“Of course it’s safer,” JeanLuc replied carefully, not wanting to agitate the older man. “Pietro, you say you know avalanches. How long will that hold?”
“My nose says it will go soon. Very soon. There are cracks below. Perhaps tomorrow, even tonight. I know where to blow her - and be very safe.” Pietro looked at Banastasio. “I can do it whatever this stronzo thinks.” Banastasio got up. “JeanLuc, me and my shift’re evacuating. Pronto. Whatever is decided.” He left.
Guineppa shifted in his cot. “JeanLuc, take Pietro aloft. Now.” “First, we’ll evacuate everyone to Rig Rosa, you first,” JeanLuc said crisply, “then dynamite. If it works you’re back in business, if not there’s enough temporary space at Rig Rosa for you.”
“Not first, last… there’s no need to evacuate.”
JeanLuc hardly heard him. He was estimating numbers of men to move. Each of the two shifts contained nine men - tool pusher, assistant, mudman, who monitored the mud and decided on its chemical constituents and weight, driller, who looked after the drilling, motorman, responsible for all winches, pumps, and so on, and four roustabouts to attach or unhook the pipes and drills. “You’ve seven Iranian cooks and laborers?”
“Yes. But I tell you it’s not necessary to evacuate,” Guineppa said exhaustedly.
“Safer, mon vieux” JeanLuc turned to Pietro. “Tell everyone to travel light and be fast.”
Pietro glanced down at Guineppa. “Yes or no?”
Disgustedly, Guineppa nodded, the effort tiring him. “Ask for a volunteer crew to stay. If no one will, Mother of God, close down.” Pietro was clearly disappointed. Still picking his teeth, he went out. Guineppa shifted in the cot again, trying to get more comfortable, and began to curse. He seemed more frail than before.
JeanLuc said quietly, “It’s better to evacuate, Mario.”
“Pietro is wise and clever but that porco misero, Banastasio, he’s fart up to his nostrils, always trouble, and it was his fault the radio was smashed, I know it!”
“What?”
“It was smashed on his shift. Now we need a new one, do you have a spare?” “No, but I’ll see if I can get you one. Is it reparable? Perhaps one of our mechanics c - ”
“Banastasio said he slipped and fell on it, but I heard he hit it with a hammer when it wouldn’t work… . Mamma mia!” Guineppa winced and clutched his chest and began to curse again.
“How long have you been having pains?”
“Since two days. Today has been the worst. That stronzo Banastasio!” Guineppa muttered. “But what can you expect, it runs in his family. Eh! His family are half-American, no? I heard the American side has mafioso connections.”
JeanLuc smiled to himself, not believing it, half listening to the tirade. He knew that they hated each other - Guineppa, the Portuguese-Roman patrician, and Banastasio, Sicilian-American peasant. But that’s not so surprising, he thought, locked up here, twelve hours on, twelve off, day after day, month after month, however good the pay.
Ah, the pay! How I could use their pay! Why even the lowest roustabout gets as much in one week as I get in a month - a miserable 1,200 pounds sterling monthly for me, a senior captain and training captain, with forty-eight hundred hours! Even with the miserly 500 pounds monthly overseas allowance, that’s not enough for the kids, school fees, my wife, the mortgage and filthy taxes… let alone the best food and wine and my darling Sayada. Ah, Sayada, how I’ve missed you! But for Lochart…
Piece of shit! Tom Lochart could have let me go with him and I could be in Tehran in her arms right now! My God how I need her. And money. Money! May the balls of all taxmen shrivel into dust and their cocks vanish! I’ve barely enough as it is and if Iran goes down the sewer, what then? I’ll bet S-G won’t survive. That’s their bad luck - there’ll always be chopper work for a pilot as excellent as I am somewhere in the world.
He saw Guineppa watching him. “Yes, mon vieux?” “I’ll go with the last load.” “Better to go first, there’s a medic at Rosa.” “I’m fine - honestly.” Then JeanLuc heard his name being called and put on his parka. “Can I do anything for you?”
The man smiled wearily. “Just take Pietro aloft with the dynamite.” “I’ll do that, but last, with any luck, before dusk. Don’t worry.” Outside the. cold hit him again. Pietro was waiting for him. Men were already grouped near the idling helicopter, with packs and duffel bags of various sizes. Banastasio went past leading a big German shepherd. “The man said to travel light,” Pietro told him. “I am,” Banastasio said equally sourly. “I’ve my papers, my dog, and my shift. The rest’s replaceable, on the goddamn company.” Then to JeanLuc, “You’ve a full load, JeanLuc, let’s get with it.”
JeanLuc checked the men aboard, and the dog, then called Nasiri on the radio and told him what they were going to do. “Okay, Scot, off you go. You take her,” he said and got out and saw Scot’s eyes widen. “You mean by myself?”
“Why not, mon brave. You’ve the hours. This’s your third check ride. You’ve got to start sometime. Off you go.”
He watched Scot lift off. In barely five seconds the chopper was over the abyss with a clear seventy-five hundred feet below and he knew how eerie and wonderful that first solo takeoff from Bellissima would be, envying the young man the thrill. Young Scot’s worth it, he thought, watching him critically. “JeanLuc!”
He took his eyes off the distant chopper and glanced around, wondering suddenly what was so different. Then he realized it was the silence, so vast that it almost seemed to deafen him. For a moment he felt weirdly unbalanced, even a little sick, then the whine of the wind picked up and he became whole again.
“JeanLuc! Over here!” Pietro was in a shadow with a group of men on the other side of the camp, beckoning him. Laboriously, he picked his way over to them. They were strangely silent.
“Look there,” Pietro said nervously and pointed aloft. “Just under the overhang. There! Twenty, thirty feet below. You see the cracks?” JeanLuc saw them. His testicles heaved. They were no longer cracks in the ice but fissures. As they watched, there was a vast groaning. The whole mass seemed to shift a fraction. A small chunk of ice and snow fell away. It gathered speed and substance and thundered down the steep slope. They were shock-still. The avalanche, now tons of snow and ice, came to rest barely fifty yards away from them.
One of the men broke the silence. “Let’s hope the chopper doesn’t come barreling back like a kamikaze - that could be the detonator, amico. Even a little noise could trigger that whole stronzo apart.”
Chapter 18
IN THE SKIES NEAR QAZVIN: 3:17 P.M. From the moment Charlie Pettikin had left Tabriz almost two hours ago with Rakoczy - the man he knew as Smith - he had flown the 206 as straight and level as possible, hoping to lull the KGB man to sleep, or at least off guard. For the same reason he had avoided conversation by slipping his headset onto his neck. At length Rakoczy had given up, just watched the terrain below. But he stayed alert with his gun across his lap, his thumb on the safety catch. And Pettikin wondered about him, who he was, what he was, what band of revolutionaries he belonged to - fedayeen, mujhadin, or Khomeini supporter - or if he was loyal, gendarmerie, army, or SAVAK, and if so why it was so important to get to Tehran. It had never occurred to Pettikin that the man was Russian not Iranian.
At Bandar-e Pahlavi where refueling had been laboriously slow, he had done nothing to break the monotony, just paid over his last remaining U.S. dollars and watched while the tanks were filled, then signed the official IranOil chit. Rakoczy had tried to chat with the refueler but the man was hostile, clearly frightened of being seen refueling this foreign helicopter, and even more frightened of the machine gun that was on the front seat. All the time they were on the ground Pettikin had gauged the odds of trying to grab the gun. There was never a chance. It was Czech. In Korea they had been plentiful. And Vietnam. My God, he thought, those days seem a million years ago.