Moments later, a large model aircraft impacted their helo’s steel nose directly below the windshield. Colby had seen it falter with the loss of a radio signal and lose the crucial meter or so of altitude that was all that kept it from coming in through the windshield.
That’s what must have happened to Ivy.
He looked out the window for her helicopter. It took him a moment to find it, and when he did, his heart stopped.
Ivy fought the controls, but it wasn’t doing her much good. Each moment she managed level flight, she added all the lift she could manage to slow their plummeting descent.
But those were stolen moments.
They spent far more time tipped onto their side, once even flailing through a full roll.
Setting up an auto-rotation was out of the question. She still had some power to work with—in engine Number Two. She’d been forced to pull the fire T-handle on Number One as the turbine must have ingested something nasty. She had enough power to maintain level flight, but not sufficient control.
Where to land? Assuming she could find any control to make a choice even possible.
The snow now blasted through the missing windshield. It stung worse than a Libyan sandstorm.
The golf course was out of reach.
In fact, either shore was out of reach. They were going down in the Ottawa River. But it wasn’t some gentle flow like the Potomac. There would be no giddy banter as they raked handfuls of duckweed out of each other’s hair.
Here, the Ottawa River was over two hundred meters wide and narrowing rapidly for the hard pinch at the heart of Ottawa. She’d seen the Remic Rapids south of the Champlain Bridge before. They weren’t a waterfall, but she had no desire to be beaten against those rocks.
“Follow them down!” Colby shouted.
The pilot half-turned to face him, then nodded and turned back. The upward slam of Colby’s gut into his chest told him they were dropping altitude fast.
He began stripping off his jacket and vest. He dumped his sidearm as well.
“What are you doing?”
Damn it! He’d forgotten about Dilya. He turned to console the frightened teen, but that’s not who was looking at him. No. The girl who now faced him was the war orphan he’d heard about—the one who had seen a lot of war before being picked up and adopted by one of the military’s top snipers.
With the facade ripped away, he now saw that she’d never been young.
“I have to go in to save them.” Because he had to save the President. No matter what. And if he didn’t save Ivy, there wouldn’t be any point in any of it. Next time he had a chance, he wasn’t going to fool around with any word games—that was for damn sure.
“I…” Dilya hesitated, then suddenly looked ready to cry. “I’m a lousy swimmer. Oh God. I should have learned better. You don’t swim in Afghanistan’s rivers. Especially not girls. I have to help. If you think I can, I’ll go in. But I don’t—” Her voice remained calm and steady even as tears started rolling down her cheeks—tears of anger at her own shortcomings.
He bent down to quickly unlace his boots. A good trick against the bucking descent of the helo.
“You can do two things, Dilya. First, once I’m in the water, I won’t be able to see very far. I’ll look to you to point me toward anyone who is washed away. Don’t lose track of anyone. Can you do that?”
She nodded fiercely and he didn’t doubt her for a second.
“Second, make sure Zackie doesn’t try to follow Rex and me into the water.”
That got the choking half laugh he’d been hoping for.
He swung open the two doors until they latched off to either side, then leaned out and looked down.
Ivy’s helo was so close that it felt as if he could reach out and touch it. But she was even closer to the river.
Ivy fought for a level splashdown. They’d be jarred harder, but it might give them a moment of float time to escape the helo before it sank. It might not. White Hawks weren’t big on floating.
Twenty feet up, whatever damage she’d been fighting in the control system finally gave way.
She’d been dragging the cyclic back and to the right when it simply let go and she slammed her elbow into the edge of her seat back.
No time to curse or compensate, she was flung up and forward as the nose dropped out from under her.
Weightless, with no seatbelt to hold her, she was flung out through the missing windshield. How close she came to the spinning rotor blades she’d never know. She slammed into freezing water and was driven under.
Good idea.
She dove as deep as she dared to get away from the churning blades that should be shattering themselves against the surface of the water.
Unable to hold her breath against the freezing cold any longer, she fought to the surface. The rain-shrouded darkness was lit by brilliant punches of two spotlights. Both were aimed behind her at the floating wreckage.
Even as she watched, one of the helos slowed to hover above the scene and a swimmer jumped off the side. A massive dog followed close behind, removing any doubt as to the swimmer’s identity.
The water was moving—she could see the Champlain Bridge coming up at warp speed. The rocks of Remic Rapids lay not far beyond the bridge.
Ivy knew she should be doing something, but the water was so cold that it was hard to concentrate. Dunk training had taught her what fifty-degree water felt like—this was definitely colder.
Swim. That was it. That’s what she was supposed to be doing.
She tried to stroke out with her right arm—
Pain screamed up from her elbow.
Not so much with the swimming.
Colby swam through the bits of floating wreckage.
No one. No one.
Then his next stroke slammed onto someone’s back.
The President.
“Mr. President?”
“Uh-huh!”
Dazed, but conscious. He kept staring up at the spotlight centered on him, blinking hard but not thinking to look down.
Colby pulled his head down. A big hard bump on the back side. Maybe a concussion.
“Look at me, sir.”
He managed that.
“Don’t look at the light. Look at me. Got it?”
“Okay.”
Rex swam up at that moment.
Colby took the President’s hands and wrapped them firmly around Rex’s harness.
“Hold onto Rex, sir. Hold on hard.”
“Okay,” the President squinted his eyes as if it took all of his concentration to do so, but he seemed to have a handle on it.
When Colby swam away, Rex dutifully followed in his wake, dragging along the President.
The next body he rolled over had a massive hole in his chest. One of the pilots by his gear. The next body he rolled over coughed and sputtered as soon as he rolled into the air.
“McShea. Buddy! Good job getting the President out. Where’s Ivy?”
“Uh-huh,” he was no better off than the President.
Then he grabbed Colby’s shoulders and shoved him underwater.
Colby knew that drowning men would climb atop one another to save themselves. Colby prepared to hit McShea in the gut to force him to let go when the man released him back to the surface.
“Sorry. I had to push off. To get…this.” His voice was still wavery, but he held a lifting collar in one hand, dangling on a line from the hovering helo. In moments they had the President’s head through it and the helo crew was winching him aloft.
Together they found Lieber in rough shape and got him winched aloft after the President.
McShea was flagging badly. It took little argument to convince him to go aloft as well.
“Ivy!” He shouted at McShea as his feet cleared the river.
McShea shook his head, then raised his arms in an I-don’t-know gesture that almost slipped him free of the collar tucked under his arms.
Then Colby remembered. Dilya was his eyes tonig
ht.
He had to backstroke out of the spotlight. The snow shifted to rain and pummeled down on him hard.
There! Dilya squatting in the doorway of the helo hovering above him.
Her arm was out, pointing firmly downriver.
Ivy learned many things about herself as she flowed between the pylons of the Champlain Bridge, which shuttered the bridge’s roadway lights into a surreal strobe light.
One, she was going to dress far more warmly in the future.
Two, she’d never again complain about how cold the ocean was by the family’s Maryland beach cabin.
Three, there was only going to be one real tragedy if she died tonight. If she did, she was going to lose a lifetime with Colby.
No way was she going to let that happen. She tucked her injured arm into the half-zipped front of her light jacket. The shivers were continuous now as she heard a growing roar.
She could almost see her brain shutting down, the life signs on the med bay monitor drooping lower and lower with each pulse.
The helicopters weren’t the roar. They were still on the upstream side of the bridge, illuminating whatever was in the water.
An eddy flung her around and she saw the cause of the roar. Even in the darkness, the whitecaps of the Remic Rapids caught the glow of the bridge’s streetlights.
This was going to really hurt.
She braced herself just as something slammed into her from behind and forced her face underwater as if she wasn’t wet enough already.
Wet enough already?
She surfaced to a mouthful of wet dog fur just as a strong arm wrapped around her waist.
Colby. She wanted to burrow up against him. Hide, just for a moment.
But there was something important.
And it was happening soon. Really, really soon.
If only she could remem—
“The rapids!”
“Hang on!” Colby shouted back.
Colby ducked down under the water, grabbed Ivy’s thighs, and with all his strength, heaved her upward.
Someone on the White Hawk helicopter hovering right at water level must have grabbed her, because she kept going upward after he’d lost all momentum.
Kicking hard, he surfaced again with a shoulder under Rex and heaved him up and through the door as well.
But he himself had run out of time.
Heaving Rex aloft had driven him back under.
Just as he surfaced once more, the helicopter lifted abruptly out of reach. He could see Rex’s rear legs still dangling out the door as water poured out of the helicopter’s cargo bay.
Then Colby felt the blow to his chest as he was flipped head over heels by the rapids.
18
Ivy had never in her life screamed in fear.
And she didn’t this time either.
It was stark terror that erupted from her throat as Colby slammed into the rapids. She didn’t even care when Rex made it to all fours and sprayed everyone with a massive shake of his coat.
The searchlight swept back and forth over the white caps. Colby’s passage through the rapids should only have taken seconds, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. Had he survived it?
It was the sharp-eyed Dilya who spotted him. Some swirl of the current had dragged him sideways in the river. Her limbs were shaking too hard with the cold to throw herself in to save him. The helo swooped in close and everyone leaned out to pluck him from the racing water.
In moments, he too was aboard. Blood was streaming down his face from a scalp wound. But it was easily staunched by her palm, so it couldn’t be too deep.
Dilya had her fists in both dogs’ collars. The President lay along the bench seat with McShea and the rescue helo’s crew chief checking him over.
Colby lay back against her knees as she sat in the President’s seat. “Let’s not do this again, Saint Ives. Deal?”
“Deal!” And she wanted to laugh. Is that how his marriage proposal would sound? Casual, a little teasing and whimsical, both backed up by a smile for humor? She’d be disappointed if it didn’t.
She watched out the still open door as they gained altitude over the river.
Piercing the sheeting raindrops, she spotted a series of red dots. A line aimed right at…
She twisted around and saw the dot—on the President’s chest.
A rifle’s aiming laser.
She instinctively dove forward enough so that the light was on her own chest instead. Then braced for impact…
No bullet slammed into her. No wound erupted in the middle of her chest, geysering blood.
If it wasn’t a guiding laser for a bullet, maybe it was guiding—
A fast-moving shadow in the rain.
No time to act, a shout erupted from her.
Colby tried to sit up as Ivy shouted, “Rex! Fetch!”
Rex pushed off the far bench, breaking free from Dilya’s grasp and slamming Colby aside.
He launched out the door and into the air.
What Colby saw should have been impossible.
Fifteen feet out from the side of the helo and thirty feet above the rushing darkness of the river, Rex’s jaws clamped down on the wing of a model plane that was rushing straight at the helicopter’s side door.
It was moving fast enough that it would have wounded or killed anyone in the flightpath.
Rex was snapped around cruelly, but he hung on to the model’s wing and together they plunged down into the river.
Even as Colby scrambled to look down, there was a roar like a buzz saw. One of the overwatch helicopters must have traced the origin point of that laser. Whoever the attackers were, they were done for as the minigun unleashed on them.
Their gripe with the President, whatever it was, had just been definitively settled. And if there was anyone behind them, he’d trust the Secret Service to ferret it out.
19
Ivy was touched that the President had sent a jet at his own expense down to fetch them from the Cape for the ceremony.
“Not Air Force One,” Colby noted, “But a Gulfstream is still a class act.”
General Arnson personally flew their helo from Andrews to the South Lawn.
Ivy noted that even he wasn’t above messing with the golfers as he climbed out particularly low over The Courses at Andrews that lay behind the Air Force One hangar.
But once again she didn’t get to see the approach to the South Lawn. She was far too busy staring at the incredibly handsome man beside her. They both sat on the side bench—they certainly weren’t going to sit in the President’s chair, not even with her bridal gown as an excuse.
She had debated about wearing her Marine Dress uniform, including the Congressional Medal of Honor she’d been awarded for managing to only somewhat crash the Marine One helicopter with the President aboard. But that wasn’t how Colby made her feel. He made her feel like a hundred percent woman.
“I didn’t go overboard-girlie, did I?” She brushed a hand over the dress that was the first she’d worn in at least a decade.
“No one would ever make that mistake about you, Saint Ives.” Colby leaned in and kissed her very convincingly. The dress wasn’t bouffant—though it wasn’t a bad word for the kiss that sent happy sighs rippling all through her. It had no great gobs of taffeta all over its surface. Instead, she’d chosen a sleek dress, but with a lace over-collar that made her seem more curvy than she was. The skirt had a lovely flair and swoop to it that somehow made her look taller. She’d tried heels once, for almost ten feet in the wedding store, and almost insisted on Army boots after the experience.
Colby had opted for a tailored suit. His own Director’s Medal of Valor had been left in a drawer at home. At home. Not quite her cozy cabin on the Maryland beach dream—that would come later. For now they had a small house close by Cape Canaveral. It was right on the beach so that they could go swimming together every morning before work. After her swim in the Ottawa River, she never complained about the overly warm Gulf Stream current tha
t flowed by their beach. The chill of thinking she’d lost Colby to that cruel water had never truly left her.
She still couldn’t believe she’d made the astronaut corps. Maybe it was NASA’s access to the tape of her plunging flight. Or maybe when dredging up the helo had revealed the extent of the damage she’d fought against—it shouldn’t have been able to fly at all, but she’d fought it down out of the Death Zone all on her own. Piloting wasn’t just about jets, and NASA had finally seen that.
Life had seemed so short in that moment and it made every moment since twice as precious.
“You shouldn’t have let him see the dress,” Dilya greeted her the moment Master Sergeant McShea opened the helicopter’s door. Then her maid of honor squealed like the teenage girl she sometimes was and threw herself into Ivy’s arms. “You look beyond amazingly amazing. He’s so lucky! You get that, don’t you?” she asked Colby over Ivy’s shoulder.
“Maybe,” Colby shrugged noncommittedly. Dilya barely had time to frown before he simply bent down and scooped her into a hug that left her feet dangling well above the ground.
Dilya hugged him back hard and seemed reluctant to let go.
“Hey, he’s mine,” Ivy reminded her. “You don’t get to keep him.”
Dilya nodded, but sniffled a little once her feet were back on the ground. And did her best to glare at Ivy. “You get how lucky you are too, right?”
“I’m going to say ‘I Do’ when it matters. Does that count?”
The girl nodded fiercely and again teared up. To hide it, she knelt down to greet Rex.
“Hey, boy.” She gave him a big hug. “Zackie will be so glad to see you, c’mon.”
Rex limped alongside her as she led the way up to the White House Rose Garden. Rex’s limp didn’t pain him but it would never fully heal, disqualifying him from the Secret Service. His fall with the model plane had cut a tendon that the surgeons had to shorten to put back together. But he was certainly plenty healthy to fulfill his role beside Colby as the new Lead Dog of NASA’s security.
In the Weeds Page 20