Frazer straightened to attention. “Sir.”
“We won’t abandon you, Ian. When the enemy is well committed there, we’ll use the helicopters to take you out. Then we will move on both their flanks and roll them up.” Falkenberg pointed to the map again. “This depression seems secure enough as a landing area. Code that Green A-one.”
Major Jeremy Savage held a match over the bowl of his pipe and inhaled carefully. When he was satisfied with the light, he said, “Close timing needed, John Christian. Ian’s in a spot of trouble if we lose the choppers.”
“Have a better way, Jerry?” Falkenberg asked.
“No.”
“Right. Fuller, can you navigate a helicopter?”
“Yes, sir. I can even fly one.”
Falkenberg nodded again. “Yes. You are a taxpayer’s son, aren’t you? Fuller, you will go with Number 3 chopper. Captain Owensford.”
“Sir.”
“I want you to lead the rescue of the hostages. Sergeant Major, I want a squad of headquarters assault guards, full body armor, in Number 3. Fuller will guide the pilot as close as possible to the cave where the women are held. Captain Owensford will follow in Number 2 with another assault squad. Every effort will be made to secure the hostages alive.”
“Yes, sir,” Owensford said.
“Fuller, is this understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. You won’t have time to go in with them. When the troops are off, those choppers must move out fast. We’ll need them to rescue Ian’s lot.”
“Colonel?” Mark said.
“Yes?”
“Not all women are hostages. Some of them will fight, I think. I don’t know how many. And not all the men are—not everybody wants to be in there. Some would run off if they could.”
“And what do you expect me to do about it?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Neither do I, but Captain Owensford will be aware of the situation. Sergeant Major, we will move this command post in one hour. Until then, Fuller, I’ll ask you to show Captain Rottermill everything you know about that camp.”
It isn’t going to work, Mark thought. I prayed for her to die. Only I don’t know if she wants to die. And now she will. He took another pull from the bottle and felt it taken from his hand.
“Later,” Rottermill said. “For now, tell me what you know about this lot.”
X
“They’ve found that dead guard.” The radio sergeant adjusted his earphones. “Seem pretty stirred up about it.”
Falkenberg looked at his watch. There was a good hour before sunrise. “Took them long enough.”
“Pity Fuller couldn’t guide that chopper in the dark,” Jeremy Savage said.
“Yes. Sergeant Major, ask Captain Frazer to ready his men, and have your trail ambush party alerted.”
“Sir.”
“I have a good feeling about this one, John Christian.” Savage tapped his pipe against the heel of his boot. “A good feeling.”
“Hope you’re right, Jeremy. Fuller doesn’t believe it will work.”
“No, but he knows this is her best chance. He’s steady enough now. Realistic assessment of probabilities. Holding up well, all things considered.”
“For a married man.” Married men make the kinds of promises no man can keep, Falkenberg thought. His lips twitched slightly at the memory, and for a moment Grace’s smile loomed in the darkness of the jungle outside. “Sergeant Major, have the chopper teams get into their armor.”
* * *
“Is it always like this?” Mark said. He sat in the left hand seat of the helicopter. Unlike fixed wing craft, the right hand seat is the command pilot’s position in a helicopter.
Body armor and helmet were an unfamiliar weight, and he sweated inside the thick clothing. The phones in his helmet crackled with commands meant for others. Outside the helmet there were sounds of firing. Captain Frazer’s assault had started a quarter of an hour before; now there was a faint reddish gray glow in the eastern skies over the jungle.
Lieutenant Bates grinned and wiggled the control stick. “Usually it’s worse. We’ll get her out, Fuller. You just put us next to the right cave.”
“I’ll do that, but it won’t work.”
“Sure it will.”
“You don’t need to cheer me up, Bates.”
“I don’t?” Bates grinned again. He was not much older than Mark. “Maybe I need cheering up. I’m always scared about now.”
“Really? You don’t look it.”
“All we’re expected to do. Not look it.” He thumbed the mike button. “Chief, everything set back there?”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
The chatter in Mark’s helmet grew still. A voice said “Missiles away.” Seconds later a new and sterner voice said “All helicopters, start your engines. I say again, start engines.”
“That’s us,” Bates reached for the starting controls and the turbines whined. “Not very much light.”
“Helicopters, report when ready.”
“Ready aye-aye,” Bates said.
“Aye-aye?” Mark asked.
“We’re an old CD Marine regiment,” Bates said. “Lot of us, anyway. Stayed with the old man when the Senate disbanded his regiment.”
“You don’t look old enough.”
“Me? Not hardly. This was Falkenberg’s Mercenary Legion long before I came aboard.”
“Why? Why join mercenaries?”
Bates shrugged. “I like being part of the regiment. The pay’s good. What’s the matter, don’t you think the work’s worth doing?”
“Lift off. Begin helicopter assault.”
Lift-off aye-aye.” The turbine whine increased and the ship lifted in a rising, looping circle. Bates took the right hand position in the three-craft formation.
Mark could dimly see the green below, and the visibility increased every minute. Now he could make out the shapes of small clearings among the endless green marshes.
“You take her,” Bates said. His hands hovered over the controls, ready to take his darling away from this stranger.
Mark grasped the unfamiliar stick. It was different from the family machine he’d learned on, but the principles were the same. The chopper was not much more than a big airborne truck, and he’d driven one of those on a vacation in the Yukon. The Canadian lakes seemed endlessly far away, in time as well as in space.
Flying came back easily. He remembered the wild stunts he’d tried when he was first licensed. Once a group from his school had gone on a picnic to San Miguel Island and Mark had landed in a cove, dropping onto a narrow, inaccessible beach between high cliffs during a windstorm. It had been stupid, but wildly exciting. After that, they always let him drive when they wanted to do something unusual. Good practice for this, he thought. And I’m scared stiff, and what do I do after this is over? Will Falkenberg turn me in? They’ll sell me to a mining company. Or worse.
There were low hills ahead, dull brown in the early morning light. Men huddled in the rocky areas. Some lay sprawled, victims of the bomblets released by the first salvo of rockets. Gatlings in the compartment behind Mark crackled like frying bacon. The shots were impossibly close together, like a steady stream of noise. The helicopter raked the Free State. The small slugs sent chips flying from the rocks. The other choppers opened up, and six tracer streams twisted in crazy patterns intertwining like some courtship dance.
Men and women died on that flinty ground. They lay in broken heaps, red blood staining the dirt around them, exactly like a scene on tri-v. It’s not fake, Mark thought. They won’t get up when the cameras go away. Did they deserve this? Does anyone?
Then he was too busy piloting the helicopter to think about anything else. The area in front of the cave was small, very small—would the rotors clear it? A strong gust from the sea struck them and the chopper rocked dangerously.
“Watch her—” Whatever Bates had intended to say, he never finished it. He slumped forward over the stick, held just above it by his shoulder straps. Something wet and sticky splashed across Mark’s left hand and arm. Brains. A large slug had come angling upward to hit Bates in the jaw, then ricochet around in his helmet. The young lieutenant had almost no face. Get her down, Mark chanted, easy baby, down you go, level now, here’s another gust, easy baby. . . .
Men poured out of the descending chopper. Mark had time to be surprised: they jumped down and ran into the cave even as their friends fell around them.
Then something stabbed Mark’s left arm, and he saw neat holes in the Plexiglas windscreen in front of him. The men went into the cave. They were faceless in their big helmets, identical robots moving forward or falling in heaps. . . .
Lord God, they’re magnificent. I’ve got to get this thing down! Suddenly it was the most important thing in his life. Get down and get out, go into the cave with those men. Find Juanita, yes, of course, but go with them, do something for myself because I want to do it—
“Bates, stop wasting time and get to green A-one urgent.”
God damn it! Mark fumbled with the communications gear. “Bates is dead. This is Fuller. I’m putting the chopper down.”