do if he had the controls. But he did not have control, he was not the captain though he was senior. “They’re okay in the back, Scot.”
“Thank God for that,” Scot Gavallan said. “You set to get out?” “How’s the surface look to you?”
Scot heard the caution in Lochart’s voice, instantly aborted the landing, put on power and went into a hover. Christ, he thought, almost in panic at his stupidity, if Tom hadn’t nudged me I’d’ve put down there and Christ knows how deep the snow is or what’s underneath! He steadied at a hundred feet and searched the mountainside. “Thanks, Tom. What about over there?” The new clearing was smaller, a few hundred yards away across the other side of the valley, lower down with a good escape route if they needed one, and protected from the wind. The ground was almost clear of snow, rough but serviceable.
“Looks better to me too.” Lochart slid one earphone away and looked back. “Hey, JeanLuc,” he shouted over the engines, “you all right?” “Yes. I heard something go.”
“So did we. Jordon, you all right?”
“Course I’m all effing right, for Gawd’s sake,” Jordon shouted back sourly. He was a lean, tough Australian and he was shaking his head like a dog. “Just banged my bleeding head, didn’t I? Bloody effing bullets! I thought Scot said things were getting bleeding better with the bleeding Shah gone and Khomeini bleeding back. Better? Now they’re bleeding firing at us! They’ve never done that before - what the eff’s going on?” “How the hell do I know? Probably just a trigger-happy nutter. Sit tight, I’m going to take a quick look. If the undercart’s okay we’ll set down and you and Rod can make a check.”
“How’s the effing oil pressure?” Jordon shouted.
“In the Green.” Lochart settled back, automatically scanning the dials, the clearing, the sky, left, right, overhead, and below. They were descending nicely, two hundred feet to go. Through his headset he heard Gavallan humming tonelessly. “You did very well, Scot.”
“The hell I did,” the younger man said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I’d’ve pranged. I was bloody paralyzed when the bullets hit, and if it hadn’t been for you I’d’ve gone in.”
“Most of it was my fault. I bashed the collective without warning. Sorry about that but I had to get us out of the bastard’s line of fire fast. I learned that in Malaya.” Lochart had spent a year there with the British Forces in their war against Communist insurgents. “No time to warn you. Set down as fast as you can.” He watched approvingly as Gavallan went into a hover, searching the terrain carefully.
“Did you see who fired at us, Tom?”
“No, but then I wasn’t looking for hostiles. Where you going to land?” “Over there, well away from the fallen tree. Okay?”
“Looks fine to me. Quick as you can. Hold her off about a foot.” The hover was perfect. A few inches above the snow, as steady as the rocks below though the wind was gusting. Lochart opened the door. The sudden cold chilled him. He zipped up his padded flight jacket, slid out carefully, keeping bis head well down from the whirling blades.
The front of the skid was scraped and badly dented and a little twisted but the rivets holding it to the undercarriage mounts were firm. Quickly he checked the other side, rechecked the damaged skid, then gave the thumbs-up. Gavallan eased off the throttle a hair and set her down, soft as thistledown.
At once the three men in the back piled out. JeanLuc Sessonne, the French pilot, ducked out of the way to let the two mechanics begin their inspection, one port, the other starboard, working back from nose to tail. The wind from the rotors tore at their clothes, whipping them. Lochart was under the helicopter now looking for oil or gasoline seepage but he could find none, so he got up and followed Rodrigues. The man was American and very good - his own mechanic who, for a year now, had serviced the 212 he normally flew. Rodrigues undipped an inspection panel and peered inside, his gray-flecked hair and clothes tugged by the airflow.
S-G safety standards were the highest of all Iranian helicopter operators, so the maze of cables, pipes, and fuel lines was neat, clean, and optimum. But suddenly Rodrigues pointed. There was a deep score on the crankcase where a bullet had ricocheted. Carefully they backtracked the line of the bullet. Again he pointed into the maze, this time using a flash. One of the oil lines was nicked. When he brought out his hand it was oil heavy. “Shit,” he said.
“Shut her down, Rod?” Lochart shouted.
“Hell no, there may be more of those trigger-happy bastards around, an’ this’s no place to spend the night.” Rodrigues pulled out a piece of waste and a spanner. “You check aft, Tom.”
Lochart left him to it, uneasily looked around for possible shelter in case they had to overnight. Over the other side of the clearing, JeanLuc was casually peeing against a fallen tree, a cigarette in his mouth. “Don’t get frostbite, JeanLuc!” he called out and saw him wave the stream good-naturedly.
“Hey, Tom.”
It was Jordon beckoning. At once he ducked under the tail boom to join the mechanic. His heart skipped a beat. Jordon also had an inspection panel off. There were two bullet holes in the fuselage, just over the tanks. Jesus, just a split second later and the tanks would have blown, he thought. If I hadn’t shoved the collective down we’d all’ve bought it. Absolutely. But for that we’d be sprayed over the mountainside. And for what? Jordon tugged him and pointed again, following the line of the bullets. There was another score on the rotor column. “How the effer missed the effing blades I’m effed if I know,” he shouted, the red wool hat that he always wore pulled down over his ears.
“It wasn’t our time.”
“Wot?”
“Nothing. Have you found anything else?”
“Not effing yet. You all right, Tom?”
“Sure.”
A sudden crash and they all whirled in fright, but it was only a huge tree limb, overloaded with snow, tumbling earthward.
“Espcce de con,” JeanLuc said and peered up into the sky, very conscious of the falling light, then shrugged to himself, lit another cigarette, and wandered off, stamping his feet against the cold.
Jordon found nothing else amiss on his side. The minutes ticked by. Rodrigues was still muttering and cursing, one arm reaching awkwardly into the bowels of the compartment. Behind him the others were huddled in a group, watching, well away from the rotors. It was noisy and uncomfortable, the light good but not for long. They still had twenty miles to go and no guidance systems in these mountains other than the small homer at their base which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. “Come on, for Christ’s sake,” someone muttered.
Yes, Lochart thought, hiding his disquiet.
At Shiraz the outgoing crew of two pilots and two mechanics they were replacing had hurriedly waved good- bye and rushed for their company 125 - an eight-place, twin-engined private jet airplane for transportation or special freighting - the same jet that had brought them from Dubai’s International Airport across the Gulf and a month’s leave, Lochart and Jordon in England, JeanLuc in France, and Rodrigues from a hunting trip in Kenya. “What the hell’s the hurry?” Lochart had asked as the small twin jet closed its doors and taxied off.
“The airport’s only still partially operational, everyone’s still on strike, but not to worry,” Scot Gavallan had said. “They’ve got to take off before the officious, bloody little burk in the tower who thinks he’s God’s gift to Iranian Air Traffic Control cancels their bloody clearance. We’d better get the lead out too before he starts to sod us around. Get your gear aboard.” “What about Customs?”
