The River of Bones v5 (19 page)

Sleeping out, they’d huddled in their blankets on the coldest nights, living like native herders.  They had stopped at the Buryat villages along the way, and rarely had any motor vehicle come along.  They hadn’t seen any other whites, and the loneliness of their journey had been blissful.  But . . . now they faced the hardest part, stealing an airplane.  He wondered if Simon had ever flown an AN-2.

“Maybe you should fly, rather than me,” he said.  “You’ve probably logged flight time in the AN-2.”

“Sorry.  All I know is you have to use the rudder to control the tail and you can’t see ahead on takeoff, so I hope the hell you don’t forget.  We’ll look pretty stupid ground looping an Antonov on the Ulan Ude Airport, and it’ll get us in big trouble, too.”  He laughed.

In fact, Jake
had
forgotten the AN-2 epitomized the worst of antiquated engineering.  The giant taildragger would whip around when he applied power, because of engine torque and the phenomenon called P-factor.  Next, he wondered where the master, magnetos, and mixture controls were located, the three M’s of flying, like the three R’s of grade school.  Their position on the instrument panel was important, because he’d only have mere seconds.

“Remind me to memorize the instrument panel on the airplane we hide in so we don’t waste time.  Let’s also listen to their communications and decide whether we should simply blast off or wait for the controller to clear us.  And I hope they don’t send the Werewolf after us.  Then we’ll
really be doomed.”

Simon shook his head.  “The military isn’t going to chase an AN-2 from the civilian side.  They can’t afford to waste their turbine fuel on what they’ll believe is some crackpot with a pilot’s license.  Remember, the people we’re watching are the old Aeroflot bunch, trying to run their own operation, except things haven’t improved much.  Wait and see—no one will pay the least attention to us.”

“I sure as hell hope so.  Need I remind you that we’ll be full of fuel, and we’ll turn into a big fireball the moment someone shoots at us?”

The doomsday remark silenced them, and both studied the airport with their glasses once more.  Simon pulled out their scanner, found the common frequency of the field, and listened to the random chatter of the control tower.  Finally, he laughed again.

“Just like good old America.  Let’s call the tower, taxi out, and wait for the controller to clear us.  I can key the mike and jam the frequency if something goes wrong, and then no one will know what’s going on.  It will be like a Chinese fire drill with everyone trying to use the same frequency, and we’ll have plenty of time to get away.”

His worries still nagged him, despite his friend’s optimism because everything looked so simple.  “What’s the punishment for people who hijack an airplane?” he asked.

“I think they shoot them,” said Simon.

Jake couldn’t help laughing too.  Why worry now?  They had come too far.  “Wake me when it gets dark,” he said.  “You can sleep tonight after we find a place to hide.”

At midnight they snuck across the airfield to where the Antonovs waited, then found an airplane stripped of most its useful parts and crawled inside.  The dark interior reeked of spermy sweetness, a mix of high-octane gasoline and motor oil, an odor both found reassuring for reasons unknown to them.  Maybe it reminded them of home and that everything was the same around the world when it came to aviation.  Airplanes were airplanes and all worked alike.  Whatever the reason, they told each other, Lord help them if someone came for surplus parts in the morning.

Jake woke Simon at nine o’clock, told him to stand guard, then crawled forward and studied the cockpit, twelve feet off the ground.  The front felt as big as a Douglas DC-3, the old airliner that was still being used in some countries.   The AN-2 was almost half its size, although it was only a single-engine ship.

He sensed its power and built-in longing to fly.  Some aircraft felt like that, almost human in their need to speak, and no wonder men and women loved them so much.  He knew that he loved them as much as life.  They were an inordinate part of his spirit, as a beautiful woman might be for other men.    Then he remembered Sasha . . .

The writing on the instrument panel was in Cyrillic, yet seemed clear in its meaning, at least for the more important switches, controls, and gauges.  The battery and starter toggles were just below eye level, and the throttle, fuel mixture, and propeller levers were on a pedestal between the captain and copilot seats.  The magnetos, flight attitude gyros, and engine instruments, oil pressure and RPM, also lay plainly in sight.

Scrunching into the pilot’s seat, he played with the panel for a few minutes, practicing his startup.  Finally, he thought that he’d have the big radial engine running in less than a minute, time enough to get away.

Leaving the cockpit, he stepped back into the cabin and peeked out a side window.  Several mechanics stood in the distance, smoking cigarettes.  A tug chugged past, pulling an Antonov by its tail wheel.

Simon’s whisper broke the stillness.  “Come here and look at this.”

He crawled across the fuselage and knelt by a window.  Two men were pulling rubber bladders off a flatbed truck, getting them ready for the AN-2 that had passed by.  Next, he saw a refueler pull alongside a tank farm and begin filling itself with a hose.  Was it aviation gas or turbine fuel?

“Can you read what’s printed on those tanks?” he asked.  “It’s in Russian and I can’t read a word.”

Simon looked through his binoculars.  “We’re in luck.  They’re loading the airplane with those rubber bladders, pumping them full of gasoline, and then someone’s going to fly off to Lord knows where . . . except we’ll beat him to the punch.  Let’s get ready.”

Frowning, Jake wished there was a better way, something safer.  But life didn’t work like that, at least not his life, or Simon’s for that matter.  They had been in a million tough spots together.

“Let’s keep our Uzis handy,” he said.  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Trust me,” said Simon.  “I’m telling you it’ll be easy.”

Once again, Jake frowned.  Every time someone had told him how easy things would be, or how he or she couldn’t possibly get lost on a cross-country, or had said, “I’ve got it,” the biggest lie of all in flying, he’d seen disaster looming just around the corner.  Overconfidence around airplanes and helicopters always caused more trouble than any other problem.  Alarms were sounding in his head.  But was there any other choice?

“All right, we’ll do it your way, but this whole thing smells like trouble.  Stay alert.”

He knew Simon well enough to realize, despite all the bravado, his friend was worried as well.  They checked their Uzis for live rounds, hid them, and packed everything as small as they could, making it easier for them to run.  Afterward, both watched a young man, the pilot of the AN-2 they wanted to steal, supervise its loading.  In an hour or so the plane would be ready.  Jake felt his heart start pounding.

As Simon had predicted, the pilot, finally signing off on the load, waved away the refueler, stepped down from the airplane, and walked back to operations.

Too good to be true, Jake told himself, because the guy was behaving like a trained pig.  “All right, let’s go,” he said.  “We’ll need to crawl over the fuel bladders to reach the front, so let’s get a move on.”

They stepped out and walked across the ramp to the airplane.  No one seemed the least bit curious about them.  Jake opened the cargo door, jumped up, and snaked across the bladders, giving him the sensation of a waterbed.  He saw Simon close behind him, grinning.  So far, so good, he thought to himself.

He sat in the pilot’s seat, snapped on the master switch, listened to the battery start the electrical system, and pushed the fuel control to full rich.  He opened the throttle, primed the engine, switched on the magnetos, and pressed the starter button.  The four-blade propeller swung around, reminding him to hold rudder on takeoff, and the grinding of the cold engine gave him hope.  They were within a minute or so of takeoff.

The engine fired, backfired, shook with partial power, and blue smoke blew past the windscreen, the sign the cylinders had begun burning the oil puddled on top of the pistons.  He inched the throttle forward, heard the engine sputter, then roar.  They were within 30 seconds of freedom.

Simon’s voice pitched above the noisy engine.  “I hate telling you this but the same guy looks like he’s royally pissed.”

He glanced out the window by Simon’s right shoulder.  The young pilot was running toward them, screaming and waving.  They had been caught red-handed.

“Damnit, I told you this would happen.”

He opened the throttle, rolled the airplane forward, and swung between all the other Antonovs on the ramp.  More smoke rolled past, then billowed behind.  He saw the Russian break off his wild chase and head for another AN-2.  Just as he had feared, things were going from bad to worse.

“Get on the radio and say something.  He’ll be after us in a minute, screaming on the tower frequency.  Maybe if you tell the controller there’s a maniac chasing us, security will stop him.  Regardless, do whatever you can to confuse things.  I’m leaving the moment I see the first taxiway.  There’s no sense in waiting.”

He watched Simon’s hands fly around the center pedestal, switching on avionics and searching for a microphone.  Seconds later, he heard him shouting Russian words, next keying the mike to cut off the controller’s replies and transmitting again, pretending more than one airplane had simultaneously used the frequency.

Moments after, he rolled onto an open taxiway, the airplane bouncing on its main gear because of its high speed.  The second he saw its nose line up he pushed on full power, shooting all the engine instruments to their red lines.  The Antonov hurtled ahead and its tail lifted, thunder filling the front.  He saw Simon stop radioing and stare out his side window.

“Here he comes, ready or not.  Now what in hell do we do?”

Jake yelled at the top of his lungs.  “Can you speak Chinese?  It’s our only chance.”

Simon’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open.  He yelled back, “A little Cantonese I once learned in Hong Kong, but what good’s that going to do?  Goddamn, we can’t go there—”

“That’s good enough—try it on them.  Maybe they’ll think the Chinese did this, rather than us.  Meanwhile, I’m heading down the Selenge River for Mongolia.  That should help convince them we’re just commie bandits.”

His friend’s eyes widened even more.  “Have you gone nuts?  You’ll start an international incident, and the whole world will get worked up.  Even Washington might get involved.”

“How else would you suggest we get away?  That idiot back there will follow us forever, at least until we lose him.  The only thing I can think is he hasn’t got the guts to cross the border, so it’s worth a try.”

Simon keyed the microphone, held it away from his mouth, and mimicked someone speaking Chinese in the cockpit, but having forgotten a hot mike.  Then he stopped mid-sentence, as if the same person had caught his mistake.  He shook his head.    “I can’t think of a reason anyone would think some Chinese have bothered hijacking an AN-2 full of fuel, but on the other hand, why not?  The world’s a crazy place, so who knows what might happen next?”

Glancing back, Jake saw the other AN-2 a mile away, coming after them.  The Russian had gotten off the ground as well.  Now the wild chase was on and the question was who would win the dogfight, though neither plane had weapons.   But that didn’t mean the other Antonov couldn’t do any harm.  It could chew off his rudder, maybe bash into a wing, jamming the ailerons and crippling his ability to fly, leaving Simon and him riding in a gas-filled coffin.

He hoped Simon’s last remark hadn’t been prophetic, especially since he was flying south over the swampy Selenga, trying to keep between its banks, wing tips missing fishermen by inches, as the river hooked one way and then another.

His AN-2 weighed three or four thousand pounds more than the one chasing him, which, because of the science of aerodynamics concerning tail loading, made his ship a little faster in level flight.  But . . . the heavier load would ruin his maneuverability.  His airplane couldn’t climb or turn like the lighter one.  Simon and he’d be in deep jeopardy if the young pilot ever caught them.  He began looking for a bridge, the ultimate test for those who thought they were hotshot pilots.  Squeezing an airplane between steel girders and the water always
determined a person’s
true
proficiency.

He saw an overpass spanning the river, one with power lines strung across the far side, a deathtrap for those with poor eyesight, or bad luck.  He lined up the Antonov.  The space he’d chosen was so low he sensed his main tires would rip rooster tails in the water when he passed under the roadbed.  He saw Simon’s eyes widen.

“Goddamn, are you sure this thing will fit?  We’re dead if it doesn’t.”

“Open your window, look back, and tell me if he follows.  I’m hoping he’ll turn back.”

Cold air whistled around the inside as Simon opened his side window and thrust out his head.  Moments later, the airplane shuddered with thunder-booms as it streaked under the bridge, its sound trapped for a second in the hollowness.  They shot out the other side, whizzing over the water.  He pushed the stick forward, resisting the temptation to climb.  The wires lay ahead.

Simon pulled his head inside and yelled again, this time fighting the wind, rather than the roar of the engine.  “He’s too smart for us.  He pulled up and flew over the bridge, and all you gained was a little ground.”

Now what?
  They were still forty minutes north of Mongolia, which was too far.  He began looking for some mountains.  Maybe a game of cat and mouse would lose the Russian.  Then he heard the radio crackle with voices.

“Jam him and don’t let him transmit our position.  Give me time to think.”

He saw Simon grab the microphone and transmit, stopping anyone from receiving a full message.  The Mig Foxbats wouldn’t come for them just yet—but they’d see them soon if they couldn’t find a way to escape.  They had to shake the guy
.