"L'Amour, Louis - Last_of_the_Breed40" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

Last of the Breed
Chapter 40

For a moment Botev stood still. Then he reached out and touched his companion. The other man turned, and it was Borowsky.
Were they to be considered friends or enemies? They were, after all, Russians. Yet they had differences with their government. He walked closer.
"You are still free," Botev said. "It is an achievement."
"Yakov is a prisoner."
"That is why we are here."
"He is at the airfield?"
Botev's eyes swept the area around to see if they were attracting attention. Nobody was in sight.
"He is there. There are four KGB men with him. They are in a small waiting room near the control center, waiting for the plane to come and take them away. It will be a helicopter, I believe."
"You have a plan?"
Botev shrugged. "How can we plan? We know so little. He is there and we wish to free him. If we free him, we can escape into the taiga. We have friends there, scattered friends. We also have friends in Magadan."
"I did not know there were so many of you."
Borowsky shrugged. "We are few, comrade, very few. We are not seeking to overthrow the government, even if that were possible. We only want some freedom for ourselves and to protect our own. Yakov is one of the best. We need him. He has helped all of us from time to time."
"Our choice is limited," Botev said. "The taiga or a prison camp, and for Borowsky and me, they would put us to work that would soon kill us. If they did not torture us to death. We can expect nothing less. Neither can Yakov."
"We had better move on," Borowsky said. "To stand talking in the cold is unreasonable. We will attract attention."
"Four men, you say? There will be others about?"
Borowsky shrugged. "Perhaps, Most of them will not like the KGB, but we cannot tell what they might do."
They walked on in silence along the snow-covered road. They passed a long building like a warehouse and then some smaller buildings. They could see the field now. It had several hangars, a building that was probably an administration building with a tower, and a smaller building nearby with a Volga standing before it.
Joe Mack said, "There's a chopper coming in now. Will that be it?"
"It will. When they start for the chopper, we had better take them."
"No," Joe Mack said. "Let's take the chopper. I can fly it."
"Well--"
"It will get us out of town. There will be planes after us, but we can ditch it and take to the woods."
They paused beside a hangar. "When it lands," Botev said, "they will drive out in the Volga. They will not expect trouble. "
They waited, stamping their feet against the cold, shivering and watching. "If we are seen," Borowsky said, "they will wonder why we are standing here in the cold."
"It is a risk we take," Botev said, "Yakov would do it for us."
"He got me out of Kirensk," Borowsky said. "He risked his neck to do it."
"And me from one of the Sol'vychegodsk camps," Botev said.
The chopper was coming in low. It would land on the airfield not far from the hangars.
Joe Mack's hand was on the AK-47. He heard the Volga start, and from the corner of the hangar they saw two men emerge from the building with a prisoner between them. His hands were shackled behind him.
"There will be two men in the building. Maybe they will be watching."
"No matter." Joe Mack saw the helicopter landing gently on the field and heard the car's motor start. The hatch of the copter opened and a man got down and stood aside. It was a bigger ship than those he had seen before and would carry at least a squad. Inwardly he was praying there was no such force aboard. If there were, nobody would get out of this alive.
"Let's go," he said, and they started to walk, not in a group but scattered out, drifting onto the field with the casual manner of curious country folk.
The Volga swung alongside the chopper, and the driver remained at the wheel. From the Volga, three men got down, and they saw Yakov turn his head slightly, eyes downcast, and glance toward them. Suddenly he fell to his knees. "No! No!" he cried out. "I am afraid to fly! I--!"
Angrily, the KGB men tried to jerk him erect, their attention completely on their prisoner. Even the driver had turned his head to see what was happening. Borowsky stepped alongside the Volga and opened the door on the driver's side. The driver, surprised, turned to look into a pistol. "Get out, very carefully," Borowsky said quietly. "I do not want to kill you."
Botev had rounded the Volga, coming up behind the two men who struggled with Yakov. Yakov was a powerful man, and he had managed, with a lunge, to knock one man off his feet. The other struggled, swearing, to pull Yakov to a standing position. Botev moved in behind him as Joe Mack went to the chopper. He spoke to the pilot.
"Will you step out, please? I am very nervous, and a burst of fire at this distance would empty your guts."
Carefully, the copter pilot began to get out. He was a brave man, but he wished to live, and the AK-47 was very close, and the man who held it was like no one he had ever seen, with the striking gray eyes in a dark hawklike face, his hair in two braids. The pilot moved very carefully. "Be careful with that," he said. "I have two children."
"You are fortunate. Children need a father, so stay alive, comrade, and make no mistakes. I want your chopper."
"You can fly it?"
"I can fly anything." He nudged the pilot with the gun barrel to move him further. "And this seems very like one of our own."
Botev had the two KGB men on their feet against the side of the Volga. From the buildings they were screened. Nevertheless, one of the KGB men had come outside and was looking toward them. "Have you got the key for the handcuffs?" he asked Botev. "If so, disarm them and put them in the copter."
Borowsky was astonished. "You will take them with us?"
"Why not? There is room, and if left behind there's no telling what tales they might tell."
Working swiftly, the four men, the pilot, the driver of the Volga, and the two KGB men were bundled into the helicopter. Yakov, his hands freed, took the guns taken from two of them and climbed in with them. The helicopter was soon airborne.
Joe Mack glanced at his watch. The whole operation had taken just six minutes.
A half hour later he landed on a rugged plateau of the Chersky Mountains. "Yakov? Let them out here. Loosen their bonds so they can free themselves after we are gone. No reason to let them freeze to death."
"To the devil with them," Yakov said. "Let the bastards freeze!"