"OK." Gant sounded reluctant, but took off the headset.
During the first overflight of the beach, the flight crew would select visual markers, make their fixes, define exact distances. Making the strip of sand a grid, a pattern — a dropping zone.
He looked at Anders. '"Thanks."
"For what?"
"Seeing the inevitable."
"Shouldn't you—?"
"I want to see that beach."
They stared through adjacent windows. Perhaps six hundred feet up now, no more. The sea stretched away from them without wrinkling, without waves, like some vast lagoon. The edge of the tide flowed beneath the Galaxy's belly. Its huge shadow, coldly black on the white sand, wing tip over the water's edge. Gant glanced at the frozen frame of the map display, and began to recognize the shallow curve of the beach, the knoll of palms, the cradling arm of the sandbank. The transparent water seemed to run with silver veins, like mercury flowing over a blue-green glass slide. There were no rocks littering the beach, just the sand. He glanced across the hold. Trees flickered in the windows like an old, dark film, beyond the starboard wing.
Straight, flat, wide. The DZ.
"Good luck," Anders murmured.
"What? Oh, yes. Keep in touch."
"Wait for my—"
"Sure. It's in the bag. They won't want two Russian choppers sitting on one of their beaches for too long. See you, Anders."
He left the window. The Galaxy, having completed its check run, was beginning to climb and turn. The flight deck conversation, relayed to the hold, became more desultory. His stomach felt hollow. Nerves gripped him, shaking his body until he clenched down on them. A flight of seabirds, cormorants or pelicans, had risen agitatedly into the air from near the sandbank as the Galaxy flew over them. The captain's voice dismissed them as a possible hazard. Pelicans, he decided. Huge beaks and white bodies. Now settling like scraps of blown paper onto the cool, transparent water.
He winked at Mac, who was already strapped into his seat in the gunner s separate cockpit. Mac grinned.
He strapped himself into his seat, fitted his helmet, checked the cabin for anything not stowed or fixed. Fuel tanks empty. There was no way they could have risked a drop with fuel aboard. They'd fuel up from the drums, using the hand pump on the third pallet.
"Mac?"
"OK, sir." Mac seemed relieved, fitting once more into his role, their relationship.
"Then just hold on tight. Like the roller coaster, that's all it is."
The Galaxy was still turning in its great loop to approach the beach from its original heading. The loadmaster appeared below the pilot's cabin. Gant raised his thumb, the loadmaster responded, then turned to watch the drop-signal lamps. He pressed the right earpiece of his headset against his ear and raised his left arm as the red lamp glowed. When the green light replaced it, he would drop his arm and the crewman next to the ramp panel would press the toggle. The drogue chute would be ejected into the slipstream of the Galaxy. The main canopy would trail after it, and then jerk open folly, pulling the first pallet out in an instant, a mere twenty feet above the sand. fie could not tune the VHF set to the Galaxy flight deck's frequency. The intercom system operated by wire, like a telephone. He must sit in ignorance, in silence, until the loadmaster's arm indicated he was on his way. He would know nothing until the drogue chute opened, beginning to pull him through the doors. The feces of the Galaxy's cargo crew, harnessed and helmeted, would be the last thing he saw inside the transport, before they began rushing past him, as if seen from a speeding train. Red light, green light, moving arm, the jerk of the parachutes.
"Garcia?" he asked.
"Major?" Formality seemed to assist Garcia, just as it did with Mac. Or were they still distancing themselves from his decision? Garcia s voice issued from the walkie-talkie secured to the cockpit framework. They would use them for close-proximity communications over Afghanistan and inside Soviet airspace, thus reducing the chances of any radio transmissions being detected.
He flicked to Transmit.
"You OK?"
"Sure, Major." Garcia's voice was too quick, too hollow.
"Just cool it. Never been backward out of a Galaxy before?" The mild joke went unappreciated, and Gant merely shrugged. "Just hang in there, Garcia."
The Galaxy's course was straight and level once more. Its engines rushed distantly, like a wind. The cockpit seemed to close in around Gant. His hands touched the inert controls of the MiL. He glanced in his mirror—
— jaws opening.
The rear cargo doors of the Galaxy were slowly opening, seemingly in preparation to take some huge bite at the whiteness flowing beneath. Gant held his breath, looking down the flank of his own helicopter, past the 24A and the fuel drums. The doors widened their gape. White sand, the edge of the ripple-less tide, the darkness of trees.
Zero feet. Gant glanced at the loadmaster and the operator over whom he seemed to be leaning.
Three seconds, two—
Green light, glowing to one side of the hold, splashing on the flank of Garcias MiL. The sand rushed now, a white runway as the Galaxy gave the illusion of landing.
"Sweet Mother of Jesus," someone was muttering. Garcia?
Edge of the water. Sand. Green light.
Go—
In his mirror, Gant saw the pallet of secured fuel drums lurch toward the mouth of the cargo hold, its drogue chute out in the sunlight, the main canopy opening like a painted mouth.
5: Flotsam
Six bottles had contained beer, the larger bottle vodka. They were all empty now. Filip Kedrov studied them, shaking each of the bottles in turn as if tuning a set of musical bells. Then he replaced each with exaggerated care on the bunk opposite his; a rank of brightly painted toy soldiers. Dead soldiers, he reminded himself, and giggled.
Nothing else to do, he justified his tipsiness to himself. Bloody nothing else to do but sit and wait, just as he had been doing for the past twenty-four hours. Good thing he'd brought the bottles, an even better thing that he'd stored the vodka and some cans down here on an earlier visit. It had been intended as overstocking, but… the cans were all empty, too. In the bunker's kitchen, in the metal sink. There had been nothing else to do.
He flopped onto his bunk, slightly theatrically, hands clasped behind his head, which commenced whirling and spinning disconcertingly. Keep your eyes open. He raised his knees gently. The room began to spin.
He sat up quickly. His head lurched, and he wanted to hold it but was forced to grip the edge of the bunk with both hands if he was not to become one of those dolls with rounded bases that rocked back and forth for whole minutes after a single touch. His head bung over his knees; he groaned. The sound washed away down the long, empty corridor of the room.
He should have known, should have known he would get drunk out of sheer boredom. He released the bunk and held his head softly. After he had cradled it for a time, he looked up slowly. The row of bottles remained still. The opposite bunk did not lurch. He swallowed the sickly saliva in his mouth, and his stomach remained at some distance below his throat. He sighed cautiously.
All the drink had gone now, anyway. He focused slowly on the dial of his watch. Midmorning. Twenty-four hours had passed down there, two days since he had had Orlov send the last signal — well, almost two; a day and a half at least. They would be on their way now, coming for him. They had to come, didn't they? He felt certain they would, confident of the fact, and kicked his legs over the edge of the bunk like a child on a seawall. Soon he'd have to think about moving from here.
When?
Tomorrow would be early enough. It was difficult to decide, to imagine the distances, the time of their journey. But they wouldn't waste time, not with Thursday only two days away. And he had another hiding place, at the pickup point, the exact and agreed rendezvous. He would go there tomorrow. The helicopters would come in probably disguised as Russian machines — from where? Turkey, Afghanistan, more than a thousand miles away—