Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  “Thank you.”

  “Come on, darlin’.” Leslie gave the Bear a nudge. “Let’s get a refill at the champagne fountain.” As the two moved off, Leslie glanced back over her shoulder and gave Eric a slow, sinuous wink, her lashes lazily brushing her cheek before lifting again.

  Mae West would’ve killed for that wink.

  Eric whirled around toward the bar, his demeanor finally breaking. “Oh, fuck.” He laughed. “How many years has it been, and that woman still scares the shit out of me? And did you see the size of Barry’s fist?”

  Kyle let loose his own laughter, finally. “’Bout as big as the Grand Canyon,” he said in a Southern drawl. Although, in truth, Eric had nothing to fear from any man’s fists. There was no better fist fighter than LZ.

  Lights dimmed, and the live band switched to a love song.

  “I can’t believe I ran into an ex-hookup at my own wedding.” Eric aimed a pointed look at Kyle. “Isn’t crap like that supposed to happen to you?”

  Kyle kept laughing. “I know, right?”

  “Chivas, rocks,” Eric said to the bartender, then aimed at Kyle, “You never tried to bag Leslie after I left Pensacola?”

  “Nah. I was keeping myself busy with a couple of lovely Southern belles.”

  “Oh, yeah. Now I remember.” Eric picked up his new drink. “Do you ever miss those days?”

  Kyle hah’d! He couldn’t even begin to express how glad he was his hound dog days were behind him. Goodbye for good to his sabotaging ways, may the prize for that go to his wife. He glanced over to where Max was mingling with a small group of other Wolf Pack wives.

  She was wearing a dark pink—which Max had explained was rose—dress with thin straps that highlighted the delicate bone structure in her shoulders, completely camouflaging the nubile strength Kyle knew lay beneath her clothes. It was always a bit of a dick-hardener, knowing he held the secret to just how hot her body truly was.

  Eric held up his Chivas. “Once again, here’s to being off the market.”

  “Hear, hear.” Kyle drank his cocktail.

  “Hey, I was thinking…” Eric stopped talking and swiveled around toward the band.

  Kyle looked over, too.

  Nicole was standing near the stage, as if she’d just put in a request. She was smiling at Eric with an expression in her eyes that somehow mixed deep tenderness with wicked mischief.

  Eric’s head fell back and he laughed. “Excuse me, Mikey, but I’ve got to take this dance.”

  As Eric threaded his way toward his new wife, Kyle listened to the lyrics for a moment, trying to place the song. It was Biggest Part of Me by Ambrosia. The song leaned heavily toward sappy, so he wasn’t sure what the big deal was, but…

  Now that he was a married man, sappy could work for him, too.

  Kyle finished off his drink, then headed over to Max and took her gently by the arm. “May I steal Mrs. Hammond away for a dance?”

  Smiling, Max excused herself from the wives, then linked her arms around Kyle’s neck and swayed with him onto the dance floor.

  “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?”

  “Let’s see…” Max made a pretense of thinking about it. “Only a hundred times.”

  He warmed his gaze. “Consider this a hundred and one.”

  She twinkled at him.

  The sight had an immediate effect on the flow of blood through his veins. Most of it rushed south, and, with a hand on her lower back, he tugged her closer and bent to her ear. “What do you say we find a closet later?”

  She huffed air from her nose. “We’re at a wedding, Kyle.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to finish what you started at home.”

  She chuckled. “Ah.”

  “Besides, it’s nothing Eric didn’t do at our wedding…in the church, no less.”

  An incredulous ripple of air escaped her. “You’re kidding?”

  “Nope. Remember how we spotted a rock on Nicole’s finger at our reception? Apparently a little shaboink went down along with the proposal.” LZ had confessed his engagement story one night over a shared pitcher of beer at Cass Street Bar and Grill—where Kyle and Eric did their best bullshitting.

  “I’m ovulating,” Max warned. “Do you have a condom on you?”

  Heat grabbed at Kyle’s groin. “Damn,” he cursed throatily. “Why is it whenever you say you’re fertile I want to jack a monster load inside you.”

  His wife’s blue-on-blue eyes sparkled with amusement. “You’re such a poet, Kyle.” She gently dragged her index finger down his lips. “Only five more months to wait.” The glow in her gaze switched from amused to fiery.

  He felt himself growing hard. Closet. Definitely. Now. He swirled her around—and accidently bumped shoulders with someone on the side of the dance floor.

  “Excuse me,” Kyle apologized, then caught sight of who he’d collided with. “Casanova!” Hell, it was a night for reunions. He stepped off the dance floor with Max. “My wife, Max,” he introduced. “How are you doing, man? Rumors flew for a while that you’d died in Pakistan after your Sierra was shot down.”

  Casanova exhaled broadly. “It was a near thing. I was chased across Pakistan by terrorists for nearly a week.”

  Kyle slanted his lips. “How fucking fun.”

  Casanova snorted. “Very.”

  A waitress came by with a tray of drinks. “Jack and Coke?” she inquired of Casanova.

  “Thank you.” Casanova accepted the offered drink, then turned back to Kyle. “Good to see you’re not dead, either, Mikey. I heard you drilled a hole in the Mangla Dam.”

  “Yeah, I owe a few ass-gaskets some serious payback for that.”

  “You and me both, Hammond.” Casanova sipped his cocktail, and when he came up from it, his expression sobered. “I’m sorry about your copilot. You lent me Steve Whitmore, and then he…” Casanova studied his Jack and Coke.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Vanderby. As my wife tells me”—he gave Max a squeeze—“it was the fault of a bunch of terrorists.” A conclusion the mishap board had also reached.

  “It still doesn’t sit well.” Casanova’s eyes raked back up. “I heard what you did at your wedding, leaving a man missing in the sword arch to honor Steve.”

  Nearly all military weddings concluded with the sword arch ritual, where squadron mates of the groom got decked out in their choker whites, formed two lines facing one another, then drew ceremonial swords and crossed them high overhead to create a passageway the newly wedded couple dashed through on their way to married life. For Kyle and Max’s sword arch, Kyle had arranged to have four men on one side and five on the other, leaving an open space for Jobs, who, if he’d lived, Kyle would’ve definitely asked to be a sword bearer.

  “Very cool of you,” Casanova added.

  “Thanks.” Kyle paused, not sure what else to say, then, “Hey, what are you doing here, anyway?”

  “My brother Danny brought me along.” Danny Vanderby, call sign Beans, was in the Wolf Pack squadron. Casanova smiled. “I guess I’m his date.”

  “No, I mean what are you doing back in San Diego?” Kyle clarified. “I heard you’d transferred to an East Coast squadron.”

  “Yep, I’m a Dusty Dog38 now,” Casanova confirmed. “It was hard to move away from my brother, but I was chasing down the woman I was trying to marry, and she lives and works in Norfolk.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Kyle arched his eyebrows. “Did you end up marrying her?”

  Bonus Chapter

  From the author:

  I clearly remember the chilling phone call.

  “There’s been a fatal helicopter crash in the squadron.”

  My knees turn to water. I don’t end up collapsing to the floor, but only because my own husband is telling me the news, so he’s obviously okay. But someone else isn’t. And that’s blood-icing.

  I grip the receiver. “Who?”

  “Walt Hogan died, and Mark Eoff is in critical condition.”

  My
next breath is raw and burning. Tears leap to my eyes. I’ve never been an easy crier, but I cry now.

  Mark! He and his wife, Tricia, live just down the street from me and my husband, Jeff. They are good friends—good people. I don’t know Walt too well, but his death is a profound loss to the entire squadron, and I feel that pall over the days to come.

  I want to reach out to Tricia right away, but she’s spending a lot of time at the hospital. Understandably—her husband is teetering on the verge of death. In fact, she’s told several times to prepare for the worst; Mark isn’t going to make it.

  I finally manage to visit Tricia on one of her breaks home from the hospital. She isn’t crying when she opens the door to her house, but it’s clear she has been, and, well…we take one look at each other and both break down again.

  I don’t remember exactly what we talked about that night. But I do recall a very clear thought; that Tricia was living through every pilot wife’s worst nightmare.

  We military wives deal with a lot of worry. When our husbands are deployed, we worry about them facing danger on a daily basis, and we live in constant fear of the CO showing up on our doorstep. I think aviator wives also suffer the added stress of knowing that every single time our husbands get into an aircraft, it could break.

  That fateful day of Mark and Walt’s accident, something did break on their aircraft: a cable in the rear rotor wore through and failed. These two pilots didn’t do anything wrong, and yet a fine man died, and another one came frighteningly close.

  Mark’s death would’ve been a cruel loss to the world. He’s a 6’3” teddy bear of a fellow, good-natured, with a dry wit, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard an unkind word come out of his mouth. Considering all that happened to Mark, it’s a miracle he made it through, but I’m thankful he did.

  The crash Mark endured was one of the worst experiences of his life, but he is just the sort of generous soul who would openly share his experiences with me. With his consent, I have drawn liberally from his real-life account of the helicopter crash he barely survived in order to give Kyle Hammond’s story as much realism as possible. As you read ALLIED OPERATIONS, you may have thought some parts of the story were unbelievable. How could a man drown and not die? As impossible as it sounds, it really happened. As you will see…

  The heart-wrenching story of Mark’s horrible accident is copied below in his own words.

  * * *

  I received a phone call the other day from an old Navy buddy who found something I had written many years ago. It was a yellowed, dot-matrix, continuous-feed computer printout of my experiences following a tragic helicopter crash from 1988. I didn’t even remember writing it, but here is the account of that incident.

  August 10th, 1988.

  It’s cool and overcast in the morning with little wind. Nice day for flying. That’s what I think.

  I had no way of knowing it would turn out to be the worst day of my life.

  Wednesday morning.

  I’m assigned as the HSL-35 Detachment 10 Maintenance Officer aboard USS Reid (FFG-30), and draw the dawn launch. The mission is routine: a simulated transit through the Straits of Hormuz off the shores of San Diego. The helicopter’s mission? Stay within ten miles of the ship. No problem. Can handle.

  There’s nothing noteworthy in the mission brief. Winds light and variable, estimated ceiling is overcast at a thousand feet. Piece of cake. A thorough preflight inspection of our bird reveals no problems. The sun is coming up, and we launch without incident, actually beating our scheduled 0700 launch time by six or seven minutes. Things are going well. The aircraft is flying very nicely.

  As we soon discover, it doesn’t take long to investigate virtually every square inch of a circle within a ten-mile radius. Our sole source of entertainment becomes the incredible variety of marine life packed into this small area. Huge schools of porpoises. And whales.

  Another fuel check. There’s 1+40 hours remaining on gas. It is 0845. About 45 minutes until our scheduled return time for fuel and crew swap. My copilot is flying, having a great time. I’m busying myself with fuel checks, monitoring gauges, and looking outside the cockpit for yet another whale, porpoise, or sunfish.

  My fish-gazing activities are interrupted by a weird feeling in my butt, like the aircraft is sliding out from under me. I think my copilot has somehow lost tail-rotor authority, and maybe I’d better help him get the situation under control. I’d lost tail-rotor authority before and knew how to handle it. I turn to look at my copilot just as he’s turning to look at me.

  Walt’s eyes are wide when he says, “Mark, I think you’d better take it.”

  By the time I take the controls, whoa! We’ve already rotated 180 degrees to the right! As we continue to rotate, picking up speed, going faster and faster, I look down—the left pedal is stuck all the way forward! I immediately attempt to gain forward airspeed in order to fly us into cleaner air.

  My attempt is fruitless.

  By now only three or four seconds have elapsed from the first indication of trouble, but the aircraft is already spinning violently. The noise and vibration are unbearable, and I know I have lost complete tail rotor thrust.

  I yell, “ECLs, ECLs!!” into my microphone. I need to remove the torque from the rotor head to stop this spinning! The aircraft is whirling so violently, my glasses get ripped off my face, and the microphone is torn away from my mouth. I can’t read any of the gauges, and the horizon is blurring wildly past my eyes.

  All I can do is hold on (literally) and horse the stick around, trying to maintain a level attitude. I can’t move my head…can’t take in a breath…can’t do anything but hold on. My mind is racing, trying to figure out what to do next. It seems as if I’m spinning for an eternity, when in reality it is probably more like five to ten seconds.

  The crash comes as a total and utter surprise.

  I hit the water with such force I can hear the aircraft explode into fragments. On impact, the helo continues to turn initially, but then rolls right. A feeling of spinal compression, as if I’m being crushed, overcomes me. Later I’ll find out that I’d crashed with such force, I fractured my skull. I remember thinking, “Dammit! I did not want to do this!”

  I’m dazed.

  I’m shaken.

  It occurs to me that somehow I’m still alive.

  It’s now very quiet, calm even. There isn’t any sensation of cold water. I’m detached from my body, watching myself perform my egress steps.

  I can see, but, as I sink, it gets darker by the second. I find and grab the door handle, a poorly designed metal rod, and try to open it. I use both hands. No good. I try to find the jettison handle, but it’s blocked by wreckage. Performing my egress drill gives me purpose. I hadn’t been able to take a breath prior to impact, and what I have is just about gone. My lungs are burning. No, scorching! I try to relax as I reach for my HEED bottle, a mini oxygen tank pilots carry in their survival vests. It’s now too dark to see anything but shapes. I slap the pocket where my HEED should be.

  It’s not there!

  I frantically search for it. My bottle is gone—lost during impact. I’m running out of time. Out of air!

  I unstrap and make a move for the copilot’s door. No good. The way is blocked. My last hope is to squeeze between the bulkheads and try to get out of the aft cabin. I can’t see anything now. Feeling my way into the narrow space, I become lodged. I’m trapped in a sinking aircraft, going to die! I’m all out of air and ideas. My lungs are on fire, exploding!

  It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I take a deep breath. I just can’t fight it any longer. As I ingest a lungful of seawater and JP-5 jet fuel, I feel a flash of pain and immediately lose consciousness.

  Fade to black…

  I had died in a helicopter crash.

  Sometime later…

  What am I looking at? Where is the helicopter? I slowly turn my head, first to the left, then to the right. I see nothing—the water around me is very dark green—b
ut I can feel I’m clear of the aircraft. I glance down and find the toggles that activate my LPA: my life preserver. I grab them slowly and pull first the left, then the right. Nothing happens. I try them again. I lift my head and look up. I can see a lighter shade of very dark green water.

  I raise my arms toward the light…

  Black out again.

  It turns out that both my crewmen are lucky. At the moment of impact, their back window blew clear, and the aircraft immediately filled with water. First one man, then the other, egressed through the window, and kicked for the surface. Once on top, they checked each other for injuries, then proceeded to search for the pilots.

  Some seconds later, I surface. My vest is inflated, but I’m floating face down. When the first crewman reaches me, my body has righted itself. I am blue in the face and so bloated and distended from all the water that he can’t even tell which pilot I am. When he touches my neck to check for a pulse, it triggers me to vomit large quantities of water, JP-5, and blood. I start breathing, weakly.

  The ship, only about three miles away when we crashed, immediately proceeds to the site. They reach the scene and have the surviving members of the flight crew aboard the motor whaleboat within seventeen minutes of the crash. My inert form is hoisted aboard Reid by horse collar, and the ship’s medical corpsman is standing by to render aid.

  At the same time, an H-3 helicopter, which happened to be airborne at the time, diverts to Reid to medevac me and my crewmen to Balboa Naval Hospital, San Diego.

  The loud roar of rotor blades and the powerful downwash bring me up to a level of semi-consciousness. I’m stretched out on a litter of some sort and being loaded into a helicopter. What is happening? The helicopter lifts off, and I feel cold. Inches from my vision is the face of the corpsman from the Reid. He looks very worried, and keeps asking me if I’m OK.

  I say I am.

  We are en route by 0930.

  I shift onto my side, and cough. I look down and see blood. What’s happening to me? Another man in the cabin holds a note in front of me: “10 minutes from Balboa.” That’s the name of the Naval Hospital. It hits me that I’m in some kind of serious trouble, but I can’t make out exactly what, and, once again, I drift into unconsciousness.