Thomas Hoover - Project Cyclops

Probably harder than he knew. He reached up and flicked on the fuel feeds, then pushed the starter. To his surprise, there came the sound of a long, dull whine that began increasing rapidly in intensity and frequency. The main rotor had kicked on-he could tell from the vibration-and the tail stabilizer, too, if the rpm dials were reporting accurately.

All right, he told himself, the dial on the right side of the panel is rotor speed. Keep it in the green. And over to the left is engine speed. Come on, baby. Go for the green. Red line means you crash and burn. Pedals, okay. But this isn't like a regular airplane; the stick is cyclic, controls the angle of your blades.

The instruments were now on-line-temperature, fuel gauges, pressure, power output. The two Isotov turboshafts were rapidly bringing up rpm now, already past three thousand. He grabbed hold of the collective, eased back on the clutch, and felt the massive machine shudder, then begin to lift off.

As the three men breached the gate leading into the asphalt-paved landing area, a fusillade of automatic-weapons fire began spattering off the bubble windscreen, leaving deep dents in the clear, globelike plastic.

So far, so good, he thought. It's holding up to manufacturer's specs.

Now for the power. It's controlled by the collective, but when you increase power you increase torque, so give her some left pedal to compensate.

The Hind had started to hover, and now he moved the columns to starboard, bringing it around. He could not reach the weapons station, but the 12.7mm machine gun in the nose had an auxiliary fire control under the command of the pilot.

With his hand on the stick, he activated the fire button. He might not be able to hit anything, but he'd definitely get somebody's attention…

The machine gun just below him erupted, a deadly spray that knocked sparks off the hurricane fence surrounding the pad as the chopper slowly revolved around. Somewhere now off to his left came a new burst of automatic fire. He found himself in a full-scale firefight, trapped like a tormented bull in a pen.

But the Hind was up and hovering… and also beginning to slip sideways because of the damaged wing. He grappled with the collective pitch lever in his left hand, trying to regain control, but he didn't have the experience. The chopper was now poised about ten feet above the ground, its engines bellowing, nosing around and drifting dangerously.

He'd lost control. As it tilted sideways, the fence began coming up at him, aiming directly for the nose bubble. Even more unnerving, though, was the heavyset terrorist in a black pullover who was standing directly in front of the bubble and firing his Uzi point-blank. Worse still, he was handling it like second nature.

The plastic splintered with a high-pitched shriek as the rounds caught it head-on. The curvature had helped before, but now the gunman was able to fire straight into it. The game was about to be up.

He ducked for the floor of the cockpit just as the bubble windscreen detonated, spewing shards of plastic both outward and inward. Now the helicopter was coming about and lifting off again, pulling up strands of the wire fence that had gotten tangled in the landing gear.

No time to worry about it. He rose up, grasped the collective, and urged more power, trying to compensate for the torque. But the mottled gray behemoth was increasingly unstable, shunting sideways, drifting over the security fence and spiraling upward toward the mountain that bristled with SatCom's communications gear. The gunner holding the Uzi slipped in another clip and raised up to finish him off, but at that instant Vance squeezed the fire button one last time and the man danced a pirouette, disappearing from view.

As he started to spiral in earnest, more automatic fire ricocheted off the fuselage. Then came a sickening whine.

The stabilizer, he thought. They must have hit the damned stabilizer. This is going to be a very short trip.

Panic caught him as the Hind started into autorotation, round and round like a bumper-car ride at an amusement park.

He cut the power-hoping he could bring her down using the energy stored in the blades-then quickly put the right pedal to the floor, held the collective down, and tried to keep rotor speed in the green. He was drifting to the east now, headed for a copse of trees halfway up the mountain.

Not a bad place to set down, he thought, and started to flare the blades with the stick, hoping he could bring her in with the collective. The Hind was still spinning in autorotation, but not yet dangerously. Slowly, slowly…

He was about thirty feet above the trees when a splatter of automatic fire erupted from the open doorway. He whirled around to see the terrorist he'd bulldozed into the fence now hanging onto the metal step and trying to pull himself in.

What now…!

The man-Vance guessed he was pushing forty, with a face of timeless brutality-was covered with blood and his aim was hampered by trying to hold the Uzi as he fired one-handed, the other hand grasping the step. He was cursing in German…

At that instant the Hind took a sickening dip, and the Uzi clattered onto the doorway pallet as the terrorist relinquished it to try to hold on with both hands.

But he was losing it, his hands slippery with his own blood, and all that held him now was the torn section of his own shirt that had somehow sleeved over the step. Then his grasp gave way entirely, and he dangled for a moment by the shirt before it ripped through and he fell, a trailing scream. He landed somewhere in the trees twenty feet below, leaving only the shirt.

In the meantime the Hind continued spiraling and drifting down, and Vance looked out to see the gray granite of the side of the mountain moving toward him, with only a bramble of trees in between. But at least the chopper's autorotation was bringing him in for a soft crash.

He braced himself as a clump of trees slapped against the side of the fuselage. Then the twelve-ton helicopter plunged into them, its landing gear collapsing as it crunched to a stop. He felt himself flung forward, accompanied by the metallic splatter of the rotor collapsing against the granite, shearing and knocking the fuselage sideways in a series of jolts. As the two turboshaft engines automatically shut down, he held onto the seat straps and reflected that this was his first and probably last turn at the stick of a Hind. And all he'd managed to do was total it.

Heck of a way to start a morning.

The Uzi was still lying on the floor of the cabin, while the shirt of the man he had shot was wrapped around the metal step and lodged beneath the crushed landing gear.

When he reached back and checked to see that the Walther 9mm was still secured in his belt, he noticed that his arm had been lacerated by the jagged plastic of the shattered canopy. He noticed it, but he didn't feel it. He was feeling nothing, only a surge of adrenaline and the certain knowledge he had to get out fast, with the Uzi.

He scooped it up and stumbled through the doorway, to the sound of muted gunfire down the hill, as the other two hoods continued to advance.

He had the German's automatic now, but the last thing he wanted was a shootout. Nonetheless, rounds of fire sang around him as he ripped the black shirt loose from the chopper's step and felt the pockets. One contained what seemed like a small leather packet.

He yanked it out, then plunged in a direction that would bring the Hind between him and the other two assailants. But when he tried to catch his footing in the green bramble of brush, he fell on his shoulder and rolled, feeling a spasm of pain. Christ, this was no longer any fun!

About twenty feet away was an even denser copse of cypress scrub than the one he had crashed in. If he could make that, he told himself, he'd have some cover. He just had to get there in one piece.