Close Quarters

FORTY-SIX

There was nothing for it. It was no good running. I slammed on the brakes and this time we stopped dead. I threw my door open and Travis did the same.

‘Out and go!’ I shouted, and saw Travis respond and bale out, hitting the ground in a roll. It must have hurt like hell but it was better than staying to be used for target practice.

I paused long enough to lean into the back, then ran round and hauled Travis to his feet and dragged him away from the car. I was keeping low so the men in the helicopter didn’t see the OSV.

If I was going to have to fight, I wanted to fight back with something they’d know about.

When I glanced back the Mi-24 was hovering two hundred yards out, the pilot looking right down at us through the upper windshield. I wondered why he wasn’t using his guns. Maybe they were simply puzzled by our actions … or maybe they thought we were truly delusional and were going to try to out-run them.

I caught a glimpse of the crewman in the side door; he was leaning out to get a better view of us and shouting something into his intercom. He looked really pissed about something, and I suddenly realized what his problem was.

They hadn’t got a full complement of weapons. There were no rocket pods under the stubby wings and I was guessing they only had the side-mounted machine gun. They’d grabbed the only machine that was airworthy but it wasn’t fully equipped. To do anything to us they’d have to turn sideways on, and the pilot’s lack of experience with the machine wasn’t helping.

Then the pilot flicked side-on to us, and the man in the doorway grinned and punched the air with his fist. Damn.

I pushed Travis away. ‘Split and stay down!’

He rolled away and scrambled into a shallow depression in the ground, and I found my own a couple of seconds later. Neither spot was going to help one bit if the gunner opened fire, but if he was as inexperienced as the pilot, we might just get a few seconds’ grace.

I checked the OSV and slung it into my shoulder, and the pilot’s face jumped into the lens of the optical gun-sight. He was fighting with the controls to keep the machine steady and I figured having the crewman screaming orders at him wasn’t helping his coordination any.

I swung right and saw the barrel of the machine gun coming towards us, and to one side, the crewman waving his arms and giving instructions.

From what I recalled of the Mi-24’s characteristics, the 12.7mm rounds from the OSV, as heavy as they were compared to normal rifles, would probably bounce off the fuselage and the glass of the twin bubbles. The aircraft had been designed to withstand a lot of punishment and was all but invulnerable to normal weapons.

But I was hoping the pilot didn’t know that.

I got a bead on the pilot’s cockpit and squeezed the trigger.

Even with the helicopter’s twin engines pounding the airwaves, the sound of the shot was loud. The gun kicked hard against my shoulder and jumped a little sideways, and I pulled it back ready to sight on the gunner’s window. But I didn’t get a chance to fire. There was a split second of nothing, then the helicopter tipped sideways as if it had been hit by a battering ram and veered away. I followed it, watching the pilot’s upper body moving frantically to bring it under control. The crewman was hanging from the doorway by his safety harness and trying to grab hold of anything to hand.

It took maybe ten seconds for the pilot to get his act together and for the machine to become stable, by which time they had moved a couple of hundred yards away. But even at this distance I could tell the impact of the round on the window near his head must have scared the pilot and made him even more jumpy than ever. He was looking towards us, his mouth open, and I could see what looked like a star-shaped crack in the glass.

‘Watchman, we have new information. Incoming fighter is arming, ready to attack. Suggest you get off the road now.’

I sighted on the side rear window where the machine gun was mounted, and fired again. Then I immediately swung a fraction to the rear and fired into the open doorway, where the crewman was scrambling to get back inside. I had no idea what the shots did inside the cabin, but in such a confined space, it might serve to give the crew a taste of what the pilot had just suffered.

If the pilot hadn’t been busy fighting to stay in the air, or blowing a Land Cruiser and its passengers to pieces, he should have picked up the warning blare from his instrument panel of an incoming fighter on an attack run. But maybe he could be forgiven the lack of focus. One moment they were kings of the sky, rulers of everything below them; next moment there was a thunderous roar and the ground beyond them was blown apart by a volley of shells, followed by the shape of a fighter plane going by close overhead and curving round in a tight turn.

It had been a warning pass. The next one wouldn’t be.

The helicopter pilot instantly got the message, and veered away. But his gunner didn’t receive the memo. He was now facing the departing fighter, and let loose a long burst of machine gun fire for the sheer hell of it. Or maybe he was too scared to know better.

When the fighter came in on its second run, the pilot was no longer kidding around. He must have picked up on the fact that he’d been fired on.

The plane came in low, streaking across the landscape, the twin upright tail fins flashing in the light, a deadly arrow on-target for a kill. The sound of the engines wasn’t yet reaching us, but a slight buzz was building in the atmosphere.

Then the pilot opened fire and the Mi-24 disintegrated.

Travis and I hit the ground and covered our heads. I heard him yelling something but I couldn’t tell what it was; the air was being ripped apart by the noise of the helicopter exploding and the shattering roar of the Su-27 going over and disappearing into the sky. It left behind the smell of kerosene, explosives and burning metal, and a shower of wreckage coming down around us like heavy rain.

Travis began to get to his feet, wide-eyed with terror, and I reached out and grabbed him, pulling him back down. There was nothing we could do but stay down and wait for it to end. If anything bigger than a dinner plate came down on us, we wouldn’t know much about it, anyway.

When I judged it was clear, I looked up and got to my feet. The majority of the wreckage had fallen pretty much where the helicopter had taken the hit. But we were lying in a sea of fragments, of glass, of metal, of plastic and unidentifiable shards of blackened metal. A scrap of paper fluttered down and fastened itself to my chest. I took it off.

It was a warning label about the dangers of live ammunition.

I shook my head to clear my hearing, temporarily dulled by the noise, and dragged Travis back towards the Land Cruiser which, other than being sprinkled with tiny bits of wreckage, had survived intact. As we approached it, a pickup truck appeared from the west and stopped a hundred yards away. An old man climbed out to inspect the damage, then looked at me as I opened the door of the car, noting with a look of awe the sniper’s rifle and drawing the wrong conclusion.

I nodded politely and we got in and drove away, leaving him to rationalize what he had seen and tell his grandchildren when he got home. They would probably never believe him.

‘Watchman, report. Come in, Watchman.’ It was Callahan again.

‘We’re good and mobile,’ I reassured him. ‘You might like to pass on our thanks to Kiev for the help.’

‘Wish I could.’ There was a smile of relief in his voice. ‘But all we did was pass them the coordinates and told them it was on an attack run.’

‘Just in time. We were lined up for the kill.’

‘It might not be over yet. Two Mi-8 transports have just left Dnipropetrovsk airborne brigade base heading south towards your location. Estimated convergence in eighteen minutes. No indications of target, but comms analysis between them and their base shows it to be a scheduled flight. But be aware they might be diverted to recce the site.’

‘Got that. We won’t be here.’

I disconnected and settled down to drive. My nerve endings were sky high and taking a while to settle, but I’d been in situations like this before. I knew it would be a long while before Travis regained any equilibrium. I left him to it; it was best if he got to grips with what had happened without me trying to force it. Some people took longer than others to get over a near-death experience of military action, others never truly did.

I kept a weather eye on the sky to the north. I wasn’t particularly concerned by the two transport helicopters heading this way; if what Callahan had surmised was correct, they would circle and examine, but wouldn’t stop unless they had good reason. In all likelihood they’d arrange for a ground team to come out and examine the site of the wreckage and clear it off the road, but in the current climate, that would be the extent of their concern.

We encountered no traffic coming towards us to speak of, save for three delivery trucks from a small haulage company, no doubt desperate to keep going in spite of the unrest, and a handful of farm-type vehicles, off-roaders and pickups, mostly bashed and smashed and carrying bales of hay or animals. The Land Cruiser fitted right in, and I kept my fingers crossed that it would stay that way. I knew I could probably talk my way past any normal patrol, but I wasn’t so sure about Travis. He was too obviously foreign, clearly not well and jumpy as hell. If they were looking for a guilty man, he was right out of the police training manual suspects page.

He’d fallen asleep and was mumbling vaguely with the onset of a temperature and the influence of a couple more painkillers I’d given him. But he came sharply awake when one of the trucks blared a horn in a friendly salute and the Land Cruiser rocked under the side-draft of its passing.

‘What was that?’ He looked around, eyes struggling to stay open, and relaxed when he spotted the trucks disappearing behind us. He reached down at his feet and gulped some water from a plastic bottle. ‘Sorry. Gave me a surprise.’ He dropped the window and spat out to clear his mouth. ‘The woman earlier,’ he said. ‘She sounded young. What is she — CIA?’

‘Yes. But you didn’t hear that from me. She’s our eyes and ears in the sky.’ I stared hard at him to gauge if he was fully awake enough to absorb some instructions. It was time to get a few facts straight between us. ‘I’m heading for the border with Moldova. It’s about the best way out of here. It’ll take several hours, even longer if we have to use secondary roads or tracks for any reason, which is possible. I don’t know what we’re going to run into up ahead, but if anything happens to me, listen to Lindsay and do exactly as she says. She will guide you out of here.’ I tapped the cell phone which lay on the seat beside me. ‘This is a direct encrypted link, so you’ll get through to her every time. But it’s only to be used in short bursts. And don’t use it to call home.’ I pointed at the sky. ‘You know who might be listening.’

‘I understand.’ Travis looked sombre at the reminder of home. It was tough on him, having the means to call them so close at hand; but doing an E.T. was out of the question. ‘Are you expecting something to happen to you?’

‘Not if I can avoid it. But it pays to be ready. You OK with that?’

He nodded carefully, as if he knew it made sense but was struggling to accept the fact. Rules were easy if you could follow them without question. But sometimes it went against the grain of emotion and logic to take it on board. ‘Yeah, I got it.’ He turned and stared out the window, and I let him do it. He needed to get back in the frame and focus on not doing anything that might stop us getting out of here in one piece; otherwise calling his family would be the last thing he’d ever accomplish.

I checked in the mirrors for signs of movement, but the horizon behind us was clear save for a wisp of dark smoke hovering over the crash site. So far so good.

‘Christ, Portman,’ he said suddenly, his voice soft, ‘how do you do this work? Do they seriously pay you enough to make it worthwhile?’

‘Enough? Probably not. But nobody forces me to take it on.’

I steered round a long right-hand curve and overtook two small trucks carrying vegetables, and peered past Travis to watch the skies to the north. A couple of large transport helicopters travelling together on the same heading should be easy enough to spot, and I hoped would ignore us and keep on going.