“Bring down that bloody chopper,” Gunter shouted.
“Where the hell is Yuliya?” Magnus asked.
“I’m on my way,” she replied. “It took me some time to turn the Bell around, since this rusty piece of junk doesn’t work well.”
Magnus’s binoculars followed the flight of the Bell helicopter. It hovered over the runway for a few seconds before it went screaming toward the battlefield.
“That should take care of that problem,” Valgerda said.
“I hope so,” Magnus replied. I’ve got my own problems to resolve. He glanced at Ali’s group still rooted in their trench.
“Fire! Fire at the chopper!” Justin shouted.
The Bell roared, circling above their heads.
“We are.” Joe slammed a fresh magazine in his Let Støttevåben. “But the beast is moving so fast.”
He cleaned the snow from his face with the ear flap of his toque, and straightened his gloves before resuming shooting.
“Maybe we should have Carrie dogfight this,” Anna suggested between sporadic shots. Justin had given her a crash course on how to use his M4 carbine. The weapon rested heavily on her arms. The firing recoil jerked the metal stock against her shoulder.
“Carrie’s ammo’s running low,” Justin replied. “We have to ride this on our own.”
“Doesn’t she have Hellfire missiles or some rockets?” Joe shouted.
A volley of bullets sprinkled the Land Rover. Anna gritted her teeth. Justin offered her a reassuring smile, but her eyes showed their defense needed a more powerful boost.
“Ned,” Justin called at the man lying fifteen feet in front of him, “status!”
“Two men critically wounded,” he replied. “Nilak tells me they have three dead and ten wounded, two of them in serious conditions.”
“That’s beside the guys lost down in the field,” Joe added. “Seven or eight, I believe.”
“Can we afford another attack?” Justin asked.
“Not until the flying monster’s dead,” Joe replied. “Or at least down on the ground.”
Justin peeked through a couple of holes in the Land Rover’s doors. The Bell helicopter completed a downward pirouette and was rising up toward the ice ridge. The Seahawk was hidden behind it.
“Well, the pigeon’s going to the hawk.” Justin pointed out the obvious. “Is Carrie ready?”
“She better be,” Joe replied.
As soon as the enemy helicopter appeared over the hill, the Seahawk broke into a long volley of machine gun fire aimed at the Bell’s tail rotor. The Seahawk hovered a few feet above ground, swinging slightly to the sides.
As machine gun bullets slammed into the Bell’s rotor blades and pierced its tail boom, the helicopter pivoted to the right. Yuliya’s mission had been turned upside down. She struggled to regain control of her helicopter and avoid a nose-first crash into the fast approaching ground.
The Bell responded to her commands and regained its earlier altitude but only for a few moments. Sharp electronic beeps erupted throughout the cabin. Flashing red signals on the control panel urged Yuliya to perform an immediate emergency landing. But landing behind enemy lines meant death or capture. She attempted a one hundred and eighty-degree turn.
The unsafe maneuver brought the helicopter dangerously close to the ice-covered hills. At the last moment, the Bell jerked upwards, the damaged tail rotor barely missing a huge rock jutting out of the ice ridge. Yuliya steadied the helicopter and headed back to her camp.
When Carrie fired her shots, she intended to disable the Bell helicopter and force the pilot to land within easy reach of Justin’s men. The crew of the downed helicopter would serve as bargaining chips. Once Carrie realized the pilot was escaping her trap, there was no point in holding back.
The Seahawk pitched forward until it was about a hundred and fifty feet above the ridge. Carrie tapped the joystick mounted on the center console, which controlled the machine gun. The powerful rattle returned. She spread out her bullets evenly over the entire length of the runaway target.
Soon enough, the Bell was swallowed up in a thick cloud of smoke. Carrie eased on her trigger, waiting for the inevitable explosion. A few seconds passed. The Bell helicopter appeared on the other side of the gray cloud, still airborne, but swaying to and fro like a duckling during its first flight.
Carrie closed her left eye, once again focusing on her target. She wondered whether she should launch one of the two Hellfire missiles.
“C’mon,” she yelled. “C’mon! Go down, you son of a…”
The Bell swirled around a couple of times, dropping a few dozen feet. Then, it jerked upwards, regaining its lost altitude. But when the pilot had steadied the helicopter, its main rotor blades stopped spinning. The helicopter took a downward plunge, fast and hard.
The helicopter was doomed. Some of the Danish troops scurried in panic as the large fuselage of the Bell helicopter crashed into the permafrost. The impact shattered the ground. The ensuing explosion hurled huge blocks of ice and rocks in all directions and tore open the ice shield. The crater swallowed the helicopter’s wreckage, as dark waves slammed against the edges.
“Holy crap!” Carrie stared in awe.
Narrow crevasses stretched like cobwebs for tens of feet on both sides of the pit. It looked like when a rock cracked but did not shatter window glass.
“The Danes are over a lake,” Justin yelled over the jubilant shouts of the men around him, “over a lake whose ice cover is busted open.”
“Yeah,” Nilak added. There are two ponds by the runway. Tim used to complain that water from melting ice would flood parts of the runway.”
“Why didn’t we think of this earlier?” Justin said. “The solution is right in front of our eyes. Call Kiawak and the rest of the people back.”
“Eh, what? Why?” Joe asked.
“Our best defense is the natural one, the lake. We’ll blow off the top, breaking apart the ice sheet and sinking every one of these jerks.”
“Sir, Yuliya’s gone, sir,” Valgerda mumbled over the radio.
“I can fucking see that,” Gunter exploded.
Valgerda removed the receiver from her left ear. She could still hear him blurting obscenities and ordering four men to prepare the DHC-6 Twin Otter airplane for the fight.
“Magnus, where are you?” she shouted and began to look around. “Magnus?”
“I’m here, down here,” he replied with a groan.
She followed the sound of his weak voice until her eyes found him lying on his back. He was about fifty feet away from the helicopter’s grave. She noticed a trickle of blood over his right pant leg and a long tear, about four inches, on his shin.
“Fuck,” Magnus cried, as he tried to get back to his feet.
“It’s not broken, is it?” Valgerda asked.
Magnus placed his heel carefully over the slippery ice. “A damned ice sliver almost cut off my freaking leg. What was Yuliya thinking?”
“I guess she wasn’t. And neither is Gunter.” She pointed at the terminal. “He just ordered the Otter in.”
“Yeah, I heard it.” Magnus took an uneven step, leaning on Valgerda’s shoulder.
Whizz.
A bullet screeched over their heads. They both ducked. Magnus’s leg failed him. He plunged into the snow, cursing and rolling downhill. Valgerda returned fire at the closest truck from where the shots were coming. A couple of trucks farther up the hill were struggling to retreat from their initial positions.
“They’re falling back,” she said over the mike. “The enemy’s falling back. All troops, fire at will, fire at will.”