If he was the helo pilot, what would he do?
Fly like a bat out of hell.
Until he knew he was being followed. Then he’d stop somewhere, wait for the aircraft to go away, and start up again.
Which would help him, since once it set down, he could disable it safely and wait for the ground forces to surround it.
But the helicopter pilot didn’t know he was being followed. The Tigershark would be invisible to his radar until well after Turk saw the helo.
Turk could fix that. He tilted his wings, edging toward the outer radius of the search area the computer had outlined on the screen. Then he hit his flares.
81
Zen dragged himself to the bench seat at the side of the helicopter, then pulled himself upright.
It was definitely Stoner; he had no doubt. But in some sense it wasn’t Stoner — there was a curtain up behind his eyes, beyond the blank expression.
The others called him “Black” and “Black Wolf.” That was his identity now.
“You have a prosthetic leg,” said Zen, studying the way Stoner held himself against the bulkhead. “Both of them?”
Stoner stared at him.
“Did you lose them in the crash?” asked Zen. “We looked for you. We figured out later that you must have ordered the helicopter pilot to make your aircraft the target so the others could escape. It was you, wasn’t it?”
“It… made sense,” said Stoner.
Everything came back.
Mark Stoner, CIA officer.
Romania. Moldova.
And Asia before that.
This was Zen Stockard.
He remembered the beer. He remembered Dog. And Bree. Danny Freah and everyone else.
“Where the hell were you fifteen years ago?” Stoner asked. “Why didn’t you help me?”
“We didn’t think anyone could have survived that crash.”
No, no one could have survived. No one had survived — they’d taken what was left of him and shoveled him into this — a body of two phony legs from the hips down, a phony arm, a brain held in what was left of his skull by plastic.
A body that needed drugs to survive, drugs he thirsted for now.
“Stoner, we have to go back,” said Zen.
“There’s no going back, Jeff. We’re gone.” He pointed at his legs. “You know that.”
“Black, there’s a flare ahead,” yelled the helicopter pilot from the cockpit.
“Evade,” said Stoner flatly.
Turk let off a volley of flares and checked his speed, lowering it to 200 knots. This was considerably slower than the aircraft liked, and it whimpered slightly, lowering its nose like a chastised pony.
“Contact at two o’clock, altitude sixty feet AG,” said the computer, telling the pilot its radar had spotted something about sixty feet off the ground to his right. “Distance at one-point-two miles.”
“Identify aircraft,” said Turk, glancing at the plot screen.
The helicopter was heading southeast at about 98 knots. He pulled to his left, starting a circle that would take him around so he could approach from the rear.
“Type is Russian-made Mil, Mi–16,” said the computer. It used the video cameras to capture the image and identify it in its library of types. “No identifying marks. Paint scheme similar to Czech air force.”
“Is it a Czech helicopter?”
“Camouflage is similar to Czech air force.”
“Similar but not the same?”
“Out of visual contact. Insufficient data.”
“We can fix that,” said Turk, coming out of his turn. The helo had ducked even lower: it was now just under ten feet from the ground, running along a road through the Czech hills.
Turk switched to the emergency or “Guard” band, a common frequency monitored by all aircraft.
“Mil helicopter, this is U.S. Air Force Tigershark. You are ordered to land at Kbely Air Field. Do you copy?”
There was no answer.
“Mil helicopter, I have orders to get you on the ground,” he said, improvising. “I can do that in any number of ways. Most of them not good for you.”
The helicopter took a hard turn right, flying over a field. Turk, who was already going almost twice as fast as the chopper, couldn’t follow; instead, he banked in the other direction and came around, lining up again on its tail.
What was he going to do? He had no missiles in his bays and no bullets in his gun. Even if he had, he’d be reluctant as hell to use them. His childhood hero was aboard the damn aircraft, for God’s sakes.
Only one option: bluff the crap out of him.
Stoner leaned over the pilot’s shoulder, looking at the terrain. They were five miles from Plegeau, a town outside of Mestecko and one of their alternate escape points. Two vehicles were stashed in a barn there.
The aircraft chasing them was American. It would be hard for him to coordinate with ground units. They could get away.
“Give me your map,” Stoner told the pilot.
The copilot handed him a folded-over chart. It took a moment for him to orient himself, then pick out the location.
“Fly to this spot,” he said, pressing his finger there. “You will see a barn painted green at the top of the hill. We will land next to a red barn on the next hill over, just to the east of that one. Do you understand?”
“The pilot of the aircraft is warning that he will shoot us down,” said the pilot.
“He’s an American,” replied Stoner. “He won’t dare.”
“Tigershark, are you on this channel?”
Breanna’s voice came loud and clear in Turk’s headset.
“Hey, roger that, boss — can you hear me?”
“Affirmative. What’s your situation?”
“I have the helicopter in sight. Not answering hails.”
“Describe the helicopter.”
“Hold on.”
Turk throttled back again as the helicopter jinked hard to the right. It was very close to the ground — so close that he thought it was going to hit a house as it turned.
“Mi–16. If this isn’t the helicopter, it’s sure doing a great impression,” he told Breanna. “Brown on tan camo in a scheme similar to the Czech air force, but not precisely the same.”
“I’m going to attempt to make contact,” Breanna told him. “In the meantime, I have a Czech air force staff officer ready to contact you. Stand by for the frequency.”
