“Okay,” Dean told them, calling a halt. “Ilya? You know how to use your trousers as a float.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have rope.”
“Use the antenna wire in my belt.” He unbuckled his belt and began pulling it free from the loops. “Art Room!” he called, before the short-range radio link between his implant and the belt transceiver was lost. “I’m going off the air!”
“Charlie!” Marie called. “Wait! What are—”
Then the signal was lost.
Akulinin blinked. Without his belt, Dean was out of communication with the Art Room. Then he nodded, took Dean’s belt, and, using a pocket knife, began slitting a seam in the leather, revealing the copper-colored antenna wire inside. Dean started shucking off his uniform trousers.
“What … what is this for?” Masha asked.
“Old survival trick,” Dean told her. “Ilya will take these pants — they’re a fine-mesh cotton fabric — and wire the openings at the ankles shut, tight as he can make them. You two wade out into the water. He slaps the pants onto the surface, waist-down and open, and it traps air in both legs. You stick your head and arms between the legs, and the pants become a life preserver.”
“My head between the legs? It sounds like a compromising position.”
She was clearly scared, her voice shaking, but if she could make a joke like that, she was a lot tougher than she looked.
“Yeah, but it’ll keep you afloat. You hold tight to the waistband, keep it underwater and pointed down, understand? Ilya will be right there beside you to keep you steady, keep you from capsizing it, okay?”
“Yes … but where will you be?”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Those guys are going to figure out that we’re not near the car any second now. I’m going to give them something else to focus on. With luck, they won’t spot you on the river.”
“Charlie—” Akulinin said.
Dean cut him off. “You take care of Masha … and get that briefcase back to the Art Room, no matter
“I don’t think it’s watertight.”
“Doesn’t matter. Paper dries, and there’s that CD in there. Ditch the weapons and the black bag gear in the river, but get that briefcase back to Fort Meade.”
“But—”
Akulinin didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Here.” He handed Dean an extra magazine for the AKM.
“Thanks. Now get the hell out of here.”
Akulinin and Alekseyevna turned away and kept moving toward the river. Dean watched them go for a moment, then reversed direction and started heading back toward the north, following the canal when it took a ninety-degree jog to the right. When he chanced a peek above the edge of the canal, he saw the helicopter was moving off, now, its rotor wash flattening cotton plants in a broad footprint beneath the aircraft. The second helicopter had turned and was drawing closer now as well.
Dean kept moving, running now, bent nearly double as he splashed up the canal in his shirt and briefs, putting as much distance between himself and the others as he could. These canals and ditches ran for miles across the flat riverbed terrain, but he only needed to move about a hundred yards to give Ilya and Masha some breathing space.
He heard the hammer of a machine gun again and chanced another peek. The first helicopter was probing another patch of cotton plants, trying to flush the fugitives into the open.
This should be far enough. Dean stopped, leaned against the side of the ditch, and took aim just above the nearest line of cotton plants. The Hip was broadside on from this angle, the left-side cabin door wide open, the gunner clearly visible at the door-mounted gun. Carefully, Dean thumbed his weapon’s selector switch from full auto to single shot and took aim.
Once, in a different lifetime long before the NSA and Desk Three, Dean had been a Marine sniper — one shot, one kill. He still kept his skills honed at the Fort Meade weapons range and during training sessions at the Farm.
It was impossible to judge the windage caused by the down-blast of the helicopter’s rotors, but the target was only, he estimated, two hundred yards away. He popped up the rear sight. He much preferred the AKM’s sighting assembly to that of the older AK-47. The rear sight was graduated to 1,000 meters in 200-meter increments, and the front sight was narrower, more easily positioned in the sight picture. He brought the gunner onto the 200-meter line on the range scale, then raised the weapon just a touch to allow for the rotor wash. He took a breath, released part of it … held … and squeezed.
The assault rifle fired, a single short, sharp crack, the recoil slamming the butt back against his shoulder. On the helicopter, the gunner jerked to one side but remained behind the gun. Either he was strapped in — or else Dean hadn’t allowed enough for the wash, and the man was reacting to the snap of a bullet close by. He took aim again, following as the aircraft dropped its nose and began to break out of its hover, and got off a second shot.
Then the helicopter was roaring off into the distance. Whether he’d killed the gunner, wounded him, or just scared the crap out of him didn’t really matter so far as Dean was concerned.
The other aircraft was moving toward him, nose-on.
Dean ducked back into the canal and started splashing toward the east again. The opposition probably didn’t have a clear idea of where he was yet, not unless one of the pi lots had happened to see the muzzle flash. A moment later, the oncoming Hip thundered across the canal less than a hundred yards straight ahead. Dean ducked and felt the fringe of the rotor wash sweep over him. The helicopter banked to the left and started to circle.
Had they seen him? Or had they spotted the canal and were circling around to check it out? Either way, Dean needed to get out of the water and hide himself among the cotton plants nearby.
The crop was upland cotton, the most common commercial variety, and was growing a little more than a yard high at this time of the season, with green leaves and no white bolls as yet. By lying flat on his belly, Dean could stay fairly well hidden, at least until they got
The helicopter swung back around, coming to a hover directly above the canal sixty yards ahead. A machine gun barked, and a line of geysers spouted up the canal. Then the aircraft moved ahead, probably relying on the military axiom that a moving target was harder to hit.
Dean weighed his options. If he stayed on dry land, he would have to crawl on his belly to stay out of sight. In the water, he could travel a lot farther, a lot faster.
It seemed like a no-brainer.
Rolling back into the canal, he started wading toward the east once more. He could hear both helicopters off to his left and behind him.
Behind him. He turned in time to see one of the aircraft following him right up the canal, coming in low, less than ten feet off the ground. The Hip slewed sharply, bringing its open side hatch into view, the gunner crouching behind his weapon.
Dean exploded out of the water, diving onto the land and scrambling forward just as the PK gunner opened up, sending another line of geysering splashes up the canal. Still firing, the machine-gunner swung his aim away from the canal, firing into the cotton plants above the water.
Rotor wash whipped and slashed at the cotton plants, destroying Dean’s cover. Rolling onto his back, he snapped the selector switch to full auto and brought the rifle to his shoulder, aiming into the open cabin door as he clamped down on the trigger.
The AKM thundered in his grip, and he saw ricochets spark from the cargo deck’s interior, on the overhead. Still firing, he dragged his aim down, saw the gunner leaning against his PK as he brought the weapon into line with Dean … then saw the gunner jerk and twist in his harness as Dean’s volley struck home.
He shifted aim to the helicopter’s cockpit … then remembered how the windscreen of the Hip he’d seen at Ayni had deflected gunfire aimed at it, and shifted his aim higher. Hips were well-armored, but there were vulnerable spots at access hatches in the engine fairings, and the rotor head offered a number of exposed targets — blade pitch control rods, swashplate mechanisms, hydraulic drag dampers, and the reduction gearbox.
He squeezed the trigger again and kept squeezing, draining his magazine in one long volley lasting perhaps two seconds. The AKM ran dry; he dropped the spent magazine, slapped in the spare Ilya had given him, and took
