She rose. Gunfire began pinging off the chopper. Damn it. The Russians had figured it out.
Okay, back on her feet now. A few rounds sparking here and there.
Ten yards. Five. That soldier was right there, his face obscured by a visor.
Abruptly, the helo tipped slightly away from her, rotors lifting back—
Then she saw what was happening. The ice below had cracked, and the helo’s gear was sinking into the water, chunks of ice already bobbing around it.
But the cracks were on the back side of the helicopter, so Halverson kept on running. Just fifteen feet now. Ten. Five.
The soldier’s mouth was working:
Halverson increased her stride.
The soldier leaned out as far as he could, extending his gloved hand.
What was that sound?
She took three more steps, heard a chorus of cracking sounds, then she began to slip and tried shifting to the right—
Only to find herself atop a small raft of ice that floated freely, her weight driving one side down.
Instinctively, she reached out. Nothing to grab on to, no one to help. She began to fall.
The water rushed up her legs, over her chest, and broke over her face, the sensation like a billion fingernails of ice poking every part of her body.
Completely underwater now, the shock having robbed her entirely of breath, she panicked and kicked frantically for the surface.
Only then did the extreme cold hit her.
In truth the water was probably not colder than what she’d experienced during water immersion tests during her training, but combined with the stress of the moment, the stress of the past night, it was liquid death.
Her head hit something hard. More ice. She pushed up, tried to find an opening.
Where was the surface?
She made a fist, punched the ice, looked around, punched again.
Rule had already yanked the quick straps on his boots, toed them off, and had zipped off his combat suit, leaving him in his black LWCWUS (lightweight cold weather undergarment set) and socks.
No way would they let that pilot drown.
Rule would die first.
Friskis had already found a nylon rescue rope, and Rule made a loop in it as the chopper began to rise from the river.
With the looped rope in one hand, he jumped out, dropping six feet toward the broken ice. Before he even felt the water, he screamed at it like an animal raging against nature.
Just as he broke through, about to be swallowed, the rattling of the helo’s machine gun sounded against the rotors.
Rule sank deep, popped up, and cried out again as the chill seized him in its grasp. He told himself,
And there she was, just off to his left, a few feet back and struggling to push through the ice, unable to see the opening nearby.
He paddled to her, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her back with him, kicking as hard as he could.
They burst up, both tanking down air, gasping, the rotor wash whipping over them. “Grab on to my back!”
She wrapped one arm over his right shoulder, tucked the other arm beneath his left, and locked her hands. Smart girl. “I’m ready,” she said through her intense shivering.
There wasn’t time to ascend the rope and climb back into the helo — not with that incoming fire.
So Rule flashed a thumbs-up, seized the loop with both hands, and braced himself.
From the open door, McAllen gave the Russian pilot the go-ahead, and the rope snapped taut. Rule and the woman were wrenched from the water and swung hard under the chopper.
“Go, go, go,” McAllen cried over the intercom.
The helo’s nose pitched down, and they veered off, still drawing fire from the infantrymen behind them.
One of the BMP-3s even fired a round from its big gun but missed by a wide margin. The Russians were at once desperate, embarrassed, and mighty pissed off.
“This is it,” said Khaki. “We’re on fumes now.”
“Just get us to the other side of this forest and put us down there. We have to get them inside.”
McAllen wished they could turn back for just a moment and launch rockets, but not with Rule and the pilot dangling below.
“Hang on, buddy, just hang on!” shouted Palladino, even though the sergeant below couldn’t hear him.
They all began shouting, and maybe it made them feel better, McAllen wasn’t sure, but he joined in and remembered the conversation he’d had with his young assistant:
Yes, indeed, Sergeant Scott Rule had just cast a very long shadow. And McAllen would make sure to commend him for that.
Rule’s arms were frozen, his hands locked onto the rope. The pilot was tugging hard on his shoulders, and tears were beginning to form in his eyes from all the exertion.
“Don’t… let go…” she said in his ear.
She was half dead, but even then she sounded kind of sexy. Leave it to him to be thinking of sex at a time like this…
He closed his eyes.
But the feeling had escaped from his arms, and the rope began sliding through his fingers.
“He’s losing it!” shouted McAllen. “Khaki, how much longer?”
“We’re almost there!”
McAllen began stripping out of his combat suit so he could give it to the pilot, once they had her inside. The suit’s life critical layer had a narrow network of tubing that would provide one hundred watts of heating A-SAP. Rule’s suit waited for him.
Talk about being hung out to dry. McAllen couldn’t imagine how cold those two must be.
The helo broke past another long stretch of trees, then the engine stuttered like a misfiring lawnmower.
“No choice now,” said Khaki.
“Try to put them down easy,” McAllen said.
“Easy is not possible,” grunted the pilot. “Maybe you pray now. Because we go down hard!”
He wasn’t kidding. The chopper began dropping like a rock as she lost power.
McAllen clung to the back of the pilot’s seat, watched as Rule, who was one-handing the rope now, slammed into a snow bank.
“They’re down!” he shouted. “But he’s still holding the rope. He’s not letting go! Cut it! Cut it!”
Gutierrez immediately unsheathed his Blackhawk Tatang, a thirteen-inch-long serrated blade that he lifted high in the air, then—
“They’re clear!” cried McAllen.
