Ryng thought about the snowfield. He would have been just about at the top of this point. Christ, there wouldn’t be enough of me left to color the snow!
The air was filled with birds circling and turning in fear above their nests. There was no longer any way the men in the helo could use the bird population to find him. The helo was forced to a higher altitude to avoid fouling the birds. Anything that will do the trick, Ryng thought, trying harder to make himself one with the boulder that was his only protection. Now they have a problem too.
The helo dropped farther down the slope, moving away from his position and the birds. Have they given up already? Not a chance. They’ve got time on their side. They’ll let everything settle down, then move in again.
The son of a bitch knows I’m here, Ryng realized. He didn’t mess around in the lower valleys. He came right up near the snow line and fired at the first thing that moved. Being the object of a hunt when there was nowhere to run was not Ryng’s idea of fun.
The helo swept back and forth below him, dropping farther down the slope then working its way back in his direction. Ryng looked around, determining where he might shift to next if there was even an inkling that he might be spotted. It was then that he realized he hadn’t been so damn clever after all. He’d selected the largest boulder in that section of the slope below the snow line. Could there have been a more obvious place to try to hide?
The helo, moving back up the slope in his general direction, decided the same thing. Its zigzag movement halted and the bulbous nose dipped slightly as it settled on a course directly for his hiding place.
Frantically, Ryng searched about him. There was nothing else big enough to use as cover, nothing that would serve as adequate protection if they opened fire with machine guns, and nothing at all if it used rockets. This was the only place, and Ryng, thinking exactly like Colonel Bulgan, knew they would be on top of him in a matter of seconds.
The helo did not circle around the large boulder to search for its quarry. It headed straight in.
Nearby birds rose from their nests, but this time the helo hovered about seventy-five yards away horizontal with Ryng’s position.
What the hell were they going to do? As he mulled over that question, the answer became evident. There was a telltale wisp of smoke from the left pod. Ryng had seen rockets fired before — he had even used them himself — but he had never had the misfortune of being the target. He had no more than a second to ponder the sleek missile racing in his direction before his reflexes took command. He buried his head in his arms.
Wham! The rocket hit the boulder directly with an earth-shattering explosion. The concussion rolled over him at the same instant, sucking the air from his lungs, the blast bouncing his body into the air, then smashing it back to the ground.
Ryng was unable to move, even to lift his head or draw a breath into his agonized lungs. The silence that followed the blast was broken by the sound of small rocks dislodged by the explosion rolling down about him.
The heavier ones were what jolted him back to the real world, the world of a helicopter moving in closer, its rotors piercing the air. Ryng struggled for air, desperate to return oxygen to his system before he blacked out. He could feel himself going, eyes clouding as his feeble chest spasms failed to supply the needed air. He arched his body into the air, let it fall to the ground, then increased the rhythm until the impact forced his body to react, to suck the crisp mountain air into his lungs.
He was breathing again, painfully, but breathing nevertheless. The acrid smell of high explosives came to him. Ryng sensed, even before his eyes recorded the fact, that the helo was swinging out to the right. It swam before him as his eyes focused on the approaching perspex canopy. It was close enough to see the one remaining rocket and the wicked machine gun, its multiple barrels almost in line with him.
On his hands and knees, hugging the ground, Ryng scuttled backward like a crab. The cloud of birds constantly fluttering between him and the helo seemed his only hope, but they flew to either side as the craft came closer.
Just as he ducked back, the machine gun opened fire. They had seen him! The ground erupted. Hundreds of bullets ricocheted in every direction. He felt tiny shards of stone rip into his skin like a thousand little pins. Instinctively, he covered his eyes. As the noise of the gun-burst subsided, the only thought that came to him was how one-sided it all seemed. It was an alien situation to Bernie Ryng, being unable to shoot back.
As he chafed at the problem, he was also aware of the movement of the helo, now maneuvering above and behind his boulder. He backed around, and again the guns pounded away at the spot he’d just left. The one advantage he knew he had was that the helo could not easily shoot down on him from its position between the boulder and the snowfield. But he couldn’t crab his way around this boulder forever either. Sooner or later he’d make a mistake when there was no room for even one slight error. A ricocheting bullet could solve the enemy’s problem, and the odds were good that if they fired enough, sooner or later one would get him.
The thrust of the rotors saturated the air with dust and feathers. The mess penetrated his eyes and nose, and when he choked on it, it got in his mouth too. Through the haze, he could see the helo floating off to the other side, literally following him around the boulder. The guns let loose once more, kicking up the earth to either side as the craft bobbed in its own air currents.
Ryng slipped in the gravel as he skittered backward, sliding momentarily with the curve of the slope into the open. Frantically he rolled back to safety as the helo drifted into view. Shards of stone sprayed over him, penetrating his skin.
It was fast becoming a losing game for Bernie Ryng. There was no way a man could long protect himself from the hovering monster. Only instinct and the reactions he had left had protected him so far.
Now the copter was downhill from him again, with more room to raise or lower its target angle. It swung back and forth in the air as if suspended on a string, persistently firing short bursts whether or not he was in sight. The Russians, Ryng knew, understood the odds of the stray bullet as well as he did.
It was between the bursts of the helo’s machine gun that he heard another sound, something new added to the cacophony around him. Only, this was different, something alien to this snow-peaked, arctic hellhole. It was the screaming sound of a jet engine, and it was accompanied by a piercing shriek that he had rarely heard. The latter sound was followed by a tremendous burst below and to one side of the helo. It was much louder and many times more intense than the rockets that had been fired at him.
Ryng looked up to see a jet fighter spiraling into a high turn. He knew instantaneously that it was a Harrier fighter, recognizing vaguely the British colors on its tail. The explosion must have been an air-to-ground missile. Where the jet came from, or how, never entered his mind. Just the fact that the confrontation had evened out was all he cared about.
As the possibility began to overtake him that it might be a one-shot deal, a second fighter screamed down. Though its missile also missed its mark, Ryng was overjoyed to see that it came closer than the last.
He stared into the sky, wondering whether the first would return, and saw three others circling in a tight formation above. This was more like it. Now the helo was facing roughly the same odds as he had moments earlier. The odds that a third or fourth guided missile would miss its target were remote, and he waited with joy as he saw the first plane diving on its prey.