A/N: Again, big props go out to Lakewood and Anysia for their fantastic beta work. There are few, if any, better author/editors out there.
The time-zone changes might be a little bit off, but I think they're pretty accurate so far. If anyone wants to get detailed and really map 'em out, I'd more than welcome your input. Corrections can be E-mailed to the address in my profile.
Props go out to chibichu from the Full Metal Panic! LJ community for providing me with the Mechwarrior 2 OST. It helped quite a good deal in writing the story; I'm listening to lots of Hans Zimmer and Harry-Gregson Williams to get my juices flowing. I'm not that great at writing action scenes, so hopefully the music will help.
On with the show!
6: More Distant and More Solemn
September 6th, 1981
MITHPAC Combat Operations Base
Merida Island, Federated Republic of Micronesia
10:45 PM
The sound of a distant machine gun on the firing range echoed across the air-operations tarmac. Already baked after a day under the hot sun, a grease-faced MITHRIL mechanic grimaced at the sound and the constant floodlighting of the hangar.
I don't need any more distractions, the mechanic thought as he twisted a torque wrench under the open instrument array. The bug-like targeting array of the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter lay silent; the gunner was a few feet away in the slender cockpit, waiting for his cue.
"Try it now!" the mechanic called, having finished with the bolt of the targeting servomotor. "It should give you a much faster response."
"Okay, stand clear. Powering on APUs."
The gunner flicked a few switches, enabling external power to flow in from an olive drab-painted auxiliary power cart sitting inside the hangar. His digital indicators and multifunction display powered on, reflecting against the smoked plastic lens of his head-mounted display.
"Engaging TADS. Test protocol active. Ammo belt, negative. Master switch set to safe. Here we go."
He looked up, flicked a switch on his flight stick, and looked directly right. The insectile TADS/PNVS targeting and night-vision array rotated, as did the 30mm chain gun slung under the nose of the helicopter. The entire system was slaved to a sensor that rested in front of the visors of the pilot and gunner. Either could have control over the Apache's weapons, and at this point, the Apache's weapons began to target just a little faster.
The gunner looked left, right, down, and all around. The chain gun and targeting array followed his moves precisely; any directional lag had been adequately programmed out.
"Seems pretty good to me, but we'll need to take her up to test it for sure," the gunner pulled his helmet off, flashing a thumbs-up to the mechanic. "Tell whoever programmed the new software I said thanks."
"Yeah, no problem. You wanna go up armed?"
"No point in it," the gunner shook his head. "All we need is practice for now. There's nothing to live-fire against just yet."
"You think this is going to have to go to Perthro Wing as well?"
"It just might," the gunner said with a shrug, stepping down from his cockpit. "I've seen estimates of what we might go up against. I don't know when or where we'll have to fight it, but the numbers we crunched and the test exercise we ran already cracked down on the fact that we could barely target it."
"No kidding?"
The gunner beckoned the pilot closer. "We got a briefing from MITHPAC HQ the other week talking about what it's supposed to be able to do," he said in a low, quiet voice. "It's supposed to be able to jump at up to a hundred thirty miles per hour and run faster than a tank."
"Wait, you said it could jump? It can run!"
"Keep it down!"
"Sorry, sorry!" The mechanic edged in closer to better hear the gunner's low voice.
"All we know is that it was theoretically able to evade an M1. If it can dodge tank rounds, it can probably dodge Hellfires and Zunis as well. At least we can keep it targeted with these new upgrades, though." The gunner patted the still-open instrument access panel. "All we needed to do was tighten down the target optimization code and up the output of the motors, right?"
"Yeah, no sweat." The mechanic tightened down the bolts to secure the instrument bay. "Nothing we can't handle, but having two wings of choppers upgraded will take some time."
"Might as well get started. McAllen'll get the paperwork ramrodded through back in Sydney."
"Sounds good. Wanna go for a beer when we get off?"
"I wish I could, but go on ahead without me. We're practicing night-ops and then we're back on combat standby in the morning. Fehu's taking up the new alert watch and we're supposed to have all the choppers ready by then."
"Geez. Wish I knew what was going on with all this."
Pennsylvania Avenue, 1200 blockWashington, DC
That same time (September 6th, 1981, 4:45 AM local)
The hot coffee in his hands was fading in its warmth, but not in its effects just yet. The old metal flask traditionally should have had brandy, rum, or some thing to warm the body in a different sense; however, he was smart enough to carry something hot and decaffeinated on a cold autumn night like this. His body was as young as it ever was, still in that accursed state it had been since an unfortunate encounter in Berlin.
Yeah, it had to be years ago, he thought, reflecting on times that he still remembered as vividly as anything. He had to. That damnable accident had left him with an eidetic memory as sharp as a brand-new Nikon.
The repeated kathunk-kathunk noises of underground Metro trains had faded, the last train having departed the Red Line station beneath him hours ago. The streets of Washington were largely empty, cut through only with the occasional Metrobus, car, or fancy limousine, doubtless returning from a very late diplomatic engagement or even heading out to an early one. Taking a swig from his coffee flask, the man allowed himself to daydream for a moment, thinking about the lives of the politicians, ambassadors, lobbyists, movers and shakers alike who rode in the stretch Town Cars and De Villes.
The fallacies of "real power," he thought with a chuckle.
The shuffle of feet in shoes not made for stealthy movement wasn't that hard to hear from even forty meters, and he wasn't worried about any botched encounters tonight. He never feared for his safety, neither alone, with a group of allies, nor with a group of enemies. He tried his best to keep himself in situations where the latter two did not matter, but in any city, no man could ever be an island.
"We saw it."
The man who passed by him sat down next to him on the bench at the bus stop, lighting a long, thin, brown-wrapped cigarette.
"I didn't think you'd miss it," he replied, reaching within his coat pocket slowly. "Coffee?" He held out his silver flask.
"Thanks." The other man took the flask with his free hand, accepting the warm liquid gratefully. He hadn't been drinking hot fluids that night and was already a little cold because of it, despite his Burberry wool overcoat.
"So you see that they're seriously moving in on it, then," the coffee-bearer continued, leaning back, running his hands through his thick, night-black hair. "You can also see that it's reproducible."
"We already know it's reproducible. Our people have already come up with a prototype."
"But not a means of production."
The stranger was silent.
"They've already set up a factory in Khabarovsk, ostensibly for the construction of the new MiG-29 fighter jet. You're aware of that, too. I know that for a fact." The man with the coffee leaned back on the bench, maybe a little bit arrogantly after one-upping his visitor.
"That close to China?"
"That close to Vladivostok," he corrected. "If they produce them there, the Soviets will have a well-guarded open-water port to send them to. From Vladivostok, they'll go everywhere they're needed, and that will be the end of your deterrence policies."
"So you have the data, then?"
The man pocketed his flask and pulled out a reel of magnetic recorder tape from a hidden pocket within the lining of his overcoat. "Please realize that I never wanted to give this to you in public," he commented, handing it over.
"I appreciate your forbearance in this matter. Your payment should be confirmed any time soon."
As his guest rose to leave, the man cleared his throat.
"Not quite yet," he said, holding a brick-like cellular phone to his ear. "Stay a while. My friend won't let you move five steps unless I flash him the correct signal."
The man froze in mid-step, catching his balance. "Excuse me?"
He held the phone to his ear, an international dial tone ringing. "I'm sorry to have to do this," he looked up at the man, his sharp almond eyes downcast and a slanted, sad expression about his face. He was as truly sympathetic, not wanting to inconvenience his client or further delay him. "I would like to trust you, but there were problems with trusting you people in '61. I'd like to not run into them again."
"You smug little bastard..." the man growled, sitting down, hands clenched into fists. "Who the hell do you think you are!"
"I think I'm the only person on earth with the encryption key to that file." He covered the mouthpiece of the phone. "Of course, if you'd like to try to have your number-crunchers at the NSA bust through it, the tape will only accept one entry of the code before the contents are physically destroyed by a magnesium-ignited compound."
He brought the mouthpiece back up. "Ja, guten abend. Das ist herr Klein, kunde 49218," he spoke in perfect German. "Meine kontonummer ist 910-421-4421, kennwort ist 8434609, Berlin. Hat es irgendwelche neuen ablagerungen zu meiner rechnung gegeben?"
There was a moment of silence. "Ja, das ist. Ja. Vielen dank." The man pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed a button to disconnect the call. "It appears you're serious," he nodded. He smiled at the man and flashed two fingers, then a mock-salute with his left hand. "Now!" he exclaimed suddenly, eyes quickly focusing off to his left, over the right shoulder of the other man.
He turned in a panic, waiting for a blow that never came. At least, not from the direction he expected.
Richard Sonoma stepped back from the government agent, loosening the knife-edged hand he had struck the man with. It was an effective enough blow, little more than a quick, hard press, to the arteries running behind his neck. The interruption in blood flow caused him to shuffle to the ground in an unconscious heap. He'd still be breathing, but he'd have a monster headache upon waking up.
"Sorry about that," Sonoma shook his head, tucking a wax-sealed envelope into the man's hand. "If you had backup, I didn't want you calling them in after we were finished."
He shook his flask to see if there was any more coffee. Finding none, he checked his watch and walked two blocks down to where his car was kept.
The still-new-smelling Plymouth Horizon growled to life as he turned it down Pennsylvania Avenue, heading towards I-395 and Dulles International Airport. His flight was leaving in two hours, and the airport newsstands would probably get the day's Washington Post by the time he arrived.
Pan Am 24 from IAD to LAX took off on schedule, with only one passenger in the first class cabin for the 6:45 AM flight.
Outside Konduz, Afghanistan
That same time (8:46 AM, September 5th)
The Soviet base had been alive since 6 AM, the traditional bugle having been replaced by the roar of helicopter turboshafts. A wing of four Mi-24 attack helicopters went out on a daily morning patrol, and the enterprising base commander had requested them to buzz the barracks tents in order to rouse his soldiers.
"My head hurts," Private Valery Danilenko moaned, already accustomed to the shockingly loud wake-up and still curled up in a fetal position on his cot. He had won his share of the vodka in the poker game last night, setting a new personal best four straight hands with surprising victories.
"Your own fault, you damn Kazakh," Corporal Sergei Kuyvishev mumbled from beneath his rough-wool blanket. "Let me sleep a little while longer."
"Where's the lieutenant?" Danilenko looked around. "I thought he was crashing here with us?"
"Dunno," Kuyvishev stirred. "He probably went to the zampolit again."
"Comrade Kalinin, are you sure about this?"
Kalinin stood at ease, hands clasped behind his back, feet apart at shoulder's width, precisely looking forward. He did not meet the mischievously sparkling blue eyes of the KGB officer across from him, the disciplined ground soldier to the end.
"I am sure, comrade Rozhkov," Kalinin replied strongly.
The KGB officer stood up, brushing his green serge uniform off superfluously. "Central Command will not look kindly upon this mission plan!"
"I am aware of that, comrade Rozhkov."
"That's comrade colonel to you, comrade lieutenant!" Rozhkov shouted, suddenly unable to hold back his laughter. "Andrei Sergeivich, you are crazy, I hope you know that."
Kalinin let a rare grin slip. "I am aware of that too, Misha Il'ych," Kalinin said to his old friend, Mikhail Ilya Rozhkov, the divisional zampolit for the 76th Guards Air Rifle Regiment's spetsnaz platoons.
"Sit down, Andrei Sergeivich," Rozhkov gestured to the metal folding chair opposite his map table. He brushed aside a map of the city of Konduz and its surrounds off of the table and set out two metal mugs, pouring tea. "I still can't believe you were just going to take him back to his base."
"It was an idea, Misha," Kalinin shrugged, accepting the tin mug and sipping some of the tea. "If we could at least have him lead us back to his operational area, it would allow us to at least pinpoint the Helmaji base."
"I only wish it could be that way, Andrei," Rozhkov said, sipping his tea, "but our political masters have handed down their orders. Such is as it is."
Kalinin nodded.
"I wish I could let you, Andrei," Rozhkov set his mug down, leaning forward. "Believe me, I owe you so much from back in the Basic Cadet School and the Academy."
"Misha, you don't owe me anything," Kalinin said as he shook his head. "I was merely inquiring as to the operational feasibility of such a plan."
The metal door of the medical tent-slash-barracks flew open, and Sergeant Kadashvili's bulky form blocked the harsh daylight outside.
"Sergeant!" Both soldiers immediately stood and snapped to attention.
"Can it, comrades, we have work to do," Kadashvili growled. "Pack in five minutes for an extended deployment, and meet up with me at the divisional armory."
"Yes, Sergeant!" they shouted as they saluted. Kadashvili returned it, rather tensely.
"This is your last chance to back out," Kadashvili lowered his voice as he rummaged through his field pack, pretending to arrange some items. "The lieutenant doesn't expect you to participate unwillingly."
"We want to put an end to the Helmaj raids just as much as you and Lieutenant Kalinin do, comrade sergeant," Danilenko quietly replied. "We are Soviet soldiers, and we must accomplish the goals set before Soviet soldiers, no?"
"You've got a good head on your shoulders, Danilenko," Kadashvili stood up, clapping a hairy, bearish hand on the private's shoulder, shaking him a little violently. "You'd damn well better pack a Dragunov on this mission. Let's see if that Kazakh hunter's blood can take down some black-assed rebels!"
"Da, comrade sergeant!"
"All we really know about them is their ferocity; we have no information about their culture, their background, even their language other than its base roots." Rozhkov flipped the next black-and-white photo in the small stack. It showed some lightly-armed men in ragged, sun-bleached clothes storming onto a T-72 tank. "They attack from the northeast and manage to level entire bases. Their ability to capture Soviet equipment hints at the fact that they have an intelligence source that is highly placed and training that is beyond our own. As you know, not even a spetsnaz squad is trained in literally boarding and capturing American tanks."
Kalinin looked at the photo, trying to get a glimpse of the faces of the men who were wrenching a bolt cutter into place. Rozhkov's next photo showed the tank's crew being physically hauled out of the tank, the secure bolts holding the turret hatch already lying on the tank's hull, snapped in half.
"They've shot down Hinds and Hips like flies. Sometimes it's with those new American Stingers and old Redeyes, sometimes with our own SA-7s. They'll roll over mudjehedeen and anyone else. Believe me, Andrei Sergeivich, it is best that you not even try to go up against them with less than a division's worth of spetsnaz."
"Misha, you know as well as I do that the less there is to detect, the less there will be to worry about."
"Da, Andrei, but I cannot afford to lose you."
Rozhkov unfolded a different map, a regional map of northeast Afghanistan. "We've encountered them as far west as the highway from yesterday," he pointed out, gesturing to the area that Kalinin's unit had been reconnoitering the previous day. "They've been known to operate all the way back through the majority of Badakhshan province, but we haven't been able to deploy through the Panhandle."
Rozhkov referred to the area of Afghanistan that passed between the Tadzhik Soviet Socialist Republic and Pakistan, cutting like a sword through the nations and extending all the way to the mountainous southwest of China.
"This is all we know, Andrei Sergeivich." Rozhkov spread his hands, then reached for his tea. "All we need is one Helmaj, and the one you brought us is the only one we have ever captured alive."
"You mean all the KGB needs is one, Misha Il'ych," Kalinin corrected.
Rozhkov nodded slowly. "That is true, comrade, but just as you volunteered to stay in the Army, so did I volunteer to join State Security. We both do vital work for the rodina. Neither of us is any less a Communist because of that."
Kalinin nodded. His grandfather's legs had been crushed by the very wheels of Czar Nikolai II's carriage; upon petitioning the Palace for the exorbitant bills he would have to pay, he was bayoneted. No reason, no foul, no indication had come to Andrei Kalinin the elder. His young son, Sergei Andreievich, had fought alongside Lenin in the October Revolution, but soon fled with Leon Trotsky when their dreams of equality had been subverted by the institutional bloodthirst of Stalin. Kalinin, unlike a good majority of Soviet citizens and workers, was ever angered by the elites who so easily maimed, then murdered, his grandfather.
Of course, Kalinin's distrust of elites often extended to that of the Party and the Politburo. Despite the charges laid before the Politburo under the Collective Will of the People, Kalinin had never thought that unappointed leaders could ever truly speak for the downtrodden and oppressed masses.
Like any organized power, the leaders have corrupted the initial spirit, Kalinin leafed through Rozhkov's photos one last time. So it is with capitalism in the west, communism here... Christianity, Islam... so many are always seeking to subvert their own people.
"May I keep this one, Misha Il'ych?" Kalinin asked; he held up another photo of the unknown man on the strange metal contraption.
"By all means, Andrei Sergeivich." Rozhkov went over to the small samovar that was in the corner of his tent. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"
Kalinin didn't answer. Instead, he swiftly stood up, took a step forward, and clubbed Rozhkov on the back of his head with his own Makarov pistol, so deftly swiped from its holster.
Kalinin was careful to tip over the samovar and arrange Rozhkov's unconscious body to appear as if he had slipped in a spilled puddle of tea. There were three knocks on the exterior metal pole of the tent.
"We're ready to go, comrade lieutenant," Sergeant Kadashivili saluted. Private Danilenko and Corporal Kuyvyshev were behind him and to the right, also saluting. The younger soldiers were somewhat burdened under the large field packs they carried.
Kalinin returned the salute. "Good. Are you armed?"
"Danilenko has been designated our sniper. Kuyvyshev is leaving behind the PKM, but we have grenade launchers for our AKMs. Assorted suppressed weapons and an RPG-7 as well."
"Can you walk, comrade corporal?" Kalinin grinned, patting Kuyvyshev on the back.
"I can walk as far as needed, comrade lieutenant!" the young Russian enthusiastically replied.
"Good. Let's get into position."
MITHLANT HeadquartersRome, Italy
That same time (4:30 PM local)
"All stations, stand by. MARSUPIAL downlink from Cheltenham is preparing to transmit. Signal uplink in four."
The Intel watch officer was a German, formerly a counterintelligence officer attached to the Bundes Kriminal Amt, the German equivalent to the American FBI. He was always busy, working out of the Bonn governmental offices to constantly root out spies. The Stasi, the East German equivalent of the KGB, had become dastardly skilled at infiltration, and he had rooted out deep-plant after deep-plant, delving from lowly privates in the West German army all the way up to cabinet aides in Parliament.
The recruiter from MITHRIL hadn't lied about the Intel branch of the secret organization. "It will be another crawl up the ladder, but you won't be dealing with people sneaking out the training rotation schedules to the KGB, that's for sure," the man who spoke with a Swiss accent had hinted. The café had a superb Vienna roast that day, and there wasn't yet a shift that the German didn't pour himself some of the same fresh, heady brew.
The emblazoned MITHRIL mug was long since empty. His shift, starting at 10 AM, had necessitated it. It was entirely lucky that MITHLANT hadn't yet been set on alert. The briefing from MITHPAC was enough to scare everyone, but at least they weren't handling this issue.
He checked his watch. Two hours left before he could catch a quick dinner and rotate back to Bonn for some R&R before his next tour of duty.
"All stations, MARSUPIAL downlink has begun. Estimate fourteen minutes to completion. Photointel watch, stand by."
That had to have been Technical Sergeant Valdez, the German thought, contemplating another cup of coffee. She's been here for only a couple of weeks, but it's like she never left the Spanish Air Force. A good analyst. She has some royal blood in her, right? That is, if the Personnel department has done their homework properly.
It took a few minutes for the MARSUPIAL system designated to Cheltenham Royal Air Force Base in England—this one disguised as a flock of badgers, with an overgrown mushroom as their transmittal point—to send over their data stream. It was an agonizing length of time to wait for some shots from an American KH-11 recon satellite, but it was worth it nonetheless.
If only the English didn't have a penchant for hunting, we wouldn't have to keep sending in new MARSUPIALs...
"Colonel Dietrich, please report to Photointel watch station. Colonel Dietrich, to Photointel watch, please," a Spanish-accented voice called out over the PA system.
"Einen minuten," Colonel Wilhelm Dietrich grumbled, pouring himself a fresh mug of coffee on the way down.
"What do you have, Sergeant?" Dietrich went up to the Photointelligence section, located within the cavernous, digital-display-laden MITHLANT command center.
"That hot item we sent out command-wide just got flagged coming out of the Brits' take from the Americans," Technical Sergeant Valdez reported, tapping a photo printer attached to her operator terminal. "The Americans tasked another pass to make sure the Egyptians had pulled behind the Israeli line, and this time, they decided to take a look at the leg."
Dietrich sipped at his coffee. "So they know about it now?"
"Actually, sir..." The photo printer started to hum as it printed the intercepted image onto photo paper. "It's not there anymore."
Dietrich almost choked on his coffee. "What do you mean, it's not there anymore!"
"I meant exactly that, Colonel." Valdez blinked away the officer's anger. He managed to calm down after realizing his subordinate hadn't gone all the way to the Negev/Sinai border zone and picked up the giant metal leg. "It wasn't there on the image."
Dietrich looked down at the output area of the photo printer, a massive box-like structure. Already he saw the familiar crater, but the prominent leg had gone missing.
"Du lieber gott," he swore under his breath. "Who could have taken it?"
"There's more, sir." Valdez rolled her wheeled office chair over to her terminal, punching up a few keys. "The KH-11 took some more photos of the area around the leg, and there seems to be some trouble."
Colonel Dietrich peered over Sergeant Valdez's shoulder, taking in the photograph that the American recon satellite had taken.
The KH-11 satellite had a camera resolution that was legendary in its secrecy and was thus very carefully guarded. Not even the KGB knew how accurate and sharp-eyed the 'Keyhole' truly was; however, it was nothing that a MARSUPIAL couldn't intercept and send along. MITHRIL was used to reading the private diaries of people who were foolish enough to write them without the cover of an umbrella; it was nothing troublesome to capture from two hundred miles in orbit.
Instead of a close-up on the crater, the satellite had captured a wide-angle shot that he estimated at maybe a square kilometer. The desert was still laden with craters from old tanks and other vehicles from the '73 Yom Kippur war, but when he compared the new photo to an archive shot, there were numerous more burned-out hulks than before.
Dietrich counted the smoking hulls of no less than twelve Israeli Magach-6 tanks, with almost double that number of destroyed Soviet-made T-72s. A zoomed-in shot confirmed a painted-on Egyptian flag on a T-72.
"Print these up and encrypt them over to MITHPAC and MITHCENT," Dietrich set aside his coffee mug, grabbing a comm headset from a nearby empty station.
"Operator," a voice on the other end instantly picked up.
"This is Colonel Dietrich at MITHLANT Intel. Conference me in with the MITHCENT and MITHPAC Intel watches."
Konduz baseThat same time
The explosions of the training artillery packs went off with expert delay timing, one of Kadashvili's many skills in working with demolitions. Each charge simulated the explosion of an 80mm mortar, a weapon favored and used by both the Soviets and the mudjehedeen.
"Incoming from the east!" Kalinin shouted into a barracks of soldiers, stunned by the sudden explosions. "Move!"
The soldiers grabbed their AKs and raced to the eastern edge of Konduz Base, opening fire at the shimmering silhouettes of mirages echoing up from the surface. An alarm klaxon started to ring out as more explosions rocked the base from the south.
"4th Platoon, cover our right flank," the divisional tactical radio called out. "123rd Regiment, deploy a cover formation to the north in case they try to come around. I want the 5th and 6th Motor-Rifle to cover our rear and prepare to close in any attackers from that direction."
"This is 144th spetsnaz," Kuyvyshev radioed in. "Requesting permission to go airborne and cut them off from the rear!"
"Petrov here," the divisional commander radioed back. "Approved! Get those mudje bastards!"
"That should do it," Kalinin calmly remarked as the men raced towards the air-operations tarmac. "How long do we have before the next round hits?"
"Forty seconds. These will be right in front of the choppers," Kadashvili recalled from his memorized simulator deployments. "That'll scare them off the ground for sure."
"Good enough." Kalinin stepped up the pace, and the men dashed across to the helicopter operations area.
Master Sergeant Valery Malenko was already barking instructions to the fuelers, lest they spill the volatile helicopter fuel over the wing of his Mi-24. It would not do to have a stray fragment ignite a fire on the wings of his chopper; the UV-57 rockets and AT-4 anti-tank missiles were not very fireproof.
"Comrade sergeant!" his gunner, a young private first class, yelled to catch his attention as the spetsnaz soldiers came rushing towards the chopper.
"Take us up, comrade!" Kalinin ordered as he practically pulled Danilenko through the troop door of the bulky attack helicopter. "We're looping around and ambushing the attacking force from behind!"
"Are you crazy?" the pilot yelled, looking up at Kalinin from the outside of his bubble canopy. "I'm not going to sit around like a gorilla with our ass hanging out when they can blow us out of the sky with an RPG!"
"That's an order, comrade sergeant!" Kalinin shot back. "Either you take us up or we send you out there with a rifle!"
Kadashvili was true to his word. A mortar simulator exploded forty yards away. Another followed a moment later, a mere twenty yards away.
"Damn spetsnazniks," the pilot yelled, rapidly ducking. "Kick up the fuel flow!"
Sergeant Malenko climbed the steps into the helo's cockpit as his gunner started flicking the auxiliary power switches. The gunner and pilot had the turboshaft engines roaring in another few seconds, and the massive five-bladed rotor began rotating slowly, picking up speed at a steady, rapid rate.
"You're full up!" The fuel crew chief yanked the reinforced high-flow hose away from the Hind, slapping the armored side of the chopper affectionately. "Get out there and bag us some raiders!"
"If they're mudje, we'll bring you back a turban!" the gunner shot back with a grin. "If they're Helmaj, then may we meet again in Hell!"
"Already there, comrade!" the fuel chief saluted as his crew drove the fuel truck away as fast as it could go. "Good hunting!"
The Mil turboshaft engine quickly spun the rotor to full speed as the twin intake turbines started to spin. Building up power, the Hind settled briefly at the tail as the pilot pulled back on the collective stick. Kalinin had left the sliding crew door open, not even bothering to belt himself into a troop seat, and he had a full-side view as Kadashvili's explosives erupted throughout the base. He saw one soldier go flying as he ran over a charge just as it went off. Fortunately, he only flew about ten feet into the air, landing hard on his right arm.
Sorry about that, Kalinin winced. A broken arm would ruin anyone's day, but he'd live to fight again.
The Hind kicked up massive clouds of sand as it rotated off the makeshift tarmac and took to the air. Kalinin held on to a metal handrail in the chopper as the pilot reefed it hard to the east, picking up altitude.
"This is Strelya-one, requesting a vector to targets, over," Malenko radioed out. He nodded a few times as a response came through the earphones of his helmet. "Copy, Konduz. Will patrol grid coordinates 45/37 and provide support to advancing perimeter security. We'll take out those mortars as soon as we see them. Strelya-one out."
"All weapons armed and operational," the gunner called over his shoulder. "Ready for targets."
"Head east, comrade," Kalinin yelled to the pilot over the din of the rotor as he moved up to the cockpit. "We need a dropoff at 43/30."
"That's right behind the main axis of the attack if they're in from the east!" Malenko yelled back. "Are you insane?"
"Head east," Kalinin repeated, growing tired already, holding Rozhkov's stolen Makarov pistol up to the pilot's head. "Head east and drop down as far as you can go. Fly between mountains if you must. Remove your radio microphone as well, comrade. I do not want to have to put my cross-training in helicopter piloting into practice."
"What the fuck are you doing?" Malenko hissed, catching a glimpse of the pressed gunmetal at his forehead.
Kalinin reached over to the microphone jutting out from the right side of the pilot's helmet. With one swift movement, he severed the connector cord that patched the microphone into the radio system with a previously unseen knife.
"Now, comrade, you will head east," Kalinin said as flatly as he could, now holding the gun to the pilot's head and the knife only a few precarious centimeters from the pilot's throat. The prisoner had handed the ceremonial Helmaj dagger to him in a strange sense of confidence as he was unloaded at Konduz the previous night, and Kalinin had no idea why. Still, he couldn't hesitate to make use of it if he had to.
"Okay, okay," Malenko breathed deeply. "I have a wife and daughter. I'll do what you say."
"I was hoping you'd just obey a superior officer, comrade sergeant," Kalinin pulled back the knife and gun. "Just remember that the good men at the Mil design bureau made these helicopters so even an idiot soldier such as myself could pilot one."
Kalinin felt the helicopter tilt to the right as the pilot dropped altitude rather harshly and turned east, no doubt treating his captors with a bit of roughness to spite them.
"We are good to go, comrades," Kalinin went back to his men in the troop seats, taking another good look at the Helmaj dagger. "If we follow this, we may just be heading in the right direction."
Kalinin took out the area map that he had swiped from Rozhkov's makeshift office. A terrain map of Badakhshan province, it displayed ridgelines, hills, mountains, and valleys in near-precision detail, complete with coordinate mapping. It was scribbled with markings of suspected Helmaj bases and mudjehedeen operating areas, but so many of those scribbles had yielded nothing.
Except for when Kalinin held the blade of the Helmaj dagger up to grid coordinates 12/74, a point approximately four hundred kilometers to the east.
One side of the blade, polished to a high-mirror sheen, had the slightest of imprints on it. When viewed without any light reflecting off the dagger, the angle yielded the very faintest of curves and undulations. They formed a perfect match with the terrain indicators on grid coordinates 12/74, a mountainous expanse at the very base of what was known to the men as the "Helmaj Panhandle."
To be continued...
A/N and glossary:
TADS/PNVS: Acronym for Targeting Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor. This is an integrated night-vision and targeting system designed for the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. Not officially fielded until the mid-1980s, this represented the most rugged and advanced targeting system on a modern attack helicopter for its time. The system was slaved to a small eyepiece on the gunner's helmet, allowing him to simply look in a certain direction and have the image centered on a display. The gunner can then simply designate a target to lock on and the system does the rest.
The modifications performed on it by the MITHRIL engineer allowed the TADS/PNVS to acquire and track far more rapidly-moving targets than an average ground vehicle, making it able to track small aircraft, or more appropriately, the Leapfrog.
Mi-24 "Hind": Arguably one of the most versatile, powerful, fast, and surprisingly maneuverable helicopters known to the world, the Hind was designed in the 1960s as a new-generation helicopter gunship with a secondary troop-carrying capacity. By the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Hind had evolved into the deadly Mi-24 Hind D. The D model was equipped with six wing pylons and a high-speed .50-caliber Gatling gun under the nose. The Hind normally carried four UV-57-32 rocket pods and two sets of two AT-4 Sagger anti-tank missiles, which made for an incredibly deadly and heavily-armed complement of weapons. If that wasn't bad enough, the Hind's cargo bay has the ability to carry eight fully-loaded combat infantrymen or their equivalent weight in regular cargo. Armored like a tank, a Hind can withstand up to .50 caliber gunfire easily, and some have even managed to have dented armor from 23mm anti-aircraft gunfire.
The Hind is a rugged, easy-to-maintain helicopter and saw strong service in Afghanistan. The introduction of Hinds was a primary factor for the United States to send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the Afghan mudjehedeen; indeed, the Stingers downed many a Hind and rapidly equalized the battlefield.
A mudjehedeen is reputedly quoted to have said "We are not afraid of the Soviets, but we are afraid of their helicopters." The Hind D is indeed worthy of that fear.