exhaust as if riding a wild horse, Lane realizing what he had done—
— all in the moment that the Mil seemed to shrug, and tilt and drop its nose and port side. The tip of the rotor disappeared beneath the surface, refraction making it appear like an arm put out of joint. A foot or more of it below the water!
Water lapped against the gunners cockpit, almost over it; the sea idled over the lip of the pilot's doorsill.
'Jesus!' Gant wailed. The pallet's wreckage groaned. The movement continued. Two feet, three, almost four feet of rotor disappeared beneath the surface. The next rotor was no more than a foot from the water. He could not take off now. Dare not attempt engine-start and let the rotors, one after the other and with quicker and quicker beat, plow through four or five feet of water. Breaking each of them, one by one, flinging the body of the Mil about in an approximation of an animal's dying frenzy—
— couldn't, couldn't.
As if an intrigued spectator, the 24A glided gently slowly toward them, towing the fuel cell behind it.
The problem had changed. Gant couldn't use the fuel now, there was no point, but there was no other way to lift the Mil to safety. Pelicans scattered around the approaching helicopter like gulls around a plow as if mocking the stately progress of the 24A, which finally stood off in the hover about fifty yards away. The sandbar was now like the thinnest of bony fingers. It was diminishing more rapidly because of its flattened top.
Mac's face, empty with realization, Lane's features stunned with self-blame, the face of the 24A staring blindly at him. Faces.
The towrope slackened, the fuel cell bobbed on the glittering water. Pelicans wheeled and cried in protest, began to settle… slack towrope… Garcia would drag the fuel cell closer — why bother? Slack towrope.
Towrope.
Fuel first, or towrope — towrope…
'Garcia — drag that fuel cell and the pump onto the sandbar, then cast off. I want the rope—'
'I can't—'
'You got to, Garcia. Towrope on the tail bumper, you got to pull this baby out of the water. Then we fuel up, and I may have time to lift her off under her own power — now do it!'
Garcia immediately headed his Mil toward the sandbar, to a point thirty yards or so away from the 24D. The fuel cell bobbed behind it; the pump, on a section of pallet unbolted from the main frame, was bringing up the rear of the tiny, futile-looking convoy. Garcia passed over the bar, throwing up a cloud of fine sand, then the towrope tautened as the pallet section drove into the bar, wedged, stuck fast.
'Mac, Lane — get the hell over there and untie that rope!' Into the transceiver, he snapped: 'Kooper, I want you down here now. Garcia, stand by when you've delivered him.'
Gant rose, straightened, then jumped down on the port side. The water was closing over the sandbar ever more quickly, or so it seemed. Garcia's Mil had touched its wheels onto the bar, and Kooper had opened his Plexiglas hatch from the gunner's seat. He climbed out, balanced on the boarding steps, closed his hatch, and dropped into the swirl of sand raised by the rotors. Garcia lifted and dodged the Mil away from the sandbar, adopting the hover perhaps twenty yards out over the water. Gant ran, floundering in the churned sand, toward the knot of men around the fuel cell and the wobble pump. His hands waved Garcia in closer. Mac was holding the end of the towrope aloft like a prize at some championship.
Garcia's Mil danced slowly, graciously in toward them. Mac began pulling the rope toward Gant, Kooper and Lane picking it up, too, like children rushing to join a tug-of-war challenge. Garcia kept pace with them, standing far enough off not to raise sand. The water, instead, was wrinkled and distressed by his downdraft. It looked darker, colder beneath the MiL's shadow. Gant, too, grabbed the rope, and the four of them heaved and rushed it toward the uptilted drunken tail boom of the 24D.
'Make it secure,' he ordered.
He returned to the nose section of the helicopter. The water was shallow enough. He stepped into it, feeling with his feet for a foothold, for the resistance of compacted sand, as he leaned against the Plexiglas and pushed. His feet slipped, then gripped. He was up to his thighs in water. He moved around the nose, then checked the sand along the forward fuselage, below the pilot's cockpit. Enough for a foothold, maybe.
'OK — Kooper, Lane, get her unlashed from the pallet. She has to roll off when Garcia takes up the strain. Come on.'
Water was lapping gently against the fuselage. He slammed the pilot's door, preventing it from slopping into the cabin. Sensor boom almost submerged, cannon refracted and bent beneath the surface. Forward undercarriage drowned, starboard undercarriage the same.
Kooper, Lane, and he unlashed the Mil from the wreckage of the pallet. His knuckles sprouted blood as he grazed them. Kooper swore. The heat seemed intolerable, as if the air had begun to scorch and burn. His lungs felt dry and raw. Every time he glanced up, the sandbar seemed narrower. The pelicans, settled now despite the hovering MiL, seemed to have gathered to watch; superiorly afloat, able to fly simply by rising from the sea.
He straightened his aching back.
'OK, OK — let's get to it. Garcia — ready?'
'Ready, Major.'
'Begin to take up the slack — gently.'
Gant raised his hand, and Garcia's Mil began to move slowly away, along the diminishing spine of the sandbar. Mac stood by the towrope where it was attached to the tail bumper. The rope jerked out, rose from the sand.
'Get ready,' Gant warned Kooper and Lane, waist-deep in the water, shoulders leaning against the Plexiglas of the gunner's cabin and the metal of the fuselage.
The towrope snapped taut, scattering wet sand. The knots creaked tight. The rope strained. Hold,
The sandstorm whirled beneath the 24A, almost obscuring it. It began flinging hard, stinging particles against Gant's face and hands. He squinted into the murk. The rope seemed thinly stretched, like a thread rather than a rope,
'Mac!' he yelled. 'Come and give a hand.'
He splashed into the water, taking up a position near the forward undercarriage. Straining against the bulk and mass of the fuselage. Mac joined them on the port side, his feet just out of the water.
'Heave — for Christ's sake, heave!'
Downdraft from the straining Mil seeped over them like a slow cloud of heavy gas. He closed his eyes against the stinging sand. He heard the others coughing, groaning with effort. The 24D resisted, solidly unmoving.
Come on, come on, come on,
He heard Garcia increase the power to his engines. The Mil roared. He seemed in darkness when he slitted open his eyes. His feet began to lose what grip they had been able to find, he began to slip backward.
'Come on — heave!' he screamed.
He fell forward, plunging his face into the churned, sand-filled water. Beneath the water, he could hear the throb of the Mil and some thin noise like a distorted cheer.
He lifted his face out of the water. Twenty yards away, as the sandstorm subsided, its wheels axle-deep in the sand at the end of three long, deep furrows, his helicopter sat with a kind of elegance: upright, rotors drooping gently.
Water sparkled as it dripped from the rotor that had been half submerged. Lane was on his knees in the water, Kooper was doubled over. Mac had struggled up the slope and was staring at the Mil as it rested near the fuel cell and the pump, as if quizzical about their situation.
'OK, let's fuel her up and get off. We haven't got time to spare.'
Lane groaned, got to his feet. Kooper straightened reluctantly. Mac was already moving toward the MiL. Garcia's helicopter hovered over the water, towrope trailing in the sea. By the time Gant reached him, Mac had cut through the rope. Garcia wobbled in the air, as if bowing, then headed back toward the sandbar. Gant waved him away. Garcia gave a thumbs-up.
'OK — be back with you, Major, just as soon as I can.'
The 24A drifted toward the beach.
