The Silent Sea (2010) - Cussler Clive - Страница 19

We need an immediate evac, Juan called to the pilot, pausing to help Mike Trono and his Quasimodo-like gait.

Not without the Major's permission, the pilot replied.

Radio him, Juan said sharply. He was the one who said to take off immediately. But fire the turbines first so we don't waste any time.

The pilot made no move to turn on the Eurocopter's engines. Instead, he reached for his helmet, with its integrated communication's system. Cabrillo glanced up the mountain. Through the smoke, it was difficult to make out details. It didn't appear the lead vehicles of the rescue convoy had made it to the crash scene, but he decided they'd wasted enough time.

He moved quickly, drawing an automatic from his hip holster and rushing forward to place the muzzle against the pilot's head before he could don the bulky helmet. The man froze.

Start the engines now. The cold timber in Juan's voice was enough to command compliance.

Take it easy, amigo. I'll get you and your buddies out of here. He carefully set the helmet back onto the copilot's seat and set about preparing the chopper for flight.

Juan turned back to his men. Miguel, he said nodding to Mike Trono and then pointing to the cockpit. Trono knew immediately that the Chairman wanted him watching the pilot for any sign he was going to trick them. The pilot should be thinking that these were badly wounded and even more frightened comrades who needed medical care. It would come later that he'd realize he was being kidnapped.

The rest of the men climbed into the helo, strapping themselves into the web-canvas bench seats. Jerry carefully placed the power cell on the deck and found some bungee cords to secure it in place.

In the cockpit, the pilot hit the turbine starter. There was a loud pop followed immediately by the steadily increasing whine of the helo's main engine. In seconds, the chorus was joined by the second motor. It would take more than a minute for them to reach the proper temperatures to engage the transmission and start the blades turning overhead.

Juan kept glancing upslope. The convoy must have reached the injured men by now. He wondered how long it would take the Major to understand what had happened. An hour would be nice, Cabrillo thought ruefully, but the truth was that the Argentine officer appeared more than capable. He would consider them lucky to get off the ground before coming under fire.

There came a clunk as the rotors started turning. Slowly at first, they quickly began whipping the smoke-gorged air. A tinny voice came over the helmet's speakers. Even with the din filling the chopper, its strident tone was plain.

Time's up, Juan thought.

The pilot motioned for Mike to hand him the helmet. Trono threw back a thousand-yard stare, the look of a man so deep into his own pain that nothing in the outside world mattered. The Argentine reached over to grab it, only to feel the cold steel of Juan's pistol hard up against his neck.

Leave it and just take off.

What's going on?

Mike suddenly shed his wounded persona and also had an automatic trained on the pilot.

My friend here also knows how to fly this thing. Do what we say, and you'll walk away alive. Screw with me, and some poor slob is going to be hosing your brains out of the cabin for a week. Comprende?

Who are you people? Americans?

Do I sound American to you? Juan shot back. Like any of the world's great languages, Spanish has diverse accents and dialects that are as regionally distinctive as fingerprints. Cabrillo also spoke Arabic, and no matter how he tried he couldn't shake a Saudi accent. But in Spanish he was a perfect mimic. He could imitate royalty from Seville or a sot from a Mexico City slum.

What the pilot heard was the voice of a man from his own city of Buenos Aires. I . . .

Don't think, Juan said. Just fly. Take us south.

He spent a microsecond considering his options. The hard eyes on him said there was only one. S+, s+. I'll fly.

His hands moved to the controls. Cabrillo looked up the hill once again. Trucks were racing down the log-hauling road, kicking up dust that mixed with the smoke already fouling the air. It wasn't even going to be close. The chopper would be a mile away by the time the Ninth Brigade soldiers were in range.

Jerry Pulaski shouted Juan's name.

And saved his life.

The pilot of the second chopper had to have heard Major Espinoza's radio call. He stood just outside the Eurocopter with a raised pistol. He had seen the gun Juan had trained on the pilot and calculated that he was the greatest risk. When he heard Jerry yell, the Argentine shifted his aim and fired twice. From that instant, events happened in such rapid succession that it was impossible to know their order.

As a fine red mist enveloped the cargo area, Juan twisted and dropped the second pilot with a double tap to the chest that hit in such a tight group the penetrations overlapped. The man dropped where he stood, no dramatic flourish, no Hollywood contortions. One second he thought he was about to become a hero, and the next he was on the ground like discarded laundry.

Mike Trono fired across the cockpit when the pilot reached for his door, then took up the controls himself. He twisted the throttle, and the helo lifted from the ground. As it began to rotate around on its axes, he put in the opposite rudder, and the craft stabilized.

Juan turned, jamming his pistol against the pilot's head hard enough to break skin. Blood ran from his ear. Fly this chopper or when we hit a thousand feet you'll fly out of it.

Mike's bullet had passed so close to the pilot's eyes that they stung from the heat and GSR, but he blinked through the pain and started flying the Eurocopter. With Trono covering him again, Juan turned his attention to Jerry Pulaski and Mark Murphy on the rear bench seat. Mark was bent over Jerry, who was slouched back with an arm clamped across his belly. Making sure the pilot wouldn't hear, Cabrillo asked, How bad?

The big man was going into shock. His face had lost all color, and he was shaking as though with fever.

Gut-shot, Mark replied. Both rounds. At such close range, I expect damage beyond the intestines. Kidney. Liver maybe.

Juan went numb. Such wounds were treatable at a level-one trauma center, but the nearest one of those was perhaps a thousand miles away. Out here, in the jungle, the chances of Pulaski surviving were zero. Cabrillo was looking at a dead man. And the pained eyes holding his knew it. Stay with us, Ski, Juan said, the words as empty as the hollow in his chest.

I ain't going anywhere, Jerry replied, taking rapid sips of air between each syllable, lying.

DOWN ON THE GROUND, Major Espinoza realized his quarry was getting away in the helicopter he gave them permission to take. He ordered the logger who was driving their pickup to stop. Espinoza threw open his door and jumped to the ground. He only carried a pistol, an ivory-handled Colt .45, but he had it out and trained on the fleeing helicopter as soon as his boots hit the dirt. He had no hope of hitting the chopper, but he cycled through the pistol's seven-round magazine as fast as he could pull the trigger, rage as much as gunpowder sending the bullets flying.

The men in the bed followed suit, filling the sky with autofire from their machine pistols. What they lacked in range they made up for in sheer weight of shot. In seconds, nearly two hundred bullets went chasing after the helicopter, and the men managed to reload and unleash another volley even as the first rounds began to swarm around the chopper like maddened wasps.

INCOMING, MIKE SHOUTED from the copilot's seat as he saw the constellation of muzzle flashes through the drifting smoke.

The pilot instinctively juked the nimble chopper, but with so many bullets in the air, and so many of them spreading far from their intended target, it was impossible to evade them all. Nine-millimeters peppered the Eurocopter, tearing sizzling holes through its thin aluminum skin. Most passed harmlessly through, but there was the ominous clang of rounds striking the engine housings and doing who knows what to the delicate turbines. The chopper suddenly veered hard over. Juan lost his footing and, had he not grabbed for the door stanchion, would have fallen out of the aircraft.