River Rising

by Merline Lovelace

  "What do we have that's ready to go?"

  The tired major who'd taken her post-flight report just ten minutes ago looked up in surprise. "Didn't I just send you back to the 'Q for crew rest?"

  "I'm okay. What's ready to go?"

  "You've already flown three missions, Captain. We've got student crews from Fort Rucker who can take up the slack for a while."

  "I just heard that a friend of mine is down," Jo said urgently. "Major Samuels. Carly Samuels."

  "The JAG?"

  "You know her?"

  "Yeah, sure, she put together a special briefing for our squadron on the legal issues surrounding our ACUZ problem."

  Jo wasn't interested right now in the Aircraft Critical Use Zone issues that had the Maxwell flying community grinding their teeth with frustration.

  "What have you got that's ready to go? "

  The major swept a quick look down the computerized status board projected onto a wall-sized screen. "A student crew is getting ready to preflight one of Fort Rucker's schoolhouse Huey's right now. Hang loose, I'll talk to the army liaison."

  Jo paced in front of his console while he radioed the harried army officer who'd brought his birds and crews up from Fort Rucker and plunged instantly into around-the-clock flood relief efforts. He hung up a moment later.

  "The army's more than happy to have an experienced hand on the stick." He punched a change into the status board. "All set. You're on as pilot. Tail number seventy-three dash one-seven-two-one."

  The '73 prefix on the tail number told Jo instantly the bird was a Vietnam-era H-model, single engine, simple and unsophisticated by today's standards, but smooth, powerful, and a joy to fly.

  "Thanks!"

  She dashed for the crew bus just pulling up outside base ops. Scant moments later, she jumped out and ran across the rain-soaked apron to the squat UH-1. Jo had flown her first solo in a Huey at Fort Rucker and logged more hours in the bird during follow-on air force training at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. She knew its capabilities, trusted its proven record of performance.

  A drenched army lieutenant greeted her with a salute and obvious relief. "Just heard you're taking the right seat, Captain."

  "That's a roge, Lieutenant."

  She introduced herself to the crew chief, tossed her bag into the cockpit, and climbed into the aircraft commander's seat. While the lieutenant strapped himself into the left seat, she dragged on her helmet and fire-retardent Nomex gloves with leather palms for a tight grip on the controls. With her copilot calling off the checklist steps and the crew chief preparing the back of the aircraft for takeoff, she whipped through the preflight procedures.

  The engine wound up with a high-pitched whine. The rotors began their initial whirl, slowly picking up speed as Jo advanced the twist-grip throttle, bringing the Huey to the 6400 rpm necessary for lift off. When the aircraft rattled and shook with an eagerness that said she was ready to fly, Jo gave her copilot a thumbs up.

  "All right, Lieutenant," she shouted into the mike of her helmet, "let's get this bird in the air."

  With one hand nursing the collective at her side, the other working the slanted cyclic between her legs, and both feet on the pedals, Jo employed the natural coordination all helo drivers had to be born with. Slowly, the Huey picked up to a hover. Countering wind, driving rain, and the helicopter's natural tendency to whirl into a spin, she pushed the cyclic forward and pulled up on the collective to increase both altitude and airspeed. The runway fell away, and soon even the hangars were lost to the haze of rain.

  As soon as the Maxwell tower had handed them off to the emergency command center controlling search and rescue operations, Jo got on the radio.

  "This is army Rescue one-seven-two-one. Request the coordinates of the two people tagged by a Civil Air Patrol spotter less than an hour ago."

  The reply came crisp and clear through the chatter on the radio. "This is Rescue Control. We've already dedicated assets for that operation."

  "Roger that, but they may need backup."

  "Two police choppers are enroute. They haven't asked for military backup."

  One way or another, they were going to get it.

  "There's a military officer on the ground, Control. Request permission to fly cover and keep Maxwell advised on military frequencies."

  The harried controller came back on a few moments later. "All right, two-one, you're cleared, but for backup only. Be advised this is a police operation."

  He rattled off the coordinates, which the copilot hastily grease-penciled on the acetate-covered clipboard strapped to his knee.

  "Got'em? "Jo asked.

  "Got'em."

  "What's our ETA?"

  He plotted the coordinates, calculated airspeed and distance on the circular navigational slide ruler universally referred to as the whizwheel, and gave her an estimated time of arrival.

  "Army Rescue one-seven-two-one enroute," she advised the control center. "We should arrive on-scene in twenty minutes."

  With a smooth coordination of arms and legs, Jo tipped the nose forward and opened the throttle. Moments later, Montgomery's rain-shrouded skyline had disappeared from view. Then there was only the wind, the black clouds, and the angry water below.

  Jo's stomach clenched as she searched for the terrain features she'd noted on her flight through this sector less than an hour ago. So many had disappeared. Too many.

  Jaw tight, Ryan turned away from the half-flooded stairwell. He didn't try to minimize the situation.

  "We've got a half hour, maybe less, until we have to hit the roof."

  Carly nodded. In contrast to her near panic when she'd found him gone earlier this morning, she was calm now, almost numb.

  "We'd better get what we need and stack it by the window," she said quietly.

  Ryan cut her a sharp glance, his insides tight and aching. God, she looked so pale, so self-contained. So damned different from the flushed, panting woman he'd held in his arms what seemed like a lifetime ago that he ached with the loss. It was clear that the shock of the radio announcement they'd caught a little while ago still hadn't quite worn off.

  He'd give his right arm to turn the clock back twenty-four hours. If only he hadn't decided to beat the truth out of Gator. Carly wouldn't have come after him and been caught in the flood. The assistant warden wouldn't have died.

  If only Carly had rounded the boat shed a second or two sooner than she had. She would have seen that Preston was still alive when the lightning stuck. Still alive when Ryan threw himself across the yard in a futile attempt to save Carly from the rushing waters.

  If only.

  The two most painful words in the English language. Ryan felt their slash as he caught up with Carly in the hall. Snagging her arm, he turned her around. The darkness that had come with the storm shadowed her face, but not her eyes. They lifted to his, wide and clear.

  "I didn't kill Fayrene Preston."

  He'd already told her, already said the words. He needed to say them again.

  "I believe you."

  "Why?"

  "The radio report said she suffered multiple fractures to the skull and apparent sexual assault. You didn't have time to inflict that on her in the short time I was gone."

  "Two?"

  "Two, it's your word against Gator's. I've already been down that road, Ryan. I believe you."

  "And three?"

  "Three..." She chewed on her lower lip. "I can't think of a three right now."

  She was lying. For the first time she could remember, Carly deliberately and with malice aforethought violated her personal code of ethics and flat out lied. She knew darn well what constituted reason number three.

  She believed Ryan McMann because she loved him. It was a shaky kind of love, too new, too scary to even think about right now. But it was there, curled deep inside her chest, waiting for the right time and the right place to unfurl and grow.

  She'd suspected it when she stood in the backyard this morning, her mo
uth agape and a burlap bag squirming with kittens in her hand. She'd felt it flutter beneath the splintering layers of passion Ryan had released inside her. She'd acknowledged it silently when he'd reached out, shut off the boom box, and stared at her, simply stared at her, from the depths of his own private hell.

  They both knew what faced him when they got back. If they got back. Another investigation. Another media frenzy. Another incarceration, this time at a maximum security facility, while the Bureau of Prisons shifted through the evidence in Fayrene Preston's horrible murder.

  Carly's jaw set. This time Ryan wasn't going to put his life in the hands of a team of high-priced lawyers he didn't trust and an incompetent judge. This time, he'd damn well get the best. A familiar surge of adrenaline shot through her.

  "Don't worry about number three," she told him with a brisk smile. "I'll come up with something before we get back to Maxwell. Come on, let's get our gear together."

  The silent torment left his face. To her intense relief, he even managed a smile.

  "You sound pretty chipper all of a sudden for a woman who may have to crawl out a second story window onto the eaves at any minute."

  "At least I'll be crawling along with someone who knows his way around a roof." She started down the hall. "How are you going to carry your cats?"

  "They're not my cats! Carly! Dammit, they're not mine!"

  Ryan missed his guess by fifteen minutes. The water crept up the stairs faster than he'd estimated. It was calf deep in the upstairs hallway and lapping at the window sills outside when he lifted the sash and punched out the screen. Rain needled his head and body, soaking him instantly. He tested the line that anchored him to the heavy dresser and gave Carly a last, reassuring grin.

  "After today, I'm giving up roofing as a second career."

  "After today, I'm giving up water in any way, shape, or form. I'm bathing only in milk and drinking only the Judge's corn mash."

  "Sounds like a good plan to me." He slung a leg over the sill. "Wait for my signal."

  "I will. Ryan!" She grabbed his arm, pulled him back. "Take this with you."

  Her mouth came down on his, hard, hot, wet and wild and sweet. He took the taste of her with him into the nightmare of wind and rain that hit him the moment he swung onto the steep-pitched gable.

  The composition shingles were as slick as spit under his boots. Only a tight grip on the window frame, a lifetime of balancing himself on the ice, and the skills he'd picked up in the past eight months kept him from sliding off and pitching butt first into the waters swirling around the house. His jaw tight, he swung the hand ax he'd found in the garage. Its blade bit into the shingles, and the handle gave him a grip to hang onto.

  "Stay put until I pull on the rope," he shouted to Carly "Too pulls! Wait for two pulls!"

  "Two pulls! Got it!"

  She leaned out the window, ignoring the rain that drove into her face and upper body like bullets. Ryan wouldn't let himself look back at her, wouldn't let himself think about the worry for her that clawed at his gut. If he could reach the high-pitched ridge, pull Carly up and anchor them both to the chimney, he might buy them another ten, maybe fifteen minutes. If rescue didn't arrive by then, they'd have to take to the river with only the plastic milk jugs they'd emptied, capped tight, and strung together as life vests. The prospect of another ride down the raging Alabama buoyed only by milk jugs raised a cold sweat that even the rain streaming down his face and neck couldn't wash away.

  Testing the rope knotted around his waist to make sure it gave him enough slack, Ryan began the longest crawl of his life. Whacking the ax into the shingles, he hung on to it with one hand and scrabbled in the rough-surfaced shingles with the other. Rather than go straight up, he angled across the roof, sliding his body inch by inch.

  His hands were raw and bloody by the time he pulled himself up and straddled the ridge. He caught his breath, swiping his palms down his thighs to clean away the blood and embedded particles, then worked his way backward to the brick chimney. With a fervent prayer of thanks to the farmer who put in a fireplace even in the deep South, Ryan looped the rope around the brick. Then he drew in a ragged breath, said another silent prayer, and tugged on the rope. Once. Twice.

  He didn't breathe again until he pulled Carly up beside him, her hair streaming, her shirt plastered to her body. She found a precarious seat on the shingles and eyed the water swirling past them with a deliberate nonchalance that made Ryan's heart ache. Swiftly, he reeled in the rest of the line, hauling up empty milk jugs, a pillowcase holding plastic-wrapped flares, flashlight, and food, and finally, another pillowcase, this one padded with newspaper and occupied by two extremely unhappy kittens.

  "I'm going to shorten your line," he shouted to Carly over the roar of rain and river. With a quick twist he looped the rope, shortening the line that tied her to the chimney. "This is a slip knot. It'll give with a single tug if the water... If we have to..."

  "If we have to swim," she finished for him. Incredibly, she flashed him a grin. "We beat the river once, McMann. We'll do it again."

  They almost did.

  Not five minutes later, Ryan heard the choppers.

  Using the rope looped around the chimney as a safety line and the embedded ax as a handhold, he surged up. He had a flare out and sparking before Carly managed to find her feet on the roof's ridge. Hanging on to the rope, she shoved her hair out of her eyes and searched frantically for the source of the distant whump whump whump.

  "There they are!" she shouted. "Over there!"

  Afterward, Ryan could never say how it happened. Maybe she knocked against his arm. Maybe he jerked too hard on the ax handle.

  However it happened, the ax came free and Ryan twisted frantically to avoid slicing Carly. She jumped back, lost her footing. With a yelp of sheer terror, she hit the roof on one hip. Hands and feet scrabbling, she tried desperately to stop her slide, but only succeeded in pulling loose the slipknot in the shortened rope.

  Terrified that the knot around her waist might give, too, Ryan threw himself down and caught her flailing wrist. For long, panicked seconds, they sprawled head down on the roof, Ryan anchored to the chimney by his rope, Carly anchored to him by the bruising grip around her wrist. With a grunt, he managed to swing the ax and bury it in the roof for added support.

  He tried to drag her up, but the shingles caught at her shirt, her shorts. "Flip over! Carly, can you flip yourself over?"

  "I...I think...so."

  She used her feet and hips and shoulders, flopping like a stranded dolphin. Ryan gritted his teeth and held on to her rain-slick wrist with all the strength he had. Finally, she twisted onto her stomach.

  "Take a breath," he ordered, "then reach up with your other hand and grab my wrist."

  She stretched and pushed with toes that couldn't find purchase on the slick shingles. They were both grunting with effort by the time she got a hold of his arm and took some of the strain off hers.

  "All right. You're still roped to the chimney," he reminded her, praying the remaining knot had held. "It's a safety line, but we won't need it. We're going to inch back up the roof, like a crab."

  "Got it," she panted. "Like a crab."

  "Okay. I'll pull. You push with your toes."

  The stark terror at seeing Carly slide down the roof had driven everything else from Ryan's mind. Only now that he had her hands wrapped around his did the roar in his ears subside enough for him to hear the choppers. They were closer now, the whap of their rotors clearly audible over the river's rage.

  He had to get Carly up, had to get her on the ridge and ready for a sling. One-armed, he worked the rope that anchored him, crabbing back and up slowly, steadily. With the other arm, he tugged Carly. His shoulder socket burned. His muscles were on fire.

  "You're doing great, sweetheart. A few more yards."

  His left boot had just touched brick when he heard the first pop, almost lost in the rain and wind and deafening beat of the blades. Another pop came a
few seconds later, followed by a splat just behind him.

  Carly's eyes went wide with shock. "They're shooting at us!" she screamed. "Ryan! They're shooting at us!"

  He whipped his head around, saw the chunk taken out of the brick just behind him. Incredulous, he threw a look above him at the nearest chopper. The hatch stood open. Lifelines hooked to both sides of the hatch braced a helmeted police sharpshooter against the violent pitch and roll of the aircraft. He aimed a high-powered rifle at the roof, waiting for the helo to bank and bring him another clear shot.

  The truth hit Ryan between the eyes. Twisting, he shouted to the woman clinging to his wrist with both hands. He had less than a second to make a frantic decision. The rope would hold her. It had to hold her.

  "They're not shooting at us, Carly! They're shooting at me! They think I'm trying to hold you, trying to hurt you or use you as a shield. You've got to let go, slide down the roof away from me, or you might get hit!"

  Her nails dug into his wrist, frantic, clawing. "No!"

  "Yes! Let go! The rope will hold you. I've wrapped it around the chimney."

  "No! Dammit, Ryan, no!" The rain pelted into her upturned face, slicked her hair back from her face in a dark river of red. "I won't make you an easy target for them. Pull me up."

  Another chunk of masonry exploded. As deadly as a bullet, a long, ragged sliver of brick dug into Ryan's back. He felt the hot, biting sting, the rush of blood, saw more bits of brick flying at Carly. She turned her head, took the hits on her cheek, winced.

  Oh, God! They were going to put out her eye! Send a deadly sliver of mortar through her skull! They'd kill her in their efforts to save her. He jerked his arm, trying to shake her loose.

  "Carly! Let go!"

  "No!"

  Chapter Twenty

  "Holy shit!"

  The copilot's exclamation exploded through Jo's earphones. She made a minor correction to keep the winds rolling in from the north from driving her too close to the police helos circling the flooded farmhouse and snapped a glance at the copilot.