More slugs snapped low over his head as a second squad automatic opened up, raking his position. Dragging his rifle behind him, he hunched backward down the trail a few yards, pressing low in the meager shelter of the compacted snow. Coming up onto his knees again, he spotted the movement of a Spetsnaz trooper crawling toward the station. Smith squeezed off two hasty shots before the covering gunners shifted fire to his new position.
Smith recognized a losing scenario when he saw one. The battery of light machine guns he faced could simply throw too much lead too fast. By using alternating overwatch fire, the Russians could keep him pinned while they worked around to a kill position on his flanks. It was only a matter of time.
Gregori Smyslov had traded his life for a few precious minutes of that commodity. Now it was his turn. He had to keep fire off the helicopter. He had to protract his death long enough to give Val and Randi their chance.
The two women heard the sudden hammer crash of gunfire beyond the station.
“Randi?”
“Get in!”
As Valentina threw herself on the deck behind the pilots’ seats, Randi ran a final eye over the cockpit instrumentation. She didn’t like what she saw, especially the battery rates. But nothing was going to get any better. She set her throttle position and energized the starter.
Overhead, in the power pack, the turbines sluggishly started their spin-up against the drag and inertia of cold metal. Slowly a rotor blade swung past, too slowly. Randi willed the tachometer needles upward into the green ignition zone. The battery amperage flickered ominously as the drain grew.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” She got off the starter before the final dregs of battery power bled away.
Valentina thrust her head and shoulders over the pilot’s seat. “Miss Russell, as the saying goes, failure is not an option here!”
“I know, damn it! Let me think!”
There had to be something! But it wouldn’t be anything in the book. The book said it was impossible to get airborne under these circumstances. The book said they were all going to die on the ground. It would have to be something else. An anecdote read once about a peculiarity of the Bell Ranger family of helicopters. What had it been? What had it been?
“Spin the tail rotor!” Randi screeched.
“What?”
“Spin the tail rotor by hand while I crank it! It’s connected through a direct driveshaft to the transmission. It’ll take some of the load off the starter motor!”
“What the bloody ever!” Valentina called back, scrambling out of the open side hatch.
In the cockpit sideview mirror Randi watched as Valentina positioned herself at the end of the fuselage boom, hands braced on the small, vertically mounted blade of the tail rotor.
“Ready!” the historian called.
“Right! Cranking now!”
Once more the starter whined. As the tail rotor began to spin, Valentina shoved down on it with all her weight, kicking it around. Shifting her grip, she repeated the move again and again. As the RPMs climbed she began to ride the blades single-handed, adding her strength to the electric starter.
In the cockpit Randi watched the tachometers as Valentina’s efforts were magnified by the transmission gearing. The needle edged upward, not quite to ignition range. Not quite. Not quite. The ammeter needles began to quiver.
“Get clear!” she screamed. “Get clear!” That was as good as it was going to get.
Randi saw Valentina throw herself backward and out of the way, and she shoved the starter switch into the ignition detente. Flame flickered in the engine throats. A soft, rising vacuum cleaner moan supplanted the starter whine, and the engine temperature gauges snapped to attention.
“Yes!” Randi twisted the throttle grip on the collective, and the turbines screamed in response, the main rotor blurring into its thudding beat, the Long Ranger coming to life.
Laughing, Valentina scrambled back into the cabin. Throwing her arms around the pilot’s seat, she administered a gleeful hug.
“What were Jon’s orders?” Randi yelled over her shoulder.
“Oh, he said a lot of things! Let’s go fetch him!”
Smith felt the contrast of the heat beating on his back, and the cold beneath his belly. He’d gone prone beside the flaming frame of the bunk hut, using the swirling smoke for cover. Two of the surviving Spetsnaz were still out ahead of him somewhere, firing short, economical bursts. The third was off to his right at about two o’clock and still working steadily around to an enfilade position. Soon the third man would be in position to lay down suppressive fire, and the first two men could start working in.
Rolling onto his side, Smith squeezed off half a dozen rounds offhand toward the third man, emptying the magazine and driving the Russian to ground momentarily. Snaking back a couple of yards, he found another shallow depression in the snow and reloaded.
This was getting nasty. In another minute he was going to have to fall back to the lab hut, and the smoke cover would start working in favor of the Spetsnaz.
In an action movie this would be an excellent time for the relief force to come thundering over the horizon. But Smith didn’t believe in Hollywood anymore. Incrementally he lifted his head and peered around, judging his terrain. No, on second thought, he wouldn’t fall back any farther. If the Russians reached the first hut, they’d have a line of sight and fire on the helipad. He’d make his stand here.
It was interesting, he noted, how abstractly a person could decide on his dying ground. The scientist and diagnostician within him said it was due merely to the numbing effect of shock and emotional overload. Psychologically, he was not actually comprehending the concept of his own death.
The romantic and the soldier counterpointed that one man’s life really wasn’t that important in the greater scheme of the world, and if it could be expended in the saving of things and people one cared about, the spending was not so bitter.
Behind him he heard the rising metallic whistle of a helicopter’s engines. Good girl, Randi, you always manage. That bastard out at two o’clock would have the best angle of fire on a departing copter, so Smith nestled his cheek against the chill stock of the SR-25. Laying the sighting crosshairs on the knob of snow the Russian was crouching behind, he started knocking chunks off it.
The whine of the turbines intermixed with the drone of lifting rotors. That was it. His people were out of it and clear.
And then Smith realized the drone wasn’t drawing away; it was coming closer. He twisted around and bellowed an incoherent curse.
Hovering in ground effect at a mere ten feet altitude, the Long Ranger was sidling in over the station, snow and smoke swirling in the lift wash. A slender gun barrel protruded from the open side hatch, the venomous crack of Valentina’s Winchester echoing as she put fire in on the Spetsnaz positions.
To rage, hesitate, or even think would see them all dead. One end of the laboratory building was not yet fully involved; its roof not yet burning. Scrambling to his feet, Smith backed toward the lab hut, emptying the SR-25’s magazine, not hoping to hit, but just to keep hostile heads down for a few critical seconds.
The bolt slammed on an empty chamber, and he turned and sprinted the last few yards. He threw his rifle at the rooftop, swearing again as it rebounded and skidded off. There was no time to fool with it. He vaulted for the roof edge, straight-arming himself onto the unburned section. It proved to be not nearly as stable as it had looked, and flame licked at him.
Randi had him spotted, and the Long Ranger moved in, easing past the wind turbine tower, the starboard pontoon pushing closer through the smoke.