Slash and Burn

heard the explosion. Depending on his altitude when the engine died, those extra few seconds could mean that the pilot controlled his dive rather than just drop.”
    Phosy asked, “What are the chances of him getting out alive in thick bush even if he did autorotate?”
    “You’d have to pick an open spot and aim for it. It was night. The jungle was dense. His chopper exploded so he probably collided with the trees.”
    “But how long would he have had before the crash?”
    “Judging from the woman’s description, I don’t know, about thirty seconds?”
    “Could he have bailed out before the chopper blew up?” Daeng asked.
    “You know, they used to put chutes in helicopters in the early days,” Johnson told her. “But they turned out to be more messy than helpful. A lot of guys got tangled up in the blades. Most fliers I know don’t even bother to bring one along.”
    “So, back to autorotate,” said Civilai. “Once you’ve disengaged the rotors you presumably know the trajectory of the fall. Am I right?”
    “You’d be traveling at about a forty-five degree angle. But, yes, you’d be kind of swaying down in a straight line. You’d be at a ground speed of about sixty to seventy knots.”
    “More control than say just letting go of the joy stick when you’re flying normally?”
    “Yes.”
    “And how long does it take to release the steel cable from the spool?”
    “Pretty slow if it’s working through the pneumatics. But there’s a release catch you can use if that doesn’t work. The cogs disengage and the cable drops at its own pace.”
    “And how long would that take to be fully extended?”
    “No more than ten seconds.”
    “Civilai, what’s your point here?” Daeng asked.
    “Just playing the odds, Daeng, old girl,” he said. “I’m a young helicopter pilot. I’ve just engaged autorotate. I’m slicing toward the trees with a full gas tank. I have nowhere to land. I know in thirty seconds I’ll be blown to hell. As I’m quite fond of myself, I’d rather not let that happen so I climb down into the fuselage, release the cable, grab hold of the harness and jump.”
    “And what damned good would that do you?”
    “Push the odds more in my favor, comrade. I’m traveling forward at sixty knots at the end of my thirty-meter cable. That means I hit the trees a few seconds before the helicopter which, as that would be an isosceles triangle, is thirty meters away by the time it explodes. Due to the trajectory and speed the force of the explosion sends its whatever volatile substance ahead of it. Hence the crater being at the edge rather than the center of the crash site. A sixty–forty chance of the pilot not being blown up. Voilà . Mathematics was my favorite subject at school. What does our American think of that?”
    When Peach passed this fantasy on, Johnson laughed until his belly hurt.
    “You’d be flying into trees at eighty miles an hour,” he said. “You’ve dropped to the end of a steel cable in ten seconds. If the harness hasn’t crushed your ribs you break your head on a tree.”
    “Tree tops being basically soft leaves,” said Civilai, determined to rescue his hypothesis.
    Johnson asked for the old Politburo man’s telephone number. He told him he had friends in Hollywood who’d really be interested in a man with such a vivid imagination. To his surprise, Civilai took out a pencil and started to write it down. He was interrupted by Phosy who shot to his feet and looked around as if he’d scented an ambush.
    “Damn,” he said, and rushed off at full speed into the jungle.
    “See? Now you’ve upset Phosy,” said Daeng.
    “What do you suppose that was about?” Civilai asked.
    * * *
    By the time the search continued after lunch, the objectives had changed. More of them were hunting with the hope of not finding any human remains. Civilai’s fanciful theory that the pilot might have enacted a daring escape had secretly sparked more hope in the others. Madame Daeng knew nothing of the character or dreams of the young pilot but her sense of adventure left her willing him alive. Nobody knew what had happened to Inspector Phosy. Someone suggested he might have come down with diarrhea after eating too many NASA lunch modules. But when he returned at three, he looked none the worse for wear. He had headman Ar in tow. The old man called his son’s name and the boy emerged from his hiding place in the undergrowth. He walked over to his father and grinned at