Rake steadied the launcher against his shoulder and adjusted the sight. The crosswinds were well over ten miles an hour, which skewed his chances of a first good hit. He needed to allow for helicopter draught too, and that changed from moment to moment. He made ready the second grenade just in case. He scanned the landscape, checking for cover out on the ice. At about seventy-five meters, he thought he saw an ice wall. This was a glass-half-full view of the world, the part of Rake’s character that Carrie said she found attractive, the belief that he might be alive enough to take another shot if he failed with the first, might even make it out to new cover on the ice.
Rake waited, letting the aircraft get closer, gauging the wind, judging distance, what the enemy could see. Then, when the helicopter was less than a hundred meters off the hillside, the arc of the lamps sweeping down towards him, Rake tightened his finger on the trigger. The fuel tank would have the most impact. But he needed the fattest target area and the fuel was in the tail, too slender. He tilted the launcher up, waited a beat longer; it turned out to be a beat too long. Heavy machine-gun fire smashed into the hillside above him. Rounds sparked off rock. Snow sprayed across his goggles. It was random firing, to flush him out, but the next burst could cut him in two.
Rake fired.
A huge cloud of blue and gray smoke enveloped him and trailed out towards the aircraft. His position was exposed. Rake loaded the next grenade while expecting a wall of hot lead to cut into him.
Nothing came.
His shot hit the underbelly, violently tilting the aircraft backward. He fired again. More blue and gray smoke, and the fuselage peeled open like a can. Flames spread back toward the tail. The aircraft rolled away. As the pilot tried to keep control, it lurched the other way, and that was when he saw a flash of blonde hair. Carrie turned towards the window, its glass blackening with fire, her eyes dark with terror.
Rake dropped the grenade launcher into the snow. How he could have done that? Why hadn’t he thought? That’s how their twisted minds would work; use a civilian as bait. Then why didn’t they make her more visible? If he’d seen her, he’d never have…
A shrieking whine came from the stricken aircraft. The rear rotor blades stopped dead. Flames encased the tail. The fuselage was torn and the pilot had no rear power. He would only have a few seconds left in the air, to hunt for the safest glide angle, struggling to stop a lethal spin.
Rake scrambled out of the crevice onto the sea. The ice was patchy as if walrus had been there, their body warmth melting it. Thick broken ice sheets floated in channels of dark water. The pilot managed to get the nose up, but there was no way the aircraft could get back to base. A soldier smashed his rifle butt through a cracked window. Rake ran out into full view, jumping over weak ice patches. He moved unpredictably to avoid being a target, but deliberately made himself visible to show the pilot where the thickest ice was, the safest place to crash land. The ice around them was weak. It got stronger bit by bit further north, not far, maybe half a mile. Rake pointed and gave the pilot a thumbs down. Bad here. He raised both arms, hands vertical like parallel blades, slicing them down repeatedly towards the north. Good there. Trust me.
The pilot powered the blades, pitching the nose up like a rearing stallion, the tail ablaze, wild flames dancing, reflected on the ice. Rake glimpsed Carrie again. She looked at him, rigid, focused, her terror gone. ‘So sorry,’ he mouthed. ‘I love you.’ It was ridiculous. She wouldn’t hear, couldn’t lip-read it from that distance. Could she even see him; would she understand? But he had to do it, because in a few seconds she could be dead. Her expression didn’t change.
The pilot gave his wounded aircraft a final burst of speed, then cut the engine, letting the blades rotate freely in the air to give more stability. It kept going forward, foot by foot, but not far enough. Either he could try to reach stronger ice and risk a mid-air explosion. Or he could take a chance and crash-land on weaker ice. Rake watched him conduct a work of art. The pilot brought the helicopter down so that the burning tail brushed the ice to dampen the fire to try to stop it catching the fuel tank. Some flames were extinguished, but not all. Then he could hold it no longer. He levelled out and the skids settled heavily on the ice.
Rake unclipped a radio from his belt and called through, knowing that both sides would pick up: ‘Tin City. Tin City. This is Captain Rake Ozenna. Do not intervene in aircraft activity on northern edge of Little Diomede. Repeat — do not intervene. Russian aircraft is down with casualties. This is a humanitarian operation. Let Russia handle it.’
‘Copy that,’ came the American voice across the crackling channel.
A blade of wind cut through a smashed window into Carrie’s face. A soldier opposite was slumped, his foot shredded by shrapnel that had torn up from under them. She couldn’t tell if he was even alive. Another had his hands clasped over his eyes, and blood streaming out from between his fingers. Chilled air mixed with tail-fire heat sent warmth and cold into the cabin.
‘Out! Now!’ Vitruk shouted.
She unclipped her seatbelt just as the helicopter jolted, throwing her against Vitruk. It stabilized, then with a scraping of metal the ice gave way, and the side of the aircraft fell through. A spray of frozen water flew up into her face, unforgiving and brutal.
Vitruk slid the door far enough back to climb out. He reached down and pulled Carrie to him, gripping her arm as she started back towards the burning wreckage. ‘The wounded!’ she shouted.
‘Get back. Further!’ yelled Vitruk.
The pilot was out, guiding them to a firmer area he had identified twenty meters away. Soldiers stumbled from the wreckage. They carried two wounded colleagues and brought them to Carrie. The one with the injured foot had bled out. He was dead. The other would live, though probably blinded. Carrie recognized the faraway throbbing of an engine which became louder as three helicopters reached them from the base. Their floodlamps lit up the survivors. She could see Rake still there, a tiny distant solitary figure, so far away that he was long out of small-arms range. Vitruk’s gaze was on him too. An incoming helicopter snapped on more lights and broke away towards him.
A jagged piece of shrapnel protruded from the eyes of the wounded soldier. They lowered him onto a thermal blanket. Iced blood was hardening on his face. His teeth chattered violently, pushing the embedded metal towards his brain.
‘He needs to get to the base!’ Carrie opened her medical bag to give him a shot of morphine. Suddenly, alarm spread across Vitruk’s face and without warning he hurled himself against Carrie, bringing her down. Her face was pressed hard into the ice, cold stinging her skin, Vitruk’s weight on top of her. She heard a high shrill whine of wind that at first sounded like a gust kicking up surface snow. But it was the fuel tank of their helicopter exploding. A fireball rose into the air, throwing a hot cloud of aviation vapor over them, and a plume of thick black choking smoke, laced with orange flame, that faded and was taken by the wind. When Vitruk finally let her up, she turned to her surviving patient, but didn’t have to check his heartbeat to know that he too was dead.
Four soldiers stood up, readied weapons, adjusted snowshoes, and set off to find Rake on the wasteland of cold that stretched out endlessly in front of them.