Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

This was no regular aircraft chasing them. The damned thing could turn on its own axis while flying straight ahead, bank as steeply as the Twin Astir, and hover when the glider would reach stalling speeds.

But Dar had committed himself. He glanced over his shoulder.

The Bell Ranger was hovering above and behind, a bird of prey waiting for its victim to end its contortions before pouncing.

Dar was just beginning his contortions. He came low across a wide valley, looking for a place to set the Twin Astir down, sure that they would have a better chance on foot than in the air. No meadows. No open mountainsides. All trees and boulders and ridgeline.

The helicopter nosed forward in a screaming dive behind them, rotors glinting.

“Can we open this canopy?” shouted Syd. “I need to get a shot.”

“No,” said Dar. He flew the glider directly at a rock wall, found the heated ridge-lift thermal less than fifty feet from the rock, and banked hard left, climbing on the thermal.

The helicopter easily made the turn, matched climb rates, and flew with them just beyond rotor distance. Dar could see the man in the back grinning as he raised the AK-47.

“Tony Constanza!” said Syd. She had loosened her harness enough to lean forward and get the muzzle of her Sig-Sauer out the open ventilation panel.

Constanza fired on full automatic even as Dar put the nose down, aiming for the ridgeline.

A bullet struck the nose of the Twin Astir. Another smashed the canopy, passed through between Dar’s and Syd’s heads, and exited through the Plexiglas on the right.

“Are you all right?” shouted Dar.

Before Syd could answer, Dar drove the nose of the sailplane inches above the Douglas firs, knocking needles off the treetops, and then banked hard right down the narrow valley.

The Bell Ranger gained altitude, clearing the ridgeline by yards instead of inches, and then roared above and past them headed south, Constanza’s assault rifle firing on full automatic.

Dar flew lower than the trees, following a small river running down the center of the narrow gully. Ahead of them, the helicopter slewed, swerved, and stopped directly in their path, hovering with its open door facing them and the AK-47 muzzle already flashing.

Dar banked hard left and felt two impacts on the right wing. Then he was through the gap in the east ridge he had noted from above. There was lift here, but he could not afford the airspeed to utilize it fully as he kept the nose down and flew down this even narrower gully, the Twin Astir’s wingtips less than two meters from rock walls on either side.

The Bell Ranger roared in behind them.

“I need to get a shot,” cried Syd again, swiveling wildly in her seat. Her harness had been loose enough that she had been thrown back and forth during the hard banks and choppy recovery.

“No,” said Dar. “We’re already beginning to handle poorly. If we open the canopy, our aerodynamics aren’t worth shit.”

The helicopter roared overhead at four times the glider’s speed. Constanza was leaning out, spraying slugs in their direction, but he had a bad angle.

The sailplane came into a wider valley just at the edge of the major uplift, almost back to the stacks of lenticular clouds, and Dar banked up and left. The glider lurched from the thermals flowing up and off the rock and they were over the ridge, soaring a thousand feet above a wider, descending valley.

“This isn’t going to work down here,” Dar said to Syd. “We need altitude.”

“We had altitude,” said Syd, still holding the 9mm pistol in both hands. “Then you came down here.”

“I know,” said Dar. “I fucked up.”

Dar worked the glider into the powerful vertical currents closer to the ridge just as the Bell Ranger made another sweep. Constanza was leaning out against his safety strap, blazing away, ejected brass glinting in the sunlight. Slugs struck the Twin Astir’s tail and Dar felt control go sluggish. Another bullet shattered the canopy just behind Dar’s head. He pitched the nose up steeply—trading speed for altitude as he entered the turbulent borders of the lift column—and another bullet ripped through his seat cushion.

Or was it through my parachute? Dar wondered, knowing then what he was going to do.

“Are you all right?” he called again to Syd as they spiraled up, the altimeter and variometer spinning clockwise as they gained altitude rapidly in the lift rotor. The sailplane’s ground speed dropped to almost nothing as they headed back west into the strength of the wind, climbing like a panicked sparrow while the helicopter roared up and around them in a carefully choreographed helix.

Dar’s eyes were on the instruments. He needed at least five thousand feet above ground level for his plan—if he could call it a plan—to have any chance of working. It was obvious that the chopper was not going to give them that kind of time. The Bell Ranger crabbed closer, the shooter leaning out the left side this time, both aircraft climbing in a slow left spiral.

Syd loosened her harness further, leaned forward so she could get an angle through the narrow air vent, and fired five times at the helicopter.

Dar saw sparks fly on the forward fuselage and then watched as Tony Constanza ducked back into the shadows of the backseat. Dar could see the heavyset gunman shouting at the pilot.

The Bell Ranger banked right and roared above them in a counterclockwise spiral; they knew that Dar would have to level off at some point. Then they could come in from the rear or from above—at some angle where Syd could not fire without shooting through the Twin Astir’s own canopy.

“Tighten your straps!” Dar shouted, then explained to her what they were going to do.

Syd’s head swiveled around. Her mouth hung open. “You’re shitting me.”

Dar shook his head. “Hang on.”

The sailplane swept right into the outer edge of the foehn gap rotor thermal. The winds were stronger and the heat of midday had added to the powerful thermal updraft, but Dar could not be sure whether the increased turbulence they encountered was from the lift or from damage to the fuselage and control surfaces of his aircraft. It did not matter. Steve’s beautiful high-performance two-seater only had to hold together for another few minutes.

The Bell Ranger moved in to shooting range, sliding sideways as if it were on rails.

Dar dived to pick up speed and then looped the sailplane. As they passed the helicopter, bullets rained onto the aft part of the fuselage like pellets of hail. Dar felt the right rudder go slack, but he still had some control.

The helicopter stayed where it was: the pilot knew that Dar would have to complete the loop.

He did so, climbing into another, broader inside loop. Syd fired twice from the front seat. Slugs from the AK-47 slammed into Dar’s instrument console, shattering the instruments, punched four holes in the top of the canopy inches above their heads, and struck the nose hard enough to slew the glider to the left as he tried to climb into his second loop.

The Bell Ranger held its place, waiting for Dar to pass by again.

Just before the top of their loop, perhaps five hundred feet above the helicopter, Dar rolled the sluggish Twin Astir until they were performing an outside loop. He felt the negative g’s trying to force him up and out of the aircraft—the pressure of the restraint harness on his shoulders was painful—and he heard Syd gasp. Dar’s vision dimmed and then turned red for an instant before he forced the balking sailplane into level flight and then raised the nose again.

There was no more lift. The Twin Astir stalled and fell out of the sky.

Dar put the nose down enough to keep some control. The helicopter pilot must have been watching their insane aerobatics, for he pitched the nose of the Bell Ranger down and accelerated up the valley.