The Charm School

years.” He added, “The main rotor in Soviet choppers turns the opposite of Western rotary-wing. So the rudder pedals are opposite.”
    “Is that why we’re zigzagging all over the place, Captain?”
    “Yeah. Takes a while to get used to.” O’Shea pointed to a switch. “What does that say?”
    Alevy leaned forward and read the Russian switch plate. “
Svet
… light… moving… landing.”
    “Controllable landing light,” O’Shea said. He switched it off. “I saw the pilot hit it a few minutes ago. We don’t need that.” O’Shea pushed the cyclic control stick to port and worked the antitorque pedals to keep the craft in longitudinal trim, swinging the helicopter west, away from Sheremetyevo, away from Moscow. O’Shea said, “I’ll need about fifteen minutes of maneuvers before I feel confident with these controls.”
    Alevy replied, “Try ten. We need every drop of fuel. Did that training manual help?”
    “Yes, but it’s no substitute for hands-on.” O’Shea added, “It’s okay, men. Just relax. I’m getting it.”
    Alevy put on the headphones and listened to the radio traffic from Sheremetyevo tower. He said to O’Shea, “Don’t get too far west. I have to call the tower.”
    “Right.” O’Shea practiced some simple maneuvers.
    Alevy looked toward the east and saw the bright lights of Moscow on the distant horizon. The sky was unusually clear, very starry, but there was only a sliver of a white, waning moon tonight, he noted, which was fine. Below, the farmland and forests were in almost complete darkness.
    Seth Alevy stared out the windshield. Spread before him was Russia in all its endless mystery, the land of his grandparents, a black limitless space so dark, deep, and cold that whole armies and entire nationalities—Don Cossacks, Volga Germans, Jews, and Tartars—could disappear without a trace and without a decibel of their screams being heard beyond the vast frontiers.
    Alevy looked west out to where the dark sky touched the black horizon. Soon they would be plunging into that void, and though he could smell the fear around him, nothing frightened him so much as the thought that they might be too late.
    Bill Brennan, sitting now behind O’Shea’s seat, with his feet on the unconscious Aeroflot pilot, asked Alevy, “Do you want me to dump him?”
    “There’s no need for that.”
    “Okay. Can I break his nose?”
    “No. Just tie him up.”
    Brennan tied the pilot’s wrists and ankles with a length of metal flex.
    Bert Mills looked at his watch. “We’re about five minutes overdue at Sheremetyevo.”
    “Right.” Alevy said to O’Shea, “Let’s kill all the lights.”
    O’Shea scanned the instrument panel and referred to an Mi-28 cockpit diagram that he and Hollis had made up with English subtitles some weeks ago.
    “Here,” Alevy said. “This says ‘navigation lights.’”
    “That’s the one.”
    Alevy hit the switch and the outside lights went out. “You just fly, Captain.” He took the diagram from O’Shea and found the interior light switch and flipped it, throwing the cabin and cockpit into darkness. The instrument lights cast a pale red glow over Alevy and O’Shea’s face and hands.
    The effect of the nearly total darkness inside and outside was somewhat eerie, Alevy thought, and he could hear the other three men’s disembodied breathing above the sound of the rotor blades. Alevy held the diagram on his lap and scanned it. He found the radio transmit button on the cyclic grip. “Okay.” He depressed the transmit button and suddenly shouted in Russian into the mouth mike of his headset, “
Kontroler! Kontroler!
”
    A few seconds later the control tower at Sheremetyevo replied, “
Kontroler.
”
    Alevy said excitedly in Russian, “This is Aeroflot P one one three—lost engine power—” He stopped talking, but continued depressing the button the way a pilot would do as he contemplated the ground rushing up at him. Alevy screamed in Russian, “God—!” then lifted his finger from the button and heard Sheremetyevo tower in his headphones, “—one one three, come in, come—” Alevy shut off the radio power and removed his headphones. “That should keep them busy searching for wreckage, as well as making them reflect on man’s need for divine comfort in the last second of life. Okay, Captain O’Shea, let’s head west.”
    O’Shea swung the tail boom around and pointed the Mi-28 west, then opened up the throttle and changed the