“You can have it all, Bucky. Don’t sweat it. Take an even strain, as Cliff would say.”
“Jim, run ’em up.”
Demion set the pitch on the Hamilton Standard propellers, then took hold of the bank of throttles and moved them smoothly forward.
Barr stood on the brakes as the power came up. He watched the tachometers. He felt the airframe shuddering, the wings vibrating, the brakes struggling to hold.
Eighty percent.
Ninety percent.
“That’s a hundred,” Demion said.
He released the brakes.
The Hercules hesitated at her new freedom, lurched forward, and the nose came up.
A few hollers rose from the men in the compartment behind him.
Lunging forward, the nose threatened several times to dip again.
The whole airplane leaned to the left as the left main gear crunched through the surface. The outboard prop came dangerously close to touching down.
The airplane bounced over a rise.
Levelled out.
“Twenty-fucking-miles-per-hour!” Maal yelled.
And forty.
And eighty.
“That’s one-ten,” Demion said.
He was getting enough lift to take the pressure off the landing gear.
The speed came up quickly then, though the plane was rising and falling with the uneven terrain.
“Rotate,” Demion said.
Barr eased back on the yoke, and the nose gear broke free. The main gear followed.
When he had ten feet of clearance, the airspeed still building, Barr said, “Pull the gear, Jim.”
Demion retracted the landing gear.
At three hundred feet, he started a left turn.
“Una problema,” Vrdla said.
“What’s that, Sam?”
“We’ve got a UFO on our ass.”
“Shit.”
“No shit. It’s a slow-mover. Put some knots on her, Bucky.”
The throttles were already at their forward stops. Barr lowered the nose a trifle to increase his rate of acceleration, then went into a shallow right turn.
He waited for the missile.
But none came.
They came around 180 degrees, and Demion, watching through his window, said, “It’s a goddamned helicopter! Where’d that come from?”
“Can you tell if he’s armed, Jim?” Barr asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s a Hip.”
Mi-8. If they were armed, they carried rocket pods on fuselage pylons.
“Make your circle wider, Bucky,” Maal said. “We can outrun this bastard.”
Barr levelled off from the turn, then eased the yoke back again, searching for altitude.
“He’s turning inside us, but he’s losing ground,” Demion reported.
“Damn,” Maal said, “who expected that?”
“I’ll tell you, maybe,” Vrdla said. “Those transports from the east disappeared off my screen. I’ll bet he came off one of those.”
“If there’s one,” Barr said, “there’s more. What do you see around Andy’s location? And give me a damned course, Sam!”
“Go three-four-five. Nothing flying up there. Wait. I’ve got some faint return, but it’s in the ground clutter. I’m guessing when I say the transports are on the ground near Andy. Give me a couple minutes and some more altitude, and maybe I can tell you more.”
“All right,” Barr said. “We’ve got to keep our eyes open. Everyone take up stations. Neil, get on the direction finder and see if Andy’s transmitting a locater signal. Give me a time line, Sam.”
Vrdla said, “Twelve minutes to the zone.”
They had to take him alive.
If they wanted to learn from him.
That was some consolation.
But not much.
Alive, he’d scream more.
Wyatt’s mind bounced a linked thought with each slap of his boots on the earth.
He tripped and went down, his face scraping the hard, gritty soil. His back was aching fiercely, his right ear still felt numbed from the antiaircraft shell. His breath came in sobbing gasps.
He sat up. Blood oozed from a laceration in his cheek, forming drops, and dripping from his jaw.
Got to his feet.
Started trotting again.
He had heard the helicopter put down, but then it had left immediately. He didn’t think they were giving up; he thought they had a ground search underway.
His mouth was dry, and still running, he levered the canteen from his survival pack, twisted the cap off, and splashed a couple ounces in his mouth.
He slowed to a stop, catching his breath.
They would follow the wadi. There was just no other cover for him, and no other trail to follow for them.
Unless he could make a break for the hills to the south. He estimated that they were a couple thousand yards away. Fine at night, but not during the day.
Then again, he could sit down and shoot the first one or two who showed up.
He’d get two for their one.
At the moment, he didn’t think his chances were much better than that.
About to take off running again, he heard the pounding of feet behind him.
A couple of muted yells in a language that was not English.
They were breathing heavily.
Or was he imagining that?
They were getting very close.
He looked around for a depression in the side of the trench, in the bottom, anything he could fold himself inside.
There was nothing.
Wyatt pulled the Browning from its holster and slipped the safety.
In the far distance, he heard turboprops.
Were they bringing in more troops?
Thought about the radio. It had a range of a couple of miles. If the others were near, they should know.
He slipped the survival pack off his webbing and unzipped it. Pulling the harness out and tossing it aside, he found the radio.
Flicking the on switch, he immediately heard, “…back to me, Yucca One.”
Wyatt turned the volume down, then pressed the transmit.
“One.”
“Gotcha!” Vrdla said. “Saddle up! We’re coming!”
Dropping the radio, Wyatt shoved the pistol into his belt, picked up the harness, and stepped into it. He pulled it up, snugged it into his crotch, then hooked the shoulder strap fasteners. From a yoke at the top of the shoulder straps, a coiled line of cable was suspended, held in place by a plastic tie. On the other end of the one-hundred-foot line was a small pouch.
The pounding feet were coming closer.
He picked up the pouch, pulled it free of the balloon, jerked the lanyard on the aluminium cartridge, and heard the helium escaping into the bright orange balloon. It filled rapidly, rose from his hands, and trailed the thin cable behind it after he broke the plastic tie.
He was watching it rise and listening to the oncoming turboprops when the pounding boots stopped pounding.
He looked up to the top of the wadi.
A soldier, an officer, stood there, panting slightly and aiming his pistol up at the balloon.
He felt the tug when the balloon reached the end of its tether.
It was, however, a bit too late.
Al-Qati yelled to his soldiers in Arabic, “Do not shoot! We want him alive!”
The soldiers fanned out on both rims of the depression, keeping the muzzles of their AK-74s trained on the man who was wearing a soft grey flight suit. His helmet was attached to his webbing belt and looked out of place.
The three soldiers in the wadi went to their stomachs, rifles extended before them.
The pilot was holding his own pistol, aiming it directly at al-Qati.
Without letting his own aim waver from the balloon, al-Qati said in French, “Who are you?”
Al-Qati was well-versed in military strategies. He knew what the balloon meant, and he knew what the approaching airplane engines meant.