Two of the unit appeared to be wounded, leaning heavily against others of the group. Anders had seen some of the final rehearsals, but there was no sense of
deja vu.
Only danger, the possibilities of error multiplying with every step.
Fifteen yards of sand and rock now separated the group from the terrorist who waited impatiently for them. He called, and Anders heard a muffled, out-of-breath explanation. Eleven yards, ten, eight. . .
It all seemed huge and in slow motion, like the collision of two great prehistoric creatures. He could hear his own quick, shallow breathing and the little expelled grunts of tension from Jaffe. In his memory, the directors voice possessed a similar tense breathless-ness.
. . . Cactus Plant has given us a possible date, John. The launch is rumored to be on schedule to coincide with the treaty signing. He's not going to be able to confirm that until maybe only a week before it happens . . . one week from launch time, we'll know for certain . . .
. . . altogether, maybe we have three weeks maximum—maybe only two, maybe no more than a week before they put this damn thing in orbit. The Israelis have found us the helicopters. Go bring them back . . .
Fear jolted Anders' mind back to the present. The terrorist might sense the strangeness of this approaching group, even behind their scarves and burnooses. Anders flicked his infrared, one-eyed gaze toward the helicopters. The image of them in the gray mistiness provided by the lens made him twitch with nerves. He felt stretched by the succession of moments. At no point until it was completed, until they had been successful, would he be able to feel they might not fail utterly. There was no relief, no escape.
He could see faces staring up toward the top of the cliff. What would they see? Might they not see . . . ?
"OK, OK, OK," jaffe was muttering, the earpiece clamped against his face, his head nodding even as he squinted through the nightscope. "OK, OK."
Anders switched the pocketscope to the group on the clifftop. Arms now akimbo in welcome, AKM held harmlessly away from the Iranian's body—three yards. Three steps.
Warm greeting, still relief in the terrorist's tones, even in the moment the group leader embraced him—
now!
Small twitch of the whole body as the knife, blade darkened so as not to catch the moonlight, went in. A hand over the Iranian's mouth to prevent a cry, then the unit leader was holding the body upright, turning it . . . Anders watched, unable to breathe. Another embrace and—yes!—the exchange was completed. One of the pretend-wounded had straightened, begun to walk beside the unit leader in place of the Iranian. Chattering excitedly, his arm around the shoulders of the unit leader in welcome.
The whole group, in single file, began to thread its way down a dry gully into the hollow in the dunes. They were fifty or sixty yards from the two MiLs. Jaffe exhaled noisily, his tension almost as palpable as smoke in the chill air. The two pilots would already have completed their prestart checks. Anders had heard the hum of the auxiliary power units for the past—how long? It did not matter. He knew the MiLs were ready for an immediate engine-start. The moments lengthened, giving no comfort, only prospects of failure.
"Easy now, boys, easy now, easy," Jaffe murmured beside him, almost lovingly.
They were approaching the helicopters from the rear, moving slowly but seeming to Anders to rush toward failure. He could witness the whole scene now through the monocular eyepiece of the pocketsight. Gray, misty light. Rotors unmoving as yet. The terrorist's dead feet were dragging through the sand, his body supported by a man on either side. Anders noticed guns now. Kalashnikovs and Uzi submachine guns held loosely, slung easily. Forty yards to the MiLs.
Noise. Shattering, unnerving. Engine-start. The rotors moved, began to shimmer in the moonlight. Dust lifted but visibility was not obscured, only shadowed as the pilots held the rpm of the rotors at ground-idling speed. The Israeli unit moved closer as the MiLs appeared to tremble like cold dogs down in the hollow. When they lifted away there would be—
... I tell you, John, we have to have those gunships. It isn't any exaggeration, God help all of us, to say the future of this country depends on those Russian helicopters. You know how true that is, along with maybe a couple of dozen other people . . .
The Israelis would have only seconds before the torque wound up, the rotors were placed in their lift angle of incidence, and the MiLs moved up and away, escaping them. The timing, rehearsed a hundred, two hundred times, was critical.
Twenty-five yards. Another of the Iranians was out of the door of the 24A now, waving the group to hurry. The pilots were becoming impatient now that the MiLs were noisier, audible in the night. It had taken two weeks to bring about this conjunction of a special Israeli commando unit and two Russian gunships. Objective: capture intact, whatever the human cost. Two Israeli helicopter pilots waited in the dunes, a quarter of a mile away, ready and briefed to fly the captured gunships over the border to the waiting Galaxy transport that would hurry them back to the States. Where Gant and his crews would have perhaps two weeks to learn to fly them before they set out for—for the target of their reach-and-recover mission. Objective: agent Cactus Plant alive, proof intact.
Fifteen yards, waving arms and hooded faces. Exclamations in Farsi. The Islamic Jihad group had been under Israeli surveillance for a long time, operating against Christian and Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and northern Israel; periodic long-stay incursions, piling up the raids, the bombs, the bodies. Always, they were transported to and from their base in eastern Syria by MiL helicopters flown by Russian pilots.
It had taken days to break just one of them and to obtain the signals, the IDs, the codes, timings, landing fields, next pickup point. Days . . .
Anders shuddered. Stepping out of the Galaxy, he at once became part of it, and driven by his own demons of urgency and desperation, utterly without innocence. Even so, he did not want to consider the Iranian who had been broken and the others destroyed but still silent.
Eleven yards, ten—
He felt his whole frame trembling against the fine sand that had compacted beneath him. Jaffe's hand clamped on his arm, not to steady his nerves but to communicate a similar tense excitement. So many rehearsals . . .
The director and the President disappeared from his mind like half-remembered performers in a long-ago play. Fear of failure, desperation, nerves all became immediate, transmuted into pure adrenaline as he watched the drama's second act begin.
The pilot and gunner were clearly visible, shadowy bulks in the cockpit of the 24D. They were watching the approach of the unit in their mirrors. Pilot and copilot of the 24A side by side, also watching. There were so many eyes! The slow, broken shimmer of the idling rotors reflected the moonlight like two great, damaged mirrors. Sand scuttled and puffed, but the visibility remained too good. What if—? So many unfamiliarities of detail between remembered comrades and this unit—shape, height, voice, walk, posture. They'd see something any moment now. The noise from the engines and the whip of rotors might not be enough to hide strangeness in expected voices, words—
Anders was aware of the stubby wings of the two MiLs; rocket pods and missiles were slung beneath them, all ironically pointing at the dune that hid Jaffe and himself. Wheels creaked against the restraint of brakes.
Seven yards, six, four—
Recognition and decision in the same appalling instant. The Iranian terrorist half turned to cry a warning and was beaten down with the butt of the unit leaders rifle. He sprawled on the sand like a dropped blanket.
Movement an instant after decision. The terrorist they had already killed fell slowly sideways as his body was released. Even before his involuntary movement was complete, two Israelis were through the gaping main cabin door of the 24A and others were running through the swirling sand raised by the downdraft of its rotors. Behind the tinted glass of the MiLs cockpit, Anders saw the gleam of a bright flashlight, inwardly heard the shouted threats to the two pilots, could almost see the grenade held in an upthrust hand, thumb on the lever—the Uzis pointing. The swift, sudden, chill shock of icy water, the shock of a stun grenade they could not even use for fear of damaging the cockpit instruments with the shock wave . . .
. . . might have to use grenades on the two separate cockpits of the other gunship, the 24D. They had always known that. No way to reach gunner and pilot without opening both cockpit doors, both hatches. And the 24D was farther away than its companion, its crew already alerted to danger. The greater prize but the more risky capture. His eye strained at the eyepiece of the pocketscope. Sweat was chill on every part of his body.
Now—
One commando had his hand on the pilot's cockpit latch, a second had climbed to the gunners cockpit and was heaving at the hinged cover. Flash of gunfire, the noise coming slow seconds later, it seemed. Two rounds at point-blank range from an army-issue Be-retta 9mm. Satisfied, the commando dropped back to the ground. The gunners body was all but below the level of his cockpit sill.
Image of the pilot turning in his seat, arm moving across his body, striking out with something. The commando at his door swung outward on it, suddenly endangered. A shot from inside the MiL, two more from outside it. The commando fell to the ground and lay still.
The pilot should have been terrorized into surrender, not killed—
His body slumped heavily in the cockpit. Anders sensed rather than saw his hand leave the control column, sensed his weight transmitted down through the dead body to the rudder.
The MiL tilted, began to lean drunkenly over, its rotors seeming to stretch out toward the sand. Jaffe's hand gripped Anders' arm, and there was a sob of anticipation and shock in his throat. On the 24A, the rotors had stilled. It was safe. The nearer MiL continued to lean, its fuselage lurching, the tail boom swinging outward, the rotor disk tilting slowly, almost with delicacy toward the sand—
—where they would grind, bite, gouge before being ripped off, broken.
The pilot had his dead foot jammed heavily on the right rudder pedal. That was obvious. The tail rotor's thrust was increased, the tail had begun to swing. The MiL was leaning drunkenly; sand was billowing as the rotors' disk neared the ground. It was trying to climb even as it leaned, shunting about like a wounded bull on the distressed sand.
Jaffe was shouting in Hebrew above the bellow of the rotors and the confusion. Anders understood only the urgency. A shadow ducked into the whirling sand, touched the fuselage, began to climb. Anders watched him, almost paralyzed with the imminence of failure. A door swung open. The hollow seemed filled with flying sand. The door shut. Noise, noise—
The rotor disk shimmered, only feet from the sand, the fuselage leaned more drunkenly than ever, the tail boom seemed to thrash in the sand cloud like the tail of a pain-maddened creature.
"Christ!" Anders could not help bellowing at the MiL. Men were scattering from the 24A. Anders became mesmerized by the rotors of the 24D and by the apparent effort of the helicopter to lift off: a wounded bird trying to hop desperately into the air. Hop, hop, the rotors like broken wings, about-to-break wings . . .
. . . men running away—why? Then he saw. The lurching, hopping, leaning MiL was shunting closer and closer to its companion. Both the helicopters would be wrecked, the mission would be— —would not be, ever.
"Christ!" he bellowed again. Four weeks before, a little more than that, they hadn't even known what the Russians were doing, hadn't any need for MiL helicopters and a reach-and-recover mission behind the Curtain—four weeks! The age of innocence. They'd been taken by complete surprise—the NSC, the CIA, DARPA, the DIA, the White House, all of them, totally, completely by surprise. ... it was going to fail, going to fail, going to— Slowing? Slowing!
The tail no longer twitched, it was steadying. The shimmer of the rotors behind the veil of sand dulled, the noise lessened. The undercarriage righted, came level, thumped back onto the sand. The rotors continued to wind down. Anders realized that the commando had stop-cocked the MiL's engines, starving them of fuel as the quickest way to stop them. Had kicked the dead Russian's foot off the right rudder pedal and stamped hard himself off the left rudder to correct the drift of the tail boom before he released the rotor clutch.
The rotors slowed to a halt. Anders heard, in the deaf silence, faint, ragged cheering. It might have been Jaffe's voice, even his own. As the tension was released, he felt aged and dazed by it. Jaffe was on his feet, waving to his men, to the lieutenant at the foot of the dune. He was shouting for him to bring up the two helicopter pilots.
Anders stood up and rocked back and forth with exhaustion. It was as if he had run for miles without the least pause. Jaffe gripped his elbow. The colonel was grinning wildly. Below them, as the sand settled, he saw the commando open the door of the 24D and climb slowly, carefully out, as if bruised or wounded by his own heartbeat and adrenaline.
"I told you we'd do it—told you, man!" Jaffe shouted.
"A—close-run thing—too damn close!" Anders shouted back, beginning to grin. Then he coughed as the cold air filled his lungs. Sand drifted slowly down, making his eyes smart and wink.
"Don't bellyache! We did it, and you've got your helicopters— for whatever reason!"