Crusaders in Hell

SNOWBALLS IN HELL Chris Morris

When his horse started dissolving under him, Alexander the Great was riding along the shore of a wine-dark sea.

Though the beach he cantered along was no longer the beach of Troy, it had been that, once.

Alexander had fought here then, with Achilles and Diomedes by his side. Or he thought he had.

He remembered it.

The horse under him was the noble Bucephahis, long lost and now found again.

For Bucephalus' sake, for the mighty heart beating under that black hide, for the mane that whipped now in his face and the soft sweetness of a kiss from that velvet muzzle, Alexander had left his new-found Achaean friends behind.

Friends were hard to come by in Hell. But Bucephalus, the war horse of Alexander's Earthly life, had been reunited with him and the choice between staying with the horse or returning to a higher hell had been no choice at all, So he'd stayed behind, here on what was once the battle plain of Ilion but remade itself anew, periodically. He'd stayed with Bucephalus, alone.

And now, on a canter to nowhere for no particular reason, Bucephalus was starting to leave him.

To dissolve. To decompose. To scream and become ectoplasmic and ... gone.

Alexander too was screaming, though he didn't know it. He was crying and this he knew. He couldn't see clearly but he could see-and feel-the horse between his thighs becoming dust and air and sand and...

Bright white light came from somewhere, burning away the sea mist and destroying everything in its path. Alexander twisted his fingers in what remained of Bucephalus' mane and yelled, "I love you Bucephalus. I'll never forget you. I'll not rest until we find each other again!"

By the time he'd howled the last words he was falling, unseated by a ghost horse who might never have been there. Falling forever. He didn't hit the ground. He fell and fell.

Trying to brace for a concussion of flesh and ground that would not come, his tears dried. Dried in the wind and the white light and the grief that emptied his soul. And still he fell.

He fell through white wind and soon he fell sideways. He opened his eyes and squinted into the light and noticed that he wasn't the only one falling: he saw others, shadows passing at a distance, dark dapples in the light. And then he realized, by the way his hair was whipping around his eyes, that he wasn't falling downward. He was falling up!

How can a man fall up? He couldn't understand it. He clenched his fists and brought them to his eyes. And there he found, wound among his fingers, long, midnight strands of Bucephalus' mane. He laughed a defiant laugh, clutching those strands to his face.

And fell some more, until at last he began to sense that he was falling downward. Through the white light he could See dark plateaus. He could see clouds below him. He could see lands far and wide, with rivers and forests.

Forests toward which he was falling at a terrifying rate. Doubtless, he told himself as he pinwheeled in the air, he would hit the ground and die instantly. Death, in Hell, meant the Trip: he would suffer, he would crash and crumple and shatter like faience; then he would awake in New Hell on the Undertaker's table, subject to the foul jokes of the Chief Mortician. And then he would be Reassigned.

Next to losing Bucephalus, it was a minor horror. He was Alexander the Great.

He was not afraid of Hell's bureaucracy, only of himself-of his capacity for love and his capacity for rage.

So as he fell ever more quickly toward a stand of trees among which wound a series of roads, he clutched the strands of Bucephalus' mane more tightly, and tied one end of the strands to his chiton's clasp, the other to his wrist.

No matter what happened to him, or where he woke, he would have that talisman of love and luck when he lived again. For Alexander, who had been separated from Bucephalus for millennia, those strands were all the luck and all the hope he needed.

Death was a mere inconvenience.

Or so he thought, until he began falling through a stand of pines. Every branch that broke under his weight stabbed him. Every bough that bent slapped him. Every trunk rebounded him like a pinball in that game the New Dead played. Every pine needle pierced him.

And then he began to wonder where he was dying: if you died in certain deeper Hells, like that of Troy, rumor had it you never found your way back to the Undertaker, You experienced nothingness. Forever. Or you didn't experience anything. Ever again.

Suddenly the pain of his fall became precious-it was experience. Alexander had stayed sane in Hell because he was Alexander-was always Alexander, would always be Alexander.

The idea of "not being" terrified him. What had happened to Bucephalus? He shook his head, falling with his eyes closed, and his skull hit a tree trunk.

Hard.

The last. thing he thought, before his body hit the ground in a marsh and a rush of reed and water, was that if Bucephalus was really gone forever, he must face it. And face a similar fate with courage.

But that much courage, Alexander the Great did not have. "No!" he screamed, at the top of his lungs, until those lungs filled up with marsh water and his battered body sank in the mud.

It wasn't easy, being the only volunteer angel in Hell, but Altos was doing the best job he could.

He'd been co-opted into the rebel camp, into the Dissident movement, by men of low degree for foul purpose - those who followed Che Guevara, those who took orders from a Pentagram faction headed by Tigellinus and Mithridates.

He'd come to the Dissidents for reasons that none of those who'd brought him even suspected, until it was too late. There had been an air strike called on (he Dissidents' camp by the Devil's Children. Altos had gone among the rebels to save whomever he could.

Not "save" in the sense of salvation, manumission, or ascension to heavenly estate, although he could and would offer true salvation to any he found deserving-it was part of his job. But, among the Dissidents, before the cleansing fire of the air strike, he'd found none ready for salvation.

He had, however, found many ready for mercy, many who might feel the hand of God if it touched them, even here. So he had gone into the camp in full awareness of the napalm soon to come, of the cluster bombs and area denial munitions which were among the Devil's favorite tools. And he had denied, as was his mandate, Satan's will.

For the sake of the souls here who were worth tempering, of those on the path toward redemption, he had spread a warning in the camp and urged the Dissidents down into their ubiquitous tunnels. Many had heeded him, and many had been saved from the Devil's crucible of fire. Temporarily, of course.

Now, walking along a wooden path toward the marsh by which the refugee Dissidents were encamped. Altos contemplated the meaning of salvation, when applied to the damned. The salvation he could offer the Dissidents was not complete because they were not ready. They were not yet good. Some of them, however, were increasingly less bad. Thus, he had managed to keep them from the Undertaker's table, from disbandment and Reassignments.

Reassignments, more than any other bureau among Hell's proliferate bureacracy, was Altos' antagonist. The Reassignments computer and the souls who manned it strove to keep the damned lonely, bitter, venal, and horrid. Altos strove to teach them community, hope, sacrifice, and generosity.

When Satan dispatched his Children with their fighter-bombers full of hellfire. Altos had been among the Dissidents to shepherd them out of harm's way. He had even confronted one of the Devil's Children, an agent named Welch, face to face.

And that had been wrenching, because Altos was an angel and thus subject to the occasional unsolicited Revelation. Looking into Welch's eyes, he had had one: the Devil's agent was not committed to evil; this man who did Satan's will was closer to salvation than Che Guevara, than many of the Dissidents.

Welch thought of himself as a soldier in the service of order, and of order as an ameliorating factor in the suffering of the damned.

It had been disconcerting to meet the pragmatic gaze of a man who had made an accommodation with his fate that allowed him to serve the Devil-well-without becoming Satanized. In those eyes for the angel to see was a life spent on earth in similar circumstances.

Welch had personal standards to which he adhered and a perception of the evil around him that made the man, in his own mind, almost a comrade in arms of the angel.

Only Welch, being human, took the failings of his fellows more personally. Not only did the agent believe that he himself belonged here, but that everyone he met did. In fact. Altos had learned in that cataclysmic locking of eyes, Welch didn't believe that there were any better men in heaven. It was his catechism that real men went to hell.

The member of die Devil's Children had no designs on a pass to heaven. The Child merely did his job. When Altos had gone back into the camp to save the Dissidents in the face of the air strike, Welch's pity had followed after the angel like a balm.

Pity from a damned soul? An irredeemable? For Welch was surely that, as an agent of Satanic will. It troubled the angel still, so long after.

It had troubled him while he hustled the Dissidents down into the tunnels. It had troubled him when Che had refused to run, hesitated to hide, dug in his rebellious heels and kept a score of men with him on the surface.

All of those were back, now: the Devil's Reassignments bureau knew its job.

Che and his staunchest followers had been returned to the Undertakers, debriefed, their hearts and souls gleaned of all they knew and planned and schemed. Then they'd been returned to their band, having betrayed everyone and everything that supported them.

Che Guevara knew this, and he sulked in his tent, weakened in mind and body.

He had betrayed Mithridates and Tigellinus and even the hired mercenaries who served him as bug as the Pentagram faction's gold held out. Che couldn't help it. He'd been through the System, taken the Trip.

The Devil was impressing the fruitlessness of revolution on Guevara, the hopelessness of hope itself. And it was working. Che was nearly broken. He was listless and uncommunicative. His lieutenants covered The change in Their leader as best They could, but Altos knew: Guevara, The leader who inspired

The Dissidents, was drained of inspiration, merely going through The motions.

And so. Altos could not leave the band of rebels: if Che did not recover and no new leader took his place, the entire Dissident movement would dissolve. At such a moment, the volunteer angel must witness Satan's victory and The final damnation of These many souls.

You're not truly damned until you accept it. You're not lost until you lose hope. You're not irredeemable until you lose faith in redemption. Like Welch.

The angel shook his head and hiked up his robe as his sandals squished, sinking into boggy ground, pushing thoughts of the Devil's Child away. Here the cattails were as high a his blond head and the smell of putrefaction was like that which blurts from a man's rectum; the marsh was near at hand. AH around was white gas rising, opaque and cloudlike, making it hard to see your hand before your face.

The gas eddied and hung low in the air, in patches and whirls and swirls.

Somewhere out Acre, creatures lived: he could hear insect-like cluttering and froglike croaking and the calls of murderous owls and hawks and gulls. And then he heard another sound, and stopped. It was a moan of pain, a human moan, from a throat in torture. Altos hiked his robes above his knees and headed toward the sound.

His ankles sank into the mud. Fetid water swirled about his knees, scummy and dotted with algae, larvae, and worse. Mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds dove at him, veering at the last instant: he was an angel; the smell of his flesh, sweet and clean, repelled the suckers of impure blood.

On he struggled, stumbling so That his white robe soaked up mud and became an impediment He tore it at the knee and cast away the lower part of his garment, pressing on toward the moans, which were fainter, though he knew he approached The moaner.

A soul in torment could draw the angel like filings to a magnet, if it were the right sort of soul. Altos could not fail to find this roan if the whole of Upper Hell were in between them, for the man was calling on God for help.

The words were garbled, but the intent was clear. The man was delirious-The damned did not call on God in Hell. Not if they were in their right minds. But this one was in such pain that he didn't know what he was saying.

When Altos broke through a stand of reeds and saw The distant battered body in its pool of blood-stained mud and scum, There were already predators about, waiting with slavering jaws and open beaks: Jackals and ospreys and wolves and vultures.

'Shoo!" called Altos, his arms waving. "Get away!"

The carrion-eaters scattered, but did not disappear. They retreated and reformed, lurking, curious, their nostrils fall of the odor of an incipient feast.

This man might be eaten alive, a particularly unpleasant fate here, where death would not come early, and memory would linger through resurrection and beyond. Might be, if Altos couldn't help him.

The angel paused, thinking as he did so that he was out of earshot of the camp. He would have to drag or carry this roan to The Dissidents, if he could be moved. Or simply sit with him until his soul bled out, until sleep came if he could not.

More, Altos had no power to do. Preparing a soul for heaven wasn't something one could do in minutes. Everyone here was here for a reason. Altos could not commute a sentence out of hand, no matter the heart-wrenching plight of the sufferer.

So he cautioned himself, hastening toward the wounded man. And as he got closer, and the footing beneath him became more treacherous, his steps began to lighten. Soon -he was treading water then walking upon it.

Then his sandals skimmed the marshy surface. And, as he approached to within ten feet of the moaning man, the angel was levitating freely.

Altos could only levitate under certain conditions. The condition here, which lightened his heart sufficiently to allow the angel's body to rise, and float, was inherent in the soul whose body he approached.

Floating freely. Altos settled slowly toward the man, his knees bending, his mind foil of questions. Who could it be, who faced death with such equanimity?

Who could it be, who had such passion for life and such love in his unrepentant soul? Who could it be, who met his fate so boldly That merely being in his presence caused Altos' heart such joy?

Kneeling as he descended. Altos settled by the body and brushed mud and blood from The battered face. The countenance revealed was beautiful even in its pain. From split lips no words came now, only rattling breath and occasional groans.

At Altos" touch, one eye opened--The other was swollen shut. The eye, blue as The Mediterranean, regarded him, and the lips tried to form words. The head tried to rise, but fell back with a splash into the mud, which was its pillow.

Broken weds had jabbed him; some terrible fall had bruised him. Its flesh was torn and flies crawled freely over open wounds.

But the single eye met the angel's two eyes, and held. Held long enough That Altos learned why he'd been drawn here and why he'd levitated in this man's presence.

This battered soul before him was Alexander of Macedon, who'd given up salvation to bring the light of civilization to the darkest corners of the ancient world.

Altos gathered up the man in his arms and it was as if Alexander weighed nothing. Floating with The Macedonian toward The Dissidents camp, the angel was moved to send up a paean of praise and thanks. Even in Hell, The proper tools were delivered unto him, that the angel might better perform God's work.

Among The Dissidents was Judah Maccabee, and when Maccabee saw Alexander, with whom he'd fought at Troy, The Israelite was filled with joy. He demanded that the angel give The Macedonian into his care, which the muddied Altos, staggering through the camp with Alexander in his arms, was glad to do.

"Just Al," said The Israelite, calling the angel by the name The Dissidents used for him, "where did you find him?"

"Ah, out there," said the angel, cocking his head vaguely to indicate The swamp. Altos did not admit to his high estate among the Dissidents. Some knew; some suspected; some disbelieved. But none would ask him to his face, because if Altos was really an angel who could grant salvation and deny it, Then all hopes of the questioner were in jeopardy of being dashed eternally.

It was one thing to be sent to Hell by mistake, another to have an agent of God tell you that you belonged here. No one wanted to hear that Not even Judah Maccabee, who was on speaking terms with many of Hell's movers and shakers, including the redoubtable Welch.

"Out there?" Maccabees intelligent eyes narrowed; his tall frame stooped to draw back his tentflap. He motioned Altos and his burden inside. Once the flap was drawn and Alexander laid on Maccabees pallet, the Israelite said, "Last time I saw him, he was ... in a deeper abode. Troy. Ilion, if you like. Or if you don't." White teeth flashed in the gloom. "He couldn't have gotten back up here by himself. I know. I made that journey. And where's Bucephalus? That's what he stayed for, the horse..."

"I don't know what to tell you, Israelite." A careful answer, for Altos had seen in Alexander's eyes all that had transpired. And more, for the angel understood what the Macedonian did not.

"There was no horse, just the fallen man. Perhaps the horse ran-"

"Bullshit." Maccabee had been long among the New Dead, the likes of Welch.

"You know; you don't tell me. Why not?"

Altos spread his hands. "Let us see if we can keep this man from the Undertaker-cheat fate. You're an expert at that, aren't you?"

"First aid? Yeah, I can probably manage. But how is it you're so interested in keeping him alive?"

The Israelite stroked his bearded jaw. Eyes that had looked upon die Roman army and dared to oppose it defocused, then sharpened.

Maccabee said: "What do you want from this, friend? What does your sort want? Why not let him go back to Reassignments? Or did you bring him here-for your own purposes?"

Too smart, this one. Too smart and too contentious. Altos answered the safest question: "I didn't bring him. There are . . . temporal disturbances. Do you understand? The very fabric of Hell's before-and-after is troubled. Someone went. . . down . . ." Altos pointed to the ground beneath his feet and as he did so, Alexander groaned softly, stirred, and then was still again, "... down abruptly, to some deeper 'abode,' as you call it. And Alexander was ... thrust up. Pure coincidence." Altos shrugged. "I bet. But not coincidence that he'd appear here, when Che's not exactly compos mentis, I'd wager. Don't you have to play fair? Or is this just more punishment? Alexander's not up to these sorts of games. I know him." And, rather than tending the battered Macedonian, Maccabee crossed his big arms over his chest and stared hard at the angel.

"I know him, too," said the angel softly. "And he's capable of whatever he asks of himself."

"You might as well be working for Satan, if you separated him from that horse of his just to stick him in with these limp-dicked weekend wonders," said the Israelite in colloquial English. Then he switched to Attic Greek, speaking softly to the wounded man as if Altos weren't present.

The angel left the two men together, wondering why, when God's ways were so mysterious to him, the very sword of Heaven in Hell, they were so obvious to an Israelite whose main distinction in life had been teaching Jews how to die for their ideals.

Of course, that had been Before Christ. It occurred to him then that Maccabee might be jealous-might have wanted to take over the Dissident's; leadership himself. But he could still do that. Though Altos didn't think that he would.

The Macedonian would change everything among the Dissidents. Where Maccabee could have engendered only sacrifice-suicide, in Altos' terms-Alexander could generate passion, belief, personal loyalty.

If Alexander wanted to, he could launch a crusade and every man and woman among the Dissidents would be his willing crusaders. A crusade against the Devil such as had not been seen since the Middle Ages on Earth-and never, in Hell.

If the Macedonian chose to, he could bring the revolution to the Devil's very doorstep in New Hell. If. Assuming, of course, that Che and his followers mounted no opposition.

Altos, outside the tent, was wandering among dozens of other, similar tents under cammo netting, not watching where be was going, absorbed in his thoughts. Thus it took a moment for the commotion to penetrate his abstraction.

As a matter of fact, he didn't notice the ruckus in the camp (Dissidents were always bickering) until a blond woman who had been a twentieth-century news reporter came running up to him, tape recorder in hand, thrusting a microphone toward him.

"A chopper's crashed on the other side of the marsh!" she proclaimed. "Number of casualties, destination, and, cause of crash unknown. Would you like to make a statement?"

"A statement?" Altos frowned. "No, I wouldn't. Why would I?"

When the woman scowled and stalked away, he slipped between two tents and ran toward the marsh. It was another result of the temporal wind shear, he was certain. But someone should have warned the pilot.

Unless, of course, Satan was already countering the insertion of Alexander into the Dissidents' camp with some players of his own.

In the ravine, the helicopter lay askew, one skid bent sideways, leaning on its rotors against the upward slope. Smoke still came from it, and the slight, red-headed figure of Achilles could be seen darting hither and yon with his fire extinguisher.

"Hold him!" Welch said again to Nichols, who had his gun pointed steadily at Enkidu's hairy chest. That chest was heaving, as if Enkidu had run a long, long way. Which was what the captive wanted to do, would have done, if not far the watchful eye of Nichols' gun.

The crash had been terrifying, a dizzying descent, an onslaught of spinning and jolting, men yelling and being thrown against the great bird's insides.

Now, safe on solid land, Enkidu crouched tow, has hairy knuckles nearly brushing the ground, and awaited his chance. Sometime, Nichols must blink.

Beyond him was clean country, trees and bog and hills. A place to hide. A place to run.

The woman called Tanya brushed blond hair matted with blood out other eyes and went to Welch, pressing her cheek against his arm. "Are you all-is the chopper all right?" she said, changing her mind in mid-sentence.

"You mean, can we fly it out of here?" Welch looked around, past Nichols, guarding Enkidu, to the people peeking over the ravine's crest and a few, braver souls straggling down it. "Ask Achilles, it's his mess."

Enkidu fully expected the woman to stride up to the red-haired man who fussed over his grounded bird and do just that, but she did not. She said to Welch, "Achilles said it was wind shear from a singularity... What does that mean? Were we shot down?"

"He doesn't know what he's talking about," Nichols spat without taking his eyes from Enkidu's chest. "The only thing 'singular' about the crash was that damn tool's piss-poor performance."

Enkidu wanted very much to run. His entire person was rejecting everything around him-everything he'd seen and heard, the whole concept of having flown in the bird's belly. None of ft had happened. None of it was real. Somehow, he'd had a bad dream that transported him here. A dream, that was all. A dream that had separated him from Gilgamesh and transported him here.

Yes, it was easier to believe to tile power of a dream than in a bud that had flown him hither in its belly. He looked beyond Nichols, whose black-dad, threatening person was all that kept Enkidu from the beckoning forests, and his eyes alighted upon the woman, Tanya.

The woman was a sorceress, a priestess of hostile gods, a wielder of powerful dreams. He must remember to warn Gilgamesh about such women. When he saw him again.

Right now, it was perfectly obvious to Enkidu's wilderness-trained ears and nose that people were sneaking up on them: he could smell their excited sweat on the downwind; he could hear their secret whispers on the breeze.

But this man with the fire-spitting weapon before him did not hear the voices approaching, nor the tread of furtive feet or the crack of broken branches as they came. The square-jawed man with the short hair like a beard upon his head looked only at Enkidu, thought only of Enkidu, and waited with a taunt in his eyes that dared Enkidu to break and run.

Enkidu did not. He hunkered down where he was and watched. The red-haired owner of the bird tended it with occasional gesticulations and curses that re-consecrated him and it to Hell.

The sorceress with the beautiful blond hair hung upon the arm of Welch, the heavy-set leader, and they spoke in tones they thought Enkidu could not hear.

"What about the ape-man?" Welch whispered to her. "You think you can control him long enough to get him back in the chopper? If Achilles is right and we can get it flying again?"

"Have we a choice?" she answered with her own question. "We're supposed to bring him back to Reassignments. What's the penalty if we go back without him?"

Welch's shoulders Tippled up, and then down. "Maybe none. 'Enkidu and Gilgamesh separated'-depends on how you want to interpret the orders. We can always shoot him, that'll get him back to Slab A quick enough." Welch bared the most perfect white teeth Enkidu had ever seen on a man. Then the pleasant features of his pale face hardened as he looked straight at Enkidu. "If I didn't know better," he said to Tanya, "I'd think he could hear us."

"-Use all that muscle of Enkidu's to help us right the chopper," Achilles called out, his short legs scissoring blurrily as he hurried toward Welch and Tanya. "Well be out of here in short order. Nothing's irreparably - shit!

Y'all see that welcoming committee?"

Now the entire group, even Nichols, looked past Enkidu and he saw his chance.

Without hesitation, he lunged to his left, where the ravine was met by trees and boulders, not even taking time to come erect, but scuttling away on all fours, his callused knuckles helping to push him along the ground.

"Nichols!" he heard Welch yell from behind him, but he didn't took back.

He didn't hear Nichols' laconic, "Yeah, boss; gotcha," either, because the sound of the gun going off behind him followed almost simultaneously, and in its wake came a mighty hand that thrust Enkidu from his feet, face down into oblivion.

"Back the fuck off," warned Achilles in a voice that had trumpeted over the battle of Ilion. His M14 quested among the ranks of the armed men who had halted twenty feet away. Before the helicopter, the little Achaean stood, spread-legged, as if, single-handedly, he could defend it all: the chopper, the woman whom he'd grabbed and thrust inside it and who now peeked out the open door, and Welch and Nichols, who'd taken cover behind its fuselage.

The fifty-odd men and women who had come down over the ravine were all armed to the teeth, but they hesitated when Achilles brandished his assault rifle.

None of 'em wanted to go back to Reassignments, Achilles realized. So once again, Welch was right: We can hold them off if nobody panics, the sortie leader had assured them, and given Achilles an indefensible position he was too proud not to take.

But it was working. Or at least, ft worked for a minute. Then' the ranks parted like a drill team and a slight, bearded man with soulful eyes and waxy skin came forth, a grenade in one hand, the pin in the other.

"Hello, fighter," said the man in accented English. "Comienzen fuego?" A taunt, incomprehensible. "No? Then surrender. Or we return you to your base of operations, the hard way." He raised his fist, brandishing the grenade. On that signal, other men pulled grenades (pineapples) from their belts and pulled their own pins, so that if Achilles fired, tire ensuing explosion would wreck the chopper, and his body.

"Shit," said Achilles under his breath. Men weren't usually this careless of their own lives, even in Hell. "Well, Welch, got any more bright ideas?"

"It's Guevara," said Welch calmly, from only a few inches behind him.

Achilles, startled, flinched and a ripple of laughter ran through the opposing ranks. "Bastard, don't Sneak up on me. So what, it's Guevara? I'm Achilles."

"We know," said Welch with what might have been a sardonic tinge in his tone.

"But even Achilles wouldn't want to waste the Trojan Horse. Go back with Tamara. I think," and his voice lowered to a whisper, "we're going to surrender. For the nonce."

"Nonce, shit," said Achilles through tight-locked jaws. It was like giving in to the Atreides. He couldn't abide surrender. He wouldn't. He'd jack himself up into the chopper and hold out there. Even without operational cannon, he could give these sons of whores a-

"And don't try anything cute. One casualty on this is all I'm willing to take the blame for." Welch came up beside him and nodded toward the pile of smoldering flesh that had once been Enkidu, and now was just another self-combusting husk on its way to the Undertaker's. "If J. Edgar's still got connections in the Mortuary, you or me or anybody involved in that interdiction sure wouldn't want to come under an unfriendly knife there."

Achilles shuddered. One could be in worse shape than Achilles was-his whole body worked; every limb did its job. He'd seen men whose resurrection had been botched, for less reason.

"Yeah," he said, retreating. "I heard that," And promised himself silently that he'd find some way to blame this whole mess on Welch, when he got back to New Hell.

Got back alive. After having surrendered. It wasn't something he could take with equanimity. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and jumped for the doorsill of the canted chopper, then pulled himself up and sat on it.

Tamara looked up at him from inside the chopper and said, "Well, at least they're asking, not shooting."

"Achilles didn't have a thing to say to that New Dead slut. He just crossed his arms and wished she wasn't there. if she hadn't been, with her nasty little side arm pointed casually at him from the darkness of the chopper's belly, he'd have barricaded himself inside.

But Welch, as usual, had everything covered. He surrendered their party with grace, poise, and good manners to the Dissident leader known as Guevara, and there wasn't a damned thing Achilles could do but go along. For now.

"We ransom you. gringo, back to your slime-bag masters," Che said with a wave of farewell, and ducked through the tent-flaps before Welch could respond.

Alone in the interrogation tent, Welch tried to ignore the pain in his bound wrists and ankles, the complaint of muscles strained and skin chafing against the tent-pole. He had some time to consider his options. He ought to take it.

Guevara was an old pro at this. He'd stripped the captives naked, made a number of lewd suggestions as applicable to men as to women, dual separated them. Welch's main concern was for Tanya. He should have known that, when Guevara realized who the woman was, there'd be no reasoning with him.

He had no doubt that Guevara would ransom him, and Achilles, and Nichols, but he had a feeling that Tamara Burke was going to return to New Hell the hard way. He felt bad about that, he really did. It surprised him how bad he felt about it But there wasn't much he could do; not tied to a tent-pole, there wasn't.

Guevara would ransom them back, eventually, but until then, it was going to be mind-fuck and interrogation, lots of if. If Welch had anticipated this mess correctly, he'd have shot his people himself, to spare them what was coming.

But he'd screwed up-he'd forgotten about Ch& and Tanya and their long history of kill-me/kill-you-the sort of history that got repeated endlessly in Hell because people never learned. If you could keep from making the same mistakes that got you here, you could probably get out, at feast to Purgatory. But nobody ever could. Or, at feast, nobody ever did.

Welch spent an interminable interval staring at the tent-flap that shivered in the wind-the same sort of wind the chopper had run into. Hell's heaviest weather, complete with thunder and lightning: there'd been no anticipating that. Things screw up. Perfect planning prevents piss-poor performance, but nothing was ever perfect in Hell.

Only some sort of screw up on Che's part, something Guevara hadn't planned for, was going to get them out of this anytime soon. He hoped Tanya was thinking about that. If he could have reached her, he'd have suggested she try to make Che...

Pardon me, do you mind a visitor?" said a man who poked his head into tile tent. A blond head.

A slightly glowing countenance in tile dim light. A perfect, beautiful smile that made Welch's heart ache.

"Hello, Altos," said Welch calmly, because all he had left now was his inner arsenal-apparent calm, clear-headedness, incisive analysis of his own plight.

"Come to save me from the Dissidents?"

In came the angel, who wasn't about to do any such dung. Blue eyes lowered and Welch was glad enough not to meet them. It had hurt, the last time he'd looked tills supernal errand boy in the eye.

"Not exactly," said Altos very quietly.

"How about alleviating my suffering? A quick cut, a slug in the brain-me and Tanya. Yeah, Tanya first. Do her a world of good. Good's what you're about, here, right?"

"Don't tease me, Welch. I am here to help." A flicker of darkness crossed the angel's face like a storm cloud scuttling before the moon. "Alexander of Macedon is here. He would speak with you."

"It doesn't look to me like you need my permission," said Welch, giving a desultory pull against his bonds. "You want it, then loosen some of these ropes. I'm all pins and needles."

"I can't," whispered the angel with something like real despair. "Not yet. But Alexander needs only to know that you wish to be rescued. For the rest, honor will exact its due."

Welch began to see where Altos was headed. "Tell Alexander I'm waiting for him to make his move. I'll gladly see him. But I want somebody to check on Tanya-she's in more danger from Che than you know."

"Perhaps more than Alexander knows," said Altos wearily. "I, unfortunately, know exactly how much danger the lady is in." He shook his head. "I shall bring Alexander to you, as soon as possible. And ... thank you, Welch."

"Don't thank me, friend. You could have just said I ...oh, I see, you couldn't: can't he, I bet. That so?"

The angel nodded glumly and turned to go, shoulders slumped.

Welch watched without another word. The angel hadn't been able to loosen his bonds because he'd promised not to; Altos couldn't spring him personally because he'd given his word to Guevara. He couldn't even go to Alexander on Welch's behalf unless Welch expressed the need himself.

Much be tough, in this crowd, having to walk the straight and narrow.

As the flap fell, cutting off Welch's view of the angel and the ruddy light beyond, Welch was grinning. He wasn't that bad off. He could be working for the same agency Altos was-that would have been torture.

Alexander lay on his friend's pallet and listened while Maccabee talked. Judah Maccabee would never lie to him and Maccabee said that Che was doing evil upon the persons of men who had fought at Alexander's side.

"So," said Judah, with the light of the lion in his eyes, "we have only one recourse." He sat back, his muscular shoulders gleaming m the cook-fire's light.

"Which is?" Alexander was barely recovered from his fall-every muscle still hurt. Oh, he was bandaged and clean, bat whenever he wanted to turn his head, he had to do it very carefully. So very carefully he mopped himself up on one elbow. "Speak plainly, Judah."

"Force Che to turn the prisoners over to us - to you, Alexander.

"To 'us' will do." Judah was a guest-friend, and more. Judah was his Hephaestion, the man to whom he was closest. "But how, and on what grounds?"

"Will you see the one called Just Al, my lord?" said Maccabee then.

When Judah called him "lord," he wanted something. And Alexander thought he knew what Judah wanted. Judah wanted what Judah had always wanted: a way out of Hell; power over his own fate; a conduit to God, whom Judah knew was just testing him. And minions, to cleave a way to Heaven through force of arms.

"See Just Al, the one who saved me, the..." Alexander knew, because Judah had told him, what the Israelite perceived Just Al to be. He did not believe it, but he would not hurt Maccabee's feelings by saying so.

And he should thank the one who'd saved him from the Trip. "Yes, bring him here. And see that, if he and you know a way that we may release our comrades from bondage, this is told to me."

You had to be careful with minions, even beloved ones who were friends. You had to let them know that you were who you were-Alexander the Great. Thus, no matter how dose he wished to be with Maccabee, he kept this shred of distance.

He was a living god, or had been. Judah was merely a guerrilla fighter of infinite courage and unshakable resolve.

A fighter who believed in angels. It was a bit disturbing. But someone had brought Alexander back from the Trip's door, in the swamp. Some one or some dung. Judah was not omnipotent.

He might have been fooled. This Just Al could be an agent of evil.

But whatever he was, he glowed softly in the firelight when he entered. And Alexander found the strength to sit up completely, and the need to be erect in this one's presence.

Judah left them atone, although Alexander protested it was not necessary. And Just Al said, "A man named Welch to whom you owe a debt, and one named Nichols, and one named Achilles, petition you for aid and comfort. Guevara will not release them as long as he leads these Dissidents, because of a woman they brought with them."

"A woman?" said Alexander Cautiously.

"A Tamara Burke."

Alexander nodded as if he were not surprised. "I see. What would you have me do? Between those two, man and woman, much blood has been spilled. Bad blood."

"Che has lost faith, and hope. He merely goes through the motions. He has let himself be compromised by factions in the Pentagram. The entire Dissident movement is imperiled because of him."

"I didn't think your sort mixed in infernal polities." Alexander wanted to see if tins curious being would proclaim himself as a divine agent, face to face.

But Just Al did not. He shrugged. "Surety you have come among us for some great purpose, Alexander of Macedon. Surely there is good reason you are called Alexander the Great."

"But you are alluding to ... suggesting that..." Alexander shook his head and it hurt. "I'm in no shape to wrest control of these Dissidents from the man they've followed so tong."

"But declare your willingness, and Providence shall aid you. Your loyal servants shall smooth the way for you. Only accept the honor."

"Hold. I know only what Maccabee has told me, and Maccabee thinks God is everywhere, under every bush, in every storm and rock, in every comer even of Hell." Alexander leaned forward, into the fire's warmth, even though it hurt his neck. "Do you too dunk that this is so?"

"God is."

"I need more."

"Then you must provide what you need yourself."

"If I allow you and your ... compatriots ... to remake these Dissidents in my name, when it is done, they are mine. Command is mine. Control is mine: I owe you nothing."

"This is acceptable," said the one called Just Al whose eyes were as blue as the sky over Parthia.

Alexander wanted, then, to make a farther bargain-to say that, if he did this thing, became embroiled in the affairs of the Dissidents, freed Welch et al, then in exchange. Altos must reunite him with Bucephalus. But he couldn't. He was too proud to ask a favor, too much a king to admit a weakness, and too much in love with Bucephalus to chance that the steed would be brought here, into so squalid a hell as this.

So he did not, just waved his hand. "I am tired. I must rest. Do what you must to free the captives in my name."

Just Al inclined his head and arose, then slipped from the tent. Outside, Alexander soon heard the whoop of joy he knew to be Maccabee's, whenever action was in the offing.

Weeping quietly, Homer was sitting cross-legged before the interrogation tent in which Torquemada was questioning Achilles when Judah Maccabee and a dozen others materialized out of the rufous mist that cloaked the camp.

"What's this?" said Maccabee, reaching down gently to lift the old bard from the dirt and sand.

"Tears for your noble savage, Achilles? Don't waste them. We're here to loose the ungovernable anger on which the whole Iliad turned."

Maccabee grinned.

Nichols, letting the bolt of his old Thompson slap home, pushed his way forward. "That's right, old man. Don't sweat the small stuff . . . meaning that fool in there." Nichols' stubbly chin jutted toward the closed tent, out of which only an occasional grunt wafted to join the smell of seared human flesh. "We've got a saying where I come from: 'Everybody goes home.' One way or the other. You read me?"

"Read? Of course I can read," protested Homer, unsteady on his spindly legs.

The bard pulled at his long, crooked nose and his sunken eyes searched the crowd.

Nichols didn't miss the confusion there, or the dawning suspicion that followed, or the certainty that made the sharp-featured antique square rounded shoulders. "I see. What can I do to help? I am with you, to the death!"

"Probably won't take that," Nichols replied before Maccabee could. (Best to make it clear who was running this show.) "Just stay in the back, with Fat Boy there, and write the action report after."

From the rear of the volunteers, Confucius called softly, "Yes, honorable Homer, come fight by me. The king uses him to sortie forth and chastise. The superior man must kill the leaders and capture the followers. There is no blame in this.' " The oriental beamed beatifically and held out a pudgy hand.

Nichols watched Homer stumble by him and signalled Maccabee. "Now, before we go in there, I gotta make this clear: them's we kill, we can't control. So we ain't killin' anyone if we can help it. Till we get to Welch and find out what he wants to do, anyways. Clear? In the ranks, and all?"

Nichols turned on his heel then and faced the volunteers Maccabee had collected-Meds and Third World mercs, Hittites and Kurds, and a couple of Brits with shoulder-boards. 'Take prisoners, got that? We c'n always km 'em later, after Welch sorts em out."

A rumble went through the men, and Nichols had to take it as assent. There wasn't time to do anything else. Like the outmoded submachine gun he carried, produced before its maker changed to open bolt, there was no refinement here, just over-complication.

But brute force was something Nichols understood better than many of these banana politicos.

He rotated the cocking handle back, taking the weapon off safe, and raised his left hand in the air.

When he lowered it, these dogs of counter-revolutioh would be loosed. For just an instant be hesitated, won dering whether Welch would have approved this action, if Nichols could have asked him. But he couldn't Welch's tent was too well guarded. Only a crisis like the one Nichols was about to foment would draw those guards away so that Nichols could get to his commander. Which he had to do, before Torquemada got to one of the Devil's Children.

Thinking to himself that putting the revolution in Alexander s hands was one way to stop Che, and that, if Welch had any objections, he wouldn't have said what he had to Altos, Nichols took a deep breath, clenched his sweating fist, and brought it down.

As the group of fighters lunged forward, Nichols had only a second to wish that fate hadn't decreed that he must save Achilles too. But Achilles was necessary to rally the Old Dead, to make the whole thing work.

Then Nichols dived for the tent-flap, calling out hoarsely, "Okay, girls, let's rock 'n' roll" as his finger squeezed the trigger and his M-10 began to bop.

Both Che and Tanya heard the semi-suppressed chatter of auto fire from some distant part of the camp.

The woman tied to Che's tent-pole looked toward the sound. The man, nearly as naked as she, stepped forward and took her chin between his fingers, forcing her to look again at him.

"Tell me," said Che Guevara raggedy, "why you did it. The first time. For whom, and why?"

"Got you killed?" said the woman he'd known as Tanya. It was my assignment.

"You were. And the second time, it was you who - "

"Don't lie to me!" Guevara said loudly, just short of a shout. "Tell me, was it real? Was everything a sham? Did you not - "

Low me, she realized he was going to say, and cut him off before he could. "It doesn't matter, not now. It can't matter. Look at you-there's nothing left.

You're a shell, a simulacrum. The Devil's got you on the run." She spoke as quickly as she could, because she knew what she was hearing, and she could guess what it meant. Welch. You couldn't hold Welch. You could murder him, to slow him down. But you couldn't hold him. Not unless you were smarter than he was. And what was left of Guevara, this lovesick wetback, this husk all eaten up inside with twisted ideals, couldn't hold his own against a stiff breeze.

The eyes of Guevara burned with all the self-consuming passion of a zealot. He was a martyr, thrice over. He was a cynic who'd lost his center. He believed in nothing; he was exhausted, disgusted by himself and what he d wrought.

She understood why: on the Undertaker's table, and in Reassignments, he'd betrayed everything-himself, his cause, his loyalists. They always did. And so it made sense that he'd clutch at her, grab for the last shred of self-definition.

What he wanted to know was who'd betrayed him, in life: what she'd done, how she'd done it, and who for-CIA or KGB. As if it mattered to anyone but him.

But if he could exonerate her as a player, he could pretend that there'd been love there. Or remember that there had.

She wasn't sure there hadn't been, but love wasn't an excuse for anything. It solved nothing. It answered nothing. It was only a torment

The man who should be interrogating her with hot pokers and sensory-deprivation hoods was trying to do so with memories, with guilt she didn't possess.

But he had enough for both of them. And he had enough lust. . . perhaps obsession . . . where she was concerned that he could even ignore what was obviously gunfire in tile camp.

Instead of reacting to it, he moved close, very slowly, and his face broke out in a sweat as his hand raised toward her naked breast He was going to fondle her into submission. He was going to bring her to her knees-and his cause-with the power of his personality.

It might have worked, in life, if she'd been desperate or stupid or not... what she'd been. It couldn't work here, because he wasn't what he'd been.

Suddenly Guevara reminded her of an aging sex queen, a twohundred pound geriatric tart who'd never realized that flirtation served only to point up what had been lost.

Che was ludicrous, a parody of himself. His liquid eyes, eyes that had inspired so many to give their lives for an unformed cause, inspired only a shadowy remembrance of himself.

As his fingers closed on her nipple, his lips said, "Tanya, you love me. Say this. Say it's so, blanca, and we will make a new world here together-"

Blam! Blat-blat-blat! Thud. And yelling, outside the tent, which shivered as struggling men fell against it.

"Che," she said, "for your own sake, run." She said it flatly. She didn't know where it had come from. She couldn't afford to feel what she was feeling for this addled Quixotic soul. "Go on, go!"

"Not until you say you did. Do. Or no. St. Nada. Say . . . something."

Something for him to remember. Something to make it all right that she'd been killed while he watched, the last time through here. Something to make it easier for him to look at all the souls his teachings had brought here, every dim-witted rebel who used Che's words as an excuse for his basest crimes, and not shrivel with guilt.

If she'd loved him, if she'd been forced or compromised to betray him, then it wouldn't be empty. It wouldn't all have been a mistake. He'd have something to live for, here.

She stared him in the eye and his hand ran down her belly, onto her naked thighs. His breath came fast.

Hers did too, but because she could see the tent behind him, where firelight beyond it threw shadowplay on the canvas, so that she could make out strugglers in silhouette.

"Che, you're a fool. A dangerous one. You always were. No matter what I felt for you, I always knew I could never trust you. Your dick got you killed-that's not my fault"

"No! No!" he said and closed his fist on the soft flesh of her inner thigh.

She closed her eyes, wishing the men outside would hurry.

And thus she missed the nearly silent storming of the tent, the slitting of its sides with knives, the sneaking of the men through the slits.

Until two men spoke and her eyes snapped open.

"Hold it, asshole. Freeze!" said Nichols, not even breathing hard, his Thompson easy on his hip.

And Achilles, brushing by him, pushing Che roughly from his feet yelling

"Brisels! Brisels, my love," as he came toward Tanya.

Great! That was all she needed, was one of the Old Dead hallucinating that she was some long-lost love.

More men were crowding in now, and Achilles was cutting her bonds. Someone handed her a robe and she flung it over her shoulders, rubbing her wrists, watching Guevara, still on the ground where Achilles had thrust him.

Watching Guevara, the great revolutionary, who had buried his head in his arms and was sobbing like a baby.

The coup was relatively peaceful, as coups went. Welch, once he'd been freed by Nichols, asked for a body count that Nichols gave proudly as, "Zero, sir.

That's the way I thought you'd want it. Though we can always remedy that now."

"Nice going, soldier," said Welch and slapped his adc familiarly on the arm.

"Let's check the wounded and sort the players out."

The players, in this case, were those who secretly harbored real sympathy for Guevara. Three hours of interviewing Dissidents didn't turn up a single one who'd admit it, and Welch sent Nichols and Maccabee to "see how Achilles is doing and bring me Tanya."

The first personal question he'd asked had been how Tanya was, the first observation Nichols had volunteered was that Achilles, though "mussed up some" from his interrogation at Torquemada's hands, was "fit to fly, sir."

So it was going to be all right. As right as anything got, here. Or he thought it was until, instead of Tanya, the frigging angel poked his head into the tent Welch had commandeered-the one that had been Guevara's.

Welch had just been congratulating himself on breaking die back of the Dissident movement It might even make up for having to shoot Enkidu. Express Trips were always a last resort. In more controlled circumstances, he'd have been able to call in an alert, so that somebody'd be ready for Enkidu when he arrived.

Welch was about to do that-send somebody to the chopper for a field phone, or have Achilles call in on the bird's radio, when the angel said, "I hope I'm not disturbing you, Welch."

"Not unduly. I heard you were a real help in all this. Want to tell me why that was? How could you throw in with Authority and against the Dissidents?"

The angel walked as if his feet hardly touched the ground. When he was an arm's length away from Welch, who was sitting on a feather pallet in scrounged fatigues, Altos said in his velvet voice, "You proceed under a mistaken assumption."

Oh-oh. "Well, then, why don't you sit down and clarify tile situation?" Welch kicked himself for letting wishful thinking seduce him. You didn't get this lucky. Not in Hell, you didn't.

The angel sat and a sweet smell like spring in a field of wildflowers wafted from his garments.

Coup or not, hand to hand combat or not, the angel didn't have a golden hair out of place. He played with the ragged hem of a short, once-white robe as he said, "The Dissidents will be led from now on by

Alexander of Macedon." And his stare was fierce and full of God.

"Crap," said Welch, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I can't have anything to do with - "

"You did not, if I may interrupt.. You were a prisoner, a helpless victim, until moments ago. Now you are free to go."

Fuck you, buddy, and the wings you rode in on. But there was no mistaking the angel's certainty.

"Alexander's a friend of mine. You can't compel him to do anything against his will."

"That is so. But he has agreed. And it is done, in the sight of - "

"Don't say that, not Down Here." Welch got to his feet and nervously began to pace, his head bent toward the angel. "Look, I don't want to have this conversation with you. Why don't you just disappear? Go somewhere you're needed."

"I was needed here." The angel rose too. "Thank you for your help. I couldn't have-"

"Fuck-all, if you say you couldn't have done this without me, I'm going to find out what it takes to dismember one of your type." Few things frightened Welch, but this just might be one of them. I don't need to know any more about what you're doing. If you're not trying to treble my torment, you're still doing a damned good job of it."

"Damned, yes. But not without free will." said Altos as the angel glided toward the tent-flap.

"A lot of good that s going to do me with the Agency when I try to explain this."

"Don't," said the angel, and the parting word of advice hung in the breeze long after Altos was gone. Hung there, in fact, until Tanya arrived, her eyes fall of shadows and Che's plight on her lips.

"Look, Tanya," Welch said, "don't talk to me about your old boyfriend. You do whatever you want, where he's concerned. Send him through the System again; if you want. Anything. Just don't bother me with it. I've got to see Alexander.

"Send Che through the System? But then Authority will know what. . .

"That's right," said Welch savagely. "What happened here. I'm just glad I didn't give the damned orders. And I've got to make sure we can say that about Nichols, too. Suss it out. Prove to yourself that Maccabee and the angel cooked this up, that we were just pawns. I'd rather have the whole Admin building know I got caught with my pants down than take the blame for this one."

"I know," said Tanya, rubbing her eyes with the back of one hand. "I know.

Nichols was right, though-no casualties. We're all okay. Achilles says the chopper can make it back to New Hell; . ." Her eyes were pleading.

"And your boyfriend?"

"Come on, Welch, you know that's not fair. He can't hurt anyone, the shape he's in.

Reassignments didn't keep him off the playing field the last time; we don't have to. Let's just go home."

"Fine. Get everybody packed into the chopper - just the team, no passengers. I'll meet you." He ducked out of the tent.

"Where are you going?" Tanya called after him.

"Got to see a man about a horse."

Alexander of Macedon lay in Maccabee's tent, listening to the triumph in Judah's voice more than to his words.

Alexander had made a bargain. He had a task to accomplish, men to lead. Judah assured him that this was so. And it had been relatively bloodless, because of Welch's people. Bloodless was always better, when men are brought together by ideals.

He'd made bloody mistakes, in life, at moments like these. He appreciated the restraint that Welch's forces had displayed. So when Welch came to thank him, Alexander allowed the New Dead leader a private audience, even though Maccabee scowled and said, "I'll be right outside if you need me, Alexander."

"I won't," said the Macedonian. And, to Welch: "Sit. We have much to talk of. Old wars on the beach at Ilion. New wars of liberation. There's no need to thank me."

Welch did not sit. The man in tiger camouflage put his hands on his hips and said. "Tell me you're not going to get sucked into this mess. You're too good a strategist to be the next sacred cow here. Look what it did to Guevara."

"Guevara did that to Guevara. And perhaps the woman called Tanya helped. Women can do that to some men. But I am Alexander. These men need me. I have given my word to lead them,"

"Lead them where? Why? How? For how long? Welch was nearly shouting, an odd thing in a man whose voice tended to drop when he was intent. "You're too smart for this trick, no matter which side's at the bottom of it Don't do this, Alexander. I don't want you for an enemy."

"Nor I you," said the Macedonian, and rose because his guest would not sit, so that Welch would not be guilty of standing in the presence of a reclining Great King. And held out his hand in the New Dead gesture of friendship. "But as I said, I have given my word. These men want a leader. They have chosen me."

Welch did not take Alexander's hand. "Again, where're you going to lead them? To what end?"

"Freedom is what they want. A fairer, more just land in which to ... live."

Alexander's hand, extended in friendship, did not waver. He thought of the one called Just Al, who had called upon him to champion the Dissidents' cause. And Maccabee, who loved causes.

"You fool," Welch said, shaking his head. "I shouldn't waste my breath. . . .

Look, what're you going to do, ride into New Hell and camp on the Devils doorstep? Join the government? Even that won't do it. These bastards have got exactly the Hell they deserve. And I've got a chopper waiting." Finally, Welch met Alexander's hand with his, and shook it, his grip manly in its strength.

"Go with luck," said the Macedonian as he broke the clasp. "Remember, you have friends here. You may count on that."

"Yeah, and you can count on us, too . . . when you have trouble with Mithridates and Tigellinus and that lot." A sour grimace crossed Welch's face.

"Look, Alex, you're a good fighter, a brave man, a-"

"Living God."

"Right. You don't know what you're getting into. Politics, around here, is a deeper sewer than you know. And it leads right to the Pentagram. You haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of making this thing work."

"This is not what Just Al thinks," Alexander said as Welch, without another word or a proper farewell, turned to leave.

Alexander watched the swaying tent-flap that had fallen back in Welch's wake, and wondered if what the New Dead agent said was true, until Maccabee called him out to attend the celebration in his honor and meet his new and loyal followers.

There were so many of them, and the celebration was so noisy in its gaiety, that Alexander didn't even hear the chopper as it flew away.