[ III ].

SETROVICH WAS WEARING a very long face when we returned to sh.o.r.e. Three of the marines had been killed in the raid, and two other men had been severely wounded. Worse, we'd found no trace of Polorski, a missile, or Yong Shin Jong. Twelve defenders had been killed at the yard, and the warehouse that didn't blow up contained enough rifles and grenade launchers to equip a small South American country. Three computers had been seized from the building, so there was some hope of getting more information on the gang. And here's another bright note: the barrels that I'd hidden behind during the battle turned out to hold rounds of small-arms ammunition. But Setrovich still figured the ledger strongly favored Polorski when he tallied it on the ground.

"We will find him." Setrovich pounded the desk in the office of the remaining warehouse. The marines were busy inventorying the weapons cache; it was far too big to move by helicopter. "I make solemn vow. I will get b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Crush him."

I pretended to be impressed, then slipped outside, looking for Trace. I found her in the field across from the yard, talking to one of the gunship pilots about how the bird was flown. I went over and got her attention.

"He's going to give me a ride," said Trace. "And I can drive. What do you think?"

She said it with enough of a smirk that made me think she might be interested in something more than just a helicopter ride. The pilot surely was-I could see his leer from where I was standing.

"Go to it," I told her.

The Russian was about six-six, but Trace already had him wrapped around her little finger. He not only showed her to the c.o.c.kpit, but helped her into it. Then he scrambled into the forward seat. Trace had the rotors turning before he even had his hatch cinched. The helicopter took a few hops forward, then suddenly surged into the air. Trace took it into a wide orbit around the yard, then pushed its nose down and accelerated out to sea. I could just about hear her "yah-oos" as it whipped back in my direction.

I was waiting for her to try an invert when my sat phone began to ring. It was Matthew Loring.

"What's up, Junior?" I asked.

"Polorski and his people have another ship. That one's just a decoy."

"You think?"

"I've been tracking through their financial transactions," Matthew told me. "d.i.c.k, there's a lot more to this than it seems."

Duh.

"I'm pretty sure it was a decoy as well," I told him. "Where is the other ship?"

"About a day south of Vietnam. Doc got somebody he knows at the navy to check with-"

"That's all right, Junior. I don't need the details right now. What I need is transportation. I want to get back to j.a.pan, and then I'll need an airplane that can get us to that ship."

"No, I don't think so," said Setrovich behind me. "Transportation is not what you need at all."

I turned around and saw Setrovich standing there with a very wide grin on his face.

The grin didn't bother me. The gun in his hand was an entirely different matter.

16 A newer version of this missile is still being manufactured in Russia, which has declared it is no longer bound by the START treaties.

17 "No Suchers," as in members of "No Such Agency," aka the National Security Agency, which as we all know doesn't exist and wouldn't if it did.

18 See Rogue Warrior: Vengeance.

19 Yes, AK74, not AK47. Among its alleged improvements is the fact that it fires a smaller, NATO-sized round. I greatly prefer my MP5.

7.

[ I ].

THERE WAS A very good reason that Setrovich hadn't caught Polorski and the mafiya group he worked with-the FSB colonel was paid good rubles not to.

Or euros, or possibly even American dollars. But I digress.

"Who are you talking to, Marcinko?" asked Setrovich. His English had measurably improved, as had his snarl.

"Just getting the time to set my watch," I said.

"Hang up now."

I turned the phone off.

"Drop the phone."

I did so.

"Take the gun from your belt," said Setrovich.

"Tell me first, was this part a setup?" I asked. "Did these guys know we were coming?"

Setrovich didn't answer. My guess was that it wasn't-Setrovich knew that the raid would please his superiors, and would probably argue that to Polorski. Certainly it would let him take the heat off the mobsters while they got away with the missile. Dead bodies make wonderful trophies, even if the real heart of the operation is untouched. Knowing that I was interested in Polorski, and that the CIA was involved, even if at arm's length, Setrovich had probably decided that a little raid might divert me. But the fact that I had found the real ship changed everything.

"Where is your woman?" asked the colonel.

I probably should have had a snappy, in-your-face comeback for that, but I didn't. It would have been drowned out anyway: Trace, still showing off, flew her helicopter directly overhead at about eight feet off the ground.

Dirt and dust flew through the air. So did I. Setrovich fired, but by then he was already falling backward. I'd hit him square in the chest with a tackle that would have made an NFL linebacker proud. We wrestled around in the dirt as the helo circled above us. It wasn't exactly a match worthy of WrestleMania-I punched, squeezed, and shoved, while Setrovich mostly rolled and tried to get away. He hit me with the b.u.t.t end of his gun, but since he was. .h.i.tting my skull, there was little chance of damage.

He twisted around, his back to me and his belly on the ground. The gun was underneath him. Somehow, it went off.

Maybe my finger on the trigger helped.

He was dead when I pulled the gun out from under him and stood up. Our little fracas had attracted the attention of several nearby marines. They weren't sure what was going on, and I didn't trust my ability to explain. Nor did I think the little peashooter I'd taken from Setrovich-a Pistolet Makarov, aka PM, a dead ringer rip-off of the Walther PP-was going to hold them off for very long.

Fortunately, the marines had a great deal of respect for the 30mm cannon in the nose of the Havoc, which swooped down in front of me. They didn't realize that the cannon was controlled by the Russian in the forward compartment, who at that very moment was punching his dashboard in a vain attempt to figure out a way to override the controls Trace was using to fly the chopper, and I certainly wasn't going to tell them-I was too busy trying to figure out how to get the h.e.l.l out of there.

A normal helicopter would have had a rear compartment, but the Havoc is basically a cannon with two seats strapped to it. If you've ever seen an Apache or a Cobra, you get the basic idea. So did the Russians, who shamelessly copied from those helos when designing it. Among other things they cribbed was the Apache's landing gear; rather than the more familiar and easy-to-grab-on-to skids used by most helicopters, the Havoc uses large planelike landing gear in a tricycle arrangement beneath the c.o.c.kpit, two front, one back. Seeing no other way out, I grabbed on to the left wheel of the helicopter as it hovered above me. A second later, the chopper began moving sideways across the yard toward the field where it had taken off. I got ready to drop to the ground, but it didn't slow down. On the contrary, it not only sped up but rose another hundred feet in the air.

I had a h.e.l.l of a view of Kamenka. And let me say this for Kamenka: it is truly a pit of ugly brown and gray feces spread in box form across a gray landscape, relieved only by urine-colored streams running to a puke-colored ocean. I expect a Lonely Planet guidebook on it to be published soon.

I hugged the wheel tighter, hoping that Trace knew what she was doing. Finally, we started to slow down and descend. The ground below me went from gray to black to green. I waited until I could just about count the blades of gra.s.s below me before letting go.

I hit the ground and rolled, got to my feet, and-though dizzy as h.e.l.l-ran to the chopper, gun drawn to cover the pilot in the forward compartment as Trace set the chopper down. She hit a number of b.u.t.tons before finding the master c.o.c.kpit unlock, which forced the windscreen to open; once the Russian saw the pistol in my hand, it didn't take much to persuade him to give up his seat. He undid his seat belt, called me a c.o.c.ksucker under his breath, then jumped out of the helo and ran away.

I pulled myself over the side, tangling my feet as I tried to get situated in the cramped c.o.c.kpit. The wind-screen started closing above me, smacking against my head and pushing me down into my seat. We rolled forward, then abruptly pitched upward. The chopper turned hard port, slamming me against the right instrument panel before I managed to get my f.a.n.n.y properly situated in the seat. The pilot's helmet had rolled to the floor; I picked it up and squeezed it over my ears.

"d.i.c.k, can you hear me?" asked Trace.

"Copy. Roger."

"Hang on."

By now the other helicopters that had been a.s.signed to the mission had realized something had gone wrong and were pursuing us. Trace pushed us northward, throttle open. The two Hinds fell behind, but the other Havoc stayed with us, announcing its annoyance with a stream of 30mm rounds just to the right of our tail. Trace tucked hard left, turned in a tight bank, then slammed us out toward the water.

"Get us south," I told her. "Get us out near the navy destroyers that were shadowing the operation."

It wasn't a bad idea, except that the destroyers were at least two hundred miles away, and we had fuel for maybe a hundred.

We also had someone on our tail. Another burst of cannon fire let us know he wasn't going away anytime soon.

"d.i.c.k, can you figure out how to work that cannon?" asked Trace.

"Give me a minute," I told her, studying the controls. I knew the weapon had to be turned on from the main armament panel, but since all the writing was in Russian gibberish I had a difficult time figuring out what to do. I hit some toggles and got some lights to turn from red to yellow; one had the word "pushka" in tape next to it, so I figured I was in business once the light went yellow.

The next hurdle was figuring out what exactly fired the gun. Unlike in computer games, where all the Russians have weapons slaved to the eyepieces in their helmets and fire by saying "kill," the cannon in the Havoc was slaved to old-fashioned mechanical controls.20 The cannon was aimed by looking through an ocular-think creaky old telescope-perched above a set of dials in front of me. Wheels at both sides of the device focused it and apparently worked various adjustments-like wind-but I didn't have time to get too fancy. I grabbed the stick in front of me, got something of a feel for how it swiveled, then started hunting for our adversary.

Which was a bit like searching the beach for a tack with a straw.

"Trace?"

"d.i.c.k?"

"I'm ready with the gun. Where is that son of a b.i.t.c.h?"

"Behind us. Hang on."

Trace pulled the helo nearly onto its side. I lifted my head from the ocular and saw the other helicopter moving across the top part of my windscreen. I put my eye back on the gunsight, got the bull's-eye in the other helicopter's path, and fired. A black stream of bullets spit out of the gun beneath my seat, making a big smudge in the sky in front of me. I pushed the smudge in the direction of the other helicopter, managing to get the bullets close enough to force him to jink in front of us. Trace tried to get close for the kill, but the other pilot easily slipped off to the left. Trace spun around, trying to stay with him. I don't know where exactly he went, though-all I could see were tracers from the two Hinds, which had managed to catch up while we were playing tag with the other Havoc.

Sh.e.l.ls streaming around us, I moved the gun stick up, trying to get the ship on the right. I bracketed the sucker, but couldn't manage to get him before Trace once more turned off, pushing the helicopter around to the east. She moved the throttle to full military power-or whatever the Russians call the get-the-h.e.l.l-out-of-here-fast position-and we zipped out over the water, temporarily clear.

But they knew we'd be going south, and as soon as we turned they were on us again.

"They're coming for another pa.s.s!" shouted Trace, so loud I wouldn't have needed the interphone.

Her warning was followed quickly by a fresh stream of bullets. Several hit the side of the chopper and we fluttered a bit before Trace was able to get us turned away from our pursuer. She tucked us a little farther out to sea, then banked around, antic.i.p.ating that the Havoc would be closing in again. I had the gun ready, but the other helo had turned back toward land.

"Now what?" said Trace. "I figure I have about ten minutes' more fuel left in the tanks."

"Take us north along the coast, see if you can find a boatyard," I told her. "I'll call home."

"North?"

"They'll be looking south."

"Good. Copy."

The far eastern sh.o.r.e of Russia is a lonely place, and we didn't see anything that even looked like it might float until nearly fifteen minutes later. By then, the c.o.c.kpit was buzzing with warnings indicating we were about to run out of fuel, and Trace was trying to gauge how soft the waves would be if we plowed into them. I was on the sat phone with Doc. The good thing was that he knew where we were, thanks to the GPS locator in the sat phone. The bad thing was that he was several hundred miles away in j.a.pan.

"d.i.c.k, I see a fishing boat down there. I'm going to land near it," said Trace. "I think we'll fit on the road."

We might have, if we'd had enough fuel to make it. We were still about a hundred yards from sh.o.r.e when the motor quit.

Airplanes can glide when they're out of fuel. He li copters basically become bricks with useless pieces of metal waiting to chop off your head when they crash.

We hit the water at about forty knots, fast and hard enough to pop the forward windscreen. Water flooded into the compartment from every direction-beneath the seat, over the canopy window, through the ventilation system. By the time I managed to get the seat restraints off, the water was lapping at my chin. The center front panel was too narrow for me to squeeze through. That meant waiting another few seconds for the water inside the cabin to be roughly equal pressure-wise to the water outside so I could open the side panel door. By then I was underwater. I pushed open the door and squeezed out, snaking my legs out from under a piece of the control panel that had twisted upward after the crash.

I climbed up the side, looking into Trace's compartment, which was about halfway down into the water. She was still strapped into her seat, apparently stunned into unconsciousness by the crash. I reached for the handle to get her out, then realized that her door was on the other side of the craft.

As I worked myself around to the other side, I saw that the helicopter had stopped sinking. We had landed on a ledge about ten feet from sh.o.r.e, just high enough to keep the water from reaching Trace's head. Mr. Murphy had been kind.

Not. As I reached for the door, the helicopter shifted suddenly, sliding away from me into the deeper water.

[ II ].

ONE OF THE arguments that's always been raised against women in combat has been that men will drop everything to save a woman on his team if they're in distress, risking their own lives to help them.

True. But anyone who has been in combat knows that's true of anyone on the team, male as well as female. Real warriors fight for each other. They save each other. That's why they're there. Most soldiers will tell you that once they get into battle, they're not really fighting for the flag or their country-when the bullets are flying, those are abstractions that you don't have time to think about. What you do think about-or rather feel, since there's not too much time to think about anything-is saving your buddy, your fellow soldier.

If the person in the c.o.c.kpit was anybody on my team, from Doc to Hiccup to Shotgun, from Junior to Mongoose-from plank holders to newbie nugget cannon fodder-I would have dove in to rescue them regardless. The fact that Trace had more curves than most of the rest of the people on my team made zero difference.