Sea Leopard

outside.

The deck of the rescue ship heaved, and the light seemed to spill like liquid over the ship's side on to the surface of the water. The whitecaps opened like teeth in a huge black jaw. The sight of the water's distress and power was sudden, making the rescue ship fragile and the helicopter approaching it more insect-like than ever. It was a fly hovering above a motorway, awaiting an encounter with a windscreen.

The helicopter flicked away, much like a gull caught by a gust of wind, and the pilot's voice was high-pitched, his relieved laughter unreal and forced.

'Mishka, get away from there! We'll divert to the Kiev and winch them down. You'll never be able to use auto-hover, the deck's pitching too much.'

'Don't worry, Grandad,' the voice of Orlov's pilot came back. 'Just a temporary hitch. Watch this.'

The words now seemed to Ardenyev to have an empty bravado which he despised and which frightened him. Yet the rescue ship seemed to have settled again, the whitecapped waves to have subsided, slipping back into the shadows beneath the deck of the Karpaty. The MiL began to sidle towards the helipad again. Tiny figures crouched, as if at its approach, ready to secure the helicopter the moment its wheels touched.

The pilot instructed the Karpaty's captain that he would switch to auto-hover just above the deck, which would allow the helicopter to automatically move with the pitching of the ship, so that the deck would always remain at the same level beneath the MiL. Ardenyev saw his own pilot shaking his head.

'What's wrong?'

'What?'

'I said, what's wrong? You're shaking your head.'

'The deck's pitching and rolling too much, and I think he's out of the limits for auto-hover and height hold.' The pilot shrugged. 'Perhaps it isn't from where he is. I don't know.' He glanced at Ardenyev as if daring him to comment, or inviting personal insult.

'If there's any real danger, order him to divert — or I will.'

Creeping whiteness appeared at the edges of their canopy, like some cataract or a detached retina beginning to float. The sleet had returned. Ardenyev's pilot increased the beat of the wipers, and they watched, oblivious of everything else, even of attempting to interfere, as the MiL below them banked, levelled, sidled forward, moved above the white dish of the helipad. There was a long moment of stillness, accompanied by the breathy whispering of Ardenyev's pilot: 'Go on, go on, my son, go on, go on —'

The noise irritated and disturbed Ardenyev. The MiL was above the deck now, and lowering towards it. Stillness. A white-knuckled hand at the corner of his eye, whiteness creeping around the canopy, flying between them and the garishly-lit scene below. The navigation lights of the carrier, outlining a huge, safe bulk, in the distance. Ardenyev held his breath. They were going to make it. When they, too, had landed, Orlov would study his face; there'd better be no trace left of anxiety or doubt, or the young man would burst out laughing —

Dropping slowly like a spider coming down its thread; very slowly. Ardenyev could see himself, years before, watching such a spider in his bedroom, coming slowly down its thread, confident, small, agile, an acrobat. And slowly he had begun to blow upwards, making the spider swing, making it uncertain, vulnerable, that tiny creature who had abseiled from the ceiling with such arrogance. It had crawled, scuttling upside-down, back up its rope of thread, then dropped again with slightly more caution. Blow again. He had blown again.

The MiL hopped away from the deck as if electrocuted. Then it began to drop slowly, more slowly than before, towards the deck as it once more became level. The glimpse of the whitecaps vanished into the night.

The spider had scuttled away, dropped again, but its weight now could not deaden or steady the swing of the thread to which it clung. It had been descending from the lampshade, like a small black god climbing out of the sun. Swinging, unable to control the motion.

Ardenyev's hand touched his throat, feeling for the transmitter switch of his microphone. The spider was swinging across the ceiling above his bed, interestingly, helplessly. The helicopter shifted in a grumble of the wind, and the deck of the Karpaty shifted, too. Pitching towards the MiL, which hopped out of its way, then moved back down, drawn by magnetism, it seemed. The deck steadied. The spider swung across the ceiling, flying the landscape of cracks and damp patches, swinging to almost touch the shadows in the corners of the room. And nearing his face all the time as fear or instinct or helplessness made it pay out more of the rope of thread.

Six feet. Stillness now. White knuckles, his own fingers dead as he fumbled with the microphone, tried to think what to say, why he was going to speak. Appalled and fascinated. Five feet, four —

The spider just above his face. Cheeks puffed out, he waited to catch it at the optimum moment, blow it across the bedroom, perhaps at his younger brother's bed and his sleeping form. Cupping his hands round his mouth to direct the breath when he expelled it.

Three feet, two —

'Auto-hover — come on, come on —'

A foot, then two feet, three, four — the deck of the Karpaty pitched again, the lights spilling across the angry sea. Five feet — spin, flick, twist upside-down, turning like a top. The MiL staggered with the blow of the helipad, and then the repeated punching of the wind. The spider flew through the air, into shadow, its rope of thread loose, wafting in the air's current he had disturbed.

The MiL hung upside-down for a second or more, then drove back towards the port side of the ship, breaking its rotors then its back on the side of the Karpaty, just forward of the helipad. A billow of flame, incandescent and paling the ship's lights, a tiny figure struck like a match falling into the sea, the MiL's wreckage pursuing him into the whitecaps. Flame flickered over the wild water for a second, then the MiL was doused like a torch — and gone.

Ardenyev came to himself, yelling into his microphone that the pilot should abandon his attempt and divert to the carrier. His words were clipped, orderly, syntactically correct, but he was hoarsely yelling them at the top of his voice. He must have begun shouting even before the MiL crashed.

'Shut up, shut up —!'

Ardenyev's mouth remained open, his throat dry and raw. There was nothing. On the pitching deck of the rescue ship, fire-extinguishers were playing over spilled fuel that travelled like lava along the deck and down the side of the ship. Slowly, the flames flickered and disappeared.

'My God,' Ardenyev breathed finally. Teplov was at his shoulder.

'All right, sir?'

'No, Viktor, it is not all right,' he said in a small voice. 'Tell the team that Blue Section have crashed and that we are diverting to the Kiev.'

'Sir.' Teplov offered nothing more in reply. Ardenyev was aware of his departure to the passage compartment. Ardenyev looked at the pilot.

There was a silence in which each man registered the other's pain, and guilt, then the pilot cleared his throat and spoke into his microphone.

'Express One to Kiev — permission to land.'

'Permission granted.' An older voice, senior. A commiseration of rank. The same voice went on to supply velocity and the effect of the sea and wind on the pitch of the Kiev's deck. As he acknowledged, the pilot continually shook his head. Then he looked at Ardenyev.

'I was right — for fuck's sake, I was right!'

'We can get down?' The pilot nodded. 'Christ —'

'Express One to Kiev — message received. We're on our way.'

Ardenyev sat in a misery of grief as the MiL increased speed and the Karpaty slipped beneath its belly. He was appalled at the deaths of Orlov and the others, his men, his people, his responsibility. And he was shaken and anguished at the ease with which it had happened and with which he had allowed it to happen. Distance, slowness, lights — it had all become innocuous, something for spectators, cardboard danger. He had meant to issue the order to divert, but he had not. He had not believed it would happen. A child stepping from a pavement, behind a milk- float, crushed like an eggshell by the car it had not seen. But the distance between the front gate and the road is so small, it cannot signify danger —

He wiped savagely at his eyes. Through the blur as he blinked, the shadowy bulk of the