Clear and present danger - Tom Clancy [79]
"Affirmative, tossing smoke, tossing green smoke."
The rescuee was following proper procedure in telling the chopper crew what sort of smoke grenade he was using, but you couldn't tell in the dark. On the other hand, the heat of the pyrotechnic device blazed like a beacon on the infrared display, and they could see their man.
"Got him?"
"Yep," Willis answered, and spoke next to the crew chief. "Get ready, we have our victim."
"Standing by, sir." In the back the flight engineer, Senior Master Sergeant Buck Zimmer - he and the colonel went way back together - activated his winch controls. At the end of the steel cable was a heavy steel device called a penetrator. Heavy enough to fall through the foliage of any forest, its bottom unfolded like the petals of a flower, providing a seat for the victim, who would then be pulled back up through the branches, an experience which remarkably enough had never quite killed anyone. In the event that the victim was injured, it was the job of Sergeant Zimmer or a rescue paramedic to ride it down, attach the victim to the penetrator, and take the elevator ride himself. That job sometimes entailed physically searching for the victim, often under fire. It was for this reason that the people who flew the rescue choppers treated their crewmen with considerable respect. Nothing so horrifies a pilot as the idea of being on the ground, with people shooting at you.
But not this time. Since it was peacetime and safety rules applied, training or not, the pickup was being made from a small clearing. Zimmer worked the winch controls. The victim unfolded the seat-petals and hooked himself securely aboard, knowing what was to follow. The flight engineer started hoisting the cable, made sure that the victim was firmly attached, and so notified the flight crew.
On the flight deck, forward, Captain Willis immediately twisted the throttle control to full power and moved upward. Within fifteen seconds, the "rescued" fighter pilot was three hundred feet over the ground, hanging by a quarter-inch steel cable and wondering why in the hell he'd been so fucking idiotic to volunteer for this. Five seconds later, the burly arm of Sergeant Zimmer yanked him into the aircraft.
"Recovery complete," Zimmer reported.
Captain Willis pushed his cyclic control forward, diving the helicopter at the ground. He'd climbed too much on the extraction, he knew, and tried to compensate by showing Colonel Johns that he could get back down to the safety of the treetops very quickly. He accomplished this, but he could feel the eyes of his commander on the side of his head. He'd made a mistake.
Johns did not tolerate mistakes. People died of mistakes, the colonel told them every goddamned day, and he was tired of having people die.
"Can you take it for a minute?" Willis asked.
"Copilot's airplane," Johns acknowledged, taking the stick and easing the Sikorsky down another foot or so. "You don't want to climb so much winching the guy in, not with possible SAMs out there."
"At night you'd expect more guns than SAMs." Willis was right, sort of. It was a hard call. And he knew the answer that would come.
"We're protected against small-caliber guns. The big ones are as dangerous as SAMs. You keep it closer to the ground next time, Captain."
"Yes, sir."
"Other than that, not bad. Arm a little stiff?"
"Yes, sir."
"It might be the gloves. Unless your fingers fit in just right, you end up gripping too hard, and that translates back into the wrist and upper arm after a while. You end up with a stiff arm, stiff movements on the stick, and sloppy handling. Get yourself a good set of gloves. My wife makes mine for me special. You might not always have a copilot to take the airplane, and this sort of thing is tough enough that you don't want any more distractions than you gotta have."
"Yes, sir."
"By the way, you passed."
It wouldn't do to thank the colonel, Captain Willis knew. He did the next best thing after flexing his hand for a minute.
"I got the airplane."
PJ took his hand