Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  Tarzan, who’d taken cover underneath the Wolf Pack helo, leapt into the gunner’s seat.

  Kyle looked down at Max again. “Get to the medical tent,” he told her. “Stay on the floor until you receive an all-clear from—”

  “Lieutenant Hammond!” Dr. Barr blasted out of the medical tent.

  Jesus, now what? Kyle jumped to his feet, pulling Max up and over with him to his helo. He pressed back against the nose of the bird. “Ma’am?”

  Dr. Barr strode right up to him and gestured at Max. “Get her out of here! Now! There’s a massive firefight going on.”

  “I’m well aware of that, ma’am, but I’m deploying on a mission. I can’t—”

  “This fight may spill over into the aid station.” The doctor’s eyebrows lowered. “I’m not having anyone injured or taken hostage in my outfit. I’m evacuating all but essential personnel.”

  Shit. Although Kyle wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having Max along with him when he flew into battle, the doctor might have a point. Max would probably be safer in his helicopter than this aid station.

  Pop, pop, pop…

  “Get Ms. Dougin out of here!” Dr. Barr darted back into the medical tent.

  Kyle hurried Max into the back of his helo and strapped her into the left-hand passenger seat.

  Max blinked up at him. “My luggage is still in my tent.”

  “We’ll send for it,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.” She freed a short breath. “I just realized how stupid that sounded.”

  “Not at all.” He flashed her a smile. “Don’t worry about it. And, hey…” He planted a quick kiss on her, then took a precious moment to look into her eyes. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kyle’s sphincter unbunched somewhat when he ascended to four thousand feet, a relatively safe altitude with Max in the back. Originally psyched to see some action, now he couldn’t wait to finish this op and be on his boring way back to the Bunker Hill—where they were heading tonight, after all, unless he got a message in the next hour that the aid station was safe.

  “Bandit One,” he said into the mic on his helmet, calling Casanova. “Bandit Three, arriving on target.”

  “Copy that,” Casanova came back. “What’s the SITREP?”35

  Kyle studied the FLIR screen. Without a copilot to help, he’d have to be tight on his game to monitor the FLIR and fly at the same time. “We’ve got movers to the north and to the east,” he said, marking motion on the green-coated representation of the eight buildings and courtyard. He counted seven or eight people meandering about the courtyard—seeming unconcerned, which was good—another two entering the northeast structure.

  “Numbers?”

  “No more than ten.”

  There was a pause on the airwaves.

  “Are we a go?” VD, the other Sierra pilot, asked.

  And wasn’t Kyle glad not to be in charge of this op? Both Casanova and VD had to know they were working off incomplete intel. FLIR didn’t give Kyle X-ray vision inside those buildings, so he could only see the outer areas. The total number of terrorists they were potentially dealing with was still the great unknown.

  On the FLIR screen, Kyle’s eye caught movement on the roof of the northwest structure. A person was… Hold up… The roof.

  Two men hopped to their feet with long tubes propped on their shoulders. Those were shoulder launch missiles!

  Ambush! “Abort, abort, abort!” Kyle called into his mic.

  How the hell was this possible? The strike team was only now arriving on target. There was no way the terrorists could already be in position to fire. Unless… Kyle’s belly caved in. Oh, sweet Jesus…

  His own words rang back to him: Are you telling me Pakistani Intelligence just tried to take us out?

  Then Max’s words: How was ISI able to attack us exactly on this road at this time, if not for a spy inside JEM?

  And like a cement brick, the realization hit: the terrorists in this compound had known the strike team was coming all along! And not because a spy was inside JEM, but…. Dammit. Dr. Barr had unknowingly given him the clue: The two men who do the laundry are Pakistani locals.

  The spies were inside the aid station!

  Squinting hard at the FLIR screen, Kyle’s blood iced as he saw the buildings surrounding the courtyard disgorge hundreds of body outlines. Hundreds! No, not possible! JEM didn’t have that many followers. Then…who…?

  JEM had plenty of time to bring the hostages to us for the originally scheduled rendezvous. But they chose not to. Why?

  Maybe because JEM had been busy fighting off ISI and Taliban interference. Hadn’t Max said that ISI covertly backed the Taliban? Which meant…

  That wasn’t small-time JEM down there. It was a full force of the fucking Taliban!

  A white light flared supernova on the FLIR screen, and Kyle jerked his eyes away. Fuck! Those jihadist assholes just shot a missile at me!

  Weeeeeeeeeeeee! An alarm shrieked in the cockpit, warning of—

  LOCK ON!

  Kyle’s flesh went damp against a rapid onrush of adrenaline as he hauled up on the collective, adding massive power, and jammed the stick full-forward, pouring on the speed. “Bandit One, do you copy?” Kyle yanked his helicopter hard to the right. “Abort the mission. Ambush underway! Repeat. Abort!”

  The lock-on alarm took on a warbled sound. The missile was tracking them!

  His anti-missile systems automatically lit off a full spread of countermeasures, but the chaff and flare weren’t doing dick to divert the missile. Those jihadist assholes hadn’t fired a mere RPG at him—which was a matter of point, shoot, and pray—but an SA7 or SA14 heat-seeking motherfucker. The missile was following him across the sky—hunting him!

  Every sense laser-focused on evasion, Kyle raced east toward the Mangla Dam to get the hell out of range, rapidly descending.

  But everything was happening too fast. Those tangoes had just gotten off their shot too quickly, and…

  WHAM.

  Kyle was thrown violently sideways in his seat, the straps of his restraints burning his flesh through his flight suit and survival vest as he jerked hard against his seat belt. His brain knocked around inside his skull as he did a perfect Bobblehead impression. The controls went mushy in his hands. His mind processed the information outside of conscious thought. Long years of training picked up the slack and orchestrated his movements until his shaken mind could catch up. He automatically slammed down the collective, reducing power and torque on the rotors. A moment later, the data rolled by his brain like a stock ticker in the New York Exchange.

  The missile had blown his tail off. He no longer had a rear rotor!

  He’d been right to start procedures for an autorotation36 landing. The helo was already dropping like a stone tossed down a well, and he needed to slow the hell down. He chopped off the throttles.

  In his rearview mirror, he saw another explosion. Jesus! Who else got hit?!

  Kyle’s aircraft shuddered. Not a little shudder, but a whole-body catastrophic, doomsday shudder. Jaw clenched, Kyle horsed the stick around, fighting to maintain control.

  The Mangla Dam was coming up to meet him at screaming velocity. Holy fucking shit!

  They were going in. “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Ditch! Ditch! Ditch!” He pulled back on the stick, yanking the nose up to bleed off more speed before—

  Kyle’s helmet banged back against the headrest. He’d lost more of his tail than he’d realized. He had no fucking control whatsoever.

  The helo bucked upward…

  Max!

  * * *

  The world jolted wildly before Max’s vision, as if she was in a Steven Spielberg WWII movie battle sequence. Or she was a basketball being dribbled down court. Her eyes and her mouth were open wide. She was trying to scream, but the sight she’d just witnessed—of Tarzan being thrown out of the open side door of the aircraft on that WHAM—had sucked all the air out of her
lungs.

  The aircraft swung brutally to the right, the incredible force of the motion finally jolting a scream out of her—a bursting, stuttering, hiccupping noise full of terror, like someone was repeatedly punching her in the chest while she was yelling.

  “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” Kyle’s voice blasted into her earpiece. “Ditch! Ditch! Ditch!”

  She grabbed the bottom edge of her seat with a knuckle-aching grip as this fatal carnival ride reared into a nose-up position—into a completely vertical position, if the pretty picture of the starry sky in the cockpit windshield was to be believed. From there they dropped straight down, her stomach becoming one with her diaphragm. The tail of the helo drilled into the surface of the water, and the aircraft held there for an infinitesimal second, like a whale breaching the sea, pausing for breath, then umpteen tons’ worth of steel heaved over onto its back.

  Max sling-shotted against her seat belt restraints, her head slamming forward into an exaggerated bow, then whamming back against the headrest, her vertebrae Lego’ing together. The helicopter rolled violently, once, twice. Ratatatatatatata—the rotor blades detonated into tiny metal pieces and the cockpit windshield exploded into a meteor shower of jagged rocks. Good God—Kyle! Her peripheral vision snapped off, like a switch had been thrown or horse blinders unexpectedly clipped onto her helmet. Blood poured down her cheeks and forehead, creating a network of wet webbing along her nose and into her eye sockets.

  The helicopter splashed to a stop onto its right side, and suddenly, surrealistically, everything went quiet.

  The Mangla Dam held a frightened hush.

  There was only the gentle shush of water rushing into the cockpit.

  Dazed, Max blinked until the situation took hold…until her awkward position—dangling from her restraints like a human meal caught in a jungle cannibal’s net—woke her senses. Until one name rose like a bloodletting scream inside her mind.

  Kyle!

  His pilot’s seat was on the right side of the aircraft closest to the water, and with the dead weight of the helicopter sinking fast, soon he would be—oh, no, his seat just went completely underwater!

  “Kyle.” It was a whispered croak, sounding of all the desperation she felt. Don’t die. With shaking, half-numb fingers, she clawed at the five-point restraint belting her in. How did this frigging thing work?! She couldn’t unhook herself.

  Water filled the cockpit and streamed from there into the cabin where she was.

  Shush, shush, shush.

  She cast a wild glance below her, watching the water level rise steadily toward her. Higher and higher… Her heartbeat leapt into the back of her mouth and boomed in her ears. She could hear the sound of her own breathing, harsh and rapid.

  Cold water touched her right elbow, oily with gasoline.

  No.

  She kicked her legs frantically while she renewed her efforts to free herself from the complicated seatbelt. These freaking straps were trapping her! “Help!” she called out, getting her throat to work full-force now. Then even louder—“Somebody!”

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Jumping at the sound of pounding on her passenger window, she twisted around, the movement sending a concerning dart of pain down the length of her spinal cord, and—

  She gaped.

  Kyle was kneeling on the outside of the aircraft, looking almost as if he was riding the helo like a surfboard. He jabbed his finger at the windshield. “Pull the black-and-yellow handle!”

  How in the world did he get outside?

  “Pull the black-and-yellow handle!” he yelled at her again. He was pointing at something.

  What? The what…?

  Water sloshed into her belly button and covered her right breast.

  No.

  Her teeth chattered. Blood throbbed painfully in her temples.

  No.

  Water slithered up to her collarbone, a cold, consuming Leviathan.

  No.

  She angled her chin up as high as it would go. Her eyeballs swelled against their sockets.

  No.

  Her cheeks worked like bellows. She hauled in a last, hysterical breath as water, always her friend, slipped over her head and became her enemy.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The surface of the water glided away. Wavy…dreamlike…

  Nightmarish, really, because what little light there was from above was slowly disappearing. Darkness spread and inched forward, surrounding Max like ink sprayed from an octopus, engulfing her in a profound sense of wrongness. Of loneliness. Of portentousness. Her fingers still worried at her restraints; on some level, her disconnected brain registered the gesture. On another level, it registered the utter futility of it.

  Pressure increased against her eardrums as she sank and sank. So cold…so empty… She instinctively reached up, squeezed her nose and blew out, equalizing the pressure in her ears.

  Another futile gesture.

  Light blazed on the surface in a surprising flash. What’s…? Oh. A flare had been shot into the sky…

  And there, visible above her in her passenger window, silhouetted by the red-pink glare of the flare, was a human form. A man.

  Kyle.

  He hadn’t left her.

  I’m not alone…

  He was working at prying open her passenger window.

  Pull the black-and-yellow handle!

  She watched her hand move through the water in slow motion toward a metal rod. Her fingers wrapped around it. Her palm pulled.

  The window disengaged from its frame, and Kyle drew it off the rest of the way, letting it go. It soared away…

  Kyle swam forward.

  She felt a tug near her lap, and then her body was buoyant, floating free. I’m free…

  Kyle towed her out of the aircraft.

  She shoved her helmet off her head. It rolled away slowly spinning through the water like a lost probe in outer space…

  Kyle started to swim for the surface, urging her along.

  Swim, yes…

  She kicked her legs and moved her arms, the familiarity of her vocation clearing the sluggishness from her brain.

  She saw Kyle yank a cord on the floatation device around his neck. Nothing happened. He squinted up to the surface, then looked back at her. Even through vision blurred by water, she could see his alarm.

  She peered up at the surface, too, and understood. They looked to be nearly sixty feet down. They’d sunk too far! Her own welling fear ballooned in her belly, squeezing up the pipe of her throat to sour the back of her tongue.

  Kyle swam harder. So did she, face to face with him, eye-locked. The light of the flare faded to a dim rosy watercolor. It was still enough illumination for her see the expression that came into Kyle’s eyes: a spurt of abject terror—he’d run out of air!—then…just…I love you.

  And goodbye.

  Kyle sucked in a lung full of water. He thrashed once, horribly, then his eyes rolled into the back of his head, fell forward again, and…glazed over.

  Max parted her lips on a silent scream—no! Water filled her open mouth. NO!

  Fisting one hand in the front of Kyle’s survival vest, she swam harder. As hard as she could! Chin tilted up, she pinned her focus on the surface—her finish line. Win this! She concentrated on her form, nothing else: swift, hard kicks with her legs, an efficient, sweeping stroke with her one available arm. Her lungs burned and compressed. How many minutes had she been holding her breath—four minutes, five? Impossible…

  Don’t think.

  Swim.

  Win!

  The surface got closer. Her vision dimmed, unconsciousness closing in on her, Death stalking her every move. It took every ounce of concentration she owned not to flail those last few feet. Swift, hard kicks…

  She broke the surface, hauling Kyle with her, and pulled in a huge breath—a coarse, in-rushing haaaaaaaaaa. She started to cry between more gulps of oxygen. Kyle’s face was blue and bloated! She treaded water, struggling to keep Kyle on the
surface. Debris bumped around her: a notebook, a canvas bag, a seat cushion. She tried the cord on Kyle’s floatation device again, yanking hard. It inflated this time! As Kyle floated onto his back, she gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  He vomited up water and blood. It smelled like gasoline. He started to breathe, though weakly.

  Help me! I need help! She took quick stock of her surroundings. On land, black smoke billowed from something. Up above, a helicopter circled, a spotlight beaming down from its nose to search the crash site. How do they know where we are?

  The spotlight swept over them.

  She lifted an arm and waved.

  The light careened back and stayed. The helicopter moved to hover directly over them, then lowered, the spinning rotor blades churning up a blinding mist of spray and rousing small waves to the surface, like the Kraken bubbling up from far below.

  A rescue swimmer jumped off the edge of the helicopter and splashed in. He waited for a horse collar to be lowered from the aircraft, then swam over to them, the horse collar looped through his arm.

  He made for her, probably because she was a woman, but she pushed Kyle’s body forward. “Take him!” she shouted. “He’s worse!”

  The swimmer hesitated, his eyes roving over her face.

  She remembered the blood gushing down her head earlier; she probably looked bad, too. “This man just drowned, for God’s sake!” she cried. “Please! Help him!”

  Nodding, the rescue swimmer slipped the horse collar around Kyle, then aimed a thumbs-up at the pilot in the helo.

  Kyle slowly started to rise, water raining off his inert legs.

  Her teeth chattering uncontrollably, Max watched him go. His body was limp as a dead man’s, the toes of his flight boots lightly tapping together.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Adrenaline spent and muscles overtaxed, Max lost all ability to command her body to move. She lay on a stretcher in a near-comatose heap, smelling clammy, entrapped in a neck brace, staring straight up. She was in a helicopter again…not the cheeriest place to be, but she was too numb to get scared.