The Charm School

risk a visual sighting over a populated area at that time because we’ll be in the home stretch. We should be landed before they can scramble a flight to intercept us.” He looked at Hollis. “What do you think?”
    “I think someone forgot to consider Red Navy radar that watches everything in the gulf. I think if they’re specifically looking for us, they’ll find us. I’m going on the assumption they haven’t connected an Mi-28 Aeroflot helicopter bearing a certain ID number with the nerve gas attack on their training facility outside of Borodino.”
    Mills said, “We’re gambling that no one even knows that the Charm School is dead until someone comes by in the morning with a delivery or someone calls from Moscow or something. As for this helicopter, I changed the ID number, and they’re probably still looking for the crash site of P-113. This is a very compartmentalized country, and information does not travel freely. Therefore connections aren’t easily made. That’s working in our favor.”
    Hollis replied, “You may be right.” He asked O’Shea, “How are we supposed to rendezvous with the ship in the gulf?”
    O’Shea glanced at a piece of paper clipped to the instrument panel. “Well, first we look for Pulkovo Airport, which you and I would recognize from the air. Then we drop below two hundred meters to get under the radar. About a klick due south of the control tower, we take a three-hundred-ten-degree heading. We’ll pass over the coast west of Leningrad and continue out until we see the lighthouse on the long jetty. From a point directly over the lighthouse we take a three-hundred-forty-degree heading and maintain a ground speed of eighty kph for ten minutes. According to what it says here, somewhere down in the main shipping lane we’ll see three yellow fog lights that form a triangle. Those lights are on the fantail of a freighter heading out of Leningrad. The lights won’t blind or project a beam that might attract unwanted attention. But they should glow bright enough for us to see them at two hundred meters’ altitude and about half a klick radial distance around the ship—even in one of those gulf fogs. We land in the center of that triangle, deep-six the chopper, and the ship takes us to Liverpool.” O’Shea added, “I’ll buy dinner when we get to London.”
    Hollis glanced at O’Shea but said nothing.
    They continued north for another fifteen minutes, and Hollis saw that the ground speed was dropping, indicating they were picking up headwinds again. The needle on the fuel gauge was buried in the red zone. One of the things Hollis recalled from the Mi-28 manual—which he’d purchased indirectly from an Aeroflot mechanic for blue jeans and American cigarettes—was that the fuel gauge shouldn’t be trusted. In fact, he noticed that though the needle was deeper in the red, the fuel warning still wasn’t on.
    O’Shea said, “Want me to take it?”
    “No. I need the practice.”
    A few minutes later O’Shea said, “We should have seen the lights of Leningrad by now.”
    Hollis nodded.
    Mills asked, “Will we have any warning before the fuel runs out?”
    Hollis replied, “Do you want a warning?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Do you want to land in Russia?”
    “I guess not. I guess we just keep flying until we go down.”
    “I guess so,” Hollis replied.
    Five minutes later the fuel warning light flickered. A few seconds after that a reedy voice said in Russian, “Your fuel reserves are nearly gone.”
    O’Shea replied to the recording, “Screw you.”
    The voice said, “Make preparations to terminate your flight.”
    Hollis and O’Shea exchanged glances.
    Mills asked, “What did he say?”
    Hollis replied, “There’re only forty-two shopping days left until Christmas.”
    Lisa said to Mills, “Fuel is low.”
    Mills nodded. “I figured that’s what he said.”
    They continued on north through the black night. No one spoke, as if, Hollis thought, everyone were waiting for the sound of the turbines to cut out. Finally, Lisa leaned forward and put her hand on his shoulder. “How are you?”
    “Fine. How’re things back in business class?”
    “You tell me. How much fuel is left after that announcement?”
    “It’s more a matter of how much flight time you can get out of the available fuel. That depends on load, temperature, humidity, winds, altitude, speed, engine performance, maneuvers, and the good Lord.”
    “Should I pray?”
    “Can’t