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“How many more of those do you have?” Joe asked.
“Not enough.”
Joe was flying at an angle to the coastline, taking them away from where the missile had been launched and hopefully pulling them out of range. The problem with that was it took them out of the radar-free corridor.
The makeshift radar detector Joe had rigged up began flashing in multiple colors. “I knew it would work,” Joe cried out proudly. “We’ve been painted.”
“Perfect,” Kurt said. “Turn us around and make it look like we’re trying to double back and get away.”
Joe brought the helicopter around, unbuckling his safety harnessand flying an S-shaped path as if trying to avoid being targeted. Kurt reloaded the flare guns, slid backpack number two toward the door, and pulled a backpack with a number3on it over his shoulders. With the island now behind them, he looked aft. “Any second now.”
Joe was watching the radar detector flash. A dark red color told him it was a tracking radar from a missile. “Missile incoming. Radar-guided.”
Time for them to play their hand, Kurt thought. He heaved backpack number two up and tossed it forward, pulling it open as it went out the door. Thousands of little strips of aluminum foil that he had painstakingly cut by hand in theAkeso’s commissary swirled out in all directions. The downwash from the helicopter blades buffeted them about, turning them into a storm of metal confetti. If they were working as he hoped, they’d now put a large and growing cloud on the screen where the helicopter had been.
That would hide them from anyone back on the island, but the tracking radar from the Turkish missile was another problem. “Still coming,” Joe said. “Time to jump.”
Kurt kicked the buckles open and watched the straps snake through the cabin and out the open doors. With the boat dropping and the chaff swirling behind them, he fired off another flare and stepped out through the side door, dropping into the darkness.
Up in the cockpit, Joe had already pushed the cockpit door open and forced his way through. He dove headfirst away from the helicopter and down.
Joe hit the water with his fists balled in front of his head like Superman in full flight. They broke the surface tension and limited the impact to his head, though it was still strong enough to rip the night vision goggles off.
He plunged into the darkness and silence, feeling the water slowhis descent and arching his body upward to use some of the momentum to take him back toward the surface.
As he came up, a spectral flare of orange light flickered through the water from the sky above. The Sky Shriek missile had found the helicopter through the cloud of chaff and turned it into a fireball.
A sudden wave of bubbles racing through the water accompanied the concussion wave that followed.
Joe broke the surface in time to see the flaming helicopter crash into the sea like a meteor from the depths of space. A secondary explosion flashed and boomed as the fuel tanks ruptured and spread kerosene across half an acre of the sea.
The wreckage remained afloat for the moment, burning brightly and releasing billowing clouds of oily, black smoke. Then it rolled over, as helicopters ditched in the sea often did, pulled down by the weight of the engines and other equipment concentrated at the top of the craft.
Joe turned away from it, using the remaining firelight to spot the inflatable raft Kurt had dropped moments before the impact. He swam toward it, reaching it at nearly the same moment Kurt did.
They climbed in without a word, pulled a pair of long-handled paddles from their straps, and dug in. They moved west with the current for a long five minutes, remaining out beyond the wreckage and the slowly dampening flames.
“You think they can see us out here?” Joe asked.
Kurt thought they would be safe for the moment. “As long as the fire burns, we should be hard to spot, either in visible light or infrared. But after that, it’s a legitimate concern. So let’s put as much water between us and the wreck as possible before turning inbound. If anyone does look for survivors, they’ll concentrate their search where the copter hit water.”
Joe thought that sounded immensely reasonable and dug in harder with each stroke. With the current helping them, they were soon nearly a mile west of the wreck site. Here they turned toward the beach.
Neither man said a word as they expended every ounce of energy on the task at hand. But even as they remained quiet, the rumbling sound of a diesel-powered boat chugging its way from around the bend of the island arose.
“How close is it?” Joe asked.
Kurt couldn’t tell, but he knew they were getting close to the shore, because the sound of the breakers rolling onto the sand was growing with every stroke. “No idea, but we’re not far from the beach. Put your back into it.”
Joe dug in ever harder, leaning forward, thrusting the paddle deep and pulling it back along the side of the boat with everything he had. Behind him, Kurt was doing the same. The small boat cruised toward the surf, white foam now visibly shimmering in the starlight. The sound of the throbbing diesel grew louder until it was echoing off the rocks above the beach.
With their muscles burning and hands blistering, they pressed on. A small wave kicked them forward as it raced underneath. The backwash tried to steal that progress by dragging them out. Kurt jammed his oar into a wedge of volcanic rock to keep them from being pulled back to sea.
Another wave came through and Kurt shoved off, pushing them forward. Beside him, Joe dug in deep and hard. The small boat surged ahead, sweeping past the rocks and riding the crest of the wave all the way up onto the beach of black sand.
Jumping over the side Kurt pulled the inflatable across the sand as the water receded.
Joe tossed his paddle into the center of the boat and joined Kurt. Working together they dragged the boat up toward an outcropping oflava in the shape of a giant anvil. Ducking in behind it they dropped to the sand just as the patrol boat appeared around the point.