"yes. i heard something go."
"so did we. jordon, you all right?"
"course i'm all offing for gawd's sake," jordon shouted back sourly. he was a lean, tough australian and he was shaking his head like a dog. "just banged my bleeding head, didn't 1? bloody offing bullets! i thought scot said things were getting bleeding better with the bleeding shah gone and khomeini bleeding back. better? now they're bleeding firing at us! they've never done that before what the eff's going on?"
"how the hell do i know? probably just a trigger-happy putter. sit tight, i'm going to take a quick look. if the undercart's okay we'll set down and you and rod can make a check."
"how's the offing oil pressure?" jordon shouted.
"in the green." lochart settled back, automatically scanning the dials, the clearing, the sky, left, right, overhead, and below. they were descending nicely,
two hundred feet to go. through his headset he heard gavallan humming tonelessly. "you did very well, scot."
"the hell i did," the younger man said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. "i'd've pranged. i was bloody paralyzed when the bullets hit, and if it hadn't been for you i'dtve gone in."
"most of it was my fault. i bashed the collective without warning. sorry about that but i had to get us out of the bastard's line of fire fast. i learned that in malaya." lochart had spent a year there with the british forces in their war against communist insurgents. "no time to warn you. set down as fast as you can." he watched approvingly as gavallan went into a hover, searching the terrain carefully.
"did you see who fired at us, tom?"
"no, but then i wasn't looking for hostiles. where you going to land?"
"over there, well away from the fallen tree. okay?"
"looks fine to me. quick as you can. hold her off about a foot."
the hover was perfect. a few inches above the snow, as steady as the rocks below though the wind was gusting. lochart opened the door. the sudden cold chilled him. he zipped up his padded flight jacket, slid out carefully, keeping his head well down from the whirling blades.
the front of the skid was scraped and badly dented and a little twisted but the rivets holding it to the undercarriage mounts were firm. quickly he checked the other side, rechecked the damaged skid, then gave the thumbs-up. gavallan eased off the throttle a hair and set her down, soft as thistledown.
at once the three men in the back piled out. jean-luc sessonne, the french pilot, ducked out of the way to let the two mechanics begin their inspection, one port, the other starboard, working back from nose to tail. the wind from the rotors tore at their clothes, whipping them. lochart was under the helicopter now looking for oil or gasoline seepage but he could find none, so he got up and followed rodrigues. the man was american and very good his own mechanic who, for a year now, had serviced the 212 he normally flew. rodrigues unclipped an inspection panel and peered inside, his gray-flecked hair and clothes tugged by the airflow.
s-g safety standards were the highest of all iranian helicopter operators, so the maze of cables, pipes, and fuel lines was neat, clean, and optimum. but suddenly rodrigues pointed. there was a deep score on the crankcase where a bullet had ricocheted. carefully they backtracked the line of the bullet. again he pointed into the maze, this time using a flash. one of the oil lines was nicked. when he brought out his hand it was oil heavy. "shit," he said.
"shut her down, rod?" lochart shouted.
"hell no, there may be more of those trigger-happy bastards around, an'
this's no place to spend the night." rodriguespulled out a piece of waste and a spanner. "you check aft, tom."
lochart left him to it, uneasily looked around for possible shelter in case they had to overnight. over the other side of the clearing, jean-luc was casually peeing against a fallen tree, a cigarette in his mouth. "don't get frostbite, jeanluc!" he called out and saw him wave the stream good-naturedly.
"hey, tom."
it was jordon beckoning. at once he ducked under the tail boom to join the mechanic. his heart skipped a beat. jordon also had an inspection panel off. there were two bullet holes in the fuselage, just over the tanks. jesus, just a split second later and the tanks would have blown, he thought. if i hadn't shoved the collective down we'd all've bought it. absolutely. but for that we'd be sprayed over the mountainside. and for what?
jordon tugged him and pointed again, following the line of the bullets. there was another score on the rotor column. "how the effer missed the offing blades i'm effed if i know," he shouted, the red wool hat that he always wore pulled down over his ears.
"it wasn't our time."
"wot?"
"nothing. have you found anything else?"
"not offing yet. you all right, tom?"
"sure."
a sudden crash and they all whirled in fright, but it was only a huge tree limb, overloaded with snow, tumbling earthward.
"espece de con," jean-luc said and peered up into the sky, very conscious of the falling light, then shrugged to himself, lit another cigarette, and wandered off, stamping his feet against the cold.
jordon found nothing else amiss on his side. the minutes ticked by. rodrigues was still muttering and cursing, one arm reaching awkwardly into the bowels of the compartment. behind him the others were huddled in a group, watching, well away from the rotors. it was noisy and uncomfortable, the light good but not for long. they still had twenty miles to go and no guidance systems in these mountains other than the small homer at their base which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. "come on, for christ's sake," someone muttered.
yes, lochart thought, hiding his disquiet.
at shiraz the outgoing crew of two pilots and two mechanics they were replacing had hurriedly waved good-bye and rushed for their company 125 an eight-place, twin-engined private jet airplane for transportation or special freighting the same jet that had brought them from dubai's international
airport across the gulf and a month's leave, lochart and jordon in england, jean-luc in france, and rodrigues from a hunting trip in kenya. "what the hell's the hurry?" lochart had asked as the small twin jet closed its doors and taxied off.
"the airport's only still partially operational, everyone's still on strike, but not to worry," scot gavallan had said. "they've got to take off before the officious, bloody little burk in the tower who thinks he's god's gift to iranian air traffic control cancels their bloody clearance. we'd better get the lead out too before he starts to sod us around. get your gear aboard."
"what about customs?"
"they're still on strike, old boy. along with everyone else banks're still closed. never mind, we'll be normal in a week or so."
"merde," jean-luc said. "the french papers say iran is une catastrophe with khomeini and his mullahs on one side, the armed forces ready to stage a coup any day, the communists winding everyone up, the government of bakhtiar powerless, and civil war inevitable."
"what do they know in france, old boy?" scot gavallan had said airily as they loaded their gear. "the fr "
"the french know, mon vieux. all the papers say khomeini'll never cooperate with bakhtiar because he's a shah appointee and anyone connected with the shah is finished. finished. that old fire-eater's said fifty times he won't work with anyone shah-appointed."
lochart said, "i saw andy three days ago in aberdeen, jean-luc, and he was bullish as hell that irantll come back to normal soon, now that khomeini's back and the shah gone."
scot beamed. "there, you see. if anyone should know it's the old man. how is he, tom?"
lochart grinned back at him. "in great shape, his usual ball of fire." andy was andrew gavallan, scot's father, chairman and managing director of s-g. "andy said bakhtiar has the army, navy, and air force, the police, and savak, so khomeini's got to make a deal somehow. it's that or civil war."
"jesus," rodrigues said, "what the hell we doing back here anyway?"
"it's the money."
"bullmerde!"
they had all laughed, jean-luc the natural pessimist, then scot said, "what the hell does it matter, jean-luc? no one's ever bothered us here, have they? all through the troubles here no one's really ever bothered us. all our contracts are with iranoil which's the government bakhtiar, khomeini or general whoever. doesn't matter whoever's in power, they've got to get back to normal soon any government'll need oil dollars desperately, so they've got to have choppers, they've got to have us. for god's sake, they're not fools!"
"no, but khomeini's fanatic and doesn't care about anything except islam and oil's not islam."
"what about saudi? the emirates, opec, for god's sake? they're islamic and they know the price of a barrel. the hell with that, listen!" scot beamed. "guerney aviation have pulled out of all the zagros mountains and are cutting all their iranian ops to zero. to zero!"
this caught the attention of all of them. guerney aviation was the huge american helicopter company and their major rival. with guerney gone, work would be doubled and all expat s-g personnel in iran were on a bonus system that was tied to iranian profits.
"you sure, scot?"
"sure, tom. they had a helluva row with iranoil about it. the upshot was that iranoil said, if you want to leave, leave, but all the choppers are on license to us so they stay and all spares! so guerney told them to shove it, closed their base at gash, and put all the choppers in mothballs and left."
"i don't believe it," jean-luc said. "guerney must have fifty choppers on contract; even they can't afford to write off that lot."
"even so, we've already flown three missions last week which were all guerney exclusives."
jean-luc broke through the cheers. "why did guerney pull out, scot?"
"our fearless leader in tehran thinks they haven't the bottle, can't stand the pressure, or don't want to. let's face it, most of khomeini's vitriol's against america and american companies. mclver thinks they're cutting their losses and that's great for us."
"madonna, if they can't take out their planes and spares, they're in dead trouble."
"ours not to reason why, old boy, ours just to do and fly. so long as we sit tight we'll get all their contracts and more than double our pay this year alone."
"tu en parles mon cut, ma tete est malade!"
they had all laughed. even jordon knew what that meant: speak to my backside, my head is sick. "not to worry, old chap," scot said.
confidently, lochart nodded to himself, the cold on the mountainside not hurting him yet. andy and scottre right, everything's going to be normal soon, has to be, he thought. the newspapers in england were equally confident the iranian situation'd normalize itself quickly now. provided the soviets didn't make an overt move. and they had been warned. it was hands off, americans and soviets, so now iranians can settle their affairs in their own way. it's right that whoever's in power needs stability urgently, and revenue and that means oil. yes. everything's going to be all right. she believes it and if she believed everything would be wonderful once the shah was overthrown and khomeini back, why shouldn't 1?
ah, sharazad, how i've missed you.
it had been impossible to phone her from england. phones in iran had never been particularly good, given the massive overload of too-fast industrialisation. but in the past eight months since the troubles began, the almost constant telecommunication strikes had made internal and external communication worse and worse and now it was almost nonexistent. when lochart was at aberdeen hq for his biannual medical he had managed to send her a telex after eight hours of trying. he had sent it care of duncan mclver in tehran where she was now. you can't say much in a telex except see you soon, miss you, love.
not long now, my darling, and th
"tom?"
"oh, hi, jean-luc? what?"
"it's going to snow soon."
"yes."
jean-luc was thin-faced, with a big gallic nose and brown eyes, spare like all the pilots who had serious medicals every six months with no excuses for overweight. "who fired at us, tom'?"
lochart shrugged. "i saw no one. did you?"
"no. i hope it was just one crazy." jean-luc's eyes bored into him. "for a moment i thought i was back in algiers, these mountains are not so different, back in the air force fighting the fellagha and the fln, may god curse them forever." he ground the cigarette stub out with his heel. "i've been in one civil war and hated it. at least then i had bombs and guns. i don't want to be a civilian caught in another with nothing to rely on except how fast i can run."
"it was just a lone crazy."
"i think we're going to have to deal with a lot of crazies, tom. ever since i left france i've had a bad feeling. it's worse since i got back. we've been to war, you and 1, most of the others haven't. we've a nose, you and 1, and we're in for bad trouble."