Passing a hand over his forehead, the SEAL jumped down onto the concrete floor of the bunker’s hangar, moving toward the control panel mounted on the far wall.
Aged hydraulics, operating massive blast doors which opened out onto the helipad. The power from the generator was already engaged, running for the last hour.
There was only one question left in his mind: after all these years — would the doors still open? If they didn’t — then he’d led them into a death trap. Just like he had that winter so long ago.
He took a deep breath and pulled the lever…
Korsakov wasn’t the first man through the door, into the cabin. Or the second. It was protocol — bad American action movies aside, a team leader never took point. It also saved his life.
The first room of the cabin was on fire and littered with debris — splintered wood and shards of glass thrown about as if by a giant’s hand. Among the chaos, the destruction, the tripwire stretching across the entrance to the corridor went unnoticed.
Red laser beams cut through the flaming darkness as the Spetsnaz picked their way over the wreckage. Almost — the point man stepped into the corridor, the toe of his boot catching on the wire.
Korsakov’s team never knew what hit them. The pair of M18A2 Claymores were wired together, to a single trigger. Decimation — three pounds of C-4 explosive between them, fourteen hundred steel balls flying outward in a sixty-degree arc.
The man standing beside Korsakov — in the doorway of the cabin — screamed, an unearthly, haunting cry, as he doubled over, clutching at what remained of his stomach.
Blood stained the white snow.
Nothing like this had ever happened before — never in thirty years with the Bureau. He’d never seen so many agents die.
William Russell Cole raised himself up on his elbows in the snow, beside the corpse of a young HRT assaulter. The kid had been the youngest member of Jicha’s assault team — now he lay there, on his side in the snow — a ragged hole in his temple. Sightless eyes staring out into the winter night.
The negotiator whispered a silent prayer, moving the young man’s stiffening arms to remove the sling of the Heckler & Koch MP-5 from around his shoulders.
He’d never fired a submachine gun in combat before in his life, but this was turning into a night of evil firsts. Cole rolled onto his side, pulling back the charging handle to chamber a round.
Movement in the darkness. There, beside a tree — only a few feet away. No way he could move fast enough.
“Easy, Russ. It’s just me.” He looked up into the face of Vic Caruso and nearly collapsed in relief. The FBI agent’s right arm hung limply at his side, dark blood staining the sleeve. No one had escaped unscathed…
A cold blast of air smote Harry in the face as he entered the hangar, closing the door behind him and spinning the handles until it locked.
He turned, taking in the aged Sikorsky S-55 helicopter sitting there in the middle of the hangar — his eyes flickering toward the open blast doors.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, moving across the concrete floor. Sammy was kneeling at the bulbous nose of the Sikorsky, the clamshell doors peeled back to reveal the engine.
“Still losing blood,” the Asian SEAL replied, removing a screwdriver from between his teeth. “I’ll do my best to extract the splinter once we’re airborne.”
Harry cast a critical glance out into the darkness, wind-driven snow sweeping across the exposed helipad. “There something wrong with the engine?”
“Negative,” Han replied, reaching briefly inside the engine. He tapped something and pulled the screwdriver back out. “Nothing that I can tell — but the last time this bird flew, Jimmy Carter was President. We’ve only got one chance at this, Harry.”
That went without saying and a part of him didn’t appreciate it being voiced. Harry moved back, hoisting himself into the Sikorsky’s cockpit. He’d held a pilot’s license for eight years — the Agency had trained him to fly most types of small aircraft and helos. Unfortunately, 1950s avionics hadn’t been covered in the syllabus. A lot had changed. Maybe too much.
He looked out through the high windows of the Sikorsky, toward the door separating the hangar from the rest of the bunker. Korsakov and his men would be through there soon, once they’d regrouped from the Claymores.
One chance…
Watching Tex drive was enough to drive a man to drink. Actually being in the car — that was even worse. Thomas waited a moment to make sure he wasn’t being watched, then tilted back the hip flask of brandy until the amber liquid spilled down his throat.
“Drinking again?” Tex asked, no emotion showing in his voice.
Crap. There were times when he thought the big man was psychic. “Yeah, and thinkin’ again.” He was surprised to hear the slur in his own words. He hadn’t been drinking that much. Or had he? It was so hard to remember…
“Put it away,” came the peremptory order. He looked over into the Texan’s eyes, obsidian orbs staring back at him. Expressionless. A moment passed, then Tex added, “You’re no good to me drunk. No good to anyone.”
With a languid flourish, Thomas screwed the cap back on the flask and dropped it into the side pocket of the Malibu’s door. “Satisfied, padre?”
One thing struck Harry from the moment the Sikorsky’s 700-horsepower radial engine roared to life from beneath his feet. The old helo wasn’t going to cut him any slack — it hailed from a different era — back in the days before crew comfort was considered, and the term “ergonomics” had yet to be commonly used. Going to need a smooth touch. Very smooth…
The noise was deafening, or would have been, if the explosion hadn’t already taken care of his hearing. The main rotor transmission was located inches behind his head, gears meshing and whining with all the delightful harmony of an amped-up Black Sabbath.
In a modern transmission, the gears would have been cut on an angle to ensure a quieter operation. Unfortunately, in 1949, no one had figured out how to do that — or cared, apparently.
A hand on his arm, Han’s lips forming the word, Ready.
Harry nodded, motioning back toward the cabin. “Look after her.”
He couldn’t even hear his own words, but the SEAL nodded and disappeared. His gloved hand closed over the collective lever, gently increasing the power as the Sikorsky began to taxi across the floor of the hangar.
Taxi might have been the wrong word — it was more of a drunken stagger. He tapped the tail rotor pedals to steer the Sikorsky toward the open door, trying to keep his feet out of the linkage, a spider’s tangle of cables and chains connecting the pedals to the large tail rotor.
A muffled thump, as though from an explosion, struck his ears even over the persistent roar of the engine. Harry looked back just in time to see the massive door connecting the hangar and bunker fly inward off its hinges, dust and smoke billowing from the gaping hole.
The flash of red lasersights cutting through the cloud, through the darkness. Korsakov’s men. It was well past time to go.
A downdraft buffeted the helicopter as it left the hangar’s shelter, the Sikorsky’s wheels skidding sideways in the wet snow. He heard a death rattle of bullets striking the fuselage as the Spetsnaz opened fire and whispered a prayer, easing the cyclic stick forward.
The helicopter’s wheels left the ground, rising into the teeth of the wind. Harry seized the collective with his left hand, coaxing more power out of the aged engine.