A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 152

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Sean was through the outer defenses and into the laager proper with its service areas and hardened helicopter emplacements. The workshops and fuel dumps were heavily sandbagged and covered with camouflage netting. Stray mortar shells were still falling among them, kicking up geysers of dust and gusts of whistling shrapnel. One of the Hinds had fallen near the far perimeter of the laager and was burning fiercely, oily black smoke billowing back over the workshops.

In the confusion, human figures scurried about without apparent purpose, unarmed technicians in baggy gray overalls who flung up their arms when they saw Sean, most of them dropping onto their knees to emphasize their surrender. In full camouflage paint and with the bloodlust and elation of battle contorting his features, Sean cut a ferocious and terrifying figure.

"Down!" Sean gestured at them with the barrel of the AKM and with transparent relief they fell facedown in the dust and clasped their hands behind their heads.

Just ahead he made out the long, drooping rotors of a Hind protruding above the sandbagged wall of its emplacement.

"One didn't even get up," he thought as he raced toward it, but at that moment the rotors began to revolve slowly, swiftly building up speed. Somebody was attempting to start the machine.

Sean darted through the narrow entrance and into the deep circular emplacement. He checked his charge for a moment to survey the interior.

The Hind in its blotched camouflage towered over him, its rotors whirling over his head as they built up to start speed on the Isotov turbo engine. Three RtIssian ground crew were crowded around the front of the timchine, and incongruously Sean noticed the crimson arrow emblem painted on the Hind's nose that designated them an "Excellent Crew," one of the cherished performance awards of the Soviet air force.

The ground crew turned their white faces toward Scan and gaped at him. He jerked the muzzle of the AKM at them, and they fell back.

ckpit of the helicopter was still The canopy of the weapons co open, and one of the flight crew was clambering up into it. Only his plump backside in gray flying overalls protruded. Sean reached up between his legs and seized a handful of the man's genitals. The Russian squealed shrilly as Sean used them as a handle to drag him backward and threw him against the sandbagged side wall of the emplacement.

The spinning rotors whistled shrilly as the turbo engine caught, and Sean jumped up onto the boarding step of the helicopter. The pilot's canopy was also open, and Sean thrust his AKM forward.

The pilot at the controls was young and thin, with pale blond hair cut very short. In his haste to get the Hind away he had not even donned his flying helmet. He turned his head to look at Sean.

His complexion was marred by angry purple and red acne and his eyes were very pale blue. They widened dramatically as Sean touched the tip of his acne-scarred nose with the muzzle of the AKM and said, "Party is over, Ivan. Let's go home."

It was apparent that this helicopter had not been scheduled for the dawn sortie that morning and the pilot and his crew had only begun their attempt to get the machine airborne once the attack had begun. It was less than ten minutes since the first mortar shells had fallen into the laager, not enough time, though they had almost made it.

"Kill the engine," Sean told the pilot. He enforced the order by jamming the muzzle of the AKM into the pilot's nose with sufficient force to bring a smear of blood from one nostril and tears from both of the pale eyes. Reluctantly the pilot pushed the fuel mixture control to fully lean and cut both master switches. The whistle of the turbo died away.

"Out!" said Sean. The pilot understood the gesture and tone, if not the word. He unclasped his safety belt and climbed down into the laager.

Sean lined up the pilot, the flight engineer, and the three members of the ground crew against the sandbagged wall. "Welcome to the capitalist world, comrades," he greeted them, then looked back at the helicopter. "Jackpot!" He grinned, still euphoric with the adrenaline in his blood. "We've got ourselves a real live, working Hind, Matatu!"

Matatu was having a grand time. "Let's kill them now," he suggested merrily. "Give me the banduki. Let me shoot them for you." Sean had seen Matatu fire only one shot in his entire life, when as a joke Sean had let him fire the double.577. it had lifted Matatu clear off his feet and deposited him ten feet away.

You couldn't hit one of them even at this range, you bloodthirsty little bugger." Sean grinned down at him, then once more concentrated all his attention on the Hind. The magnitude of the prize he had taken began to dawn upon him.

The Hind would be a magnificent escape vehicle. He, Claudia, Job, and Matatu could get out of here with first-class tickets. Then reality overtook him, and his spirits dropped. He had never flown a helicopter, did not even have the vaguest notion of how to do so.

All he knew was that it required a delicate and expert touch on the controls and was entirely different from piloting a fixed-wing aircraft.

He looked back calculatingly at the Russian pilot. Despite the acne and his unprepossessing appearance, he thought he detected a stubborn, proud streak in the man's pale eyes, and he knew that the air force officers were among the elite of the Soviet armed forces. The Russian was almost certainly a fanatical patriot.

"Not much chance of getting you to act as ferry pilot," he guessed. Then he spoke aloud: "all right, gentlemen, let's get out of here." He indicated the exit from the emplacement, and under the barrel of the AKM they trooped toward it obediently. As the Russian pilot passed, Sean stopped him and lifted the Tokarev pistol from the holster at his hip. "You won't need that, Ivan," he said, and tucked the pistol into his own belt.

There was a fortified workshop almost abutting the Hind's emplacement. It had been excavated into the hillside and roofed with poles and sandbags. Sean herded the Russians down into it, then looked around him.

The battle had fizzled out, though a few desultory shots and the pop and bang of burning ammunition could still be heard.

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