A tracer tentacle lashed past the Long Ranger, weaving and groping for the helicopter.
“Wait for him!” Smyslov said relentlessly, his fingers digging into her collarbone. “Wait…!”
The airframe shuddered as high-velocity metal thwacked through its structure. A side window starred and exploded inward as death screamed through the cockpit.
“Now! Pull up! Pull up!”
Wrenching her controls back to their stops, Randi lifted the Long Ranger through the flight path of the Cessna Centurion. For an instant, the whole world off the port side was filled with the nose and shimmering propeller arc of the diving plane, hanging mere feet beyond their own rotor arc. And in that frozen instant the windshield of the Cessna exploded outward.
Then it was past, and the helicopter was bucking and skidding wildly in the interlocking turbulence, on the very razor’s edge of departing controlled flight. Randi fought for the recovery, a thin, angry adrenaline-spurred cry slipping from her lips as she wrestled with the pitch and collective, striving not to lethally overstress the airframe. If she could fly the Ranger out of this, by God, she could fly it anywhere.
The copter responded and steadied with a final shuddering bobble. They still had a valid aircraft. They still had life.
“Where is he?” Randi panted.
“Down there,” Smith answered.
The white Cessna was falling away beneath them in a flat spin, a thin haze of smoke streaming from its cockpit. A moment later it belly-slammed into the sea, vanishing from sight in an explosion of spray.
“Well done, Randi,” Smith continued. “And you, Major. Exceptionally well done.”
“I’ll second that,” Valentina Metrace added reverently. “If you were a man, my dear Randi, I’d be yours for the asking.”
“Thanks, but would someone mind telling me just what it was that I did? What happened to that guy?”
“It was…pah, what are the words…” Smyslov slumped in his seat, his head tilted back and his eyes closed. “…target fixation. The machine gunner, he was firing his weapon from a body harness. He did not have a fixed gun mount with fire interrupters to keep him from shooting into his own airframe. Once he had you targeted, he focused on trying to hold his tracers on you for the kill. When you cut across his nose as you did, he swung with you, and turned his gun barrel right into his own cockpit.”
“And before he could get off the trigger he’d killed his own pilot and shot himself down,” Smith finished. “Fast thinking, Major.”
Smyslov lifted his hands. “Merest memory, Colonel. Once, over Chechnya, I had a muzhik door gunner with pig shit for brains who nearly blew the back of my head off.”
Randi sighed and glanced at the Russian. “I’m glad he missed.”
Chapter Fourteen
Kodiak, Alaska
The spruce-shaggy slopes of Barometer Mountain mirrored themselves in the waters of St. Paul’s Bay as the Long Ranger skimmed into the harbor at Kodiak. Angling past the trawlers that crowded the docks of the fishing port, the copter headed for the Coast Guard Base. The USS Alex Haley lay moored beside the base pier, and the big cutter was standing by to receive them. Her own helicopter had been offloaded, and her hangar bay doors gaped wide, a wandsman standing by on her afterdeck helipad to walk them aboard.
The Haley was a singleton, one of a kind within the Coast Guard’s white-hull fleet. A staunch and stolid ex-Navy salvage ship, she did duty as both the regulation-enforcing scourge of the huge Kodiak Island fishing fleet and its rescuing angel of mercy. Sailing in the wake of legendary predecessors like the Bear and the Northland, she was the law north of the Aleutians. Also, with her powerful engines and ice-strengthened hull, she was one of only a handful of ships able to dare the Northwest Passage with winter looming.
Gingerly, Randi eased the Long Ranger aboard, compensating for the ground effect variant as she sidled over the cutter’s deck. The pontoons scuffed down on the black pebbly antiskid, and she cut the throttles. For a long minute, as the turbines whined down, Smith and his people luxuriated in the sheer stability of the ship’s deck. Then the cutter’s aviation hands were ducking under the slowing rotor arc, and two officers in crisp khakis were approaching from the hangar bay.
“Colonel Smith, I’m Commander Will Jorganson.” As stolid and stocky as his ship, Jorganson was a fit, balding middle-aged man with intent sea-faded blue eyes and a strong, dry handshake. “This is Lieutenant Grundig, my executive officer. We’ve been expecting you. Welcome aboard the Haley.”
“You have no idea how glad we are to be here, Commander,” Smith replied with a degree of irony. After the cramped interior of the helicopter, the open, breeze-swept freedom of the helipad felt wonderful. “This is my assistant team leader, Professor Valentina Metrace; my pilot, Ms. Randi Russell; and my Russian liaison, Major Gregori Smyslov of the Russian Federation Air Force. Now, I have two questions I need immediate answers for, Commander. The first and most critical is, how fast can you get this ship under way and headed north?”
Jorganson frowned. “We’re scheduled to sail at 0600 tomorrow.”
“I didn’t ask when we were scheduled to sail,” Smith said, meeting the Coast Guardsman’s eyes. “I asked how fast you can get under way.”
The cutter captain’s scowl deepened. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Colonel.”
“I don’t either, Commander. That’s why we have to get out of here right now. I trust that you have received specific orders from the commandant of the Seventeenth Coast Guard District concerning my authority on this mission under certain curcumstances?”
Jorganson stiffened. “Yes, sir.”
“Those circumstances exist, and I am invoking that authority. Now, how fast can you get us under way?”
Jorganson had indeed received his packet of sealed orders concerning the Wednesday Island evacuation, and the two-starred signature underneath them had been exceptionally impressive. “We are fully fueled and provisioned, Colonel. I have personnel ashore that I’ll need to recall, and my engine room crew will need time to heat up the plant. One hour, sir.”
Smith nodded. “Very good, Captain. Now, my second question leads into the reason for all of this. Is your onboard aviation detail set up to assess and repair battle damage on an aircraft?”
That finally shook Jorganson’s stoicism. “Battle damage?”
Smith nodded. “That’s correct. While we were en route to your ship, someone tried to shoot us down. We were intercepted over the Passages by a light plane equipped with a military-grade radio jammer and a machine gun. If it weren’t for a bright idea by Major Smyslov and some brilliant flying by Ms. Russell, you’d be sailing to search for a downed helicopter.”
“But…”
“I don’t know, Captain,” Smith repeated patiently. “But someone is obviously trying to prevent my team from reaching Wednesday Island. Accordingly, I think it behooves us to get the hell up there just as fast as we can.”
“We’ll take care of it, sir.” Jorganson nodded, his professional composure returning. “The same for your helo. Whatever needs to be done will get done.”
The captain turned to his waiting first officer. “Mr. Grundig, recall all hands and make all preparations for getting under way. Expedite! Set your sea and anchor details and advise Chief Wilkerson that he will be ready to turn shafts in forty-five minutes!”
“Aye, sir!” The exec disappeared through a watertight door in the white-painted deckhouse.
The Coast Guard commander looked back to Smith. “Do you have any instructions about Dr. Trowbridge, Colonel?”
“Trowbridge?” Smith groped mentally for the name.
“Yes, sir, he’s the off-site director of the university research program on Wednesday. He’s up at the Kodiak Inn now. He was scheduled to ride up with us for the recovery of the expedition.”