The Charm School

looking for this helicopter is in the woods outside of Sheremetyevo. No lights.”
    They continued west, land navigating between the Moskva and the highway, which ran roughly parallel to the river. Alevy looked at the airspeed indicator, which showed 120 kph. He said, “We should be seeing the lights of Mozhaisk soon.”
    Brennan commented, “I don’t see
any
lights. Nobody lives down there.”
    Mills leaned forward and pointed to the left. “There. Is that Mozhaisk?”
    Alevy looked at the lights about five kilometers ahead. There weren’t many of them at this hour, but he could definitely pick out a string of lights that appeared to cross the Moskva River. That would be the Mozhaisk Bridge. Alevy replied, “There’s not much else around here, so that must be the town. Guide on that, Captain.”
    “Right.” O’Shea corrected his heading and pointed the nose of the Mi-28 directly toward Mozhaisk.
    Within a few minutes they could see the illuminated center of the small town where the two main streets crossed; the north-south street leading to the bridge and the east-west street, which was the old Minsk–Moscow road.
    Alevy said, “Drop to about five hundred and follow the river.”
    O’Shea descended toward the Moskva and passed over the bridge. At this altitude the river seemed more luminescent, reflecting the cold starlight and the last available moonlight. O’Shea commented, “I used to love river flying. Went up the Hudson in a Piper Cherokee once. Did the entire Colorado in a Cessna… now I’m doing the Moskva… in a borrowed Mi-28… a Headstone.”
    No one spoke for some minutes, then Alevy said, “Reduce airspeed.”
    O’Shea brought the helicopter’s speed down to ninety kph.
    Alevy looked at his watch, then at his aerial map and said, “Gentlemen, we’ll be landing very soon.”
    No one responded. They were all professionals, Alevy reflected, and each of them had at one time or another pushed his luck to the limit in the performance of his respective profession. They were, each in their own way, cool, distant, and businesslike. They had calculated the odds and found them slightly better than Russian roulette with a five-chambered revolver. They were all damned scared but damned excited too. Alevy could almost feel the energy, the anticipation of actually seeing if a chalkboard play would work on the ground.
    Alevy scanned the south bank of the Moskva River. “It’s somewhere in that pine forest there.” He said to O’Shea, “Lower and slower, Ed. Turn in over the forest.”
    “Right.” O’Shea turned away from the river and cut his airspeed, dropping two hundred meters of altitude.
    Alevy glanced into the rear and looked at Brennan and Mills sitting in the murky cabin, scanning the terrain from the side windows. He had never asked their motives for coming or given them any sort of recruiting pitch. He’d only outlined the plan and asked if they thought it was feasible and if they wanted to come along, and they said yes on both counts. And that was that.
    Alevy looked out the windshield at the expanse of dark pine forest passing below. The forest ended, and he could see a broad rolling field, dotted with what he knew were stone monuments. Borodino Field. He said to O’Shea, “We’ve overshot it. Swing around.”
    O’Shea brought the helicopter to a hover, then swung it around 180 degrees and made the transition back to forward flight. They passed again over the edge of the forest, and without Alevy’s saying anything, O’Shea cut the airspeed further and dropped to two hundred meters.
    Mills saw it first. “There. Ten o’clock, one klick.”
    They all looked to port and saw a cleared swatch of ground running through the thick, dark trees. Alevy caught a glimpse of a watchtower and noted there were no floodlights on the perimeter of the camp. This was the age of electronic motion sensors and sound detectors, personnel radar and night-seeing devices. Prison walls had gone high-tech, especially in the Soviet Union.
    Alevy said to Brennan, “Let’s get the wind direction.”
    “Right.” Brennan reached into the leather bag and found a smoke marker. He slid a section of the Plexiglas side window open, pulled the pin on the marker, and dropped it out the window.
    O’Shea put the helicopter into a hover at two hundred meters’ altitude and watched the white smoke billowing through the trees below. O’Shea said, “Wind out of the north at about five knots. About eight