Having no choice, Jake had hit the hard snowy surface, his 30.06 rifle propped onto his backpack. Now he aimed the scope at the hovering helo, trying to find out who was inside and what they wanted. When he noticed the side door open and what appeared to be a barrel pointing out, Jake shifted his focus to their helo. But he couldn’t see either Anna or Kjersti inside.
It looked like a Norwegian Air Force Bell 412SP like those that had conducted training with some of Jake’s units in NATO exercises. Yet, he was sure something wasn’t right.
Suddenly the rotors started turning on their Bell 407, first slowly and then picking up speed with each revolution.
Jake saw the flashes and then heard the sound of gunfire echoing up the ridge toward him. He trained the scope on the military helo and had to make a split-second decision. He centered the crosshairs toward the middle of the cockpit and fired once, the bullet penetrating the windscreen and settling somewhere inside the cockpit.
The shot made the pilot immediately shove the stick to the left, sending the craft in a wide circle toward the east.
Jake popped open the magazine, shoved another round to replace the one he had fired, and then chambered a new round. He had five shots, plus five more left in his pocket. The rest he had left in the passenger compartment of their helo.
But Jake was stuck. It would take him too long to run the two hundred yards to jump inside their helo. But if they came to him…
Just has he thought it, Kjersti lifted off the glacier and headed in his direction.
By now the green helo had circled around and was coming right after Kjersti and Anna.
Jake raised the rifle and prepared to shoot again. He needed to turn them around long enough for Jake to jump inside. This time Jake aimed to the second seat of the green helo and squeezed off a round. Whatever he hit, it worked, since the green Bell 412SP immediately broke right and swung around in a wide loop.
Now, Kjersti slowed and dropped down to the glacier just feet from Jake. Simultaneously, Anna shoved the door open, Jake threw his backpack inside and then slid his body and rifle after it.
The door slammed.
“Go, go, go,” Anna yelled.
Seconds later they were airborne and picking up speed.
Jake made his way to the cockpit, leaning in toward Kjersti. “Who the hell are those guys?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can’t outrun them. Even fully loaded, they’ve got about five knots on me.”
She had pulled the helo to a couple hundred feet above the jagged surface, heading west southwest.
“How many shooters did you see?” Jake asked her.
“Isn’t one enough?” The controls jerked around in her hands. “Two for sure. Maybe more.”
“It almost looked like a Norwegian Air Force Bell four-twelve SP,” Jake said, glancing back and seeing the other helicopter right behind them. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“It’s a four-twelve all right, but not our air force version. It’s private. Hang onto your pants.”
She went maximum power and pulled back on the yoke, rising to four thousand feet in just a few seconds.
Before Jake could ask why, Kjersti said, “I gain a few miles per hour at four thousand feet. Plus, look what’s ahead.”
Approaching fast was a bank of clouds much like the day before when they had taken off from Longyearbyen.
“I hope you know the terrain ahead,” Jake said.
Kjersti smiled. “Absolutely.” Her smile turned grave as she checked her six. “They’re moving up on us.”
Jake turned and saw the other helo nearly even with them on the port side. He went to the back and found his rifle.
“What’s her plan?” Anna asked, concern in her eyes.
“Gonna try to lose them,” he said. “Strap yourself to that harness.”
Without hesitation, she stepped into a harness that was clipped to the bulkhead. Jake got into a sitting position, the rifle aimed at the door.
By now the other craft was alongside them.
“Slide that door open a foot,” Jake ordered.
As she did what Jake asked, the first salvo of bullets struck the side windows, shattering glass into the compartment. Anna screamed and hit the deck.
Jake took aim at the front man with the rifle and squeezed off a round. He saw the bullet strike the man’s right shoulder, knocking him onto his back.
He cycled a round and fired.
Miss.
Another round.
Miss.
Two rounds left.
He aimed a little to the right and squeezed off another round. Hit. Dead center in the chest. The man dropped straight down and then rolled out of the helo, his body free-falling helter-skelter. The Bell 412 backed off slightly, but Jake had a feeling they’d be back.
Now, Kjersti had hit the fog bank. With the obscurity of the fog, they also had more turbulence, the craft bouncing up and down. Jake reached over and slid the side door shut. Then he sat down and reloaded the rifle.
“How you doing back there?” Kjersti yelled over her shoulder.
“I hit two of them,” Jake screamed back. “One took a dive out the side.” He put a hand on Anna’s back and said to her, “You all right?”
She turned her head up to him. “Just a little queasy from the flight.”
“Stay right there. I’m gonna have Kjersti make a call.”
He made his way to the cockpit and sat in the spare seat. Looking out the windscreen, he couldn’t see anything but swirling fog.
“Hope you know where you’re going,” Jake said to her.
“We’re out over water,” she said. “I can smell the sea air.”
“Great. A pilot who flies by smell.”
She laughed. “Hold on.” Pushing forward on the yoke, they quickly descended. When they hit only three hundred feet on the altimeter, she pulled back and Jake could see the water below.
“I believe you.”
“I didn’t do it to prove a point,” Kjersti said. “Did I lose them?”
Jake looked back. “Seems so.”
For the next half hour, she quickly changed altitude from five hundred feet to four thousand feet and nearly everything in between, at all times maintaining maximum speed.
“How’s our fuel?” Jake asked her.
“Should be all right. We added fuel in Pyramiden, which was two hundred K from Longyearbyen. We have a six hundred K range. I was planning on giving you a scenic tour along some of the beautiful fjords, so even at max speed we should be fine.”
“We’ve got less than half a tank,” Jake told her.
“What?” She looked at the fuel gauge and tapped it. “That’s not right.”
“They must have nicked a fuel line,” Jake said. “Will we make it?”
She hesitated, in deep thought, running the calculations in her head. “I don’t know.”
Seconds later she had made up her mind, shoving the yoke forward.
“We’re going down.”
10
Victor Petrova, aka Oberon, shuffled along the wet cobblestone sidewalk of Stockholm’s old town, his footing maintained from his low center of gravity, while he talked on his cell phone. He had just gotten a call from one of his associates on his satellite phone.
“What you mean you lost them? How many damn choppers are flying around Spitsbergen at any given time?”
Oberon stopped and casually glanced behind him, as if he were lost, which he was surely not. He had a photographic memory and had never been lost in his life — not in the forests of the Ural Mountains, and definitely not in a damn city. No, he was checking for a tail. But all he saw was a dead rat that had been run over the night before. Not fast enough, he thought.
The man on the other end of the phone said, “Oberon, we’ll find them.” He stopped, collecting his words. “There was some gunfire.”