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Briscoe nodded curtly. "There's a Russian helicopter muddling about in the storm. Get on the radio and find out why he's flying around an empty sea."
Lieutenant Angus produced a headset, plugged it into a communications console and handed it to Rudolph. "The frequency is set. All you have to do is talk."
Rudolph placed the earphones over his ears and spoke into the tiny microphone. Briscoe and Angus waited patiently while he carried on what seemed a one-way conversation. Finally, he turned to the captain. "The man is terribly upset, almost incoherent. The best I can make of it, is that he's coming from a Russian whaling fleet."
"Then he's only doing his job."
Rudolph shook his head. "He keeps repeating, `they're all dead' and wants to know if we have helicopter landing facilities on the Bridlington. If so, he wants to come aboard."
"Impossible," Briscoe grunted. "Inform him that the Royal Navy does not allow foreign aircraft to land on Her Majesty's ships."
Rudolph repeated the message just as the helicopter's engines became audible and it suddenly materialized out of the falling rain, half a kilometer off the port bow at a height of no more than twenty meters above the sea. "He sounds on the verge of hysteria. He swears that unless you shoot him down, he's going to set down on board."
"Damn!" The oath fairly exploded from Briscoe's lips. "All I need is for some terrorist to blow up my ship."
"Not likely any terrorists are roaming about this part of the ocean," said Angus.
"Yes, yes, and the Cold War's been over for ten years. I know all that."
"For what it's worth," said Rudolph, "I read the pilot as scared out of his wits. I detect no indication of threat in his tone."
Briscoe sat silent for a few moments, then flicked a switch on the ship's intercom. "Radar, are your ears up
"Yes, sir," a voice answered. "Any ships in the area?"
"I read one large vessel and four smaller ones, bearing two-seven-two degrees, distance ninety-five kilometers."
Briscoe broke off and pressed another switch. "Communications?"
"Sir?"
"See if you can raise a fleet of Russian whaling ships ninety-five kilometers due west of us. If you need an interpreter, the ship's doc can translate."
"My thirty-word Russian vocabulary should get me by," the communications officer answered cheerfully.
Briscoe looked at Rudolph. "All right, tell him permission is granted to set down on our landing pad."
Rudolph passed on the word, and they all watched as the helicopter angled in from the starboard beam and began a shallow power-glide approach over the landing pad just forward of the stern in readiness for a hovering descent.
To Briscoe's practiced eyes, the pilot was handling the aircraft erratically, failing to compensate for the brisk wind. "That idiot flies like he's got a nervous disorder," snapped Briscoe. He turned to Angus.
"Reduce speed and order an armed reception committee to greet our visitor." Then as an afterthought. "If he so much as scratches my ship, shoot him."
Angus grinned amiably and winked at Rudolph behind the captain's back as he ordered the helmsman at the ship's
console to reduce speed. There was no insubordination intended in their shared humor.
Briscoe was admired by every man of the crew as a gruff old sea dog who watched over his men and ran a smooth ship. They were wet) aware that few ships in the Royal Navy had a captain who preferred sea duty to promotion to flag rank.
The visitor was a smaller version of the Ka-32 Helix Russian Navy helicopter, which was used for light transport duty and air reconnaissance. This one, used by a fishing fleet for locating whales, looked badly in need of maintenance. Oil streaked from the engine cowlings and the paint on the fuselage was badly chipped and faded.
The British seamen waiting under the protection of steel bulkheads cringed as the helicopter flared out barely three meters above the pitching deck. The pilot sharply decreased his engine rpms too early, and the craft dropped heavily to the deck, bounced drunkenly back into the air and then smacked down hard on its wheels before finally settling like a chastised collie into motionless submission. The pilot shut down his engines, and the rotor blades swung to a stop.
The pilot slid open an entry door and stared up at the Bridlington's huge radar dome before turning his eyes to the five advancing seamen, automatic weapons firmly clutched in their hands. He jumped down to the deck and peered at them curiously before he was taken roughly by the arms and hustled through an open hatch. The seamen escorted him up three decks through a wide companionway before turning into a passageway that led to the officers' wardroom.
The ship's first officer, Lieutenant Commander Roger Avondale, had joined the reception committee and stood off to one side with Lieutenant Angus. Surgeon Lieutenant Rudolph waited at Briscoe's elbow to interpret. He studied the Russian pilot's eyes and read terror numbed by fatigue in the wide pupils.
Briscoe nodded at Rudolph. "Ask him what in hell made him assume he can board a foreign naval vessel any time he chooses."
