The River of Bones v5 (29 page)

“Buy all his emergency flares when you go back,” said Jake.  “It’s a matter of life and death.”

Simon wrinkled his brow.  “Now he’s really going to get suspicious.  What’s the reason?”

“We’ll need them when the air force starts shooting at us.”

“That’s a very good motivational speech.”  Simon’s face paled.  “Hope you realize the guy’s going to think I’m crazy.”  Shaking his head, he jumped down and walked back to the pilothouse.

Jake watched the two crewmen fill the Werewolf’s tanks and pull the hose over to the Hip.  Again, Simon stood in the pilothouse, talking and waving his arms, but the captain didn’t look
very convinced about what he was being told.  Still, Simon came back, carrying a cardboard box under his arm, and climbed the helicopter’s side again.

“I told him we wanted them for target practice, that we’re going to put on a light show for the ladies after dark.  He thinks we’re out having a good time, and I gave him five thousand bucks to keep his mouth shut.”

Simon’s story might very well come true, Jake thought to himself, and there might be a light show later on, because the final challenge still lay ahead.  “Let’s use the same procedure as yesterday,” he said.  “Snap your mike button when you’re ready to leave.  I’ll watch these guys for a minute and then follow.  Are you ready?”

Simon nodded his head, stepped down, and walked away with his box of incendiaries.  They were homeward bound.

He heard two sharp pops on his radio and watched Simon fly off, buzzing eastbound over the river.  Checking his wristwatch, he waited, eyeing the crew who now stood on deck, watching him.  He didn’t blame them a bit—his departure would be quite an air show if they were to believe Simon’s story.  He waved at them and pulled up into slow roll, inverting the Werewolf on the way around.  He wondered if he’d made their day with his impromptu air show.

Hours passed.  He followed Simon over the Werchoyansky Mountain Range, soaring like snowy ramparts just east of the Lena River.  They flew through every nook and cranny of the ruggedness below them.  He trailed him down the other side, crossing all the lower mountains reaching toward the Indigirka River, the second principal watershed of Siberia.  There were no roads or towns or people, and it was total desolation, sublime and endless.  He wondered what kind of animals lived there.

They stopped to refuel and stretch their cramped legs, then headed east again, hugging the cranberry bushes that were turning red.  August had come and the country was changing to its autumn colors—crimson, amber, and light green, the soft colors of fall.  He started to worry again.

He hadn’t used the space-age helmet that had hung beside him in the cockpit for so long.  He had been too busy flying the Werewolf visually, learning its characteristics the oldfashioned way, by the seat of his pants, but now things were different.  The time had come to familiarize himself with its weapon systems.  The helmet was wired to the killercopter’s integrated flight director, the electronics uniting its computer, television, laser, infrared sensor, night vision, and heads-up display into one big automated system that gave the pilot instant readouts either on the optics in front of his eyes or on the windscreen.  In addition, the nose cannon fired in the direction the pilot turned his head, lessening the need to maneuver the helicopter while firing.  Modern attack helicopters had become very sophisticated.

He pulled on the helmet and started turning on the avionics one by one.  First, he activated the flight director in its manual mode, letting him fly just by moving the tiny orange bugs on the cockpit’s video displays, instruments that allowed the pilot to steer left and right, up and down, or in any combination of the directions he wanted.

Bump
—the Werewolf climbed on his command input. 
Bump—
it turned left. 
Bump
—now it followed the terrain, a
very scary experience because you had to believe the gadgetry really worked, difficult to do when you were going like a bat out hell only a few feet above the trees.  Next, he tried to decipher the commands reflected on the heads-up display.  The forward speed, altitude, and heading looked sensible . . . but what were the additional numbers all about?  They must relate to target acquisition.  Now came the complicated part.  He double-checked the weapon annunciator panel, confirmed everything was locked off, and started experimenting with the target sighting that fed electronic images to the heads-up display and helmet optics.  He turned on the target finder and sighted on Simon’s Hip, watched the system lock-on and track the big chopper. 
Cool . . . 
But maybe he shouldn’t tell his friends that he’d used them as a drone, because sometimes people got a little touchy about such things.

The second thing left undone was as low-tech as the world could get.  They needed to pick up some firewood.  Not to burn, although that might become an added bonus, but to use as floats for their flares when they were over the Bering Straits, presuming the Russians came at them over the water.   He wasn’t a military expert and didn’t understand the technology of smart weapons very well, but he suspected they all turned goofy when they tried choosing between helicopter exhaust, airborne flares, floating flares, forest fires, or whatever else you could use to create hot spots.  The simplest things sometimes worked best.

They flew on, stopping now and then to refuel, went past the Kolyma River, the last large waterway before the Far East and the territory called Chukotka, the large wedge of continent just west of Alaska.  Now they’d have to watch out because their escape route had narrowed to a defined area, no matter what path they chose.

He watched the skies.  Moments later, he heard Simon snap his transmitter, signaling that it was time to stop once again.  He slowed and landed beside him on a river bar below a bluff.  They would refuel, find some driftwood, and buck up their courage.  So close, yet so far
.
  He wished the weather would turn bad.

Simon walked over and waited for him to climb down, then they stood together for a moment without saying a word.  Molly and Sasha waited by the Hip, staring at them, waiting for some sign of reassurance.

“Well, we’ve been lucky so far,” Simon said.  “All I’ve seen is a few native settlements along the rivers.  Better still, the radio scanner has been deader than a box of rocks.  Maybe we’re going to make it after all.”

It had been surprising, Jake thought, but that didn’t mean things couldn’t change in a hurry, and it had been too easy, which usually meant trouble was waiting ahead.  There was only a little of Chukotka left . . . right where he’d wait if he wanted to ambush somebody.

“How many flares do you have?” he asked.

“We’re in fat city.  A dozen common flares and a gun with two dozen rounds of incendiary shells, which will light up the sky like the Fourth of July.”

“Make sure you miss your main rotor if we get into a dogfight,” said Jake.  “Zigzag and give yourself clear shots.”

“I’ll let Molly do the shooting because I want to fly.”

“Pick up some driftwood to use as floats on the other flares.  Then it won’t matter where they fall.”

Simon nodded.  “Good idea, and I can have Sasha throw them out.”

“I played with the weapon systems on the Werewolf and it has flares of its own.”

“What if we see fighters?”

“Stay low because I’ll be overhead blasting away with everything I have, flares, rockets, missiles, cannons until I run out.”

“You’re a goner as well if they hit me with a missile.”

“Why should I want to live?”  Jake faked a smile.  “You’ve got all the diamonds.”

Walking to the Hip, they pulled out the fuel pump and began filling both helicopters, an hour of hand-pumping.  Molly and Sasha joined them and helped finish the job, and at last they were ready for the final run.

Jake looked at the eastern sky, turning murky with the coming night.  In a couple hours they’d see the straits, at least as much as you could without night vision.  Their goggles had been lost in the Super Cubs, but maybe it was better that Simon faced the night without his,   because mercifully he’d never know what hit him.

It was a cruel way to think, but why watch your own death in living color.  He would rather fly blind if he could, only the Werewolf’s integrated system wouldn’t let him.  Bells and whistles would go off in the cockpit, and his secret eye would see the vapor trail.  He shook away the fear and looked back at his friends.

“Love you guys and good luck,” he said, “and don’t be afraid to use the radio if we run into trouble.  English won’t matter at that point.”

They stood still and looked back at him.  What could they say, and maybe they’d jinx him if they answered, anyway?  He waved to them and walked off.  A little more terror lay ahead.

He trailed Simon toward the Chukchi Sea, lying north of the last of Siberia.  They would hug the coast and come down its inner waterways, the long lagoons of saltwater running between the mainland and the barrier islands thrown up by the tides.  He liked their choice of routes.  Radar couldn’t track them, and they’d always be hidden by the high banks of sand, rock, and willows.  Also, the course would let Simon see the phosphorescent milky-white surf after dark, letting him    stay on the deck, despite not having night glasses.  Navigation wouldn’t be a problem either, because the northern coast of the Chukotka Peninsula ran right toward the little Yupik village of Wales, on the western part of Alaska, across from Siberia.  They were headed straight for it.

Two hours passed.  Jake felt the tension building in the sooty night that hung around them.  Another hour or so and they’d be free.  He watched Simon skim over the seawater ahead, hopping over the spits that got in his way.  The
guy could really fly and still had the eyes of an eagle.  They crossed Kolyuchin Bay and started down the last stretch of beach.  Where were the fighters?  Had he wore out his eyes for nothing?

Suddenly, he saw them up high, circling.  Damn them.  Somehow he had known they’d be waiting in the last fifty miles from freedom.  Damn them again.  He recognized his military fighters well enough to know them by name—two Sukoi 25 Frogfoots were spiraling down at them.  Warning lights blinked and whistles screamed in the cockpit.  They were in big trouble.  He fired off a burst of flare bombs, hit full power, and clicked the mike button.

“Simon, there’s two fighters overhead, fire your flares as fast as you can.  I’m right behind you.”

The night exploded in white streamers, red rockets, and sparkling flares falling down.  A slip-second later he saw distant flashings of yellow in the darkness, the Frogfoot’s missiles had detonated too soon, fooled by the fireworks below them.  He snap-turned, armed his own infrared missiles, and fired. 
Click.
  Nothing.

What in hell?
  He quickly checked the annunciator lights.  Nothing seemed wrong there.  He flipped on the rocket launchers, knowing they were only meant for surface attacks, but triggered them anyway.  Nothing again.  His weapons’ system was down.  How could it be?  He aimed the nose cannon at the nearest Frogfoot and squeezed the cyclic’s trigger.  Tracers streaked skyward.  Thank God, something worked.

Both Frogfoots, climbing, winged over to come around a second time.  What was wrong?  Then he realized that they were afraid.  Simon had been their target—not him.  The Sukoi 25 attack fighter was Russia’s answer to America’s A-10 Warthog, except it wasn’t equipped to fight stealth helicopters.  It was designed to shoot all kinds of dangerous goodies—rockets, missiles, smart bombs, dumb bombs, and rapid-firing cannons—but what good were they when you couldn’t see your target?  The Werewolf was black and the night was black and only a damn fool would be unafraid, although maybe he was the biggest fool of all.  He started climbing, keeping the Werewolf between Simon and them.  They were in for a nasty surprise when they turned on their next run.

He clicked his mike once again.  “Simon, keep firing flares and you’ll be safe.”

“What are you up to?”

“I’m going to give them a taste of their own medicine.”

“Be careful—I’m dead if you’re dead.”

“Not to worry.  How far are you from Little Diomede?”

“Big Diomede is just ahead.”

“Land on the mainland and wait for me.”

“You got it.”

A thousand meters, two thousand meters, he couldn’t believe how fast the Werewolf could climb.  The six counterrotating blades sucked up the altitude, and he’d never flown a helicopter so fast.  He watched the Frogfoots come lower, screaming down, searching for the Hip again.  Swinging his gun sight to the lead fighter, he waited, waited, then pulled the trigger.  Tracers filled the sky, meeting both fighters in cloud of cannon fire.  He saw one lose an engine, smoking as it blew out its fan blades and flamed out.  Instantly, both banked away, back over the Chukotka Peninsula.  He fired once more, though he knew they were out of range, and then turned away as well.  Alaska loomed on the horizon, and they had made it home.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FOGGYTOP MOUNTAIN

He saw
the Hip setting on a narrow spit ten miles north of Wales and landed beside it.  His friends ran to him when he climbed down from the Werewolf, and everyone hugged and beat each other on the back and filled the night with their happiness.

Jake stepped back and looked at Simon.  “Is there enough fuel left for two more hours in the Werewolf?” he asked.

“Yes, but what are you planning to do now?”

“We have to get rid of both helicopters, otherwise Lord knows what the feds or state will do if they ever spot them.”

“You got that right, so what do you have in mind?”

“I’ll fly over to Foggytop Mountain yet tonight and hide the Werewolf there.  It’s full of places where I can land and in a week or so the snow will cover it for good.”

“You’ve done enough,” said Molly, “and I can’t bear the thought of losing you.  Not now.  Let’s just leave.”