“Come on, guys,” Buchanan said under his breath as he stabilized the Night Hawk over the crew in the freezing water. “Move it!”
Lincoln could see Charbonnet helping someone onto the chair. Time seemed to pass in slow motion as the Night Hawk’s rotor blades whipped the surface of the muddy river into a frothy gale.
“Uh …” Higgins coughed.
Lincoln looked at Higgins a split second after the copilot took a round through the neck. The paramedic watched, horrified, as Higgins dropped to his knees, clutched his bleeding throat, then fell through the open side door. Higgins’s body bounced off the tail rotor of the downed gunship, then disappeared under the surface of the churning water.
Lincoln pressed the retrieval switch on the hoist, then contacted Buchanan. “Major, Captain Higgins is dead!”
“WHAT,” Buchanan shouted, concentrating on the rising rescue chair.
“The captain’s dead, sir,” Lincoln yelled, looking at Dimitri. “I’m gonna put the CIA guy on the sixty.”
“Do it,” Buchanan barked, then glanced back down at the chaotic struggle going on below the Sikorsky.
Lincoln motioned to the machine gun and ordered Dimitri to take the position. “Start firing! Aim for the far bank. Just keep it moving.”
Dimitri responded slowly, inching toward the M60, as Lincoln grasped one of the gunners from Scarecrow Three and pulled him to safety.
More rounds impacted the hovering helicopter as the shocked paramedic quickly lowered the rescue seat into the maelstrom below.
Zhilinkhov smiled maliciously, then reached for the decanter of vodka. “The final steps are in … motion,” the general secretary slurred.
The Politburo members and the defense minister were not smiling, afraid of the consequences of this unprecedented action against the Americans.
They regretted endorsing Zhilinkhov as successor to the previous general secretary. The men knew the futility of trying to stop the momentum created by Zhilinkhov. They were implicated too deeply to salvage their credibility or their political positions. They had to rely on Zhilinkhov at this point.
“The Americans will relax, as I … predicted,” Zhilinkhov stammered. “I will crush them … destroy them … very soon, my friends.”
The general secretary laughed, tossed down another vodka, and exhaled sharply. “To our future, comrades. We will control … finally control the world,” Zhilinkhov loudly proclaimed, motioning to Pulaev for another vodka.
“To the Motherland!” Zhilinkhov proclaimed, reaching for the tumbler offered by his friend. The general secretary poured a generous amount of the clear liquid into his glass, then held it up. “To our victory, our future, comrades.”
Zhilinkhov laughed heartily, then sank back in his chair.
Buchanan watched the rescue chair descend to the water again, then added a small amount of power as Charbonnet helped his copilot onto the platform.
PZZING!
Buchanan involuntarily flinched as the small-arms round ricocheted off the side of the cockpit. He already had two holes in the windshield and one near his right foot.
“Come on, goddamnit, move it out,” Buchanan swore, feeling the perspiration running down his neck into the collar of his flight suit.
Dimitri fired at the riverbank in wild bursts. He was too cold to hold the machine gun steady, too tired to care. Finally, after the ammunition ran out, Dimitri stopped pulling the trigger and looked at Lincoln.
The paramedic, busy operating the hoist, kicked a loose M16 across the floor, hitting Dimitri in the shins. “Use it,” Lincoln yelled at the agent.
Lincoln pulled the slightly injured copilot into the cabin and immediately tossed the rescue seat out the door. “One to go, Major!” Lincoln reported, glancing down at “Blackie” Oaks.
“Hang in there, kid,” the former gunnery sergeant said in a raspy voice, choking from the blood in his throat.
“Pete,” Buchanan shouted over the radio, “I need more fire on the riverbank, north of the gunship!”
Buchanan heard static, then the reply from Scarecrow Two as the S-70 turned on its side in preparation for another strafing attack.
“Rolling in now, Buck,” Barnes reported, sweeping low over the elite spetsnaz troops. Two rockets landed in a concentration of Soviet soldiers as Barnes pulled up sharply, completing a modified hammerhead turn. Racing back down, Barnes switched to guns, leveled out, and sprayed the entire group of Russian troops, slowly walking his pedals back and forth.
Buchanan turned the hovering Sikorsky ninety degrees to the right, which pointed the tail toward the Soviet troops. The cockpit was already damaged from small-arms rounds and he was the only pilot controlling the gunship.
“Come on, Jim,” Buchanan said to himself as he watched Charbonnet embrace the rescue seat, then push off the side of the downed Night Hawk. There was no sign of the fourth crewman.
Buchanan, breathing a sigh of relief, added more power in preparation for the transition to forward flight.
Buchanan scanned his instruments, then looked down at Charbonnet. The pilot was slowly revolving on the rescue seat, framed by the turbulent rotor wash and foaming water.
PZZINNNG!
Another round caromed off the side of the cockpit, creating a crack in the windscreen directly in front of Buchanan. The scene was unbelievable.
“We’re goin’ to move out,” Buchanan shouted to Lincoln. “I’ll slow down so you can get him in when we clear the fire zone.”
“Yessir,” the paramedic replied, pushing the hoist cable away from the door as the S-70 began to accelerate and climb into the darkness.
Buchanan looked down at the same instant Charbonnet, fifteen feet below, slumped forward into the cable, rolled off the seat, and plummeted seventy feet into the riverbank. The pilot was dead before he impacted the thick mud.
“Pete,” Buchanan radioed, “we lost Jim. Cover us. I’m off two-six-zero.”
“Gotcha in sight,” Barnes radioed. “We’ve got company. Gunships — four or five — closin’ like bats outa hell!”
“Stick tight, Pete,” Buchanan ordered, then concentrated on flying as low and fast as humanly possible.
“Rog,” Barnes replied, twisting the throttle to the limits. He watched the engine gauges closely, noting the powerful turboshaft engines were beginning to overtemp.
“They’re closin’ on us, Cap’n,” the crew chief of Scarecrow Two yelled, knowing his pilot was nursing every ounce of horsepower from the screaming, straining engines.
“Buck, they’ve got a runnin’ start on us,” Barnes radioed. “I’m gonna have to slow them down.”
Silence followed the radio transmission.
“You copy, Buck?” Barnes asked.
“Yeah,” Buchanan answered, knowing his friend, along with the crew of Scarecrow Two, would be annihilated if they engaged the division of approaching Soviet gunships. “I copy,” Buchanan answered, feeling his stomach twist into knots.
“You owe me a beer!” Barnes radioed back, then pulled up hard into a high yo-yo.
Buchanan didn’t answer, thinking instead about the letter he would have to write to Cindy Barnes.
Scarecrow Two rolled out of the steeply banked maneuver, facing head on to the three Mi-24 Hind-Ds, trailed by two Mi-28 Havoc advanced gunships.
Barnes fired the remaining air-to-air missiles, then switched to his Gatling gun.
“Open up,” Barnes shouted to his gunners as a Hind-D exploded directly in front of the Sikorsky, lighting the night for a mile in every direction.
“Holy shit,” Barnes yelled, pulling hard on the collective. The S-70 shot skyward, silhouetted in the flaming explosion, then rolled almost inverted. Barnes lined up a shot at another Hind-D as the Russian gunship raced past him.