Not a bad place to set down, he thought, and started to
flare the blades with the stick, hoping he could bring her in with the collective. The Hind was still spinning in autorotation, but not yet dangerously. Slowly, slowly . . .
He was about thirty feet above the trees when a splatter of automatic fire erupted from the open doorway. He whirled around to see the terrorist he'd bulldozed into the fence now hanging onto the metal step and trying to pull himself in.
What now . . . !
The man—Vance guessed he was pushing forty, with a face of timeless brutality—was covered with blood and his aim was hampered by trying to hold the Uzi as he fired one-handed, the other hand grasping the step. He was cursing in German. . . .
At that instant the Hind took a sickening dip, and the Uzi clattered onto the doorway pallet as the terrorist relinquished it to try to hold on with both hands.
But he was losing it, his hands slippery with his own blood, and all that held him now was the torn section of his own shirt that had somehow sleeved over the step. Then his grasp gave way entirely, and he dangled for a moment by the shirt before it ripped through and he fell, a trailing scream. He landed somewhere in the trees twenty feet below, leaving only the shirt.
In the meantime the Hind continued spiraling and drifting down, and Vance looked out to see the gray granite of the side of the mountain moving toward him, with only a bramble of trees in between. But at least the chopper's autorotation was bringing him in for a soft crash.
He braced himself as a clump of trees slapped against the side of the fuselage. Then the twelve-ton helicopter plunged into them, its landing gear collapsing as it crunched to a stop. He felt himself flung forward, accompanied by the metallic splatter of the rotor collapsing against the granite, shearing and knocking the fuselage sideways in a series of jolts. As the two turboshaft engines automatically shut down, he held onto the seat straps and reflected that this was his first and probably last turn at the stick of a Hind. And all he'd managed to do was total it.
Heck of a way to start a morning.