River Rising

by Merline Lovelace

  "Do we have a problem, Lieutenant?"

  "Not us! Them! Those people on the roof!"

  Jo's heart jumped into her throat. She wrenched her eyes from the instruments and zeroed in on the farmhouse.

  Carly and McMann were still there, she saw with relief, clinging like spiders to the shingles. Why the hell hadn't the police choppers gone in with a sling to lift them off?

  "What their problem?" she demanded. "Other than several tons of water lapping at their heels?"

  "They've got sharpshooters taking potshots at them, for starters."

  "What!"

  "In the police choppers. Check the hatch."

  Jo nudged the cyclic between her legs to the left. The Huey responded instantly, changing the pitch in one of its blades, tipping into a bank. Like a well-trained quarter horse, it turned on a dime and handed back nine cents in change.

  Disbelieving, Jo caught a glimpse of a SWAT sharpshooter in black body armor and helmet with a high-powered rifle to his shoulder before the other helo banked into a turn of its own. She jabbed her mike button and came up on the frequency Rescue Control Center had given her to coordinate with the police choppers.

  "This is army rescue one-seven-two-one. What the hell's going on? Why are you firing on those people?"

  The pilot responded after a delay that had Jo's teeth grinding. "Our orders are to take McMann alive, if possible, but shoot to kill if he makes any attempt to harm Major Samuels."

  "He's not trying to harm her!" Jo shouted over the static. "He's hanging on to her, for God's sake! Keeping her from going into the river."

  "Negative, two-one. He swung an ax at her. We saw it. She tried to get away from him, and he dragged her back. We've got to take him out or we'll never get her off that roof safely."

  Jo knew what she was going to do before he finished his transmission. "I'm going in."

  "Negative, two-one! I repeat, negative. This is our operation. Stay out of it."

  "Too late, I'm already in."

  "Stay the hell out, two-one. We've got... hell!"

  His transmission broke off as he banked violently to avoid a tall sycamore sticking out of the water like a solitary sentry. At the same moment, Jo felt her own cyclic kick under her right hand. With a coordinated movement of arms and legs, she got her bird back in trim, swearing at herself all the while for jerking the stick like some damned rookie. The copilot shot her a startled look. "Captain?"

  "I've got her under control."

  "Are we really going in?"

  "That's one of our own on the roof, Lieutenant. We're not leaving her staked out like a goat while these guys use the man with her for target practice. Chief, are you strapped in?"

  "Affirmative," the crew chief confirmed. "Try not to get in their crosshairs, will you?"

  "Roger that."

  The Huey moved with her, banking, descending, buzzing straight for the roof. She came in so low the skids brushed the topmost branches of the pecans fringing the house. So low she could see the desperate expression on McMann's face. The frantic one on Carly's. That silvery glint had to be the ax, embedded in the shingles halfway down the roof... and ignored by both of the people trying to signal the swooping helo.

  The copilot pushed against his shoulder straps, his eyes pinned on the target. "She's waving us away... no! She's waving us in. She wants us to come in!"

  "Then I guess we'd better accommodate the lady."

  Jo brought the Huey around in a tight bank, wishing fervently that the H-l carried a jungle penetrator with a seat attached. If it had, she could hover high above the roof to shield Carly and McMann from the effects of the rotor wash, keeping the bird in trim while the crew chief winched them up.

  Briefly, she considered dropping a rope for McMann to rig Swiss seats for him and Carly. Then Jo could just swoop away with them dangling like puppets from a string. But the damned winds made it too risky to put all that weight on one side. She'd have to go light on the skids and hover above the peak of the roof while they scrambled aboard.

  Setting her jaw, she lined the Huey perpendicular to the ridge and into the wind out of the north. The controls felt sluggish in her hands. Their unresponsiveness chipped away at her concentration. The command from the police pilot that exploded in her earphones didn't exactly help, either.

  "Abort, two-one! You're not authorized to go in. Abort!"

  She ignored the command, fighting the controls, fighting the backwash as she approached the roof.

  "Hang on to that roof, folks," she muttered under her breath. "Big Windy's corning in."

  The skids danced crosswise an inch above the ridge, touched down, bounced up. Jo put everything she had into maintaining an out-of-ground-effects hover, countering the violent upwash from the roof, playing with the increasingly unresponsive controls. The pitched angle of the roof made the rotor wash flow in crazy ways.

  Sweat rolled down between her breasts. She felt like a rookie again. She could almost sense the sharp eyes of a flight instructor, watching every move, sweating blood while her bird whipped back and forth in the sky for hour after hour until that magical, extraordinary instant when everything started to click and she found the hover button.

  She couldn't find the damned button today to save her soul. She got the skids an inch or two off the roof, fought to keep the nose up. It wasn't pretty, but it was the best she could do.

  "Chief! Get them aboard! Fast!"

  "Roger."

  Jo didn't dare take her eyes off the ground references she used for the hover, but the swirling rotor wash on the river gave an optical illusion of movement where none existed. She kept her hands on the stick, gripping it with the same pressure she might a tube of toothpaste. She was swimming inside her flight suit by the time the crew chief came back on the intercom.

  "I got 'em strapped in!"

  "Roger!" She rapped out a pre-takeoff check. "I've got sixty-four hundred rpm, no caution panel lights, six-hundred pounds of fuel."

  The copilot echoed the check while the crew chief did a quick visual through the open hatch.

  "You're clear left and above."

  "Roger. Here we go."

  Jo knew that her biggest challenge coming off the roof would be to gain enough speed for effective translational lift—to move from a hover to forward flight. She'd need at least fifteen knots before the two whirling overhead blades became a disk and the aircraft started flying like a plane instead of a hover craft. To do that, she'd have to slide down the roof to gain airspeed, dropping like a jet off the end of an aircraft carrier, trading altitude for airspeed, using all of her left pedal to keep the bird in trim. A tricky maneuver, but doable under ideal conditions. These were hardly ideal.

  Three seconds later, they got a whole lot worse.

  The bird went down, the water rushed at them, the nose picked up. Suddenly, she found herself using all her strength to maintain control. At the same instant, the master caution light flashed red on the instrument panel.

  "We've got a master caution!"

  One glance at the segmented control panel warning light sent her stomach plunging.

  "It's the hydraulics!"

  The stick was jerking and bouncing around. Jo used every muscle in her body to hold it while the copilot strained against his straps to reach the overhead panel behind him.

  "Hydraulic switch is off," he shouted.

  "Roger."

  His gloved fingers fumbled with the switches. "Circuit breakers are out."

  "Roger."

  "Breakers are in. Switching them back on."

  Jo gritted her teeth. "We still have no hydraulics. Chief! What have you got back there? "

  "I'm checking, I'm checking! Jesus H. Christ! We've got a hole in the side of the bird. We're leaking fluid like a sieve. One of those bastard's bullets must have nicked a line."

  That explained the sudden kick Jo had felt when she lined up for her approach to the farmhouse. Someone, she vowed grimly, was going to get real sorry about that, real soo
n.

  "And they call themselves sharpshooters," she muttered. "Lieutenant, you'd better come on and help me with the collective."

  White as a sheet, the copilot reached for his stick. "I've never landed without hydraulics before, except in simulators!"

  "Then you know exactly what we need to do," she told him with brisk reassurance. "We'll come in at about thirty knots, slide onto the skids, throttle back, and put the collective down. Piece of cake... if we can find someplace to land."

  "Right," the copilot answered weakly.

  From that point on, it took both of them to muscle the controls. Jo fought the winds and searched the flooded landscape. Maybe, just maybe, they could make it back to Maxwell. While she watched the instruments and coordinated with her crew, she was mentally handing herself off from one possible forced landing site to another—from that tiny patch of dry field to that flat-roofed, flooded school; from that distant stretch of road rising out of the water to a two-lane bridge. The police choppers flanked her. At least they could pull her passengers and crew out of the drink if the Huey went down. Thank God the rains let up enough to give her some visibility.

  Finally, Maxwell's red and white water tower loomed dead ahead. She'd already radioed ahead, advising the tower that they were coming in with police escort and hydraulics off.

  "Stay with me on the collective," she instructed her copilot.

  "With you on the collective," he confirmed.

  "We're on approach."

  The concrete rushed at them with a speed that made her forget how to breathe. Jo brought the Huey's nose down to level the skids. Curtains of sparks shot up as they slid down the runway. Sweating, Jo and the lieutenant pushed the collective down and eased back on the cyclic to brake the sliding aircraft. The H-l slid another few yards, then, mercifully, shuddered to a stop. A twist of the throttle had the rotors winching down.

  Jo sat for a moment, willing her rubbery arms and legs to move. When she could trust them to support her, she unlatched her seat restraints and climbed out of the cockpit. Her helmet and gloves came off by reflex. Tossing back her head, Jo sucked in clean, drizzly air.

  The grin that stretched across her face when McMann and Major Samuels jumped down from the side hatch was far more natural than the one she'd tried on her copilot.

  An answering grin lit McMann's blue eyes.

  "Helluva ride, Captain."

  "It was kind of fun, wasn't it?"

  Carly hadn't quite recovered her sense of humor yet. All she could do was wrap both arms around the helo pilot and hug her fiercely.

  "Thanks, Jo."

  "Anytime, Major."

  That got a shaky smile. "You're a good woman to have around when the shooting starts."

  "Speaking of which..."

  Scowling, Jo ran a hand along the Huey's skin, much as a horse trainer would along a sick or nervous mare, searching for the source of the fluid that now slicked the entire tail section. She found it just aft of the cross strut. Small. Neat. Round.

  A shocked Carly peered over her shoulder. "They shot at you, too?"

  She had to shout to be heard above the noise of incoming choppers.

  "The assholes were probably aiming at Ryan," Jo yelled back." I just got in their way."

  Blasts of rotor wash and engine noise precluded any response to that. The Huey's crew and bedraggled passengers turned to watch as the police choppers hovered above the runway, then touched down hard. Their skids had barely kissed concrete before the side hatches burst open. SWAT team members scrambled out, black body armor glistening in the drizzle, guns leveled. They fanned out, raced toward the Huey.

  "McMann! Hands in the air, now! Move away from those people!"

  Carly felt Ryan edge sideways. She grabbed his arm and yanked him back. "Don't move!"

  "I have to! I don't want them firing into you."

  She turned on him, almost snarling in her determination. "You did your thing on that roof and saved both our lives. Jo did hers in the air. This is my show now, McMann and you're not making a move or saying a word that I don't tell you to!"

  His protest got lost in a screech of tires. A midnight blue Lincoln Continental tore around base ops, swerved onto the apron, and raced toward them. It screamed to a stop only yards away, sending the entire SWAT team into a crouch. To a man, they swung their weapons toward the new threat.

  Carly felt a bubble of hysterical laughter at the back of her throat. Obviously, these trigger-happy idiots wouldn't recognize the Congressional seal on the Lincoln's license plate if it bit them in the butt. They recognized the slender, elegant woman who jumped out of it, however. She heard a few muttered exclamations as her mother ran across the concrete.

  "Carly! Baby!"

  Deciding the sharpshooters wouldn't gun Ryan down in front of a member of Congress, Carly met her mother halfway. It was a toss up who cried hardest or recovered first. When they finally pulled apart, Adele's once flawless eye makeup had painted long dark streaks on her cheeks. Carly didn't even want to think about what her own face looked like.

  "Are you all right?" Adele asked anxiously, patting her daughter's face, her shoulders, her arms.

  "Yes."

  "Are you sure? No broken bones? No lacerations, no traumas?"

  "Only a near miss with a fast bullet."

  "What!"

  "Hang around, Mother," Carly said, swinging her gaze to the SWAT team that now had Ryan face down on the concrete. "Things are going to get interesting."

  "Really?"

  There was nothing like a confrontation to perk Adele up. Raking five perfectly manicured nails through her hair, she followed as Carly stalked over to the group surrounding their suspect, guns to his head, while one of the team jerked his arms behind his back and cuffed him, then patted him down.

  "He's not armed," Carly protested.

  "We're just making sure of that, ma'am."

  Forcing herself to an icy calm, she waited until they dragged McMann to his feet. Her fists clenched at the sight of the bruise already forming above one eye and the bloody patch where the concrete had scraped the skin off his cheek.

  "Who's in charge here?" she bit out.

  "I am." A dark-suited civilian pushed his way through the heavily armed ring.

  Carly recognized him at once. Ed Bolt, warden of the Federal correctional facility here on Maxwell.

  "Were you aboard one of those choppers?" she snapped.

  "Yes, Major Samuels. I've been up looking for you and McMann since we found Fayrene Preston's body."

  "Did you give the order to fire on Mr. McMann?"

  "Yes." His gray eyes rested with cold satisfaction on the prisoner's face. "And after I get a few answers out of him, I'm going to take great pleasure in slapping him with charges that will earn him a one-way ticket to Marion."

  Carly's stomach rolled. The penitentiary at Marion was where the Feds executed condemned prisoners.

  "Before you issue any tickets, Mr. Bolt, you may have to answer to a few charges yourself."

  His gaze whipped back to her face. "Such as?"

  The fear and fury that had erupted in Carly when she realized the snipers were shooting at them boiled to the surface once again.

  "Such as reckless endangerment. Excessive use of force. Willfully discharging a firearm under such circumstances as to endanger human life, or causing another thereto."

  The third was a military offense, but Carly was too furious at this point to make such fine distinctions.

  "What in hell were you thinking, ordering these men to fire at us like that!"

  "They weren't firing at you. They were firing at the paroled prisoner suspected of abducting you and holding you hostage. The same prisoner wanted for questioning in the murder of my assistant."

  "He didn't kill Fayrene Preston," Carly asserted flatly.

  "Was she alive when you and McMann went into the river?"

  "She was face down in the mud."

  "Was she alive?"

  "I didn't see
her move, if that's what you mean, but she was alive."

  His eyes narrowed. "I think a jury will have to decide that."

  "Listen to me, Mr. Bolt. Mr. McMann didn't abduct me or at any time try to hold me hostage. Nor did he kill the assistant warden, and he sure as hell didn't have time to sexually assault her, if in fact she was assaulted. He wasn't out of my sight for more than a minute, two at the most."

  "We have an eyewitness that says he saw McMann bludgeon her. We also have his prints on the murder weapon."

  "Gator Burns's statements have to be weighed against the testimony of a rehabilitated prisoner and an officer in the United States Air Force."

  The irony almost choked her. She'd begun her Article 32 investigation faced with the same dilemma— whether to take the word of a convicted felon against that of an air force officer. She'd come full circle.

  Bolt's eyes narrowed. She was getting to him, Carly saw. Anger stained his face, even the scalp under his salt-and-pepper buzz cut. His gaze traveled from her flushed face and tangled hair to her bare legs and back up again with deliberate, infuriating thoroughness.

  "Are you sure you're pleading McMann's cause as an impartial witness?" he asked in a tone that suggested he had a good idea what had happened between her and Ryan in the isolated farmhouse.

  The fact that he'd hit the nail squarely on the head only inflamed Carly to the point that she saw red.

  "No, Mr. Bolt, I'm not just an impartial witness. I'm Mr. McMann's legal advisor."

  Surprise whipped across Ryan's bruised face. Carly flashed him a fierce, silent warning. If he opened his mouth, if he so much as tried to open his mouth, she'd cut him off at the knees!

  Satisfied that he'd received her message, she gave the warden her full attention. He was as astonished as Ryan by her declaration.

  "Then I'd say you've got yourself a little conflict of interest, Major. You're a military JAG investigating the murder of an air force officer. You can't represent McMann. He's a civilian and a witness in your own investigation."

  "I've completed the Article 32 investigation to my satisfaction, Mr. Bolt. I'll have it finalized and submitted today. As to my military status..." Her gaze was as steely as her determination. "I can resign my commission with the stroke of a pen."