Vanner looked around cautiously then ducked back in and pulled out his NVGs.
“Nothing,” he said quietly.
“They might still be on the back-trail,” Ivan said, just as quietly.
Vanner sighed and shrugged on his heavy coat; he’d kept most of the rest of the gear on. The temperature had dropped precipitously but he left the balaklava and hood down. He needed his ears as well as his eyes.
He slid out of the tent, negotiating the snowpack, and stood up with the snow up to his waist. Another look around with the NVGs then he reached in and pulled out the thermals. Looking on the backtrail he couldn’t see any sign of the team.
“Fuck,” he muttered. He did not want to broadcast.
He walked back the way they’d come, stumbling over Ivan’s pack in the process. He’d dragged it over to the tent, gotten out the Keldara’s rucksack and then left it near the entrance. It was so covered in snow he hadn’t seen it until he tripped over it.
“Found your ruck,” he called, turning around.
“I was wondering when you’d look behind you,” Julia said, grinning. She had a set of thermals hanging around her neck.
“How’d you get past us?” Vanner asked.
“I really have no idea,” Julia admitted with another grin. “But I’m just about standing on our tent. We’re set up about three meters from each other.”
“Our tent?” Vanner said. “Where’s Jeseph?”
“Asleep,” Julia said. “In the tent. With Olga.”
“With… ”
“Hey, don’t ask, don’t tell… ”
Kacey drove the Hind down the twisting river valley so close to the surface that the rotors were kicking up spray on the banks.
“Hoo-rah!” she shouted.
“I don’t think Dominik is keeping up,” Marek said, a grin in his voice. “Drive it, girl.”
They were in the second day of the ferry flight and, given that they were making good time, Marek had declared a one hour game of hide and seek. Kacey was given a box she had to stay in and a three minute head start. The kicker was that it wasn’t Tammie driving the search bird, it was Dominick, the other IP.
“This is like flying a fucking Kiowa,” Kacey said. “These things used to be pigs. This is awesome.”
“We are low,” Marek pointed out. “The air is thick. Higher… less maneuverability.”
“Got that,” Kacey said, glancing in the rearview. “I still don’t have him.”
“Twenty minutes until we’re done with the exercise,” Marek said. “But he’s not necessarily following. He could have cut one of the bends.”
“Yeah,” Kacey replied, looking ahead. There was a fork in the river that went left. “Marek, what’s the chart say about that turn?”
“Narrow,” Marek said, tersely. “But still inside the box. Want me to take it?”
“My bird,” Kacey said, banking into the tributary. She instantly recognized that it was much narrower than the main river: the trees that overhung it barely cleared her rotor cone. “Crap.”
“As I said. Narrow.”
Kacey pulled the helo into an in-ground-effect hover and looked forward. The damned channel only got narrower. Looking up she realized she’d drifted under the trees in slowing; the branches now extended over her rotor cone.
“Double crap. Marek?”
“Your bird, hotshot,” the IP said, easily.
No way to go up. No way to turn around. No way to go forward. That only left two choices; ditching the bird in the river or backing up. Of course, the channel twisted slightly so it wasn’t exactly straight back. Fortunately, Hinds had a rear-view mirror.
She pulled back on the stick and tilted the rotor gently to the rear. The increased angle had her chipping some branch-tips, but nothing unsurvivable.
Backing down to the joining she got enough room she could go up or turn around. So she carefully spun in place then looked at the main river. The other Hind had a five hundred foot maximum so they could run down the river at height, looking for them. But they couldn’t just perch like a falcon.
Which gave her an idea.
“Kacey?” Marek said as the helicopter started sliding backwards. “Where are we going?”
“Under the trees,” Kacey said. The trees were evergreens; there was some solid concealment to be had. With the gray-green camouflage of the Hind, they would be hard to spot.
“Okay,” Marek said. “Your bird.”
“And now… we wait,” Kacey said as she reached the spot she’d been “stuck” in before. She could see the main river, barely, through a small gap in the trees. They were making a hell of a signature but that would be, partially, masked by the trees.
Sure enough, about ten minutes later, Tammie’s Hind came sniffing down the river about a hundred feet up. But the trees and the camouflage of the Hind kept them from noticing the bird hidden two hundred meters up the tributary, despite the massive “signature” from their rotors. She’d have thought they’d notice the waving treetops at the very least.
“Very nice,” Marek said. “I would have stayed higher.”
“They probably did and couldn’t see us,” Kacey said. “This river was the only place to hide. So we had to be on it, right? Start at one end, go to the other and trap us at that end of the box. Nobody would be stupid enough to come up this tributary.”
“If it’s stupid and it works… ”
“It’s not stupid,” Kacey said, sliding the bird forward.
The other Hind had continued up the river so it was out of sight when she got to the joining. She pivoted to look up-river and then popped up. Sure enough, there they were, just going around the bend to the right.
She dropped down and slid out into the main river, sidling towards the opposite treeline and then popping up again. The Hinds had a rear-view but there was a solid blind-spot at about four and seven o’clock. Only by craning way over could you see into it. As planned, she was right on Dominick’s four o’clock. She pivoted again and flew along side them, keeping more or less parallel, in the four o’clock position and sidling closer. When she was about a hundred meters away she pivoted again so she was pointed right at them and pushed the bird as hard to the side as it would go so that she had her nose pointed right at them as she came into peripheral vision.
Tammie, scanning left and right, was the first one to see her and she shook her head and said something in the intercom.
“Where in the hell did you come from?” Dominick said over the radio. The disgust was clear in his voice.
“I’m a woman,” Kacey replied. “We’re tricky. Ask any guy.”
“I still want to know where you went,” Dominick said, picking at his fish.
They’d continued down through Ukraine and stopped at a small airport near Yalta on the Black Sea. Tomorrow was the last day of the ferry, a short overwater hop into Russian airspace, one refueling in Russia hopping down the Black Sea coast and then cut into Georgia near the port of Sokhumi. After that it was free-sailing.
“How’s it feel to want?” Kacey said with a grin. “Seriously, I was hiding. If I tell you where I was hiding, it ruins the fun. And it was probably Tammie’s fault anyway. She was the one that was supposed to be looking for us.”
“Hey!”
“Ah then, I am satisfied,” Dominick replied. “As long as my delicate pilot ego isn’t damaged.”
“You still got your ass kicked by a girl,” Marek pointed out.
“Yeah?” Dominick replied. “Then tomorrow I will have you try to find Tammie. See whose ass gets kicked then!”