"No chance! Missed the bastard!" It was one of the rare times she ever heard him swear.
She got the helicopter stabilized under its rotor disk and checked her gauges. "We can do that once more," she reported; "then we go into the water."
It was a simple statement of fact.
"There's a life vest under each seat, and a life raft slung under the fuselage." Smith was equally pragmatic with his reply as he reached forward to take another speed loader from the fanny pack. "When we go in, I'll try for the life raft. Everyone else swim as far away from the copter as fast as you can. Stay together and don't inflate your vests right off. He's going to strafe us, and you're going to have to dive to evade."
He was only going through the drill for form's sake. Their survival time in the frigid waters of the straits could be counted in single-digit minutes.
"This would be a marvelous moment for a witty offhand comment," Professor Metrace added dryly. "Any volunteers?" The historian's face was pale in the cockpit mirror, but she was holding it together in her own way. Randi had to smile. Her taste in men might be questionable, but even she had to admit, Valentina Metrace had style.
Beyond the portside windows she could see the Cessna climbing into attack position once again. "Last chance," Smith said. "Any suggestions?"
"There may be something..." Smyslov's distracted murmur came over the intercom circuit.
"Major, do you have an idea?"
"Possibly, Colonel, but there is only a small chance..."
"A small chance is better than none, Major," Smith snapped, "and that's what we have now. Go!"
"As you wish, sir!" Behind his sunglasses Smyslov had his own eyes fixed on the enemy plane. "Miss Russell, when he begins his next run, you must hold your course; your straight course; you must let him shoot at us!"
Randi spared him an instant's disbelieving glance. "You mean we give him a clean shot?"
"Yes. Exactly! We must let him fire on us. You must hold your course to the last possible second; then you must not turn and dive; you must climb! You must cut directly across his flight path!"
That was insanity twice over. "If he doesn't shoot us down, we'll collide with him!"
Smyslov could only nod in agreement. "Very possibly, Miss Russell."
The Cessna banked, lifting into its wingover and final attacking dive.
"Randi, do it!" Smith's command rang in her ears.
"Jon!"
His voice mellowed. "I don't know what he's thinking, either, but do it anyway."
Randi bit her lip and held her course. She felt Smyslov's hand drop onto her shoulder. "Wait for him," the Russian said, tracking the pursuit curve of their attacker, calculating speeds and distances. "Wait for him!"
A tracer tentacle lashed past the Long Ranger, weaving and groping for the helicopter.
"Wait for him!" Smyslov said relentlessly, his fingers digging into her collarbone. "Wait...!"
The airframe shuddered as high-velocity metal thwacked through its structure. A side window starred and exploded inward as death screamed through the cockpit.
"Now! Pull up! Pull up!"
Wrenching her controls back to their stops, Randi lifted the Long Ranger through the flight path of the Cessna Centurion. For an instant, the whole world off the port side was filled with the nose and shimmering propeller arc of the diving plane, hanging mere feet beyond their own rotor arc. And in that frozen instant the windshield of the Cessna exploded outward.
Then it was past, and the helicopter was bucking and skidding wildly in the interlocking turbulence, on the very razor's edge of departing controlled flight. Randi fought for the recovery, a thin, angry adrenaline-spurred cry slipping from her lips as she wrestled with the pitch and collective, striving not to lethally overstress the airframe. If she could fly the Ranger out of this, by God, she could fly it anywhere.
The copter responded and steadied with a final shuddering bobble. They still had a valid aircraft. They still had life.
"Where is he?" Randi panted.
"Down there," Smith answered.
The white Cessna was falling away beneath them in a flat spin, a thin haze of smoke streaming from its cockpit. A moment later it belly-slammed into the sea, vanishing from sight in an explosion of spray.
"Well done, Randi," Smith continued. "And you, Major. Exceptionally well done."
"I'll second that," Valentina Metrace added reverently. "If you were a man, my dear Randi, I'd be yours for the asking."
"Thanks, but would someone mind telling me just what it was that I did? What happened to that guy?"
"It was...pah, what are the words..." Smyslov slumped