That particular operation had been a dream—the team extracted before anybody on the ground knew they’d had company. Three months later, though, a different pilot took a .51-cal round through the throat and sprayed his blood all over what was left of the cockpit while the Colonel flew them back to the base. They’d pancaked in from twenty feet up, but that wasn’t the Colonel’s fault: another round had opened the tank. The turbine died when the last of the jet fuel leaked out in the airstream.
The Colonel figured he could fly the air sled if he had to—fly it better than Rao, at any rate—but he couldn’t both fly the bird and conn them in at low level the way this insertion had to be made. Besides, the controls were on the left side of the cockpit; they’d have to land for him and Rao to change places, which meant circling back to the base to find a cleared area. The number of ways that could go wrong made the risk at least as significant as letting Rao continue as pilot.
The Telugu seemed to have gotten things under control after the rocky start. The sled’s speed built up until they were belting along at close on ninety knots by the Colonel’s estimate. They could have done with a proper windscreen, though the reverse curve of the sled’s dash panel did a remarkably good job of directing the airflow over the pair in the immediate front of the vehicle. Buffeting was much worse for the common soldiers farther back.
The Colonel gave his usual half-mouthed smile. Rank hath its privileges. In this case, the privilege of taking the first round himself if they happened to overfly an Enemy outpost. God knew Enemy troops should’ve been patrolling well out from their bases in the mountains.
But even if the local commander knew what he was doing, his subordinates might still have ignored his orders or simply done a piss-poor job of executing them. You couldn’t assume that the Enemy was ten feet tall, any more than you could count on the Enemy not knowing his ass from a hole in the ground.
The air sled continued slowly climbing. He’d told Rao—told Krishnamurtri, at any rate—that they needed to stay within ten feet of the treetops; they were up to thirty by now and going higher. Rather than go through the Brahmin, the Colonel tapped on the top of the dashboard to get Rao’s attention and mimed a gliding descent with his right hand.
Krishnamurtri immediately shouted at the pilot and slapped the back of his head. Rao looked around in wide-eyed amazement. The air sled yawed; the troops in the back cried out with fear. They had a right to be afraid: the sled didn’t even have a grab rail. The Colonel was more than a little surprised that they hadn’t lost somebody during the wobbling takeoff.
He put his hand over Rao’s again, steadying the Telugu instead of trying to take control, and said to Krishnamurtri in a clipped, very clear voice, “I’ll handle this if you please, Captain. And I suggest that you not hit our pilot again while we’re in the air. A Claymore mine isn’t in the same league as an air crash for shredding human bodies. As I’ve seen many times.”
God knew he had.
The air sled stabilized. They flew on without further incident until the ground beneath changed abruptly from rolling scrubland to fractured terrain where rocks stood up in sheer-sided walls from the softer earth beneath. Rao pulled back on the joystick. He was adjusting his altitude instinctively by the mountains on the horizon rather than the broken hills immediately below the air sled.
The Colonel tapped the dashboard and again mimed a descent. Rao glanced at him sidelong and adjusted the stick only minusculely. The sled continued to rise, though at a flatter angle.
“Tell him to follow the gully to our left!” the Colonel said to Krishnamurtri. The sled’s drive mechanism made no sound other than a low-frequency hum and an occasional pop of static electricity, but wind rush meant words had to be shouted to be heard. “We need to be down below the level of the gully’s walls!”