Castillo pushed back a grin as he thought: Years ago, when I was a bushy-tailed Special Forces captain, we used to say, “Green Berets can do anything immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.”
He took another, closer look at Captains Koshkov and Blatov and decided, presuming they could speak English, they’d fit right in in the Stockade.
“Either of you speak English?” Castillo asked in English.
“About as well, Colonel,” Koshkov answered in English, “as you speak Russian.”
“I once studied to be a poet in Saint Petersburg,” Castillo said. Both smiled broadly.
“So, I understand, did Vladimir Vladimirovich,” Blatov said. “That’s the word going around.”
“What are you doing here?” Koussevitzky asked.
“We’re going to take you to Casa en el Bosque,” Koshkov said.
“In those?” Castillo asked, indicating the Bells.
Koshkov nodded.
“They’re really very nice little helicopters,” he said.
“Very nice little helicopters,” my ass. The factory calls them Long Rangers but they’re better known as Super Rangers. High-inertia two-bladed rotors. Lots of power. Just the thing to fly through the Andes as darkness falls, presuming you have the know-how to fly them. Say a hundred hours under a good instructor.
I wonder where Alek Pevsner got them?
“How much time do you have in them, Captain?” Castillo asked.
Koshkov thought a minute, shrugged, then said, “About ten hours.”
Ten hours?
Max interrupted his thought by walking up to Koshkov, sitting on his haunches, and offering his paw.
Max likes him. I’ll be damned!
Koshkov stiffened; his face showed fear.
He confirmed this by announcing, “I’m not a friend of dogs.”
“Well, you better shake that one’s paw, or he’ll eat you,” Castillo said.
With great reluctance, Koshkov stooped and took Max’s paw.
“Get in the chopper, Max,” Castillo ordered, gesturing.
Max dutifully trotted to the closest helicopter and jumped inside. Koshkov was visibly relieved.
When Castillo got to the Bell, there was a man in the co-pilot’s seat. A good pilot—say, one with a hundred hours under a good instructor—could fly a Super Ranger by himself, but a co-pilot, even one presumably with less than ten hours in the bird, was a nice thing to have.
“May I sit there, please?” Castillo asked politely.
The co-pilot didn’t like that, but Koshkov sig
naled for him to give up his seat, and he did so.
Once he was seated in the co-pilot’s position, a quick look at the interior of the Bell—especially at the panel—told Castillo that it was brand-new. The forward and side-looking radar screens, the GPS screen, and the radar altimeter bore the logos of the AFC Corporation, and that translated as “damn the cost, get the best.”
He strapped himself in and put on the helmet that the co-pilot had reluctantly turned over to him.