Reactions to this statement varied.
From the coolly efficient pilot of the Little Bird on their port side—Mandy’s side—there had been a prolonged silence followed by an order to maintain level flight, to make no evasive maneuvers, and to await further instructions.
From Dobri Levka, sitting on one of the two gunners seats—in his case, the starboard—fondling the rusty pintle-mounted 7.62mm machine gun in the bay, there was shocked silence, and a kind of sinking dismay that his new employer had turned out to be a suicidal lunatic, followed shortly by a typically Balkan acceptance of the fact that fate seemed determined to see him either dead or in a Turkish prison before dawn. He patted the pockets of his medical corpsman’s BDUs, found in one of the lockers and into which he had happily changed, being painfully aware that peeing in your pants had a chafing effect on the inner thighs, and extracted a bottle of ouzo from a case that had also been hidden in the locker. He downed a third of it in one go, which helped tremendously.
Mandy, for her part, simply stared at Dalton for a while, shook her head, and settled into the copilot’s seat a little deeper, trying without much hope to find a way to be comfortable in it, which was not the maker’s intent. Her silence was eloquent, as was the taut tense way in which she was resisting the meager military comforts of the pipe-and-canvas chair.
The interior of the Blackhawk’s cockpit had been painted matte-black—“Helps with the night vision,” Dalton had offered, to a cool reception—and the control panel was a migraine-inducing array of red, green, yellow, and amber lights coming from the altimeter dial, the compass and horizon indicators, the RPM indicator slides for both engines, and the large multifunction display panel in the middle. A pale green glow shone down on Mandy from the lights in the breaker systems arrayed overhead. Through the overhead window, she could see the blurring fan of the rotors and, beyond that, a starless, moonless sky.
A few minutes later, there was a burst of static, and Little Bird 1 came back on the air to inform them, in vaguely accusatory tones, that the night-desk nurses at Hastanesi Children’s Hospital in Beyoglu had no record of any heart-donor flight scheduled to arrive from anywhere in Greece.
Dalton replied, with righteous indignation, that the recipient, a three-year-old girl named Asya Hamila—this brought a sidelong look from Mandy, who knew the man was slick, but where did
that
name come from?—was being brought in by Red Crescent Air Ambulance from an outlying village in Turkey, the name of which he had not been told, that he knew for a fact that all proper arrangements had been duly cleared with Ankara, that this was, after all, a medical emergency, with a child’s life hanging in the balance, and not the time for bureaucratic meddling, and did Little Bird 1 now wish him to throw the donor heart overboard, turn around, and go home, and let the United Nations, the Red Cross, Ankara, Reuters, the Associated Press, and Little Bird 1’s immediate superiors sort out who was to blame for the needless death of an innocent girl?
More radio silence followed.
Then, eventually, a rather stiff reply: a decision had been made to allow them to cross Turkish airspace under close escort, to avoid passing over any built-up areas, to stay at least fifty miles away from Ankara, and to land at Atatürk Field in Istanbul, where, if their story checked out, they would receive a police escort to Hastanesi Children’s Hospital, and, if it did not, they would then be invited to enjoy the gracious hospitality of the Turkish Military Police.
This conversation had taken place approximately three hundred miles back, and little else had been said in the pilot cabin since then. It would be reasonable to describe the atmosphere in the copilot and pilot’s section of the chopper during this period of onrushing travel as “frosty,” while in the stripped-down cargo section the atmosphere, now rich in ouzo fumes and the scent of one of Levka’s Turkish cigarettes, was much more festive.
Through the windshield, in the formless dark, under a starless sky, the lights of a town could now be seen; the lakeside city of Bandirma, according to the GPS array in the control panel. To the north, beyond the scattered grid of town lights, a vast darkness—the Sea of Marmara, and on the farther side of that, fifty miles over black water, the ancient and storied city of Byzantium, for now just a pale glow on the northwestern horizon, but racing toward them like a verdict. Mandy, watching the lights of Istanbul shimmer in the distance, set her cold coffee down in the holder and clicked on her headset mike, switching the com-net from CREW to PILOT ONLY mode.
“Micah, darling, may I raise a tiny issue with you, at the risk of seeming to whinge?”
“Please. You know how I adore your voice.”
“Do you? Well, that’s lovely. ‘Absolutely
peachy,
’ as Porter would say. My question is—and I ask this in the full expectation of a wonderfully comforting reply, knowing your remarkable skills, your ineffable tradecraft, your matchless derring-do—just
precisely
how will our being buggered hourly in a Turkish prison speed our plow? Of course, as you have not had the advantages of an English public school education, being buggered hourly may be a new experience for you and one to which you may take a fancy. But it
does
seem rather a distraction from our main mission, does it not? Just asking, dear boy.”
“You’re starting to sound like the Queen Mum, you know?”
“I could do worse. At least she found great consolation in Tanqueray. I await your reply.”
“Speed.”
“Speed?”
“
Speed
is what this is all about, Mandy. We have to get inside the decision cycle of whoever is running this operation. Keraklis called Istanbul and mentioned the
Subito
. He called”—Dalton checked his watch—“at 1854 hours, a little before seven in the evening. It’s now almost two in the morning. Sofouli won’t find Keraklis and the missing chopper until he gets up. Whoever was running Keraklis will be wondering why he hasn’t heard back. But it’s a good bet that he won’t get really concerned about it until the morning. By then, we’ll be right in his face, exactly where he won’t be expecting—”
“Whoever
he
is—”
“Yes. In short, we’ll be inside his decision cycle—”
That put Mandy over the top.
“Oh
bugger
his decision cycle. Couldn’t we have taken a civilian flight? Or do you just like commandeering things?”
“Even inside the EU, they ask for papers at the airports. Which travel documents would you have used? The Pearson passports, which, by the time we got to Athens, would have set off alarms all over the airport? Our personal papers, which would kick off triggers back in Langley. Or would we just tell them we were CIA agents on a goodwill tour to Turkey? You know how well we’re getting along with Turkey these days. You heard Keraklis talking to someone at Ataköy Marina about the
Subito
. That boat’s a crime scene, supposedly the scene of Kiki Lujac’s murder, and I want to go over it before they put it somewhere we’ll never find it—”
“We don’t know the
Subito
is at this marina—”
“And we don’t know it isn’t, but if we stay inside the decision cycle—”
“If you use that phrase again, Micah, I swear I will strike you. We will also be
inside
a Turkish prison, as I have pointed out—”
“No, we won’t.”
“No? Now I’m all aflutter. Why not, pray tell?”
“We’re going to lose our escort.”
Mandy gave him one of her raised-eyebrow looks, but since it was quite dim in the cabin and he couldn’t see her face, he was able to survive it.
“Oh goody,” she said. “I just
knew
you’d have a plan. How
are
you going to lose our little friends? Really?”
“Do you want to know? Really?”
“No, not really. Well, yes . . . yes, I do.”
Dalton told her straight out, and since then she had been, for her, unnaturally silent. Now, with the lights of Bandirma under their feet and the black void of the Sea of Marmara eating up the rest of the forward universe, the time for acting was growing very short.
Dalton got on the CREW com-net to Levka.
“Levka, how are you doing back there?”
His voice came back, a little oversprightly but coherent.
“I am good, boss. I have machine gun working, if you like?”
“How’d you do that?”
“Found oil can in locker. Also big box of 7.62. You want I shoot up a Turk soldier for you? I never liked Turk soldiers.”
“Not right now. What else is back there?”
“Hard to say. All the medical stuff is ripped out. Rest is all tied down. Looks like maybe life raft, flares, blankets, gas cans—junk, boss, only junk.”
“But it’s all tied down, nothing loose?”
“No, boss. All tight”—
Including Levka,
he thought but did not add.
“Okay. For now, what I want is for you to buckle up. I mean, strap in real solid. You follow?”
Levka was silent for a moment while he worked out the implications.
“Okeydokey, boss,” he said, cinching his straps in and stuffing the ouzo bottle into a zippered pocket. “I follow. We are going for ride?”
“We are,” said Dalton. Then he looked across at Mandy, checked out her straps and his, checked them both again, gave Mandy a look that said
Brace yourself,
and then clicked the com-set to open.
“Escort Six Actual, this is Medevac, come back.”
“Medevac, this is Escort Six.”
“Six, I’m looking at my starboard engine temperature readout and it’s saying I’m running at over red line. This may be an instrument malfunction since all my other parameters are nominal. Can you drop back and take a heat signature off my starboard engine?”
A pause.
“No, we cannot, Medevac. We are not equipped. Do you have redundant sensors?”
No infrared detection on board.
“Negative. This old bird is very tired. Taped together. Our avionics are ten years old. Do you have night vision capabilities?”
A pause.
“Negative. We are on approach to Atatürk. ETA, thirty minutes. Do you need to turn back and try for Bandirma?”
And no NVGs.
“Negative, Six. This heart is too urgent. We have to try for Atatürk. Can you drop back and see if I’m losing coolant?”
More silence.
Six Actual was a wary flyer. Young but smart.
“Yes, Medevac. We will drop back and do a visual on your starboard engine housing. Please hold your course and maintain altitude.”
“Roger that. Appreciate it, Six.”
The three choppers flew level for another few seconds, and then the Little Bird flared up slightly and dropped back, gaining altitude but losing speed. At the same time, taking his mind off the game, the pilot of the port Little Bird chopper let his ride drift a few degrees farther away. Dalton had his hand on the collective, waiting for his moment.
“Medevac, this is Escort Six. I am in your slipstream and cannot see any coolant leakage. Repeat, you are not losing—”
Dalton hit a flip-top button marked EMERGENCY FUEL DUMP. The multifunction display indicator started to flash bright red with the warning STARBOARD AUXILIARY FUEL DUMP. There was a hissing sound, and a vapor cloud of JP-6 fuel began to stream out from the starboard auxiliary tank, a teardrop-shaped bolt-on clamped to a stub wing.
Little Bird 1 was right in the cone of the fuel spraying out from the Blackhawk’s slipstream. The pilot’s reaction was quick but not quick enough.
“Medevac, this is Escort Six. You are losing fluid! I am in your stream, and you are losing coolant. Repeat, you are—”
But it wasn’t coolant. It was high-octane aviation fuel, and it promptly did what JP-6 likes to do: it found a hot spark in the Little Bird’s engine, there was a red flash, a blooming white light. Little Bird 1 caught fire and, a moment later, blew itself to pieces.
The concussion wave hit the tail boom, knocking the Blackhawk forward and into a yaw. Dalton, fighting to regain control, hit the com-set and radioed Little Bird 2.
“Escort Two, I am losing power. Repeat, I am losing—”
The com-set speaker crackled into life with a frantic burst of cross talk in Turkish as the pilot of Little Bird 2 radioed the news of the midair explosion to his base, wherever the hell that was. Right now, as what was left of Little Bird 1 was raining molten steel and burned body parts down onto the town of Bandirma, the pilot of Little Bird 2 was not thinking about the United Nations Blackhawk at all.
Dalton, seizing the moment, cut the radio off abruptly, at the same time that he turned off all the exterior airframe lights, including the rotor-hub strobes and the navigation lights under the nose and tail boom.
He hit the collective and shoved the Blackhawk into a controlled shallow dive, checking his parameters. He shut off FUEL DUMP, waited two seconds for the flow to tail off.