Aggressor (36 page)

For a second, Girling was dazzled. ‘Jesus.'

‘Don't worry about the lights. I'll take care of them.' Ulm flinched as a wave of pain washed through him.

Girling's gaze weaved a path through the lights back to the RPM gauge. ‘Eight... ten per cent,' he called. His thumb felt the fuel toggle. ‘Twelve per cent.'

‘Give her fuel now and repeat the whole process again for the right-hand engine.'

Under Ulm's orders, Girling threw switches and punched buttons. As he called the shots, Ulm inched his right hand down to the comms console and flicked through the frequencies, but the set was dead. Shabanov must have given orders for his men to pull all the circuit breakers in case the Pathfinders realized what was happening and began trying to warn each other.

‘Engine temperature's coming up,' Ulm said wearily. His head fell as drowsiness began to replace pain.

Girling roused him with a shake of the arm. Ulm winced as the pain returned.

‘Colonel, you've got to stay with me.' It was then that Girling Fsaw the green flare through the window above his head. Someone was signalling them.

The American forced his eyes to focus on the instruments. ‘OK, we have ground-idle. Bring your left hand up to the overhead and prepare to release the rotor brake.'

Girling waited for Ulm's command, then pushed the lever forward. There was a groan from the bowels of the helicopter. Girling watched one of the six main blades inch impossibly slowly past the cockpit window.

‘Advance the throttles to flight idle.'

Girling pushed the levers towards the next notch.

‘Slowly, Girling, slowly.'

The blades turned faster, making the cabin rock. Girling kept advancing the levers until they clicked into the second notch.

Ulm watched the revs, calling them out all the way. Within a minute, the rocking stopped. There was a resonant hum from the engine joined by the whoosh of the blades as they rotated above the cabin at one hundred per cent rpm.

‘On the centre console, between the seats, there's a parking brake. Release it.'

Girling groped with his left hand. ‘Brake off.'

‘From now on, don't think about what you're doing, or you'll bury us in that valley down there.' He paused. ‘Here goes. Push the cyclic forward a fraction and keep your foot down on the right pedal. We need to be pointed away from those rocks.'

Girling inched the control column away from him and the helicopter trundled along the ground for no more than a few feet before coming to an abrupt halt.

‘Shit,' Ulm said.

Girling could feel the helicopter's wheels straining against the obstruction.

‘Pull up on the collective.'

Girling reached for the lever beside the seat with his left hand and lifted it towards him. It came up far too quickly. The helicopter tipped forward on its nose wheel, tail rising in the air. Girling froze as the horizon whipped away past the top of the windscreen and it seemed the Sikorsky would flip over onto its back.

Ulm fell forwards on the collective and the helicopter crashed back to the ground.

It took Girling vital seconds to heave the American off the pitch lever and back into his seat.

Ulm gritted his teeth. ‘Let's try that again, only this time, go easy on the power.'

Girling pulled the collective towards him again and the helicopter lurched forward. He kept the cyclic column pushed fractionally away from the seat and the right rudder pedal full down until the nose of the MH-53J heaved round and away from the rocky outcrop. He held the position with a touch of brakes.

Dust and stones flew around the cockpit. It would have been impossible to make out the posse of soldiers advancing up the cliff path but for the flash of sunlight on an assault rifle. Girling saw it out of the corner of his eye just as there was a crack from the Perspex in front of him and a bullet slammed into the bulkhead behind his head.

‘No time for a dress-rehearsal,' Ulm said. ‘Pull on the collective until she lifts off.'

Girling eased up the lever. He felt the helicopter getting light on its wheels.

‘Higher,' Ulm said. ‘Pull it higher. And bring back the cyclic. Just a fraction.'

The Pave Low rose and teetered uncertainly six feet above the ground. Girling heard another bullet glance off some armour-plate somewhere below him.

‘Pull the cyclic into your fucking armpit, Girling, or we die. Here, now.'

Girling heaved the lever up, but the helicopter rose only another few feet and stayed there, floating from side to side like a leaf in the wind. Girling fought to hold the Sikorsky steady, but it seemed that every corrective touch on the cyclic made the helicopter veer more wildly.

Ulm checked the temperature and torque gauges. ‘No wonder. We're at five thousand eight hundred feet. Power margins are way too low.' He shouted over the vibration. ‘Only one thing for it, Girling. Fly it over the edge of the cliff. Let her drop and pick up air speed. Then haul back and pray.'

Girling felt the blood drain from his face.

‘Do it now, before they shoot us down,' Ulm yelled.

Girling pressed the cyclic forward and the helicopter advanced at little more than walking pace towards the edge of the cliff. For a brief few seconds, the Perspex windscreen was filled with a view of the wadi below. It was like being poised at the highest point of a funfair switchback, in that instant before the carriage plunges to the bottom of the track. He could see the cell where he had been held, bodies littered across the open ground, wrecked gun emplacements and, finally, through the Perspex by his feet, the blazing roof and courtyard of the caravanserai.

‘Now!' Ulm shouted. ‘Push the stick right forward.'

Girling advanced the cyclic as far as it would go and forty-five thousand pounds of helicopter tipped on its nose and plunged over the side of the cliff. Girling fell against his straps and the ground filled the windscreen.

The Pave Low dropped like a stone.

‘Don't freeze up on me, you bastard!' Ulm roared. ‘Pull back on the stick!'

Girling pulled for their lives.

Inside the cockpit, everything happened so slowly. Ulm jockeying the power levers, his own efforts on the cyclic, the altimeter winding down.

Outside, the ground zoomed towards them. Had it not been for his harness he would have fallen straight through the Perspex and on to the roof of the caravanserai. Fighting gravity, Girling raised his foot and pushed against the instrument coaming, while pulling on the cyclic with both hands.

The Sikorsky's nose moved fractionally, then some more. Impossibly slowly, it began to come out of the dive.

Before he knew it, the helicopter was scudding a few feet over the battlefield. Too late, he heard Ulm's warning and the outhouse leaped out of the smoke. Girling pulled and felt a sickening crash as the tail boom clipped the roof.

The sight of the Sikorsky advancing precariously towards the cliff top, teetering there and then diving almost vertically for the caravanserai, made Shabanov and the rest of his men freeze. Initially, the Russian thought the helicopter had taken a hit in the tail rotor. Then, when it tipped onto its nose he had a clear view into the flight deck and saw Ulm's body, slumped and bloody in the left-hand seat.

The civilian was at the controls.

There was a roar from the Pave Low as the rotors bit through the thin air and the helicopter disappeared beneath the level of the cliff top. Shabanov rushed forward and watched as it arced towards the ground and disappeared behind a pall of smoke billowing up from the caravanserai. He waited for the explosion, but it never came. The vortex wake of the Sikorsky's rotors parted the smoke in time for Shabanov to see it heading straight for one of the outhouses further down the wadi. The helicopter's tail boom glanced the roof of the building but the machine kept going. With a sickening feeling that it was too late to make any difference, Shabanov yelled at his missileman.

The sharp tone of the SA-9's infra-red seeker head locking onto the hot exhausts of the Sikorsky was audible even over the din of exploding ammunition in the valley below. The operator steadied the missile launch tube on his shoulder and adjusted his aim.

‘Fire it!' Shabanov roared.

There was a deafening crack as the missile left the tube and shot into the valley.

A screech filled the cockpit and a whole section of the instrument panel lit up as the inbound SA-9 tripped the automatic alarm system rigged to the missile-approach warner on the helicopter's boom.

‘Holy Jesus,' Ulm said.

Girling, still wrestling to steady the Pave Low after the glancing blow to the roof, thought they were about to crash.

‘We've got a launch.' Ulm saw the white dot winking on the approach warner panel. ‘It's probably an SA-9, a heat-homer, and it's coming in fast on our six.'

‘What do I do?' Girling shouted.

‘Pray.'

‘Can't we fire flares?'

‘The counter-measures aren't armed,' Ulm said. In the rush to get airborne, he'd forgotten to prime them. And it was certainly too late now.

The screech warbled with each course deviation of the missile. Its seeker head was struggling to maintain a lock on the Sikorsky's engine exhausts through the smoke of the battlefield. But still it came at them.

Girling's whole body was braced for the SAM's imminent detonation. When an explosion blossomed in the window in front of them, he was convinced they had been hit.

Instead, the screech from the approach warner intensified. The missile was still there.

The billowing flame ahead was a truck's fuel tank blowing up, the flames rising like a geyser fifty feet into the air.

Even before the colonel yelled the command, Girling banked the helicopter straight for the fountain of fire.

The dot converged with the helicopter at the centre of the panel. Ulm looked up just as the cockpit windows were engulfed.

For a moment neither man could breathe as the fire sucked the oxygen from the air around them. The sky and the ground disappeared as the helicopter was lost in the conflagration.

Girling heard the explosion behind him. When he opened his eyes, the Pave Low was streaking through clear sunshine between the cliffs.

The screech stopped.

Girling snatched a glance over his shoulder. Through the open ramp he could see a crater where the burning truck had been. The SA-9 had homed straight in on it, the force of its exploding warhead snuffing out the flames.

With the tips of the blades and the belly of the helicopter no more than a split-second's flying time from the rocks, there was no time for self-congratulation. Girling flew on, knowing that he was just as capable of killing them as any SAM.

Shabanov was pounding up the cliff path again, his men behind, when the air above him reverberated with a new sound. The second Sikorsky rose up from behind the outcrop that had shielded it from view, pirouetted before them and dropped down onto the clear patch of scrub where the first machine had been stationed. Shabanov made it on the ramp before the Pave Low had even settled onto the ground and rushed forward to the cabin. He turned to check all his men were on board, then opened the door in the bulkhead and shouted to the pilot to head the other helicopter off before it reached the coast and the enemy ships that lay somewhere beyond.

The wadi walls rushed at Girling faster than reason. His instinct was to lift the Sikorsky out of the valley, but a voice at the back of his head reminded him about triple-A and SAMs. The Russians might be a way behind him, but Girling knew that if he flew high, away from the ground, there was still enough hardware in Southern Lebanon to knock him out of the sky.

Girling gripped the cyclic so hard his fingers bled. For the moment, his entire world consisted of the control column and the narrow tunnel of airspace through which he coaxed the MH-53J. When the valley became too narrow, he eased the helicopter a little higher, but still he hugged the contours of the earth. Like a robot, he pulled back when the land rose and pushed down when it fell. By the time he first considered the matter of navigation, he had been in the air for almost five minutes. And in all that time, he realized, he'd been heading God knows where.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the terrain ahead, he yelled at Ulm to give him a bearing for the coast.

From out of the early morning mist a shadow metamorphosed as a minaret and Girling slammed the cyclic to port. There was a flash of white masonry and the obstruction whistled past a few feet beyond the end of the rotor tips. Girling steadied the helicopter and flew on towards the indistinct horizon. His arms had turned to jelly.

Some ingrained instinct had kept him flying away from the sun, heading him west, towards the coast. But he had no idea of his position. Somewhere in the maze of instrumentation ahead of him there was an indicator that fed constantly updated co-ordinates of his position via satellite, but he did not know where it was, much less how to plot a course from here to safety.

He snatched a glance to his left. Ulm had slumped against the cabin door. Girling reached out and pulled the American towards him.

Ulm groaned.

‘Don't black out on me, Colonel.'

The American opened his eyes. There seemed to be very little comprehension behind them.

‘You've got to guide me to the ships,' Girling said, his voice desperate.

Girling thought Ulm was going to pass out on him again. Instead, the American leaned forward, primed the counter-measures and turned on the radar warning receiver, the RWR. ‘This thing starts yel-ling at you... get lower. Start punching chaff.'

‘How?'

‘There's a switch on the cyclic. Controls both the chaff and the flares.'

Girling prised his fingers off the control column. He found the rocker switch with its worn writing just beneath his thumb. Forward for chaff, the tinsellike substance for spoofing radar-guided SAMS; back for flares, used against heat-seeking missiles.