he bellowed over the roar of the slipstream. "Then two others at each of the other hatches. Move, you bastards! Move!"
The Long Ranger held warily on the hip of the heavy lifter. Slowed by the ominous cylindrical shape dangling beneath its belly, the Halo hadn't been difficult to overtake.
"It's rather like a dog chasing an automobile," Valentina mused as they studied the giant Russian-built helicopter. "Once you catch the damn thing what do you do with it?"
The larger aircraft stolidly continued its lumbering retreat away from Wednesday Island. To the southeast, the cloud-capped outlines of the next rank of arctic islands thrust above the horizon.
"This is not good, Jon," she continued, kneeling on the deck beside the open side hatch. "If he drops down to fly nap-of-the-Earth inside of the archipelago, the DEW Line will never be able to pick him up amid that tangle of islands and channels. It'll be blind luck if the interceptors can find him."
"I know it. That's why we've got to stay on him."
Randi looked back over the pilot's seat. "Just letting you know, Jon, we don't have all that much of a fuel reserve."
"I know that, too." Again they were running out of assets, and every minute and mile was taking them deeper into the frozen wastes of the Queen Elizabeth Archipelago and farther from allies and aid.
"Watch it!" Valentina exclaimed. A black rectangle had suddenly appeared in the Halo's fuselage, the jettisoned door fluttering away toward the pack ice below. "He's opening his gun ports!"
Sparks of muzzle flame danced inside the open doorway, and gun smoke streaked down the flank of the heavy lifter. Randi countered, flaring the Long Ranger back. Climbing and sideslipping, she put her smaller, nimbler machine above and behind the shield of the larger helicopter's blade arc, positioning so that Kretek's gunners could not fire on them without damaging their own rotors.
Below them, the Halo weaved sluggishly, like an elephant waving its tusks at a prowling lion, the containment vessel swinging, pendulumlike, at the end of its tether.
"Wouldn't it be lovely if they developed a bad case of butterfingers and just dropped the damn thing?" Valentina commented.
"A nice thought, but it's something we can't count on," Smith replied. "Randi, what are the odds of our shooting out one of their engines?"
The blonde shook her head. "Not good at all! The Halo is built to Russian mil spec. It's a flying tank, designed to absorb a lot of battle damage."
"There's got to be some point of vulnerability!" Smith insisted.
Randi frowned in thought. "Maybe the Jesus nut, the main rotor hub. If you can cut a push-pull rod or fracture a blade hinge, that might do it."
"Val, it's your rifle. What do you think?"
The historian looked dubiously at her old Winchester. "I don't know. The.220 Swift is an excellent man killer but a stinkin' antimateriel round. There's too much velocity and not enough penetration."
"Can you do it?" Smith insisted.
"I can but try. No promises, though. Randi, bring us in, close as you can and as steady as you can."
She lay down on the deck in the prone firing position. Twisting the sling of the model 70 around her forearm, she aimed out of the side hatch, nestling in behind the sights.
Stacked almost on top of each other, the Long Ranger and the Halo thundered through the arctic sky, a crow mercilessly harrying a vulture. In the Halo's cockpit, the deck below Kretek's feet swayed ominously, the arcing swings of the containment vessel at the end of the cable wrenching at the heavy lifter.
"They're firing at us!" the arms dealer bellowed into the ear of the Halo's pilot. "Do something!" With the escape hatches kicked open, the interior of the big helicopter was a welter of wind roar and engine shriek.
"I can't maneuver with a sling load!" the pilot yelled back. "The only way we can evade is by cutting loose!"
An automatic pistol appeared in Kretek's hand. "Try it and I'll kill you."
It was no idle threat, as the Halo's pilot was well aware. But the threat presented by that other rotor-winged gadfly was not idle, either. There was the tap and screech of a bullet strike on the upper fuselage.
"Climb, you bastard!" Kretek snapped. "Climb above them so we can shoot back!"
Gritting his teeth, the pilot twisted his throttle grip to maximum war power, pushing the Tumanski gas turbines to their limits and sending the tachometers and temperature gauges swinging up and into their red zones.