The Arctic Event

Chapter Thirteen

Merrill Field, Anchorage

Even into the twenty-first century, Alaska was essentially still a wilderness with a minimal road and rail net. Flight stitched the mammoth state together, and Merrill Field and its sister seaplane facility at Lake Hood were two of the largest civil aviation facilities in the world, central nodes in this culture of the bush pilot.

Scores of hangars lined the field taxiways, and hundreds of light planes occupied acres of parking apron. The drone of engines was a constant, and the traffic pattern was perpetually filled with incoming and departing aircraft.

As Smith and his team drew up in front of the office of Pole Star Aero-leasing, they found that a sleek Day-Glo orange helicopter had already been wheeled out of an adjacent hangar. Mounted on a set of pressed-foam arctic pontoons, it stood spotted and ready for takeoff.

“Okay, Randi,” Smith said. “There’s your piece of the action. What do you think?”

“It’ll do,” she replied, openly pleased. “It’s a Bell Jet Ranger, the stretched 206L Long Ranger variant with twin turbines. It’s about as stone reliable as a helicopter can get. According to the documentation, it should be fully IFR capable and weatherized for polar operations.”

“Then I may assume it’s acceptable in all aspects, Ms. Russell?”

She shot a look at him along with a half-smile. “Nominally, Colonel Smith. I’ll let you know for certain when I’ve finished my walk-around.”

Smyslov stared out of his window at the Ranger with that peculiar pilot’s fixation, and it occurred to Smith that the Russian Air Force officer was indeed a Russian Air Force officer.

“Do you have any helicopter time, Major?” he asked.

“Some,” he replied, looking around with a grin, “in Kamovs and Swidniks, but none in a little beauty like that one.”

“Then, Randi, you’ve got a copilot. Put him to work.”

Randi gave him the briefest of hesitant glances. Smith replied with a single millimeter’s nod. All of the brothers were valiant, and all of the sisters virtuous…until proven otherwise. Beyond that, the blond-haired Russian would be riding in that helicopter along with the rest of them, and Smyslov didn’t strike Smith as being overtly suicidal.

Leaving the loading and preflight to Randi, Smith touched base at the leasing office. There was little for him to do; the invisible but potent presence of Fred Klein had passed through here as well.

“The paperwork’s all taken care of, Colonel,” the grizzled office manager said. “Your bird’s fully fueled and surveyed, and I took the liberty of filing a flight plan through to Kodiak for you. You’ve got CAVU flight conditions all the way, and the weather looks good over Cook’s Inlet and the Entrances for the next twelve hours. The air boss aboard the Haley is expecting you, and you’ll recover directly onto ship. I’ll advise him when you’re in the air.”

Smith knew from his briefing that Pole Star provided aircraft for a number of commercial and government research projects in the Arctic, and possibly for other purposes.

The office manager was obviously ex-army aviation. A large First Air Cavalry shield had been mounted on the flier-cluttered office wall, and the model of an AH-1 Huey Cobra sat on the desk. An ancient Vietnam-era flight jacket also lay draped over the back of the chair. Smith sensed that the older man might have been a member of the Club himself at one time or had worked on the peripheries.

“Thanks for the service,” Smith said, extending his hand to the manager. “We’ll try to bring her back in one piece.”

“Screw it. It’s insured,” the old aviator grinned back, taking Smith’s hand in a strong, calloused grasp. “I don’t know what your tasking orders are, Colonel, but good luck and watch your ass. Men count. Choppers don’t.”

“I’ll make that my beautiful thought for the day.”

Smith stepped from the office and took a long automatic look around. The sky was blue and almost cloudless, the wind a faint cool brush against his face. In a few minutes they’d be airborne.

His team had linked up. Nothing untoward had happened on the flight to Anchorage or at the airport. No one had followed them here. No one was in sight, save for his own people and a couple of flannel-shirted locals tinkering around with a big white Cessna in a hangar across from the leasing agency.

Why was he thinking something had to be wrong?

The island and port of Kodiak lay some 270 miles west-southwest of Anchorage, down the length of Cook’s Inlet and across Shelikof Strait from the Alaskan mainland, a decent haul for a small helicopter.

Randi Russell kept the Long Ranger just off the beach, steering along the densely forested shore of the Kenai Peninsula. Urban civilization fell swiftly behind them, replaced by a string of small villages spaced along the Sterling Coastal Highway like the beads on a necklace.

Randi was grateful for this opportunity to learn her aircraft. Most of her rotor hours had been in the Bell Ranger family, but few had been in the big 206 series. Now she felt her way through the Long Ranger’s handling, exploring how the greater size and weight of the aircraft and the drag of the pontoons were countered by the augmented power of the twin engines. Her eyes soon found and fell into the automatic scan pattern of instrument gauges-horizon-instrument gauges-horizon of the skilled pilot.

Beyond the fishing community of Homer and the mouth of Kachemak Bay, even the coastal villages were left behind, and the Long Ranger headed out across the broad, empty straits of the Kennedy and Stevenson Entrances to Kodiak Island. The occasional distant wake of a fishing boat cutting across the chill blue waters served as the last lingering reminder of humanity.

After the first hour airborne, the steady-state whine of the turbines and the rhythmic thudding of the rotors threatened to become soporific, and Randi found herself having to fight a backlog of transpacific jet lag. Major Smyslov’s occasional interested question from the copilot’s seat about the controls and handling of the Long Ranger provided a welcome stimulus.

In the amidships passenger seats Professor Metrace had succumbed. Curling up in her mink-collared leather jacket, she’d gone to sleep. Glancing up at the rearview cockpit mirror, Randi couldn’t help but note the way her head had drifted companionably onto Jon’s shoulder.

So it hadn’t been Randi’s imagination back in Seattle. Valentina Metrace obviously was not averse to combining business with pleasure, and she was also obviously interested in Smith.

Well, she was more than welcome to the man. But, damn it, did the theoretical “historian” have to be so flagrant about it? And did she always have to go around looking like a James Bond heroine?

Randi glanced down at herself and her comfortably worn jeans and denim jacket and suppressed a soft feminine snort.

As for what Jon felt about it, Randi couldn’t tell. But then, that had always been the problem with the man. Smith was one of the very few people Randi had ever met that she couldn’t read. She could never be quite sure what was really going on behind those handsome, immobile features.

It had been that way even when he had been saying how sorry he was about her fiancé or telling her about Sophia.

One thing she could sense was Smith’s wariness. Even with that pleasantly scented seatmate nestled against him, his head was turning with slow, repetitive deliberation, those intent blue eyes moving constantly in a fighter pilot’s scan.

Did he know something he hadn’t passed on, or was he sensing something? Damn it, what was going on in there?

Maybe it was just the time and environment. If someone wanted to make trouble, now, over the open sea with the Kenai Peninsula and Kodiak Island mere hazy outlines on the horizons fore and aft, would present an excellent opportunity.

Suddenly the turning of Smith’s head stopped, and he fixed on something off the port side, like a gun turret locking on target.

“Randi,” he said quietly into the lip mike of his headset, “we have traffic paralleling us. Eight o’clock high.”

Randi swore at herself for letting her own situational awareness slip. Twisted around in the pilot’s seat, she looked down the bearing. There was something out there. A glint of sunlight heliographing off the windshield of another aircraft. “I’ve got him.”

Everyone in the Long Ranger’s cabin snapped alert, Valentina straightening up, clear-eyed and in a way that made Randi wonder if she’d been asleep at all. The team looked on as the intruder edged closer, a large, high-winged, single-engined monoplane.

“This is the direct flight path between Anchorage and Kodiak Island,” Smyslov commented, playing the devil’s advocate. “It is logical there would be other aeroplanes.”

“Maybe,” Randi replied, “but that looks like a Cessna Turbo Centurion. He has a way higher cruising speed than we do. Why would he be station keeping on us like that?”

“Randi,” Smith said, not taking his eyes off the shadowing aircraft, “angle us off the direct bearing to Kodiak.”

“Right. Doing it.”

She rocked the cyclic, and the Long Ranger paid off onto a slightly divergent course. Half a minute later Smyslov spoke quietly. “He turns with us.”

The Russian tightened his seat belt, a combat aviator’s instinctive ready alert gesture.

“Again, Randi,” Smith’s voice sharpened. “Turn away from him!”

She obeyed without question. She snapped the tail of the helicopter toward the Cessna. Veering away to the northwest, she tried to open the range.

The Cessna fell away astern. For over a full minute the sky around the helicopter remained clear. Then the light plane reappeared, crawling back into view half a mile to their left. Accelerating, it climbed into a dominant position off the Long Ranger’s port bow, a dark silhouette against the piercing blue sky. Once more it began to sidle closer.

“He must like our company,” Valentina Metrace said, removing a small, flat pair of folding sports binoculars from her inside jacket pocket. Popping them open, she focused on their stalker. “The starboard cargo door has been removed,” she reported. “There’s one pilot aboard and what looks like one passenger kneeling in the open doorway. The registration numbers are November…nine…five…three…seven…foxtrot.”

“That’s it, then.” Smith’s voice returned to its usual steady state. “That’s the same plane that was parked across from the leasing agency when we picked up the helicopter. Randi, put in a call to the Kodiak Coast Guard base. Tell them we may need some help out here.”

“Right.” Randi reached up to the overhead communications panel, switching her headset from intercom to radio. “Coast Guard Kodiak, Coast Guard Kodiak, this is Nan one niner six alpha six squawking emergency, squawking emergency, over.”

She lifted her finger from the transmit key. Abruptly, electronic ice picks were driven into her ears, her headset filling with a piercing electronic warble.

“Damn! Shit! Hell!” She swatted at the selector switch.

“Randi, what is it?”

“We’re being jammed! Somebody’s just turned on a powerful cascade jammer out there!”

“We have descending traffic to port!” Smyslov yelled. “He’s turning in on us!”

The Centurion’s wing kicked up and over. Accelerating into a shallow dive, the plane cut across the helicopter’s flight path from left to right. In the dark rectangle of the plane’s open cargo door, a ruddy spark danced and sputtered. Pale streaks of light blazed past the cabin.

Tracers.

“Breaking left!” Randi screamed, throwing the cyclic hard over and smashing down on her rudder bar.

The Long Ranger came up on one rotor tip and wailed into a diving turn of its own, cutting into and under the Cessna. The two aircraft flicked past one another like a pair of rapier blades.

Lift and power sagged, and Randi twisted the throttle grip to its stop, stabilizing the helicopter onto its new course. “Where is he?” she demanded, looking around wildly for their attacker.

“Climbing out at four o’clock,” Smith replied, looking aft out the side windows. “It looks like he’s circling back, trying to get in behind us again. Can you lose him?”

She made a few rapid mental assessments and was not happy with the outcome. “Not likely. There’s no way I can extend out over open water like this. He’s got a good sixty knots on us. He can also outclimb us.”

“Options?”

“Limited! With his gun firing out of his side door like that, he’s got a very restricted firing arc. When he comes in on us I can evade by turning into him and diving under him, like I just did. But that’ll only work for as long as we have altitude! Once he pins us down against the surface of the sea he can circle above us like the Apaches circling a wagon train. He’ll cut us to pieces.”

The wave tops glittered below the Long Ranger’s pontoons. They had not been flying at any great height to begin with, and their initial evasion had cost them a great deal of what they’d had. Randi had the Long Ranger shuddering at a maximum power climb, but in this game of dogfighting beggar-my-neighbor she couldn’t regain what she’d expended fast enough.

“Keep on that radio,” Smith commanded. “Try to get through to anyone.”

“It is no good,” Smyslov interjected grimly. He had been working the communications panel. “That plane’s jammer is cutting right across all of our communications bands. While it’s active no one will be hearing or saying anything within twenty kilometers of us.”

“Are you sure?” Smith demanded.

Smyslov gave a bitter, ironic grimace. “Unfortunately, yes. I recognize the interference modulation pattern of the unit. The bloody thing is one of ours! It’s a Russian army tactical electronic warfare system.”

“There he is!” Valentina Metrace called from her side of the helicopter. “He’s coming around again!”

Randi felt a hand reach around the seat back, yanking her Lady Magnum out of its pack holster. She didn’t have to look back to see who the hand belonged to.

“That’s not going to be much, Jon,” she commented.

“I know.” There was a grim tinge of humor in his reply. “But it’s what we’ve got.” Randi heard the wind roar of the rear passenger window sliding open, and the chill blast of the slipstream on the back of her neck.

“Be careful you don’t hit the rotors,” Randi yelled over the increased wind roar.

“I’ll be lucky to hit anything!”

“Hostile at eight o’clock, high angle!” Smyslov chanted. “Hostile is at nine o’clock, still climbing. Hostile is at ten o’clock…He’s banking! He’s turning in! He’s coming in faster this time!…”

The tracer stream cut past the windscreen, and again Randi rolled the Long Ranger into its steep evasive break. As the helicopter rolled onto its side, there was a momentary frozen image of the attacking Cessna cutting past them, the plane’s gunner half-hanging out its cargo door.

Like a Vietnam-era helicopter gunner, he was suspended from a monkey harness bolted into the door frame. Some kind of medium machine gun was strapped to his body, the belt feeding from an overhead magazine, making him a living flexible weapons mount. Looking down, he hosed death at the diving Long Ranger, the flash of an exhilarated grin glinting on his face.

Behind her, handguns crashed, both pistols firing at once, the piercing crack of Smith’s automatic and the heavier slam of her revolver. Ejecting brass flickered around the cockpit, and Randi caught a whiff of gun smoke as Smith got off half a dozen rounds before the target was past.

“No chance! Missed the bastard!” It was one of the rare times she ever heard him swear.

She got the helicopter stabilized under its rotor disk and checked her gauges. “We can do that once more,” she reported; “then we go into the water.”

It was a simple statement of fact.

“There’s a life vest under each seat, and a life raft slung under the fuselage.” Smith was equally pragmatic with his reply as he reached forward to take another speed loader from the fanny pack. “When we go in, I’ll try for the life raft. Everyone else swim as far away from the copter as fast as you can. Stay together and don’t inflate your vests right off. He’s going to strafe us, and you’re going to have to dive to evade.”

He was only going through the drill for form’s sake. Their survival time in the frigid waters of the straits could be counted in single-digit minutes.

“This would be a marvelous moment for a witty offhand comment,” Professor Metrace added dryly. “Any volunteers?” The historian’s face was pale in the cockpit mirror, but she was holding it together in her own way. Randi had to smile. Her taste in men might be questionable, but even she had to admit, Valentina Metrace had style.

Beyond the portside windows she could see the Cessna climbing into attack position once again. “Last chance,” Smith said. “Any suggestions?”

“There may be something…” Smyslov’s distracted murmur came over the intercom circuit.

“Major, do you have an idea?”

“Possibly, Colonel, but there is only a small chance…”

“A small chance is better than none, Major,” Smith snapped, “and that’s what we have now. Go!”

“As you wish, sir!” Behind his sunglasses Smyslov had his own eyes fixed on the enemy plane. “Miss Russell, when he begins his next run, you must hold your course; your straight course; you must let him shoot at us!”

Randi spared him an instant’s disbelieving glance. “You mean we give him a clean shot?”

“Yes. Exactly! We must let him fire on us. You must hold your course to the last possible second; then you must not turn and dive; you must climb! You must cut directly across his flight path!”

That was insanity twice over. “If he doesn’t shoot us down, we’ll collide with him!”

Smyslov could only nod in agreement. “Very possibly, Miss Russell.”

The Cessna banked, lifting into its wingover and final attacking dive.

“Randi, do it!” Smith’s command rang in her ears.

“Jon!”

His voice mellowed. “I don’t know what he’s thinking, either, but do it anyway.”

Randi bit her lip and held her course. She felt Smyslov’s hand drop onto her shoulder. “Wait for him,” the Russian said, tracking the pursuit curve of their attacker, calculating speeds and distances. “Wait for him!”

A tracer tentacle lashed past the Long Ranger, weaving and groping for the helicopter.

“Wait for him!” Smyslov said relentlessly, his fingers digging into her collarbone. “Wait…!”

The airframe shuddered as high-velocity metal thwacked through its structure. A side window starred and exploded inward as death screamed through the cockpit.

“Now! Pull up! Pull up!”

Wrenching her controls back to their stops, Randi lifted the Long Ranger through the flight path of the Cessna Centurion. For an instant, the whole world off the port side was filled with the nose and shimmering propeller arc of the diving plane, hanging mere feet beyond their own rotor arc. And in that frozen instant the windshield of the Cessna exploded outward.

Then it was past, and the helicopter was bucking and skidding wildly in the interlocking turbulence, on the very razor’s edge of departing controlled flight. Randi fought for the recovery, a thin, angry adrenaline-spurred cry slipping from her lips as she wrestled with the pitch and collective, striving not to lethally overstress the airframe. If she could fly the Ranger out of this, by God, she could fly it anywhere.

The copter responded and steadied with a final shuddering bobble. They still had a valid aircraft. They still had life.

“Where is he?” Randi panted.

“Down there,” Smith answered.

The white Cessna was falling away beneath them in a flat spin, a thin haze of smoke streaming from its cockpit. A moment later it belly-slammed into the sea, vanishing from sight in an explosion of spray.

“Well done, Randi,” Smith continued. “And you, Major. Exceptionally well done.”

“I’ll second that,” Valentina Metrace added reverently. “If you were a man, my dear Randi, I’d be yours for the asking.”

“Thanks, but would someone mind telling me just what it was that I did? What happened to that guy?”

“It was…pah, what are the words…” Smyslov slumped in his seat, his head tilted back and his eyes closed. “…target fixation. The machine gunner, he was firing his weapon from a body harness. He did not have a fixed gun mount with fire interrupters to keep him from shooting into his own airframe. Once he had you targeted, he focused on trying to hold his tracers on you for the kill. When you cut across his nose as you did, he swung with you, and turned his gun barrel right into his own cockpit.”

“And before he could get off the trigger he’d killed his own pilot and shot himself down,” Smith finished. “Fast thinking, Major.”

Smyslov lifted his hands. “Merest memory, Colonel. Once, over Chechnya, I had a muzhik door gunner with pig shit for brains who nearly blew the back of my head off.”

Randi sighed and glanced at the Russian. “I’m glad he missed.”