again.” Gator’s calm, professional tones couldn’t mask the real note of
concern in his voice. “You’re a little heavy–all that ice hasn’t melted
yet, and it’s affecting your flight characteristics, but it’s real
doable–just take it slow, let me kick the heaters up another notch.”
Bird Dog concentrated on the dancing basket in front of him. It was,
he realized, not the basket that was moving but his dancing Tomcat. He
tried to quiet the tremor in his hands, the jerk in his right foot.
“Think of something calm,” Gator’s voice soothed. “Man, you just blew
the hell out of a lot of bad guys back there. Think about that.”
Bird Dog concentrated, focusing on the moments immediately after he’d
dropped the weapons. It had been a clear, cool feeling, one buoyed up with
exhilaration and joy far beyond anything he’d experienced in the air
before. Even shooting down his first MiG hadn’t come close to knowing he’d
just done a hell of a job under impossible circumstances. He focused,
letting the feeling come back, letting the raw sensation of power replace
the tentativeness in his hands and legs.
After a few moments, he took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, his
voice now calm and strong. “I’ve got it.”
After what he’d been through, plugging this little basket would be a
piece of cake. He grinned, relishing the challenge, and slid the Tomcat
smoothly forward. The refueling probe rammed home, jarring the aircraft
slightly.
“Good job,” Gator said softly. Not for the first time, he marveled at
his pilot’s ability to focus, to compartmentalize and stay right in the
moment. Whether Bird Dog knew it or not, Gator decided, he was one hell of
a pilot.
Not that Gator was going to tell him that. The RIO glanced down at
his gauges and saw a solid lock and fuel flowing into the aircraft. “How
much you going to take on?” he asked Bird Dog.
“Six thousand pounds,” the pilot said, his hands and feet moving
quickly to make the minor adjustments in airspeed and altitude to keep the
aircraft firmly mated. “That gives us enough fuel for a couple of passes.
If we need them.”
And they would not, Gator decided, relaxing. The mood that Bird Dog
was in, he might not even need the arresting wire to get on board.
1136 Local
Aflu
“How about a lift?” the helicopter pilot shouted over the noise.
Rogov smiled, held out his hand, and tried to look as friendly and
undangerous as he could.
“Thank you,” he said, hoping the slight accent in his voice would be
interpreted as native islander. Evidently it was, since the pilot returned
his smile and gestured to one of the canvas-strapped seats lining the
interior of the helicopter. “We’ve got a corpsman and doctor on board,”
the pilot added.
“One is badly hurt,” Huerta said, pointing at Morning Eagle, pale and
motionless on the stretcher. “The rest are just banged up and bruised.”
“Eskimos, huh?” The pilot studied his new passengers, then shrugged
and turned back to the controls. “We’ll be there in five mikes.”
Huerta sat poised in the hatch to the aircraft, watching the others
file aboard. Oddly enough, Morning Eagle was among the last in line, still
carried by the same two Inuit. He saw Morning Eagle start to move, then
one of the stretcher-bearers shifted, blocking his line of sight. When he
next got a good look at him, Morning Eagle was no longer moving.
“Come on, come on,” Huerta shouted, gesturing at the men. “We’ve got
most of them, but who knows how many else there are?”
The men started to move more rapidly and quickly took seats along the
sides. Moving fast, Huerta noted, for men that had looked so stunned half
an hour earlier. He shrugged. The human body was more resilient than
anyone gave it credit for, particularly when the mind knew what the body
didn’t. He’d seen the men drive themselves long past the point of
exhaustion, held upright and moving only by the sheer force of will. Any
man could do it–SEAL training taught them how.
“That’s the last of them,” Huerta shouted to the pilot. He moved