Whirlwind

  Ah, the pay! How I could use their pay! Why even the lowest roustabout gets as much in one week as I get in a month—a miserable 1,200 pounds sterling monthly for me, a senior captain and training captain, with forty-eight hundred hours! Even with the miserly 500 pounds monthly overseas allowance, that’s not enough for the kids, school fees, my wife, the mortgage and filthy taxes…let alone the best food and wine and my darling Sayada. Ah, Sayada, how I’ve missed you!

  But for Lochart…

  Piece of shit! Tom Lochart could have let me go with him and I could be in Tehran in her arms right now! My God how I need her. And money. Money! May the balls of all taxmen shrivel into dust and their cocks vanish! I’ve barely enough as it is and if Iran goes down the sewer, what then? I’ll bet S-G won’t survive. That’s their bad luck—there’ll always be chopper work for a pilot as excellent as I am somewhere in the world.

  He saw Guineppa watching him. “Yes, mon vieux?”

  “I’ll go with the last load.”

  “Better to go first, there’s a medic at Rosa.”

  “I’m fine—honestly.”

  Then Jean-Luc heard his name being called and put on his parka. “Can I do anything for you?”

  The man smiled wearily. “Just take Pietro aloft with the dynamite.”

  “I’ll do that, but last, with any luck, before dusk. Don’t worry.”

  Outside the cold hit him again. Pietro was waiting for him. Men were already grouped near the idling helicopter, with packs and duffel bags of various sizes. Banastasio went past leading a big German shepherd.

  “The man said to travel light,” Pietro told him.

  “I am,” Banastasio said equally sourly. “I’ve my papers, my dog, and my shift. The rest’s replaceable, on the goddamn company.” Then to Jean-Luc, “You’ve a full load, Jean-Luc, let’s get with it.”

  Jean-Luc checked the men aboard, and the dog, then called Nasiri on the radio and told him what they were going to do. “Okay, Scot, off you go. You take her,” he said and got out and saw Scot’s eyes widen.

  “You mean by myself?”

  “Why not, mon brave. You’ve the hours. This’s your third check ride. You’ve got to start sometime. Off you go.”

  He watched Scot lift off. In barely five seconds the chopper was over the abyss with a clear seventy-five hundred feet below and he knew how eerie and wonderful that first solo takeoff from Bellissima would be, envying the young man the thrill. Young Scot’s worth it, he thought, watching him critically.

  “Jean-Luc!”

  He took his eyes off the distant chopper and glanced around, wondering suddenly what was so different. Then he realized it was the silence, so vast that it almost seemed to deafen him. For a moment he felt weirdly unbalanced, even a little sick, then the whine of the wind picked up and he became whole again.

  “Jean-Luc! Over here!” Pietro was in a shadow with a group of men on the other side of the camp, beckoning him. Laboriously, he picked his way over to them. They were strangely silent.

  “Look there,” Pietro said nervously and pointed aloft. “Just under the overhang. There! Twenty, thirty feet below. You see the cracks?”

  Jean-Luc saw them. His testicles heaved. They were no longer cracks in the ice but fissures. As they watched, there was a vast groaning. The whole mass seemed to shift a fraction. A small chunk of ice and snow fell away. It gathered speed and substance and thundered down the steep slope. They were shock-still. The avalanche, now tons of snow and ice, came to rest barely fifty yards away from them.

  One of the men broke the silence. “Let’s hope the chopper doesn’t come barreling back like a kamikaze—that could be the detonator, amico. Even a little noise could trigger that whole stronzo apart.”

  IN THE SKIES NEAR QAZVIN: 3:17 P.M. From the moment Charlie Pettikin had left Tabriz almost two hours ago with Rakoczy—the man he knew as Smith—he had flown the 206 as straight and level as possible, hoping to lull the KGB man to sleep, or at least off guard. For the same reason he had avoided conversation by slipping his headset onto his neck. At length Rakoczy had given up, just watched the terrain below. But he stayed alert with his gun across his lap, his thumb on the safety catch. And Pettikin wondered about him, who he was, what he was, what band of revolutionaries he belonged to—fedayeen, mujhadin, or Khomeini supporter—or if he was loyal, gendarmerie, army, or SAVAK, and if so why it was so important to get to Tehran. It had never occurred to Pettikin that the man was Russian not Iranian.

  At Bandar-e Pahlavi where refueling had been laboriously slow, he had done nothing to break the monotony, just paid over his last remaining U.S. dollars and watched while the tanks were filled, then signed the official IranOil chit. Rakoczy had tried to chat with the refueler but the man was hostile, clearly frightened of being seen refueling this foreign helicopter, and even more frightened of the machine gun that was on the front seat.

  All the time they were on the ground Pettikin had gauged the odds of trying to grab the gun. There was never a chance. It was Czech. In Korea they had been plentiful. And Vietnam. My God, he thought, those days seem a million years ago.

  He had taken off from Bandar-e Pahlavi and was now heading south at a thousand feet, following the Qazvin road. East he could see the beach where he had set down Captain Ross and his two paratroopers. Again he wondered how they had known he was making a flight to Tabriz and what their mission had been. Hope to God they make it—whatever they had to make. Had to be urgent and important. Hope I see Ross again, I’d like that…

  “Why do you smile, Captain?”

  The voice came through his earphones. Automatically on takeoff this time he had put them on. He looked across at Rakoczy and shrugged, then went back to monitoring his instruments and the ground below. Over Qazvin he banked southeast following the Tehran road, once more retreating into himself. Be patient, he told himself, then saw Rakoczy tense and put his face closer to the window, looking downward.

  “Bank left…a little left,” Rakoczy ordered urgently, his concentration totally on the ground. Pettikin put the chopper into a gentle bank—Rakoczy on the low side. “No, more! Make a 180.”

  “What is it?” Pettikin asked. He steepened the bank, suddenly aware the man had forgotten the machine gun in his lap. His heart picked up a beat.

  “There, below on the road. That track.”

  Pettikin paid no attention to the ground below. He kept his eyes on the gun, gauging the distance carefully, his heart racing. “Where? I can’t see anything…” He steepened the bank even more to come around quickly onto the new heading. “What truck? You mean…”

  His left hand darted out and grabbed the gun by the barrel and awkwardly jerked it through the sliding window into the cabin behind them. At the same time his right hand on the stick went harder left then quickly right and left-right again, rocking the chopper viciously. Rakoczy was taken completely unaware and his head slammed against the side, momentarily stunning him. At once Pettikin clenched his left fist and inexpertly slashed at the man’s jaw to put him unconscious. But Rakoczy, karate-trained, his reflexes good, managed to stop the blow with his forearm. Groggily he held on to Pettikin’s wrist, gaining strength every second as the two men fought for supremacy, the chopper dangerously heeled over, Rakoczy still on the downside. They grappled with each other, cursing, seat belts inhibiting them. Both became more frenzied, Rakoczy with two hands free beginning to dominate.

  Abruptly Pettikin gripped the stick with his knees, took his right hand off it, and smashed again at Rakoczy’s face. The blow was not quite true but the strength of it shifted him off balance, destroyed the grip of his knees shoving the stick left, and overrode the delicate balance of his feet on the rudder pedals. At once the chopper reeled onto its side, lost all lift—no chopper can fly itself even for a second—the centrifugal force further throwing his weight askew and in the melee the collective lever was shoved down. The chopper fell out of the sky, out of control.

  In panic, Pettikin abandoned the fight.
Blindly he struggled to regain control, engines screaming and instruments gone mad. Hands and feet and training against panic, overcorrecting, then overcorrecting again. They dropped nine hundred feet before he got her straight and level, his heart unbearable, the snow-covered ground fifty feet below.

  His hands were trembling. It was difficult to breathe. Then he felt something hard shoved in his side and heard Rakoczy cursing. Dully he realized the language was not Iranian but did not recognize it. He looked across at him and saw the face twisted with anger and the gray metal of the automatic and cursed himself for not thinking of that. Angrily he tried to shove the gun away but Rakoczy stuck it hard into the side of his neck.

  “Stop or I’ll blow your head off, you matyeryebyets!”

  At once Pettikin put the plane into a violent bank, but the gun pressed harder, hurting him. He felt the safety catch go off and the gun cock.

  “Your last chance!”

  The ground was very near, rushing past sickeningly. Pettikin knew he could not shake him off. “All right—all right,” he said, conceding, and straightened her and began to climb. The pressure from the gun increased and with it, the pain. “You’re hurting me for God’s sake and shoving me off balance! How can I fly if y—”

  Rakoczy just jabbed the gun harder, shouting at him, cursing him, jamming his head against the doorframe.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Pettikin shouted back in desperation, trying to adjust his headset that had been torn off in the struggle. “How the hell can I fly with your gun in my neck?” The pressure eased off a fraction and he righted the plane. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “Smith!” Rakoczy was equally unnerved. A split second later, he thought, and we would have been splattered like a pat of fresh cow dung. “You think you deal with a matyeryebyets amateur?” Before he could stop himself his reflexes took his hand and backhanded Pettikin across the mouth.

  Pettikin was rocked by the blow, and the chopper twisted but came back into control. He felt the burn spreading over his face. “You do that again and I’ll put her on her back,” he said with a great finality.

  “I agree,” Rakoczy said at once. “I apologize for…for that…for that stupidity, Captain,” Carefully he eased back against his door but kept the gun cocked and pointed. “Yes, there was no need. I’m sorry.”

  Pettikin stared at him blankly. “You’re sorry?”

  “Yes. Please excuse me. It was unnecessary. I am not a barbarian.” Rakoczy gathered himself. “If you give me your word you’ll stop trying to attack me, I’ll put my gun away. I swear you’re in no danger.”

  Pettikin thought a moment. “All right,” he said. “If you tell me who you are and what you are.”

  “Your word?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well, I accept your word, Captain.” Rakoczy put the safety on and the gun in his far pocket. “My name is Ali bin Hassan Karakose and I’m a Kurd. My home—my village—is on the slopes of Mount Ararat on the Iranian-Soviet border. Through the Blessings of God I’m a Freedom Fighter against the Shah, and anyone else who wishes to enslave us. Does that satisfy you?”

  “Yes—yes it does. Then if y—”

  “Please, later. First go there—quickly.” Rakoczy pointed below. “Level off and go closer.”

  They were at eight hundred feet to the right of the Qazvin-Tehran road. A village straddled the road a mile back and he could see the smoke whirled away by a stiff breeze “Where?”

  “There, beside the road.”

  At first Pettikin could not see what the man pointed at—his mind jumbled with questions about the Kurds and their historic centuries of wars against the Persian Shahs. Then he saw the collection of cars and trucks pulled up to one side, and men surrounding a modern truck with a blue cross on a rectangular white background on the roof, other traffic grinding past slowly. “You mean there? You want to go over those trucks and cars?” he asked, his face still smarting and his neck aching. “The bunch of trucks near the one with the blue cross on its roof?”

  “Yes.”

  Obediently Pettikin went into a descending bank. “What’s so important about them, eh?” he asked, then glanced up. He saw the man staring at him suspiciously. “What? What the hell’s the matter now?”

  “You really don’t know what a blue cross on a white background signifies?”

  “No. What about it? What is it?” Pettikin had his eyes on the truck that was much closer now, close enough to see it was a red Range Rover, an angry crowd surrounding it, one of the men smashing at the back windows with the butt of a rifle. “It’s the flag of Finland” came through his earphones and “Erikki” leaped into Pettikin’s mind. “Erikki had a Range Rover,” he burst out and saw the rifle butt shatter the window. “You think that’s Erikki?”

  “Yes…yes it’s possible.”

  At once he went faster and lower, his pain forgotten, his excitement overriding all the sudden questions of how and why this Freedom Fighter knew Erikki. Now they could see the crowd turning toward them and people scattering. His pass was very fast and very low but he did not see Erikki. “You see him?”

  “No. I couldn’t see inside the cab.”

  “Nor could I,” Pettikin said anxiously, “but a few of those buggers are armed and they were smashing the windows. You see them?”

  “Yes. They must be fedayeen. One of them fired at us. If you…” Rakoczy stopped, hanging on tightly as the chopper skidded into a 180-degree turn, twenty feet off the ground, and hurtled back again. This time the crowd of men and the few women fled, falling over one another. Traffic in both directions tried to speed away or shuddered to a halt, one overloaded truck skidding into another. Several cars and trucks turned off the road and one almost overturned in the joub.

  Just abreast of the Range Rover, Pettikin swung into a sliding 90-degree turn to face it—snow boiling into a cloud—for just enough time to recognize Erikki, then into another 90 degrees to barrel away into the sky. “It’s him all right. Did you see the bullet holes in the windscreen?” he asked, shocked. “Reach in the back for the machine gun. I’ll steady her and then we’ll go and get him. Hurry, I want to keep them off balance.”

  At once Rakoczy unbuckled his seat belt, reached back through the small intercommunicating window but could not get the gun that lay on the floor. With great difficulty he twisted out of his seat and clambered headfirst, half through the window, groping for it, and Pettikin knew the man was at his mercy. So easy to open the door now and shove him out. So easy. But impossible.

  “Come on!” he shouted and helped pull him back into the seat. “Put your belt on!”

  Rakoczy obeyed, trying to catch his breath, blessing his luck that Pettikin was a friend of the Finn, knowing that if their positions had been reversed he would not have hesitated to open the door. “I’m ready,” he said, cocking the gun, appalled at Pettikin’s stupidity. The British are so stupid the mother-eating bastards deserve to lose. “Wh—”

  “Here we go!” Pettikin spun the chopper into a diving turn at maximum speed. Some armed men were still near the truck, guns pointing at them. “I’ll soften them up and when I say ‘fire’ put a burst over their heads!”

  The Range Rover rushed up at them, hesitated, then swirled away drunkenly—no trees nearby—hesitated again and came at them as the chopper danced around it. Pettikin flared to a sudden stop twenty yards away, ten feet off the ground. “Fire,” he ordered.

  At once Rakoczy let off a burst through the open window, aiming not over heads but at a group of men and women ducked down behind the back end of Erikki’s truck, out of Pettikin’s line of sight, killing or wounding some of them. Everyone nearby fled panic-stricken—screams of the wounded mingling with the howl of the jets. Drivers and passengers jumped out of cars and trucks scrambling away in the snowdrifts as best they could. Another burst and more panic, now everyone rushing in retreat, all traffic snarled. On the road some youths came from behind a truck with rifles. Rakoczy sprayed them and those nearb
y. “Make a 360!” he shouted.

  Immediately the helicopter pirouetted but no one was near. Pettikin saw four bodies in the snow. “I said over their heads, for God’s sake,” he began, but at that moment the door of the Range Rover swung open and Erikki jumped out, his knife in one hand. For a moment he was alone, then a chador-clad woman was beside him. At once Pettikin set the chopper down on the snow but kept her almost airborne. “Come on,” he shouted, beckoning them. They began to run, Erikki half carrying Azadeh whom Pettikin did not yet recognize.

  Beside him Rakoczy unlocked his side door and leaped out, opened the back door, and whirled on guard. Another short burst toward the traffic. Erikki stopped, appalled to see Rakoczy. “Hurry!” Pettikin shouted, not understanding the reason for Erikki’s hesitation. “Erikki, come on!” Then he recognized Azadeh. “My God…” he muttered, then shouted, “Come on, Erikki!”

  “Quick, I’ve not much ammunition left!” Rakoczy shouted in Russian.

  Erikki whirled Azadeh up into his arms and ran forward. A few bullets hummed past. At the side of the helicopter Rakoczy helped bundle Azadeh into the back, suddenly shoved Erikki aside with the barrel of the gun. “Drop your knife and get in the front seat!” he ordered in Russian. “At once.”

  Half paralyzed with shock, Pettikin watched Erikki hesitate, his face mottled with rage.

  Rakoczy said harshly, “By God, there’s more than enough ammunition for her, you, and this motherfucking pilot. Get in!”

  Somewhere in the traffic a machine gun started to fire. Erikki dropped his knife in the snow, eased his great height into the front seat, Rakoczy slid beside Azadeh, and Pettikin took off and sped away, weaving over the ground like a panicked grouse, then climbed into the sky.

  When he could talk he said, “What the hell’s going on?”

  Erikki did not answer. He craned around to make sure Azadeh was all right. She had her eyes closed and was slumped against the side, panting, trying to get her breath. He saw that Rakoczy had locked her seat belt, but when Erikki reached back to touch her the Soviet motioned him to stop with the gun.