And now, perhaps only now, calling for more helicopters — there would have been a delay time induced by success, by the frightening exhilaration of a real kill, maybe the pilot's first, before he reacted by the book and decided on reinforcements.
'Fifteen minutes maximum, if every guess of mine is right,' he murmured, almost to himself. Yes, fifteen at the outside.
The gunship faced them, hovering thirty feet above the rocky floor of the valley. Alone. Four hundred yards away from where they stood. There were too many guesses, too many factors he had placed on his side, not on theirs. But he could do nothing else; defeat was banging behind him like a door being closed.
'You think they'll send choppers/' Mac divined.
'Wouldn't you?'
'Sure.'
'They got troops aboard, Mac?'
'I sure as hell hope not.'
The night was icy through the thinness of his flying overalls. A deeper chill of isolation and abandonment was spreading through him. He had to keep that off, stop it from numbing him.
'Cabin door,' Gant snapped.
'What do we do?'
They watched. Mac seemed to want the night viewer, but Gant kept the viewfinder against his face. He refined the focus of the single 135mm lens. The face of the Russian crew chief appeared, his head leaning out of the cabin door. Gant saw the sloping pencil mark of the rifle he was holding against his body. He switched his attention back to the shadowy cockpit. Gunner in front, pilot behind him. Immobile, almost idle in their lack of movement. He switched back to the cabin door. The crew chief lowered himself slowly down a trailing rope—
— followed by one, two—
Gant looked at his watch. Had the three armed men left the Mil because assistance was only seconds away? Were they being too eager or did they know for sure help was almost with them? It couldn't be more than fourteen minutes before other gunships arrived; it could be less than one.
'Go get the guns, Mac,' he whispered.
'What—?'
'The Apaches are here, Mac — go get the guns.'
Mac hurried off into the darkness. Gant heard him misplace his footing and curse softly, cutting the words off as he remembered the proximity of the three Russians. Gant watched the space opening up between the three men and the MiL. He studied the cockpit. Infrared trace, seeking engine heat. They'd be bound to be using that; laser range finder, too. If he so much as stepped into the mouth of the cavern now, out into the open, they would see him. Just a shadow to eyesight, but a wavering, warm shape on infrared.
The MiLs would be in the air by now, heading toward the position of the gunship that blocked their escape route. He shuddered. Escape route? To where?
Hold on, dammit, hold on, he told himself, clenching his teeth together to prevent them from chattering uncontrollably. Halfway between here and Baikonur he would run out of fuel, over the desert. He would exactly repeat the situation he was now in. They were cut off to the south, west, and maybe the east. Only the north would be open — maybe. To the east, the Hindu Kush rose above the service ceiling of the Hind. He could not cross the mountains, and anyway, only China lay beyond them. To the north lay the border. He could cross that. To run out of fuel somewhere between the Oxus and Baikonur…
Both hands gripped the night viewer. The impossibilities chimed like harsh, untuned bells.
The three armed men had moved out of sight into gullies or the shadows of boulders. Effectively, they were now cut off from the MiL, which, seen through the Noctron, became less than a threat, more of a target. It was the only way in which Gant could overcome the shuddering chill induced by the hours stretching ahead of him. An immediate, violent solution. Target.
Mac was hurrying back, but already the handguns and the two Kalashnikovs were as outmoded as arrows. Garcias helicopter exploded once more in his mind. Now that he had removed the night viewer from his eye, he could see a thin trail of dark smoke crossing the full moon like an old scar. The explosion repeated itself, a series of star bursts from some huge firework display, and he saw the Mil directly in front of him vanish into an identical orange fireball. There was no other way; he could not simply wait for defeat to arrive, he had to strive to outrun it.
Minutes — even one or two minutes — of confusion might be enough for him to be swallowed by the landscape; cross the border and drain into the desert like water. Mil for MiL; this Russian pilot and crew for Garcia and the others. An eye for an eye — and a Way out.
'I know what the gooks felt like, now that I'm staring into that face,' Mac observed through clenched teeth.
Vietnam trembled like a thick cover of leaves about to be parted.
Gant snapped: 'Shut up, Mac. I don't need it.' Mac grunted, handing one of the rifles to Gant, who simply stared at the target.
Gant's awareness narrowed. He breathed steadily but quickly. The noise of the MiL's rotors insisted. The three men on foot had not reappeared.
'There's a way out,' he murmured. 'Kill the target.'
'What then, skipper?' Mac replied, lifting to his eye the Noctron that Gant had returned to him. The rifle was folded in the crook of his right arm. 'What do we do when we've burned her?'
'Cross the border.'
'And run out of fuel, skipper?' Mac's voice was outraged. 'I never took you for a gung-ho bastard with a need to get killed. Why now?'
Gant glanced at Mac. 'There's nothing else — unless you want to surrender?' His voice snapped like a thin whip because of his own desperation.
'No, but—'
'We might as well surrender, Mac. If they'll allow it. Maybe they just want to fry us, too, like Garcia?' Mac's breathing was rapid and frightened. 'You want to wait for an order or are you volunteering?'
'OK, skipper,' Mac replied after a long silence; reluctant and almost surly.
'Let's go — and let's see how good you really are, Mac.'
They stumbled into the darkness of the cavern, not daring to use their lamps. The Plexiglas, given the faintest gleam by the instrument panel, loomed mistily out of the blackness. Mac, after missing his footing once, clambered into the gunner's cockpit. Gant closed his door softly. The noise of the MiL, washing through the entrance where the moonlight made a pale carpet, was still audible until he put on his helmet and stowed the transceiver in its fitting. His hands were clammy, shaking, and his body was alert with nerves.
Target, he reminded himself.
Lights flickered on in orderly rows in Mac's cockpit.
'Mac?'
'Sure.'
'After you launch the missile, make for the entrance. I don't want anyone outside — one Kalashnikov could bring this baby down.'
'Got you.'
His palms dried. He flicked the low-light TV picture to the main tactical screen. Ghostly. The Mil was a dervish whirling in a small dust storm. The edges of the cavern's mouth were like dark curtains revealing a tiny stage. On that stage, he could see the gunship.
And a warm body registering…
Posed in front of the MiL, merely a shadow on the TV image, but a shimmering glow on the superimposed infrared display. One of the soldiers! It unnerved him. Flesh, not just„a machine. For a moment, he could not disregard the information of the infrared. His hand sweated. Then his mind restored the imperatives of
