Le Win Fo fought the controls, leveled the craft, and began motioning. ''Thirty minutes, that's all you've got," he shouted, "before the Komiskos will be coming back for more fuel."
Bogner, with the SMG slung over his back, threw his shoulder against the access door and jumped. He lit hard, fell forward, felt the tar and gravel roof abrade away a thin layer of skin on his hands. Then he rolled over, squinted his eyes against the rain, and scrambled to clear the force of the downdraft of the Defender's rotor. In the darkness he heard Driver land a few feet away from him.
Driver got to his feet, darted for the edge of the roof, anchored one end of his rappelling rope to an antenna base, threw the rest over the side, and shimmied over the edge. There was another loud peal of thunder and a flash of lightning. It hit close and the building shuddered. Bogner saw Driver hit the ground, grab the rope, and steady it. Then, just as Bogner wormed his way over the edge of the roof and started down, he heard the sound of another rotor, this one louder and more powerful than the Allison power plant on the Defender.
Suddenly a wide, sweeping beam from a searchlight on a twin-rotored Komisko penetrated the blackness. The shaft of light arced back and forth 180 degrees until it picked up Driver.
Driver dropped to his knees and opened fire. There were two quick spurts from the SMG and the hovering Komisko erupted in a ball of flame. Bogner dropped to the ground and for one split second the chopper appeared to defy gravity while it protested its fate. Then there was a second explosion, triggered by the ammo aboard the Komisko, and it plummeted to the ground, exploded again, and lay burning in the middle of the Danjia garrison grounds.
There were screams and the sounds men make when they are dyingand for Bogner there was once again that awful nightmare sensation of helplessness. There was the feeling of being consumed, of being torn apart and betrayed by his fears. He crouched in the shadows of the two-story cell block with the rain pelting down on him, knowing he was a pawn and hating it.
The Komisko had become a twisted mass of torched metal. Finally there was the inevitable mind-numbing moment when both men thought they saw the struggling figure of a man trying frantically to claw his way out of the flames.
But even before that searing image could etch itself on Bogner's cartwheeling brain, the figure was swallowed up by the flames and Bogner looked away. He felt his eyes burn and his throat constrict. It was happening all over again: that dizzying, bottomless black hole in time. The momentary image had triggered a flashbackto the burning, death-drenched, napalm-soaked rice fields, and the stench of cooking flesh. There was the nerve-screeching, ear-piercing cries of women and children. There were chain explosions played against a backdrop of sporadic gunfire. It was just one more burning Vietnamese village and again that aching realization that there was nothing he could do about it. He felt his throat go dry and his heart hammer. There was that same devastating sense of revulsion and the even more inevitable catapult back into a world of sweaty nightmares. His head was spinning, his senses reeling; then he felt Driver's hand on his shoulder, trying to extricate him from his dance with fevered demons and drag him back into the awfulness of Danjia. He wanted no part of it. But he knew he had no choice.
"Keep your head down," Driver whispered. "While they're occupied, let's get the hell out of here."
In the surrealism of the moment, black oily smoke, thick and wind-whipped, clawed its way up into the darkness. Bogner could hear sirens.
"What the hell's wrong with you? It's now or never," Driver insisted. "They still haven't figured out what the hell's happening. If they had, one of their officers would have had the men fan out and start looking for us. They probably think that Komisko got hit by lightning."
Bogner pulled himself together, burrowed up against the wall of the cell block into the deeper shadows, pulled the SMG around, checked the clip, and tested the release. Everything had to be reoriented, reshaped, reconfigured. He bit down hard and pulled his poncho up close around his throat.
"Nothing's changed," Driver said. "We've still got to get Schubatis out of here and we've still got to get to that damned plane. We're on our own now."
Bogner pulled himself together. The nightmare was gone. The flashback, the excursion into his own private hell, had played itself out, and he was beginning to sift through the chaos of his thoughts, looking for answers.
"Still think you can fly that thing out of here without Borisov?"
Driver nodded. "Why? What's changed?"
Bogner's eyes darted to the burning Komisko and back again. "Because by the time we stuff Schubatis in there with you and me, there won't be any room for Borisov."
Driver looked at him. "No guarantees, swabbie. You know the risks."
Bogner had come all the way back. It was forced, but he even managed to sound as if he believed it. "All rightlet's hit the bricks."
While Quan barked out orders to the handful of men milling around the burning Komisko, Bogner and Driver quickly devised a new rendezvous time and locationthe ready room in the hangar where the Su-39 was housed. They synchronized their watches. They had given themselves one hourexactly sixty minutes. If contact wasn't possible, each was on his own.
Driver, with seven to eight hundred yards to negotiate, had to work his way toward the hangar through a series of outbuildings and check out the Su-39. Bogner was to meet him there, with Schubatis in tow.
"Here goes nothing," Driver said. He stood up and sprinted across the access road. With the rain still pelting down on them, he was out of sight within seconds.
Bogner stood up slowly, keeping his back pinned to the concrete wall of the cell block, and began inching his way toward the south entrance away from the garrison ground. During the briefing, Le had indicated it would be the easiest way to gain access to the cell block.
He had managed no more than twenty yards when a personnel carrier rounded the north end of the building on the access road heading for the garrison ground. He crouched and waited until the vehicle roared past. The driver was too busy trying to navigate his way through the rain to notice him.
Minutes later he was within sight of the guard shack near the door. He moved cautiously, stayed close to the building, and inched his way to a place where he could see the guard. The man had stepped out from under the overhang to watch the frenzy around the burning Komisko. Bogner crouched to within three feet behind the unsuspecting soldier, reached back, and brought the butt end of the SMG down against the back of the man's neck. The guard's head was whiplashed to one side with a snapping sound, and he crumpled. Quick and clean; no sound and no protest. Bogner bent over and peered down at the soldier. With the guard's neck broken, Bogner knew the terrified eyes looking up at him could do nothing about his situation. The spasmodic twitching of hands and legs was the only indication that a thin thread between spine and brain was still clinging desperately to life.
Bogner fumbled through the guard's pockets until he located the cell-block keys; then he dragged the body behind the guard shack and slipped into the darkened entrance. Just inside the guard station was a small holding area containing a chair, a scarred table, and a stack of dog-eared magazines. At the far end was a heavy door with steel bars. Bogner peered in and saw a long corridor no more than four feet in width. The flagstone floor was flanked on each side by a series of timbered cell doors. A string of low-watt, incandescent lamps hung from the ceiling in twenty-foot intervals. Several of the bulbs were either burned out or missing.
Hurrying, Bogner found the key that opened the access door and slipped in. If the first part was risky, this was even more so. From this point on, he was vulnerable. Too vulnerable. If there was a guard at the other end of the cell block, or if one should happen to come in behind him, there was no place to hide.