"They're away," Moore cried, pulling himself through the cockpit door with both hands. The chopper was bucking like a rodeo mustang, buckling his knees. He clutched the flight engineer's chair and hauled himself into it, needing both hands.
       "Strap down!" Cynde yelled back. "We're outta here." She was monitoring the turbines and weather conditions, all her attention on the instruments in front of her. On her right, Lars was fully occupied, bouncing against his harness only slightly less than she was.
       "You DOWN, J.C.?" Her phone boom was back, eye shield up. Lars had flipped his as well. They were both of the same mind, choosing to rely on direct voice with all its nuances for their communication with each other, that and eye contact.
       "DOWN!" J.C. shouted.
       She turned to Lars, slapping him hard on the shoulder. "Stand her on end. I'll mind the store."
       He nodded, and the bottom dropped out. The S-61's nose pointed straight down, twisting away into the wind. They were screaming toward the ocean.
       "ONE FIFTY." She called out airspeed as they dropped. "TWO HUNDRED. TWO FIFTY. THREE HUNDRED TEN. ROTOR TIP WARNING!"
       Lars looked grim. The Mach speed warning was audible, but drowned out by other noise. He brought the nose slightly away from vertical as the whole airframe shook violently. Their speed, plus rotor speed, was nearly the speed of sound for the two blade tips slicing into the air ahead at any given moment. The turbines labored as the blade tips at Mach ran into a brick wall, even though all blade angles were essentially zero. The effect was no different than swishing a spoon through honey. Much more, and the blades would self-destruct.
       "THREE TWENTY-FIVE. SIX THOUSAND FEET." She turned to J.C, locked into his seat behind the pilot's chair, his feet braced against it and both hands clinging to the engineer's console. "MONITOR 121.5 MEGAHERTZ." She was literally screaming over the combined noise of turbines, blades, outside wind and now the Mach warning. The vibration had changed to a much higher frequency, setting teeth on edge. The aircraft's top speed was specified at two hundred miles per hour, or less depending on the plane, and they were nearly twice that, diving for warmer air. The twin turbines were roaring at standard RPM with nearly zero blade load, sucking great gulps of fuel yet with air intake cowlings no longer operating as designed. Ice had already reduced their efficiency to near-stall conditions--partly offset by the speed of diving but compounded by heavier rain and sleet as the aircraft streaked toward the sea. There was no way to monitor their condition, to tell how severe the icing was, but one minute in the wrong conditions was all it took to bring a plane down, any plane. Just sixty seconds.
       On the plus side, they weren't carrying two dozen soldiers in battle gear.
       Supercooled water droplets were turning instantly to ice on the aircraft skin, on the blades--all the surfaces. The ice buildup could by itself make the craft too heavy to fly in the same short time, but long before that happened their airfoil surfaces would start to look like the coarsest of sandpaper, with ice 'horns' growing like caterpillars standing on end, all over the leading edges of all five blades plus the tail rotor. They'd lose all lift ability, if they didn't overload the turbines first. The plane would become a lead sinker twisting its way into the sea.
       Lars had 'shaken' the blades once, but the ice had not all shaled off, so the five blades were unbalanced and now loading up even faster in spots where ice remained. The danger of rotor imbalance was increasing as fast as the ice was. He was already compensating for tail-rotor ice. The cyclic lever position was not where it should have been at all.
       They were in big trouble, with nowhere to land, diving away from one problem only to confront another. There was no way out.
       "THIRTY-SIX DEGREES." she shouted. The outside air temperature was deceiving, because the supercooled large drops, or SLDs, started in clouds above them, cooling to temperatures below the freezing point as they fell. "THIRTY-EIGHT DEGREES. FOUR THOUSAND FEET. THREE HUNDRED TEN."
       "LEVELING OFF," he growled, hauling up on the collective and bringing up the nose.
       "GO TO ONE THOUSAND FEET. WE JUST WENT UP ONE DEGREE."
       Moore had stripped off his flight helmet. He freed a headset hanging top right of the console and plugged it into the HF receiver with great difficulty, punching the numbers for the EPIRB frequency, then jamming the single-earphone headband down over his head and flipping the mike boom back. He heard nothing but static. It was still early. They couldn't expect the EPIRB signal for another few seconds, maybe longer. He wasn't thinking about their own problems at that moment. It was all he could do to stay braced and hang on.
       The aircraft shuddered as blades ragged with ice sledged and hacked and mushed their way into the denser, warmer air. Airspeed was down to two hundred fifty miles per hour, all due to gravity alone. The blades were laboring just to get enough lift to slow the plane down, bending and warping and flapping in ways their designers had never dreamed. The dive angle was one hundred thirty-five degrees, or forty-five degrees away from level flight, and they were still dropping.
       Lars was growling at the plane, trying to bring her nose up. "Come on... come on... come on."
       "TWO THOUSAND." She twisted around. "ANYTHING YET, J.C.?"
       "I'LL SHOUT IF THERE IS."
       "HANG ON!" Lars yanked the collective lever upward, cutting the rotor blades in for full lift. If there'd been vibration before, it was nothing by comparison. The headset shot off Moore's head, dancing on the end of its coiled cord. He hauled it back in and jammed it back in place, bouncing so hard now that his shoes were coming off the floor like a tap dancer's. The whole cockpit frame was shaking from side to side.
       "TOO MUCH ICE ON HER," Lars shouted. "WE'LL HAVE TO GO LOWER."
       "OUTSIDE IS FORTY DEGREES. SHE SHOULD BE MELTING OFF NOW."
       "FEELS LIKE ONE BLADE'S HEAVY. REAL SLUGGISH. SHE'S NOT COMING UP. WHAT'S OUR ALTITUDE?"
       "NINE HUNDRED. WE'RE LOSING IT. NOW EIGHT FIFTY."
       "HANG ON." He cut in the collective again, hard, without effect. The Sea King threatened to shake itself to death. Grimacing, he shot a glance at Cynde. "GOTTA TRY ANOTHER SHAKE AND BAKE."
       "OKAY. PASSING SEVEN FIFTY. OH, OH... BACK DOWN ONE DEGREE."
       Lars took a breath, rolling his eyes at the overhead. "Come on, baby... shake it off." With that, he jerked the collective up and down twice, sharp movements--the kind never to be made--enough to make the plane jump and then stab into a hole as if they were driving over a series of sharp 'thank-you-ma'am's' in a car. The maneuver, if overdone, could snap blades or shred them, flexing them far beyond their limits, but there was really no choice. They were losing altitude, and without functioning blades they were dead.
       "SIX FIFTY." Still severe vibration and now even more noise. "GOOSE THE CYCLIC," she screamed. "FIVE HUNDRED."
       The cyclic control operated on individual blades as they passed over a selectable fixed point around their travel, constantly changing the blade angle of each blade with each pass and then returning it to what it had been. It was what caused a helicopter to change its nose-down or nose-up attitude, what caused it to be able to fly forward, backward, sideways. The collective, on the other hand, affected all the blades, which tended to twist less violently than when going through repeated cyclic changes. The collective was used to make the craft rise, or lose altitude if that were the desired effect. Goosing the cyclic would produce the maximum twist in every blade as it rotated through its cycle. It could also twist them to death, like twisting a stick of celery.
       "GOOSING CYCLIC," he shouted back, hauling over hard and fast on the stick. The plane pirhouetted onto its right side and slid hard sideways. Any direction would have worked as well, but they'd paid for the maneuver in airspace. The collective was slow in its response.
       "NO GO. IT'S WORSE."
       "THREE HUNDRED FIFTY. YOU GOT RID OF SOME. GOOSE IT AGAIN."
       "WE'RE OUT OF AIRSPACE, MAJOR."
       "WE HAVE ENOUGH FOR ONE MORE TRY, COLONEL. DO IT!"
       He turned and stared at her, a grim smile on his face. She had more ice than the plane. He shot the cyclic to the side and the Sea King again stood on her beam. For a moment it seemed the shaking was even worse, but then there was a sudden change. The blades sounded almost normal, and the noise dropped away to near normal. He leveled quickly and hauled up on the collective.
       "DID IT!" Cynde cried. She slugged Lars on his left shoulder. "SEVENTY FEET. WE'RE DOWN TWO DEGREES. NOW THIRTY-SIX OUTSIDE. BELAY THAT. MAKE IT THIRTY-FIVE."
       He grinned, easing the collective lever a bit. "SHE'S HOLDING. WE'LL HAVE TO CLAW OURSELVES BACK TO THAT WARMER LAYER. TAIL ROTOR'S STILL LOADED."
       "WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?"
       He suddenly broke out laughing. "Beats me, darlin'." He turned toward her, a broad smile conveying his relief. "You're one gutsy li'l cookie. I'll fly with you any day. Now about that date?"
       "How's she handling?"
       "Still sluggish." He eased the collective half an inch up, then back down, without the plane doing anything detectable. "But it's raining harder down here. Less chance of SLDs. How much ice on the pods?"
       "Turning on landing lights." She flipped a switch, craning her head through the sliding window to see their port landing gear sponson in the wash of light. "Heavy. Half an inch at least. Looks like the ice palace. Another fifty feet and we might be taking a bath here. God, that looks ghastly down there."
       "At four tons per inch of ice, we're pushing the hell out of design payload, but she's holding."
       "Lights off." Cynde twisted around. "Hearing anything, J.C.?" She saw the gloomy expression on his face; saw him shake his head and squint at his watch.
       "It's been more than long enough," he said. "They should have hit the thing by now. Been well over a minute since they jumped."
       Lars made no comment. She checked the turbine monitor and outside temperature again, then slumped in her chair while he swept off his flight helmet. He scratched his head, staring at the encrusted windshield wipers. Sighing, he turned them off. They weren't doing anything anyway.
       "Figure they had at least thirty seconds drop time before they opened their chutes," he said, "then another thirty fighting the wind and lining up. Maybe even forty-five, but not more. They're either on the tank or in the soup by now." He slid his own side window back a bit.
       "Don't say that," Cynde moaned. She held her head. "I know, I know... you're right. But maybe they forgot to...." She trailed off, sliding her own side window back far enough to stick her hand out into the weather.
       No one said anything.
       Lars began nursing the Sea King back to the warm layer they'd passed coming down, unconcerned now about their drift in the wind. There was no one else out there, no one stupid enough. He hadn't even bothered looking at his radar screen. He took his time, testing the response of the controls and checking the turbine monitors. "How long now?" he asked.
       "Two... almost three minutes."
       Cynde pulled her hand back inside. "God... what if... what can we do?"
       "Nothing," Moore said. "They understood that, Major Moore. Jim may be able to snap off a tree with that mind power of his, but...."
       "Wait a minute," she interrupted. "I'm looking at our heading... Lars, hold our heading for a moment. That's it... so the wind is now almost due north... here at a thousand feet... but upstairs we had it at WNW. Lars, we dropped them wrong. Two compass points off! Oh, my God. We killed them, Lars. Two compass points!" Her palms went to her cheeks as she realized the horrible truth. Lars stared ahead at the console, not speaking. Behind them, Moore was reaching out to touch his daughter on her shoulder. He thought better of it, looking sick. That was most assuredly what must have happened, the reason they hadn't gotten the signal.
       "Let's see... two points...." Lars began a quick calculation. "That would put them off the tank about two hundred...."
       "HOLD ON!" J.C. was grinning ear to ear, holding his right thumb straight up. "I JUST HEARD 'EM!" He let out a cowboy whoop. "Four second signal, nice and strong. They're down. They're SAFE!"
       Lars shook his head. "How can that be, J.C.? Huh? Tell me. They were off over two hundred feet. They had to be. It was downwind. They...."
       Cynde's shriek stopped him. "They did it. My God, they DID it!" She grinned and started to slap Lars again on the shoulder, then realized something was wrong. She glanced at him, at his expression. "You don't believe... the signal?" She turned to her father, incredulous. "They made it, J.C. Didn't they?"
       Lars shook his head sadly. "Cynde... there is no way they could have hit the tank. They'd have been downwind of it at least two hundred feet, maybe a lot more thanks to our error, so how could they possibly make up that much? Know what I mean? Downwind, get me? It's impossible."
       "Then... why the EPIRB signal?"
       "They're in the water. Jim's telling us it's over for them."
       "I can't believe that. If they were in the water, why wouldn't he turn it on and leave it on?"
       "Because he knows we can't do anything about it. He wouldn't want us to try. He's telling us it's over."
       "Oh, come ON! Let's have a little positive thinking here. Is our sat phone turned on? He said he'd call us on it after the EPIRB."
       Lars checked. "Nope, I forgot. Okay, I'm turning it on right now. Just don't get your hopes up. There is just no way."
       "Why not? Who says Jim remembered to flip the EPIRB switch the very second they landed? Maybe things were dicey when they got there, okay? Maybe they had to climb all over stuff. They had to get out of the rain and find some shelter, and do it in the dark. Maybe they're...."
       She stopped abruptly when the sat phone rang. Lars just stared at it, letting it ring a second time. It was J.C. who shot forward and grabbed for it. He extended the antenna and punched the TALK button, an unbelieving look on his face. The coincidence was unnerving. Who'd be calling, unless....
       "Hello?"
       "Where you guys been all this time? Trish and I were gettin' a little concerned down here."

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