From his vantage, the sandbar already appeared narrower, a sliver of gouged whiteness reaching out from the shore. No longer like a crooked arm, only as thick as a beckoning finger. The chin radar had disappeared beneath the water; the FLIR, too, was gone. The tip of the sensor boom had dipped below the surface, the rotary cannon was half drowned. Urgency panicked him, made him feel old and insecure as he straightened up, balancing his weight evenly, one foot to either side of the exhaust. Then he sat down gently.
Minutes, minutes . . .
He unlocked the first rotor.
"OK!" It was necessary and unnecessary to shout, but he did so, releasing the tension that threatened to cramp his arms, his grip on the tool. Mac's lasso floated upward; Gant grabbed it and crawled along the tail boom, a four-footed animal disoriented on a high wire, looping it over the tip of the first rotor. "OK!" He felt the sweat sheening his body inside the flight overalls, and wiped at his forehead and eyes. Raised his body to watch.
Mac walked into the water, tugging the rotor slowly away from its folded position, the rope taut, dropping beads of bright water. The rotor tip moved downward in an arc. Gant could not breathe.
He scuttled back along the tail boom, seating himself once more on the warm metal of the exhaust. He began rotating the nut, one eye watching the moving rotor tip as it dipped toward the water. Fish flicked like silver metal fragments. The wrench rotated the large nut, drawing back the triple lugs, which allowed their mating lugs to engage in their housings and become locked when the special retracting tool was withdrawn. The rotor stopped moving. Gant almost fearfully studied its tip. Less than a foot from the water. Once any part of it was submerged, the game was lost.
"One!" he yelled. "OK, Lane—release the rotor brake!"
He moved away from the rotor head. As the brake was released in the cockpit, the rotor head moved, bringing it to a more convenient position. Mac flung the lasso but failed to loop it on the tip of the next rotor. Gant s temperature soared; he clamped his lips shut, watched Mac throw again, catch the tip, tighten the noose. He waved him to begin pulling the rotor into position, retracting the lugs, loosening the nut with the wrench.
A frantic stealth; a tense, almost slow-motion sequence of actions. Lasso, wrench, retracting tool, wrench, the insertion of a wired pin. Hydraulic pressure would complete the locking of each rotor at the moment of engine-start . . . lasso, wrench, retracting tool, wrench, wired pin, rotor brake . . . His back and arms ached, his body was bathed in sweat. The water edged slowly—no, they were laboring slowly, with effort, the sea just slid and rose—toward the rotor tip. Starboard undercarriage beneath the water, the sea lapping high up on the gunners cockpit, Garcias MiL in the hazy distance already fully rigged.
"Lash the fiiel cell as securely as you can," he was instructing Garcia, even as he tightened the fourth nut, at the point of removing the retracting tool. "Make the towrope as long as you can—I don't want this baby disturbed by your downwash. Get that fuel and the wobble pump out here as quick as you can." "OK, Major—with you as soon as we can." Gant did not look up at the beach again. He stared instead at the tip of the rotor that leaned out over the water. Inches now. They wouldn't have time. Inches . . .
He heard the 24A's engines start, the rotors wind up. A shattering noise that seemed like laughter mocking the immobility of his own helicopter. He tightened the last nut and removed the retracting tool. He reached for the last wired pin and fitted it. The retracting tool slithered from his damp grasp, clanging down the bulkhead, splashing into the water—
—a moment of relief that he had finished with it, that he need not waste time retrieving it, then he realized that Lane, his own task completed and startled by the noise behind him, had lurched across the cockpit to look out, leaning his weight too quickly, too heavily against the frame of the door—
—Mac's mouth opening in surprise, even warning, Gant clinging to the rotor head, still straddling the 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 frorfl 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,
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,
"Macl" 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,
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.
Urgency was difficult, as if further effort was grossly unfair and to be resented. They should be safe, after what they had done. Instead, Gant felt his muscles crack and protest as they hauled the fuel cell alongside the helicopter, then dragged the pump beside the fuselage. He knocked open the fuel cap positioned just forward of the stubby port wing. Mac attached the hose, Kooper locked it to the fuel cell. Then he and Lane grabbed the handles of the wobble pump, and began pushing and pulling back and forth, pushing and pulling.
"We'll spell you," Gant said. Water sucked around his boots. The sand was dark and wet beneath the wheels of the MiL. He looked at Mac, then added: "I want enough to get me to the beach, is all."
Sweat spread where the water was drying on their overalls. Once more, the air seemed to scorch in Gant's lungs as he relieved Kooper at the pump. A cone of heat and humidity surrounded him. Mac's face, opposite his, was reddened, running with perspiration. Kooper relieved Gant. Water splashed audibly, ankle-deep. Lane took Mac's place.
When Garcia arrived, panting for breath after trudging along the narrow spine of the bar, Gant climbed into the cockpit of the MiL. Fuel gauges ... not quite yet. . .
"Garcia," he called, leaning out of the cockpit. "Unplug the intakes." Garcia splashed through the knee-deep water and climbed onto the fuselage. Gant looked at the rotors drooping to port and starboard. Their tips reached down almost to the level of the stubby wings. The sea had begun to envelop the undercarriage once more. Perhaps two or three feet from the rotors—fuel gauges . . . ?