Night Is Mine

by M. L. Buchman

  Emily didn’t respond, but she did begin a long, lazy turn back toward D.C. She didn’t want to land this snake out in the woods.

  Peres’s chief of staff had been framed for killing his boss. Katherine was trying to frame Ray Stevens for the killing of… his boss?

  The helicopter jolted as she almost dropped the collective.

  Katherine Matthews was planning to…

  “You want me to murder the President but frame Ray Stevens?”

  “Smart boy.”

  Get it confirmed again, Mark. C’mon. Get it on tape again.

  “But Mrs. Matthews, if I kill your husband for you, you’re no longer First Lady. It takes one mercenary to know another. What’s the benefit to you?”

  Katherine was so close that Emily could hear their microphones clicking together.

  “Mr. Zachary Thomas will do anything this woman wants, an-y-thing. Including consoling the widow all the way to the Oval Office.”

  There it was. It all made sense.

  “So,” Mark’s voice had lost most of its Texas but filled with wonder. “You’re sleeping with Ray Stevens to get him to stage attacks against you to make you look threatened. You bring in my Emily to…”

  “High-profile CNN girl to keep me alive through Ray’s supposed attempts to kill both Peter and me. I have a photograph of him firing the light weapon that he doesn’t know about. Yet.”

  “And then when I, um, do the deed for you, you expose him. But you couldn’t have counted on me showing up.”

  “You, cutie pie, were a bonus for which I will always thank your little Emily. I wasn’t looking forward to killing Peter myself. He’s such a bore, but he is my husband. So tried and true and all-American blue that he won’t listen to a single idea of mine. I have the plan all worked out. And you can make it look like Ray took care of it.”

  “And then you marry Zack Thomas…”

  “Who is total putty in my hands. The same way you are about to be.”

  The microphone picked up the distinct sound of a zipper being undone.

  Chapter 61

  “That was a nice broadcast, Ms. Matthews.” Mark’s voice rang smooth and West Coast over the headset. All hint of Texas gone.

  “Broadcast?” The zipper sound stopped, much to Emily’s relief.

  “You there, Captain?” Mark called to her over the headset.

  She knew what he was doing. Maybe it had reached that point, but it could also be dangerous. What the hell? If you’re going to unwrap the package, make sure it can’t be wrapped back up. She keyed on her helmet mic.

  “Right here, Mister Herman.” She remembered his cover name at the last second. “All loud and clear. Secret Service reports a full record, and they’re waiting for us to deliver you, Ms. Matthews, to the ground for plotting treason against the President of the United States. Apparently the Vice President is shocked and… hold on a moment…” She listened to the sudden stream of reports on the radio.

  “The Chief of Staff actually stabbed an agent in the hand with a paring knife when they took him down. He was peeling an apple at the time. They may think it’s treason, but I’d class it as premeditated attempted murder.”

  “Me personally,” Mark added cheerfully, “I tend to think of it as an act of domestic terrorism. And I’ve never been a big fan of terrorism. How about you, Captain Beale?”

  “Nope. Never a big fan, Mister Herman.” Their roleplaying had gone deep enough that even now she didn’t reveal his true rank.

  There was silence. Too much silence. Katherine wasn’t protesting or denying or…

  Mark yelped.

  “Mark!”

  Emily turned to look, and that was probably all that saved her life. A bullet whistled past her ear, bounced off the Plexiglas windshield, and ricocheted into her main screen. Sparks flew and breakers popped.

  “Mark!” No response. She hadn’t heard the shot that got him, but she needed to assume she was on her own. Strapped into a seat with her back turned to a loaded weapon.

  She racked the cyclic right and stomped the pedal to the left.

  Someone on the radio asked if she’d heard a gunshot.

  The helicopter slewed sideways and the tail rotor spun clockwise. She was thrown forward against her restraint harness and sideways against the door with a loud whack. The blow made her head spin, and she was glad again she’d chosen to wear her helmet this time. She’d done it to keep her face hidden from those behind her; the anonymous-pilot-in-a-helmet routine had let her blend into the background. Now it had saved her from a nasty lump.

  “You’re not knocking me out this time, you bitch.” Katherine spewed venom through the headset.

  “What did you do to Mar—”

  Another bullet zinged against the windshield and bounced off. This time it plowed a hole through the empty copilot’s seat.

  Emily tried to guess when the next shot was coming and rammed the collective downward. The helicopter fell like a stone. Emergency down. This rotor permitted a slight negative tilt. She now had twin, sixteen-hundred horsepower turbines driving them toward the earth. Terra firma was coming up awfully fast. Everything in the cabin that wasn’t tied down floated.

  Her water bottle floated out of the cup holder and smacked against the ceiling.

  What she was hoping for also happened.

  Not used to working in negative-gravity environments, Katherine had let her hand with the gun drift upward. A shot rang out. Two. Three. All upward by the impact sound. And no ricochet.

  Earsplittingly painful in the small cabin, but not fatal.

  Not yet.

  She’d once checked out Katherine’s Kahr MK during a security review, which only had five shots. She should be out.

  Emily yanked up on the collective and slammed down against her sprung seat so hard it rammed against the stops and jarred her spine. She’d be sore after this ride, if she was alive.

  Another pair of shots rang out.

  This time the impact sound came from below her right hand. The radios started sparking and more breakers popped. Adams, the tower, and all the other voices Emily hadn’t realized were yelling for attention died with the radios.

  So much for the five-shot theory. Katherine’s weapon had to be small. A .357 would have punched through the windshield rather than bouncing back. Probably a .22 or a 9 mm.

  She yanked the cyclic left and stomped on the right pedal. Only it didn’t respond the way she expected. The lurch in her stomach didn’t hurt; it only made her head swim.

  What was going on with the chopper? It didn’t feel right. Maybe this bird just responded poorly after a bit of abuse.

  Then she heard it. A turbine whining, not spinning down. Spinning up, out of control. From seven lousy shots. Katherine got lucky. Or unlucky.

  Emily pulled the throttle on engine number two and hit the fire suppressor.

  Nothing. It kept whining upward. Runaway engine. Reaching down, she shut the fuel flow to the number two turbine. That killed it.

  A small pistol flew over her left shoulder, where her head had been a moment before. Seecamp LWS .32. Little bigger than a deck of playing cards. Seven shots if you carried it with the chamber loaded. One had hit something vital, and this bird had far fewer redundant systems than her Black Hawk.

  The Bell could fly on one engine, but not well. If one failed, the best practice was to find a place to land. Fast.

  A blast ripped at her ears and her upper arm stung like a son-of-a-bitch. The forward windshield star-cracked, a spent bullet wedged in the center of the spidery lines. Mark’s gun. The Beretta M9 they’d tucked aboard for the flight. Fifteen rounds and only one fired.

  There was no way she was going to survive this unless the tables turned. And quickly.

  “If you kill me, you’ll die when we crash!” Emily shouted over the headset.

  “I’m not going to jail, and I’m not going to be arrested.” Katherine jammed the barrel of the gun against the bleeding wound on Emily’s arm.
/>   Emily managed not to scream at the scythe of pain; the wound must be deeper than she thought.

  “Do you have any idea how close I was? Another day, maybe two. And it would be done.”

  Again the gun jammed into her arm, rocketing so much pain into her system that her vision tunneled for a moment.

  “Damn you, bitch, I was so close!”

  Katherine was out of her seat. Unbuckled. Probably kneeling on the front set of passenger seats to extend her gun into the cockpit area.

  “Okay, Katherine. Don’t kill me. Where do you want to go?”

  Two Black Hawks were coming up close behind her. Nothing they could do from there but watch. Even a sniper, if they had one aboard, would be hard pressed to take out the First Lady through Plexiglas windows on the first try. And there’d be no time for a second try, at least none that Emily would survive.

  “You’re the one who knows everything. You figure it out.”

  “You’ve wounded the copter.” Emily eyed the gauges. Turbine two had shut down. Number one was hot, taking the load staunchly, but not at all happy about it. They had about two hours of fuel, not that she’d last another ten minutes. And the rudder was still mush. She’d hit two vital systems. Civilian birds simply didn’t have the double and triple redundancy of systems that kept military birds aloft after being shot up.

  “Let’s go to Camp David.” Way out of range, but all she could come up with quickly. “We’ll get another, long-range bird to meet us there. I can fly you to Mexico. Midair refuel.”

  “I hate fucking Mexico.”

  The balance on the helicopter shifted as Katherine moved across the rear cabin to the far window. Not a big change in a bird this size, but enough to alter the flying trim a few points. Definitely no longer in her seat belt.

  Emily went with it. She cranked the cyclic all the way over and rolled the helicopter. Rolled it and rolled it and rolled it.

  She heard a scream. Two more rounds fired off with massive roars. Thankfully, neither came forward into the cockpit that she could detect.

  Altitude was disappearing alarmingly. The White House, to which they’d been returning as slowly as they left, now filled more and more of her side window each time she rolled over. Katherine must be thumping about like a marble in a gerbil wheel. Hopefully separated from her gun.

  “What the hell?” Mark’s voice was groggy and slow. Then he exclaimed with a loud, “Oof!” as something hit him.

  “Beale! What the—? You can’t do that.”

  “You’re alive!”

  “Bitch! Ouch! Goddamn it! She Tasered me! I think you knocked her out. I think you just broke my fucking neck. Now stop it!”

  She corrected as well as she could. The ground now alarmingly close.

  The Bell had reached its limit. And then passed it.

  Something gave with a low crunch.

  “That didn’t sound good.” Mark’s tone rang suddenly steady, exactly like a professional pilot. The calmest when the going got worst. If you listened to the black-box recordings of any airliner going down, the pilots sounded perfectly calm. Discussing engine-restart procedures, altimeter readings, and airframe integrity right up to the moment they augured into the ground. Except the final moment. Almost without variation, the last thing on black-box recordings was a soft, “Damn!”

  She wasn’t planning on adding to that legacy.

  The chopper started spinning. The tail rotor was gone. That moment of imminent ground contact was going to happen much sooner than she’d anticipated.

  She glanced out the window over her right shoulder, and the gunshot wound in her left arm screamed bloody murder.

  No, the tail was still there, but the angle was wrong. It should be sticking out straight behind them, but she could see it out the window.

  Rolling over toward the left side should decrease the strain. Help gravity counteract what the rotor wasn’t doing.

  The problem was, it made her crab sideways across the sky and lose altitude.

  “Is she really out?” Emily shouted toward the back.

  “Ouch. The intercom still works and I still have my headset on. Yes, she’s out cold.”

  Emily thumbed the radio to call a Mayday. More sparks, more breakers popping. And the intercom went with it.

  They needed to be on the ground and fast.

  They were at five hundred feet and dropping rapidly.

  She continued the sideways crab and surveyed the local area.

  No answers. For once she had no answers. No way out or down. Mark had trusted her, as any passenger did, to get him back down to safety. And she couldn’t.

  Emily looked down at her hands. The hands Mark had held when she needed him most. They clutched two lousy little control sticks. Not enough to keep a dying machine alive from this high up.

  She raised her head to look back for help. To look to Mark for an answer, or at least for forgiveness for killing him somewhere in the next thirty seconds. The despair spread over her like darkness.

  Altitude around three hundred feet. Too low for a clean auto-rotate crash, especially with only half a tail. Chopper crashes were usually survivable below forty feet and above four hundred. The death zone lay in between, right where they hung.

  If she’d reacted faster, sooner, they might have had a chance. But now—

  Mark shouted. She couldn’t make out the words, but she saw it.

  A wash of light in the falling night.

  The South Lawn.

  Ahead and to the right. A quarter mile away. So close. Even the Mall was out of reach. They were out of options.

  Turbine one started a runaway whine. This bird had clearly never been designed to be shot at from the inside. Throttling back did nothing. This was it; death was upon them. And damn it, she wasn’t ready. Emily eased down on the collective, hoping to bleed off her altitude without plummeting or creating a murderous spin.

  The remains of the rear rotor wasn’t doing much of a job to keep the helicopter in any sort of a line. More and more, she was spinning one direction as the main rotors spun the other.

  Rock it sideways; let gravity help. Keep the strain low. If the tail boom went, it would fold up into the main rotor, and no one would be walking away, not from three hundred feet. Not even from the two hundred they were plummeting through.

  Mark called out again, but with the intercom dead and the helmet covering her ears, she didn’t get what he was saying. He’d have to deal. She was busy.

  She nursed the collective up a fraction, testing the rotor’s lift, and swore against the pain in her arm. Even the adrenaline couldn’t knock all the pain out.

  Now the helicopter crabbed sideways and backward in a sloping descending spiral. The South Lawn flashed across the windows, and a treacherous stand of trees swung into view. A moment later, the White House slewed across her view.

  One fifty. Still too far to fall, but if the tail rotor held on a little longer…

  One hundred.

  Aim for the lawn. It flashed by, and she tried to fix it in her mind.

  Another bad lurch and spin, but the lawn was… there!

  The turbine screamed and started to come apart. She’d heard that noise once before. Over the opium fields of Myanmar. A small fan blade inside the engine had been fractured and then broken free, and it had begun dismantling the engine from the inside.

  Below her, hurrying across the spreading field of summer-red poppy flowers, a half-dozen jeeps loaded with pissed-off drug runners had chased after her. While her turbine busily consumed itself. She retained few fond memories of that moment or the long days that followed.

  And now, that same noise had once again come into her life. No one with guns after her this time, other than the First Lady. But the ground at seventy-five feet away looked no softer than it had in Southeast Asia. As a bonus, in about fifteen seconds, the entire airframe, including the passenger compartment, was going to be riddled with shards of flying engine metal.

  Time to risk it.
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br />   At fifty feet, she swung the copter almost fully onto its left side and drove the right pedal into the floor.

  For one long, horrid moment the Bell 430 shuddered. Shuddered and held.

  She crossed the cyclic hard.

  At twenty-five feet they righted and the tail boom let go with a scream of metal.

  Jerking the cyclic back, Emily managed to get the nose up for the final impact.

  They landed tail first, buffering the impact as the remains of the tail boom crumpled. Then the baggage area, followed by the cabin frame in the rear hitting the ground, and finally the nose slammed forward and down onto the wheels.

  The wheels all blew with sharp bangs as loud as gunfire, easily heard over the roar of the thrashing engine.

  The hydraulic shocks rammed against their stops and then folded up into crumpled twists of metal.

  The bird rocked to one side, and rotor blades pinged off the ground. Broken, crumpled, scattered like birdshot from a shotgun, a thousand little bits flung in a hundred different directions.

  Without the resistance of the rotor, the dying turbine climbed into full runaway. Emily pulled throttles, threw breakers, but couldn’t find the fuel shutoff. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

  Neither was the left front side of the helicopter.

  The engine whined higher and higher. Then she smelled it. JP-5. Nothing quite like it. That tang and sting of incredibly volatile kerosene.

  She scrabbled for the release on her belt. She had to get Mark and Katherine out. Had to save her crew.

  As she reached for the door, Mark yanked it open from outside, grabbed her collar, and dragged her out.

  They fell together and stumbled clear.

  “Katherine!” She turned for the helicopter.

  Mark latched an arm around her waist and continued to drag her away.

  “She’s done. Main tail-boom strut has passed sentence on her, right through the heart, if she had one. Damn woman Tasered me.”

  Emily let Mark drag her away as flames spurted out of the exhaust ports on the screaming engine. A pool of liquid spread across the ground where one of the wheel struts had punched a fuel tank.