tunnel. The furry touch of asbestos against his fingertips. His hand closed convulsively on the pipes, his right foot reached out and tapped against the railway in the middle of the tunnel and withdrew swiftly, as if its motions were signaling like a telegraph key along the rail. The skin on his back and buttocks was so thin. If they heard or sensed him now, they might just open fire.
He moved, counting each footstep. The tunnel, lower and narrower than the corridor from which he had come, magnified the noises behind him. He could almost hear each time the walkie-talkies were switched from Transmit to Receive. Slamming doors were loud. Bootsteps were distinct.
Hesitantly, he looked back. — gleam. A flash like a weak, distant glimpse of lightning or the twitching aside of a curtain. Flashlights. He felt his hand hurrying beside him along the top of the asbestos-lagged pipe. He began to hear his own footsteps as loudly as the first whispers of theirs. Tiptoe, but that was foolish because the drink returned to surge in his head before being kept at bay by fear and the instinct to escape.
A shout that might have been the raising of the alarm stunned him, thrust him in the back to make him go faster, rid him of all thought except the certainty of capture if he did not reach the ladder to the surface. There was no time for any other idea. His heart pattered in his chest like a small, terrified animal.
He looked back three more times. On the third occasion he saw a flashlight's beam wash the tunnel wail before turning off, down the main silo corridor from which he had come. Toward the room where he had hidden. Where the evidence of his recent occupation waited to be discovered. Lights flickered on, then the glow came seeping out of the long corridor, illuminating two soldiers, little more than silhouettes. His foot splashed in a puddle; something skittered away from him with a squeak; nausea filled his throat — don't be sick now, not here. He blundered on for a few steps, one hand over his mouth, until the nausea subsided. Ahead of him, a barely discernible light seemed to drip from the roof of the tunnel.
Perhaps no more — as much as — another hundred meters. He tried to remember, and did so quite easily, prompted by the new terrors of imminent discovery. Yes, no more than a hundred meters now to one of the air ducts from the surface, closed only in time of war.
He reached the ladder, touching it almost as he passed, then clung to it. He saw his own arms, could discern the color of his clothing, the whiteness of his hands. A weak circle of light illuminated him. He looked up. Was it pale blue? He could not tell.
It was the surface up there. He gripped the rungs of the ladder, released their iciness one by one, reaching his body into a stretch without moving his feet.
Whistles, then, from the corridor. Summonses over the walkie-talkies, crackling-squeaky orders. Excitement, discovery. At once, he moved his left foot, stepped, climbed. Rung over rung toward the broken, twisted-back netting at the top of the narrow chimney, sweating profusely with effort and relief. Up, up…
He climbed with increasing, flooding gratitude. The air in his nostrils was less musty, fresher, fresher all the time with each successive rung.
The Galaxy climbed and began to turn, as if fleeing the scene of an accident. For Gant, even the sound of Garcia's excited, relieved voice from the transceiver could not dispel the image of the huge fan of sand that had been thrown up by the impact of the fuel drums and the palletized MiL. Accident — collision.
And behind Garcia's rushing, nervous relief were the noises of his crew, equally stunned. Gant had seen the main canopy of Garcia's pallet open, seen the helicopter snatched like a dandelion clock through the clamshell of the open doors; then the sand had obscured everything. The scene had lurched like the image from a joggled camera — sand, lush vegetation, the water, all rushing beneath him, then settling to a steadier image as the transport passed out over the edge of the tide. The white scraps of paper of the pelicans, distressed and alarmed, settled slowly once more on the water.
The Galaxy continued on its turn, lazily and as if time and fuel consumption were of no importance; Gant considered that the sense of detachment belonged only to himself.
No — already, the scene below was remote. At an altitude of two hundred feet, it was still impossible to make out details on the beach. The mirror into which he looked quivered because of the mild turbulence outside the Galaxy—
— sand beneath the open doors once more, not the glittering water. He felt his body tense, then consciously relaxed.
'The fuel drums are all over the fucking place!' he heard in the cockpit. Garcia over the transceiver. His body tensed once more. 'No spillage. We'll try to move—'
'Gant?' he heard in his headset. 'Yes, skipper?'
'We're going to have to let you down nearer the water, to keep you out of the way of those fuel drums.'
'Your decision.' He resented the admission. 'Thanks. Good luck.' v
The distances, timings, speed recited by the navigator and the copilot became a background, no more. Voices from the flight deck relayed to Garcia what Gant had been told. In his mirrors, he saw the huge shadow of the Galaxy's tail, dark and cool on the whiteness.
He braced his feet. His hands seemed superfluous in their lack of occupation. He might as well have folded them across his chest, like a child in class told to sit quiet, waiting for the school bell.
He smiled, in spite of his tension. The edge of the water seemed to glint in his mirrors, then the pilot adjusted the heading of the Galaxy. Height, speed, heading all seemed right to his sixth sense. The sand wasn't really firm enough for a palletized drop, but Garcia had made it — nothing to concern him, nothing.
The loadmaster raised his arm. His eyes were fixed on the red light ten paces from the MiL's nose. Gant breathed in deeply, snatching at the breath. Nerves jumped; he was helpless, it wasn't under his control.
The loadmaster's arm snapped down. Then his body seemed to lurch away, as if a blow had knocked the man aside. The beach tilted in Gant's mirrors, and the impressions he received were like reflections in a broken glass. A twitch ran through the huge fuselage, as if the aircraft had attempted some impossibly tight turn; a whale imitating the maneuvers of a shark. Anders' voice in the transceiver, wishing him good luck, broken by the pilot's expletive. The green light, the lurch, and the breaking open of the drogue chute—
— beach at the wrong angle,
— scraps of paper, red-white, white, red, red-white, white, scraps of paper all around him even as he was thrust against his harness, and the image of a slow-motion film of an accident test returned to his mind. He was the dummy flung slowly and grotesquely through the car windshield… the harness bit into his chest and shoulders, restraining him.
Scraps of paper, red-white, white, whirling and spinning. A pelican's body, headless, thudded against the cockpit, nauseating him; he understood what had happened. The course of the Galaxy had been closer to the water s edge, to the sandbank and the drifting, nervous birds. They had scattered into the air in front of the Galaxy as if thrown up by a giant hand, startling the pilot, making him twitch the stick and jerk the transport off course for an instant.
The main canopy opened its colorful mouth behind him, obscuring everything else. The Mil was tilting nose up, falling. The bird's decapitated body had disappeared from the Plexiglas, leaving a red smear that shadowed the glint of the sun. Other scraps of white flew or twisted above and beyond the MiL.
Split seconds… the sun blinded… Mac was muttering, but he hadn't reached his third expletive when the pallet struck the sand. The impact rendered him breathless. For an instant, he
'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…..' Mac recited his litany.
The straps of the harness bit. Gant realized his body was at the wrong angle. He was sitting tilted forward and to one side in his seat. Hanging there. Splintering noises. Great, aching, tearing noises, and now a steadier though intermittent groaning; the occasional snap.
The sun came back.
'Gant, are you all right? Gant?' It was the pilot.
'Alive,' he murmured, unconcerned. The inquiry was irrelevant. 'Mac?' he asked.
'Christ! OK, skipper.' Mac's voice was small and shaky, as if lost inside his stunned frame.
