On our own oxygen now, with masks in place, it was impossible to communicate any longer. In spite of the discomfort, there was time too much time for my mind to zip back to the fuck-up over France. The big difference now was that Pavarotti, poor bugger, was on the deck, in the hands of the Mafia, and had no chance of flying into me on the way down.
Either side of the tailgate the red warning lights flicked on.
The head lo adie gave me two fingers. I acknowledged them, and saw him hitch his own harness to a strop hanging from the wall.
The tail opened, letting in a blast of searingly cold air. As the ramp settled into its horizontal position the guy motioned us forward, and with another well-anchored lo adie steadying us from behind, we waddled to the edge of the abyss, a few inches at each step, stiff-legged as ducks.
One finger from the head lo adie One minute to go. Sixty seconds of sheer terror.
Sasha seemed totally cool, not trembling or shifting about. I could only think, He must have nerves of fucking steel. I found it impossible to think rationally. All I could do was try to keep my breathing rate down and will the seconds to pass faster.
Then suddenly both red lights turned to green.
"Green on!" I yelled.
"GO!"
I gave Sasha a tap on the right arm and as one we leant forward and toppled into a blasting, icy hurricane.
Immediately we were in a face-down attitude, Sasha beneath me. Freezing air ripped past my cheeks, scouring like crystals of ice. Far below and away to our right the snow-peaks shin-unered and glinted. I felt the drogue-chute tug at the centre of my back as it deployed behind us, slowing our descent slightly and keeping us stable.
Then, steering with hands and feet, I turned us round until our heads were pointing north. I was still aware of the moonlit snow summits, now out on our left, but there was no time to enjoy the view. Our urgent need was to pinpoint the LZ. It should be showing up as a lighter patch in the black of the forests.
At first I couldn't pick it out and panic threatened. Every second I kept glancing back at the altimeters on my forearms.
The hands were unwinding like clocks gone berserk.
At last I got it: a little grey oblong, father to our right than I'd expected, but well within reach. By dropping my right arm and raising my left, I tilted us in that direction. At the change of attitude I found myself dreading the possibility of going into another spin; but Sasha played his role perfectly, remaining passive beneath me, not trying to influence our flight-path, relying on me to steer.
Down, down, down we went. Sixteen thousand, fourteen, twelve. The forested hills were gloriously black below us. Far off to our right, beyond the LZ, was a small cluster of lights, which I reckoned was Samasliki, too far off for anyone there to spot one little dot falling from the sky. Otherwise the wooded hills were magnificently dark, denoting a total absence of houses. No bright windows, no roads, no moving vehicles.
Ten, eight, six… Our target was growing rapidy into a fair-sized field.
Five… I tugged the release toggle. Away went the drogue with a snap, pulling out the big chute, and with a heavy snatch we were jerked upright, swinging beneath the main canopy. Immediately I unhooked one side of my mask so I could talk again, and released the tension on the harness buckles, so that Sasha sank down until the top of his helmet was level with my chest, giving me a better view of where we were heading.
The pale opening in the forest was well within reach, ahead and slightly to our right.
"See it down there?" I said quietly, pointing.
"Fantastic!" Sasha breathed, on a high. Now I could hear him hyperventilating.
"Breelliant!" he went.
"Otlich no!"
"OK," I said, 'take it easy, and don't make too much noise."
I steered for the open patch, glad of the bright moonlight for the view it gave us, but feeling altogether too conspicuous. At least the LZ looked fairly level.
The black trees came up rapidly to meet us. We were over the southern edge of the clearing, sliding towards the centre. As we came in I pulled on both risers, staffing our descent.
"Get ready," I told Sasha.
"Start walking now."
Then I flared again: the chute came up and stalled, and a moment later we landed softly on short, frosty grass.
For a few seconds we crouched, motionless, listening. Not a murmur. The breeze carried a thin, clean scent of pines. The opening we'd landed in looked to be about two hundred metres by one hundred, with trees on all sides. Then it was out of the harness, weapons out of their ties and at the ready, and down in a defensive position, facing outwards. Sasha needed no instruction: he moved fast and instinctively.
My hands were lumps of ice. My fingers started to throb and burn as I worked them furiously, open and shut, to get the circulation going while I waited for my GPS to get a fix and confirm we were on the correct location.
As soon as the figures came up, and I saw they were right, we rolled our jumping kit into a bundle, shouldered our berg ens and set off towards the edge of the field in search of a place to hide or bury the evidence.
"Big experience for me," Sasha panted, still breathless with excitement as we hurried forward.
A sudden outburst of noise made me drop flat again. The commotion came from a distance, higher up the mountain to our left: an explosion of high wailing and howling in which several distinct voices rose and fell.
Sasha gave a chucide.
"Volki," he said.
"Wolves. We hear them often during the war. They sing to moon."
"Jesus!" I gasped.
"They gave me a fright. Do they attack humans?"
Sasha laughed again.
"Never! Wolf very shy animal keep away.
The chorus rose and fell for nearly a minute, then stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
By now the moon was on its way down, but still so bright that I hardly needed the kite-sight: the binos did just as good a job.
I swept them round, hoping to see some of the ghostly howlers, but they must have been half a mile away.
At the far end of the field, in the direction we wanted to go, there was some object in a corner. The kite-sight revealed it as an old wooden farm wagon, with a primitive hay-rake beside it.
"That thing must have come up a track through the forest to reach where it is," I whispered.
"Let's take a shufti."
We moved into the deep shadow at the edge of the trees, then advanced slowly to the corner. There was no fence round the edge of the grass, so I reckoned that herdsmen or boys must look after any animals that came to graze there. As there were wolves about, that made sense.
The wagon had wooden wheels, the back pair twice the size of the front, which were mounted on a swivelling yoke, and it took me straight back thirty years to my boyhood in the north of England.
"Vairy preemitive people, Chechens," Sasha whispered.
"Yes," I said, 'but look at this."
Beyond the cart was a drinking trough for cattle, carved out of a single tree-trunk. I reached down and felt a skim of ice in the bottom. Beside it was a broken-down hand pump for raising water from a well. Staring at it, I reckoned this was a summer pasture, on which some farmer made hay, but that now it had been abandoned for the winter. A moment later I'd found the well cover, made of planks, and lifted it. In went the para bundle, and that was one problem solved.
A rutted track led away through the wood, twisting downhill towards the east. For twenty minutes we followed it, but then the path turned right into the valley, no doubt heading down towards the village, and we had to continue as best we could through the trees, holding our height along the contour.
Our navigation proved spot-on. Seventy minutes out from the LZ, we saw something light-coloured through the screen of tree-trunks ahead, and with the kite-sight made out the perimeter fence of the compound: weidmesh on steel posts, all glowing coldly in the moonlight.