He had pushed the Sikorsky as low as he dared. He had used up all the available sky. Still the second helicopter was outrunning him and there was nothing he could do about it.
He knew that Shabanov was preparing to manoeuvre alongside to bring his guns to bear. He could try twisting and turning, but it would only delay the agony. If he manoeuvred, he would lose his bearing on the E-2C; and the Hawkeye was his one guiding light.
Girling faced front and scanned the horizon for a ship, a US Navy frigate acting as picket for the fleet, but the early morning mist allowed only a few miles’ visibility. There was not so much as a fishing boat in sight.
Girling turned to Ulm. He shouted once, but the colonel’s head continued to hang on his chest. Girling felt a rush of loneliness. He wanted to hear another voice before he died. He wanted Ulm to talk. Girling felt a mad compulsion to laugh. He wanted Ulm to make him laugh. There was no need now for fighting talk, no time any more for his advice…
Advice, Ulm’s advice.
Dear God.
He looked over his shoulder, but the second Pave Low had gone. He glanced to his left and saw its shadow on the sea. Two shadows almost parallel. His aircraft and Shabanov’s. Together. Side by side.
He lifted his eyes and there it was. The second helicopter level-pegging with his own. He could see the Soviet pilot toggling the throttle levers, squeezing that last bit of power from the engines. He could see the concentration and the sweat on his face. The helicopter inched forward and there was Shabanov in the forward gunner’s window, his minigun levelled right at the cockpit, right at him. There was a moment in which their eyes met.
Girling pushed the throttles to the gates and his helicopter edged forward twenty feet. His thumb found the toggle switch on the cyclic. There was no time to look. Forward or back? Chaff or flares?
Back. That was what Ulm had said. Girling pulled the switch towards him and held it there.
Barely a few feet separated the blades of the two helicopters when fifty flares, each possessing the peak intensity of a mini-sun, ripple-fired out of the flare rack and punched into Shabanov’s Sikorsky. They exploded through the Perspex windshield of the flight deck and into the open windows of the cargo hold. Once inside, they burned holes through flesh and bone, through metal deck plates, through control rods and fuel lines.
Shabanov took the full force of the salvo. The flares that hit him were so hot his clothes ignited instantaneously. His flaming body fell onto the ammunition box.
Girling pulled up into the sky just before the other Sikorsky exploded like a giant Catherine wheel. The force of the blast lifted his helicopter another two hundred feet and for several seconds he thought he had lost it. Behind him, the dawn was momentarily eclipsed by a billowing fireball.
He kept climbing until he reached two thousand feet and throttled back. He felt the onset of the reaction then. His hands began to shake uncontrollably and the instrumentation swam before his eyes. Had it not been for Ulm’s voice, weak but calm beside him, he might have panicked.
‘Are we going to make it, Girling?’
‘We might just, Colonel.’ He paused. ‘As long as you stick around long enough to teach me how to land this thing.’
There was a glint in the sky as something caught the sun up ahead. Before Girling had time to tense, two F-14 Tomcats appeared out of the mist. They roared past so close that the sound of their engines reverberated over the noise and vibration of the Sikorsky’s rotor.
Ulm reached for the Very pistol in the door compartment and fired their recognition signal out of the window. The F-14s reappeared, wings swept fully forward, engines throttled right back, hanging on the edge of the stall to maintain speed with the Sikorsky. The pilot of the one off their right side rocked his wings and pointed a little way south of their present heading. Girling responded by putting the Sikorsky into a gradual turn towards the fleet.
EPILOGUE
Girlling was aware of the constant throb of the deck plates as he made his way from the communications room to the infirmary. The USS Groves was steaming full tilt through the Ionian Sea to the Straits of Messina en route for Naples.
The US Navy had let him make three calls. The first was to his parents, a second to Dispatches. Atmospheric distortion on the lines had not made conversation easy; he just wanted to let them know he was on his way back.
The third call had been to Lazan in Cairo. Girling had made it clear from the way he steered the conversation that there was not a whole lot he could say about the last three days. A Navy Intelligence Officer was standing over him like a hawk.
Lazan promised he’d call Sharifa. ‘A pity, Tom Girling, I thought the two of you…’ And then his voice had become lost in the static.
The USS Groves had been designed to spearhead assault landings from the sea; the infirmary was big enough to pick up the pieces. Girling made his way between the beds. One or two of them were occupied. A marine with a broken arm, another with some indeterminate illness, a third with a scalded leg. It was a far cry from the mayhem of the caravanserai.
From the equipment surrounding Ulm’s bed, it looked like the Air Force colonel had just come through a heart-lung operation. There were wires attached to his chest, bandages lacing his torso, two drips in his arm, and a tube up his nose.
As soon as the nurse saw Girling, she headed him off. Girling looked over her shoulder and noticed Ulm giving her the once-over.
Girling asked for — and was granted — five minutes, but no more. Colonel Ulm, she said, was still a very sick man.
He sat down beside the bed. Ulm’s eyes were on him and alert.
‘They say you’re going to make a complete recovery, Colonel.’
‘Physically, yes.’ Ulm’s voice cracked.
For a moment, Girling’s face registered concern.
‘Some shrink lieutenant said he ought to take a look inside my head after the way you landed that thing.’
Girling smiled. ‘I took you for an arrogant arsehole first time we met, Colonel.’
‘Us “arseholes” have got to stick together, Girling.’ Ulm laughed, then winced as the pain shot through his body. When he had controlled the coughing bout that followed, he brought a hand up from the bed. ‘It’s Elliot.’
Girling smiled as they shook.
‘Was it true — all that shit about only ever having flown simulators?’
‘Yes and no.’ Girling paused. ‘I’ve flown helicopters, but nothing the size of a Pave Low. When it comes to heavy lift, then I’m afraid simulator experience is it. A background in technical journalism has its advantages.’
‘The sooner you’re back flying a desk, the better,’ Ulm said.
‘I’m in no hurry.’
‘Well, here’s one thing you can keep out of the notebook. The hostages, Franklin and the rest of them, were freed at ten hundred hours this morning. They’re all safe. Shaken, but safe.’
‘I’m glad. What happened?’
‘Aushev had had them detained in some top-secret military complex in Georgia. Koltsov too. A GRU listening post, way up in the mountains, close to the Black Sea. He’d got them out of the Med by submarine, our people think.’
‘He must be quite a guy.’
Ulm nodded. ‘More than anyone knew, inside the Kremlin or out. What we don’t know is whether he would have been due for a medal or a bullet in the back of the head.’
‘So what’s the official version?’
Ulm raised an eyebrow. ‘A joint Russian-American initiative brought about the release of the hostages. It’ll all be in the White House press release, sometime soon, I should think. The world needs to believe we’re all moving forward together.’