Ice glittered. The cavern mouth loomed as if about to swallow them.
Now.
He suppressed a shiver. The rotor tips caught the infrared lighting thrown back from dark, cold walls. The rotors formed a dish, not touching the walls of rock. Not touching. Mac was inside the cavern, then so was he. Rotor noise boomed in the enclosing, retreating dark. The pale, ghostly light from the IR lamp made the interior open up into dusky, shadowy heights like the nave of an ill-lit cathedral. The goggles revealed hanging ice, drifted snow, rock, undulations like those of the seabed, and a roof stretching upward beyond the light. His breath eased out, controlled. Mac exhaled noisily. "Cold in here," was his only comment.
Gant turned the Hind slowly in the hover. He flicked off the IR lamp and pulled off his goggles. The mouth of the cavern was pale with moonlight.
"Mac?"
"I can't hear anything, skipper. I'll go take a look."
Gant lowered the undercarriage until it bounced and the Hind settled. He switched off the two Isotov engines, and the rotors grumbled down to stillness. Silence seemed audible after the last echoing noises died away. He opened the cockpit door. Icy cold assailed him like a bully. Mac opened the hinged canopy of the gunner's cockpit and dropped to the floor. Gant removed his helmet. The cavern was huge around him. He felt the darkness as if it were moving. He jumped from the door, a lamp flicking on in his hand. Mac's lamp wobbled its light toward the mouth of the cavern. Gant waved the powerful, inadequate beam around him as if to locate a dangerous animal. A dry gouge in the floor stretched away toward the back of the cavern; the course of the former river or tributary that had excavated this hole in the rocks. He saw the lamp's beam glance off a waterfall of ice. There were no stars or moonlight above him, only at the entrance.
His head still rang with the noise of the rotors, as if he had been flying the Hind for days without pause. He had in fact been in the air for two and a half hours. He leaned for a moment against the fuselage, his hand and arm remaining numb from his fierce grip on the control column.
"Mac? OK?" he whispered into the transceiver he had detached from its fitting in the cockpit.
"Skipper," Mac's hoarse whisper replied; it seemed loud in the silence. "I can hear the MiG—turning, I guess. Coming this way, for sure. Jesus, I'm cold." His tone was expressive. He hardly needed to add: "What the hell got into Garcia?" for Gant to understand the force of his reaction. Gant, having flicked off the lamp, focused his night vision, and could pick out Mac's body at the entrance, hunched as if in illness.
"OK, Mac, OK," he replied, realizing there was a shiver of reacs tion in his own voice. "OK."
He heard the approaching noise of the MiG wash into the darkness.
"She's coming," Mac announced, his teeth chattering. "Skipper—shit, did you
see
it?"
«v »»
I saw.
The Flogger howled down the valley, its engine noise booming against the cliffs and into the cavern. Almost at once, the noise began to retreat. It was maybe five or six minutes since Gant had picked up the MiG. It had already flown perhaps as much as three hundred miles of its combat radius. In another five minutes, it would be forced to return to Kunduz to refuel, but a replacement would be in the air before then and on-station when the Flogger turned for home. They would still be trapped in the cavern; but he couldn't regret his decision, not even in the moment when the darkness was beaten like a gong by the noise of the MiG's engine. He could never have outrun the fighter, never have avoided its missiles—Garcia hadn't been able to.
"He just broke up," Gant murmured into the transceiver.
"Where does that leave us?" Mac almost wailed from the entrance. "Skipper—this situation is shit!"
"Maybe. What about the gunships?"
"I can hear one, maybe both—no, just one."
"I'm coming to take a look."
After he had walked a few paces, he looked back at the Hind. There was the faintest glow from the main instrument panel in the cockpit, but the bulk of the helicopter was in total darkness. It would not be seen from outside except, maybe, by means of an infrared lamp. The mouth of the cavern was a pale expression of surprise. Stars glinted. Mac's bulk, to one side of the entrance, was pressed back against the rock. He was holding the bulky Noctron night viewer to his face. Its range was more than five hundred meters, maybe better than that with bright moonlight. Gant
could
hear the approaching MiL.
'The second one's moved off to the south," Mac whispered as Gant reached him. 'This guy's gonna get swallowed by this cave mouth if he don't slow down." He ducked farther into the shadow.
Gant looked around. A lamp might just reach the Hind—just.
"Here, let me take a look."
"Sure." Mac handed him the night viewer. His voice seemed
fierce
now, angry. He appeared able to suppress his realization
about
the loss of their reserve fuel, hide it inside his rage at Garcias
death.
The thought of the fuel made Gant shiver; the darkness
spread
around him like the inhospitable country in which he was stranded.
He leaned gently out of the shadow.
The gunship hovered in the valley, moonlight splashing on its camouflage paint. It was a twin of the helicopter behind them, a 24D. No troops, then, just the crew—no, if it didn't have an auxiliary tank aboard it could still be holding up to eight soldiers. He watched it. The main door remained closed. Its blunt head turned toward them. The Isotov engine intakes were like insect eyes above the squat, gleaming cockpit. Its noise masked the engine of the coursing MiG, away out of sight.
Only minutes, Gant thought. Because of the rock that surrounded them, he could no longer monitor the Soviet Tac channel. If only they would give him a gap, a sliver of time between the departure of the Flogger and the arrival of its replacement. He could not even listen to the MiL talking to its base. If only they sent more helieopters, not more fighters; fighters were virtually useless for the kind of work the Soviets needed to do in the search for him. They had to, he decided. It was too obvious a tactic to ignore. Helicopters—this gunship and the Flogger had, doubtless, already requested backup. Excitedly reporting the one kill, the temporary loss of the second target—yes, they'd send out more gunships.
Auxiliary tanks? The Flogger had been carrying one under its belly, but no wingtip tanks. It had been flying a lo-lo-lo mission, with no high-altitude work. Its combat range would have been severely reduced. It should be leaving.
He saw the MiG, winking like an intruding star, high above the valley. Then it banked to the southwest and was gone almost at once.
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—
two
flat-helmeted soldiers. The MiL remained at its easy-to-maneuver height. The three men became lumbering shadows in the dust raised by the downdraft, then they emerged, moving away to the left of the cavern, spreading out, all of diem armed with Kalashnikovs, heading toward another, smaller cave.
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 exactiy 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 . . .
Hold on!
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 Noc-tron 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.