Snow Falcon

said. 'By the way — what's going on over there?'

The pilots shrugged. 'Routine patrols. It happens all the time, this far from Moscow.'

'Balls! No one in their right mind flies routine patrols in those beauties. They're MIL-24s, gunships!' 'Clever.'

'Only a well-spent Soviet youth, taking a proper interest in the armed forces of our glorious country, get going.'

They crossed the packed snow in a tight group, Maxim walking alongside the pilot, apparently engaging him in animated conversation, with much laughter, while Ilya, the gun in the pocket of his coat, walked just behind them.

The transport helicopter in which they arrived was in the same condition of constant readiness as the MIL- 24s that had taken off minutes before, even though it was not required until the following day when it would take an off-duty platoon for forty-eight hours' leave in Murmansk. It sat on a swept concrete square, white-and-yellow striped, in a tiny clearing just big enough to allow it to take off and land. Camouflage netting, now drawn aside, concealed it from the air, and its temporary hangar was erected around it when the weather required. At that moment the corrugated structure was wheeled back under the trees.

The pilot nodded to the two members of the groundcrew on duty, and they asked no questions when he climbed aboard. Maxim, then Ilya, clambered awkwardly after him up the handholds on the fuselage. Once inside, they settled themselves in metal-framed, canvas-webbed seats behind the pilot.

'Ask no one nothing!' Ilya ordered, taking pleasure, an almost wild delight in what was becoming for him a daring piece of initiative — an escapade. 'Just take off, and follow those taxis!'

'And don't bugger about with the machine, will you?' Maxim added, his tone level, without the slightest humour.

'We may be ignorant laymen, but if this thing doesn't behave as helicopters normally do, then I'll make sure you don't live to regale your colleagues with the tale!'

'All right, Comrades. Just like the flying manual says. Strap yourselves in, please.' He fitted his headset, settled in his seat, was aware of Ilya craning forward over his shoulder to watch him, and began the checks; hurrying them as much as he could.

As he settled to the task, he began to be less aware of his danger. His stomach settled, and the routines with which he was so familiar possessed him.

He set the turrets on the computerised fuel-flow, then the turbines began to wind up. Ilya was aware, comfortingly, of their increasing whirr. Then the chopper jiggled sideways as the tail rotor started. When there was sufficient power to the main rotor, the pilot released the rotor brake, flickered a switch, and hauled over the handle of the clutch which engaged the drive to the main rotor.

Ilya, seeing the ease, the speed of familiarity, assumed that nothing untoward was in the pilot's mind. The pilot, aware of the gun near his right ear, knew that he could have done a dozen things that Ilya would never have noticed until it was too late.

He settled to fly them. He knew the extent of their possible discoveries. He did not — he suddenly perceived — have the nerve.

He ignored the whole problem.

When they came back. It would do, then. Then they would be taken care of.

Through the canopy top, Ilya saw the rotor blades begin to turn as the engaged clutch bit, and he heard their swirling beat. Normal. As they achieved proper speed, they became a shimmering horizontal dish.

The pilot gently moved a lever to his left, and the rotor blades changed angle. The engine pitch rose as the engines fed more power to the rotors. The chopper moved off its shocks, the wheels for the moment just in contact with the ground. The pilot gently pressed the rudder bar to counteract any rotation of the fuselage, paused to check his instruments again, then moved the left hand lever slightly higher. The MIL lifted from the square of concrete, and the light suddenly increased as they lifted clear of the trees. It was not yet dark The pilot checked the drift caused by the wind, and the chopper swung round towards the border.

'You know the course, don't you,' Ilya said. It was not a question. Suddenly reminded of their presence — and Ilya applied the cold barrel of the Makarov to his jaw at that moment — the pilot merely nodded. He moved the control stick, altering the angle of the rotor disc, and the MIL moved over the wooden huts, towards the open ground, snow-covered, and the huge wire.

They passed over the wire at less than a hundred and fifty feet, then the racecourse-like stretch of open ground, then the lower, unmanned fence on the Finnish side, and a narrower space clear of trees, then the forest that engulfed both sides of the border at that point. There was little danger of being picked up; they were too low for radar detection, and the Finns maintained few watch-towers. They relied instead upon regular helicopter patrols — regular as clockwork, risibly punctual. It was a token to independence, designed not to anger the Soviet Union or give the least provocation for a border incident.

They saw the white, winding line of the single road, a parting in the trees, and the further, icy gleam of the river to the south of them. Maxim tapped Ilya's shoulder, and he leaned back.

'What are we going to do?' Maxim whispered. Ilya, aware of the pilot, stretched his right hand so that the gun rested against the pilot's neck, just where the hair touched the collar of the flying-jacket.

'Don't get any ideas,' he said. 'Sorry if it makes you nervous!'

'Look, Ilya — you're behaving like a kid! What are we going to do, afterwards V Ilya looked at him, and scowled like a child. The flickering, half-plotted scenario he had felt was in his grasp was not a firm outline. Separate incidents, nothing more, the bulk of his plan already put into operation when the MIL took off.

He said: 'We can't go back there.' Again he glanced at the back of the pilot's head.

Maxim nodded. 'Too bloody true, my son.'

'Look — if we — ?' He thought, shook his head. Then: 'This thing can take us back to Murmansk!' His voice was a breathy whisper.

'Oh, yes? Outrunning those gunships you seem determined to take us towards?' Maxim turned away, looking ahead, past the pilot. The darkening sky was empty of lights.

Ilya was silent, offering after a while only: 'I'll think of something.'

'You do that. Meanwhile, ask him what is going on.'

Ilya increased the pressure of the gun against the pilot's neck, sufficient to alarm him. He saw the slight spasm of the shoulders, the wrinkling of the neck as if to get rid of a stiffness. The man was frightened.

'Now, what are we doing here?'

Silence. The steady beat of the rotors over their heads, the dark flow of the forest below, patches of white clearing like baldness, the road like a parting in thick hair. Then, ahead of them, winking red lights, one above and to port, the other to starboard, at about the same height. They were overtaking the two gunships.

'What are they doing?' Maxim snapped.

'Looking,' the pilot offered.

'In Finland? What do they want — a wolfhead for the mess wall?

'No.'

'Enlighten us.'

A tremor passed through the pilot's frame, as if he were trying to overcome some deep, traumatic block. He was afraid of them, but he was perhaps more afraid of something else. Both Ilya and Maxim, looking at one another for a moment, realised the significance of what the pilot must know.

Then the village whose name they did not know.

'Down!' snapped Ilya, and the pilot pushed the stick forward and the nose of the MIL sagged. Figures moving, light flickering across the snow as torches and lanterns were wobbled in gloved hands — a stream of light from a doorway.

And behind a house, stiff, cold dark spots — too familiar to be anything other than dead bodies.

'What the hell is going en here?' Maxim barked, grabbing the pilot's arm in his shock. The MIL wobbled, slewed sideways, and as the pilot's arm was released and he righted the chopper, he snapped in a high voice:

'Don't touch me! Do you want to kill yourself, you stupid bastard?'

Then the intercom crackled in his ears. The cabin speaker had been left on, and the two passengers heard