"Express One to Karpaty — Express One to Karpaty, over."
The pilot's voice in his headphones startled Ardenyev with the immediacy of their attempt to land on the rescue ship's helipad. He strained his eyes forward, but could not even see the illuminated, circular platform. The Karpaty was a blur of lights seen through the still-running tears that streamed across the cockpit canopy and the windscreen of the MiL. The rescue ship was tiny, and they seemed to be making no visible progress towards it.
"Karpaty to Express One. We read you, and have you on radar. Range eight point five kilometres. Over."
"Weather conditions, Karpaty?"
"Winds oh-five-oh, thirty-five knots, gusting to forty-five. Sea state five to six, waves varying ten to twenty feet. What are your intentions? Over."
The pilot looked across at Ardenyev. He seemed satisfied by the glum, strained silence he observed. Ardenyev considered the shadow of the Kiev beyond the lights of the rescue ship. And rejected them.
"Well?" the pilot asked.
"Can you get down?"
"It's on the edge. I don't recommend trying —"
"Express Two to Express One, over."
"Go ahead, Express Two."
"Are we going down?"
"I don't like it."
"We can make it. I'll go in first, if you like. Over."
"You haven't got all night," Ardenyev remarked, looking at his watch. They were running perhaps thirty minutes behind schedule already. A diversion to the Kiev, and then a sea transfer back to the Karpaty would delay them perhaps as much as two hours. Dolohov would find that delay unacceptable. The Proteus might be located at any moment, and Ardenyev had no wish to be still airborne when that happened. "We're late."
"I fly this crate, not you, Captain. My judgement is all that counts, and my judgement tells me to divert to the carrier." The pilot was calm, irritated with his passenger but unafraid. He assumed his authority would carry the day.
"Hold on, Express One — I'll set down first. When Karpaty has filled my tanks, I'll get out of your way." The other pilot sounded to Ardenyev to be less afraid, yet he wondered whether his own pilot might not be right.
"Express Two — I suggest we divert to Kiev."
"I'm not putting my bollocks on the chopping-block with Dolohov, Andrei, even if you're prepared to. Just watch my technique!"
Ardenyev's pilot's face was tight with anger, resentment, and something deeper which might have been self-contempt. Ardenyev watched, in a new mood of satisfaction, as the second MiL surged ahead and below them, towards the Karpaty. His pilot was playing safe, they would get down now. It meant only that Orlov and Blue Section would be kitting out by the time they arrived, and amused at their superiority.
The second MiL banked, looking uncertain for a moment below them, as if turning towards the surface of the black ocean itself rather than to the Christmas tree of the ship. Then it appeared to steady and level, and began to nervously, cautiously approach the stern of the rescue ship. The helipad was now a white-lit dish, no bigger than a dinner plate from their altitude. The radio chatter between the pilot and the ship flicked back and forth in his headset, suggesting routine, orderliness, expertise.
Ardenyev's pilot brought his MiL almost to the hover, as if they were drifting with the wind's assistance, feather-like. Yet when Ardenyev glanced across at him, the man's knuckles were white. It did not indicate mental or emotional strain, merely made Ardenyev aware of the turbulence outside; its heaving against the fragile canopy of the helicopter. The pressure to move them, overturn them, crush them, was like a great depth of seawater. Once the image made contact with reality, a circuit was formed that alarmed him. The slow-motion below was fraught, dangerous now.
The fly-like MiL drifted towards the helipad. Ardenyev could see tiny figures on the deck, and their bent shapes, their clinging to rails and surfaces, indicated the force of the wind. Its volume seemed to increase outside.
The deck of the rescue ship heaved, and the light seemed to spill like liquid over the ship's side on to the surface of the water. The whitecaps opened like teeth in a huge black jaw. The sight of the water's distress and power was sudden, making the rescue ship fragile and the helicopter approaching it more insect-like than ever. It was a fly hovering above a motorway, awaiting an encounter with a windscreen.
The helicopter flicked away, much like a gull caught by a gust of wind, and the pilot's voice was high-pitched, his relieved laughter unreal and forced.
"Mishka, get away from there! We'll divert to the Kiev and winch them down. You'll never be able to use auto-hover, the deck's pitching too much."
"Don't worry, Grandad," the voice of Orlov's pilot came back. "Just a temporary hitch. Watch this."
The words now seemed to Ardenyev to have an empty bravado which he despised and which frightened him. Yet the rescue ship seemed to have settled again, the whitecapped waves to have subsided, slipping back into the shadows beneath the deck of the Karpaty. The MiL began to sidle towards the helipad again. Tiny figures crouched, as if at its approach, ready to secure the helicopter the moment its wheels touched.
The pilot instructed the Karpaty's captain that he would switch to auto-hover just above the deck, which would allow the helicopter to automatically move with the pitching of the ship, so that the deck would always remain at the same level beneath the MiL. Ardenyev saw his own pilot shaking his head.
"What's wrong?"
"What?"
"I said, what's wrong? You're shaking your head."
"The deck's pitching and rolling too much, and I think he's out of the limits for auto-hover and height hold." The pilot shrugged. "Perhaps it isn't from where he is. I don't know." He glanced at Ardenyev as if daring him to comment, or inviting personal insult.
"If there's any real danger, order him to divert — or I will."
Creeping whiteness appeared at the edges of their canopy, like some cataract or a detached retina beginning to float. The sleet had returned. Ardenyev's pilot increased the beat of the wipers, and they watched, oblivious of everything else, even of attempting to interfere, as the MiL below them banked, levelled, sidled forward, moved above the white dish of the helipad. There was a long moment of stillness, accompanied by the breathy whispering of Ardenyev's pilot: "Go on, go on, my son, go on, go on —"
The noise irritated and disturbed Ardenyev. The MiL was above the deck now, and lowering towards it. Stillness. A white-knuckled hand at the corner of his eye, whiteness creeping around the canopy, flying between them and the garishly-lit scene below. The navigation lights of the carrier, outlining a huge, safe bulk, in the distance. Ardenyev held his breath. They were going to make it. When they, too, had landed, Orlov would study his face; there'd better be no trace left of anxiety or doubt, or the young man would burst out laughing —
Dropping slowly like a spider coming down its thread; very slowly. Ardenyev could see himself, years before, watching such a spider in his bedroom, coming slowly down its thread, confident, small, agile, an acrobat. And slowly he had begun to blow upwards, making the spider swing, making it uncertain, vulnerable, that tiny creature who had abseiled from the ceiling with such arrogance. It had crawled, scuttling upside-down, back up its rope of thread, then dropped again with slightly more caution. Blow again. He had blown again.
The MiL hopped away from the deck as if electrocuted. Then it began to drop slowly, more slowly than before, towards the deck as it once more became level. The glimpse of the whitecaps vanished into the night.