“Might be crowded. Frogmen already boarded,” Kolt said as he reached behind him to control his monkey strap snap link, found the opening lever, and gave it a slight nudge to ensure it would open quickly.
“That will be my first hotwash comment then,” Slapshot said.
Twister Two-One accelerated toward the bridge, the highest point on the Queen’s bow, and the quickest point of entry for Roscoe to bite into a terrorist’s hairless ankle or bony forearm.
Chief Weeks slowed and banked slightly left, slipped cyclic slightly to lateral shift another few feet forward to center his customers over the fast rope point, then flared and settled to hover six or seven feet above the bridge.
“Ropes, ropes, ropes,” Weeks transmitted.
Pleased with the spot, Kolt turned to see the SEAL push the coiled heavy nylon rope off the pod, allowing the twenty-five-footer to drop to the bridge wing. Kolt thumbed his snap link, releasing his tether to the Little Bird, and reached for the rope to follow the SEAL down. Standard stuff for seasoned operators like Kolt. Even though nobody kept tabs on an operator’s fast rope inserts, say, like the number of HALO free falls or his long obstacle course time, for Kolt this one had to be somewhere around a thousand or two.
But this insert just didn’t feel right. Kolt sensed the MH-6M was sliding left, not keeping pace with the Queen Mary’s forward speed.
With both gloved hands gorilla-gripping the nylon rope, Kolt hesitated. He looked down. His instincts were spot-on. His landing point wasn’t fouled, just gone, and he was staring at the small whitecaps on the right tip of the bow illuminated by the distant moon.
Shit!
Kolt wasn’t sure if the SEAL had successfully dropped or if he had slipped off the end of the rope and fallen into the sea. But he did know a drifting Little Bird over a moving ship was fairly common. Weeks would make the fine adjustments and get them back over the correct insert point. No drama. Kolt held what he had.
“Twister’s Lame Duck, Lame Duck!” Weeks calmly transmitted.
Kolt froze. What the hell?
Without further warning the MH-6M jerked nose down, wobbled out of balance, and went into an uncontrollable right-hand yaw.
Blade strike? Antenna? High-tension wire?
Now that wasn’t common. Kolt figured Weeks lost drive in the tail rotor from either a blade strike — induced break in the drive train or a Murphy-like mechanical failure. Either way, or anything different altogether, any barracks mechanic could tell you it was absolutely fucked-up shit.
Kolt thought to reach for his snap link, debating whether or not to hook back in. Or, just slide down the rope and safely into the water. Put distance between him and the problem, let the HIT save his ass, pop a pin flare, and get picked up later. Before he could decide, Kolt heard a hard metallic snap and yanked his neck to investigate. The tail rotor had snapped off the main cabin and was falling toward the ocean.
Kolt knew now the safest place to be was inside with the pilots, as far away from the six spinning blades on the main rotor as possible. Second to that, the open cabin just behind the pilots’ seats and near the auxiliary fuel tank offered the best protection, and the best chance of surviving the impending crash impact.
Kolt also knew Chief Weeks didn’t have many emergency-procedure options when the crash sequence began. He knew he would be concentrating on keeping it “wings level” as they spun downward to the drink from about fifty feet above the choppy sea.
“Fuck!”
Kolt didn’t know who shouted, but it summed up his feelings nicely. Fighting the centrifugal force created by the spinning, now tailless MH-6M, Kolt struggled to push off the rope and reach for the edge of the cabin. Kolt gripped the sheet metal with his right hand, releasing his left-hand death grip from the rope, and, half launching, half pulling, he managed to get his upper torso inside. Lying on his back, his legs still hanging out the starboard side, Kolt reached out for whatever hard points he could find. As he braced for impact, his eyes rolled to the top of his goggles. Kolt blinked twice.
Slapshot?
A moment later, the MH-6M smacked into the frigid waters upside down, the rotor blades slapping the water, reducing their speed significantly. Kolt slammed into the roof area of the helo, his body armor saving him from severe blunt trauma. He took in a heavy whiff of engine oil and JP8 as ice water gushed into the doorless bubble cockpit and cabin.
Kolt knew the pilots’ shoulder harness reels would lock on impact and that they would free themselves. Assuming they were conscious, their extensive training and basic mission qualification standards ensured that much. But, just as instinctively, Kolt figured he was screwed.
He remembered his pool workup and Slapshot’s adolescent scare tactics about some bullshit called the gasp reflex. Something about the average schmuck can hold his breath for 103 seconds in room-temperature air, but maxes out at about 12 seconds of air when immersed in cold water. The gasp reflex was involuntary, Slapshot explained, and didn’t give two shits how badass you thought you were.
The HEED!
Kolt held his breath as the MH-6M held him entombed and dragged him below the choppy water. But forgetting to close his mouth, either from the hard slam against his chicken plate or simple shock, he took in a gulp of seawater. He tried to spit it out but, already submerged, he had no choice but to close his mouth tight and fight the urge to panic.
He reached for his HEED, stoked to find it on the first try, but fumbled to turn the white rubber mouthpiece toward his face. He jammed it in his mouth, closed his lips tight around it, and purged the regulator and most of the water in his mouth. Kolt coughed, having not cleared all the salt water, and struggled to remain calm.
When submerged at night, without reference points and unable to see, Kolt knew the key to survival was actually counterintuitive. Swimming out of the crashed helo was the last thing he should do, as the arm strokes and kicks were more likely to hang his kit up on some unseen hazard. If that happened, he would suck his HEED empty trying to free himself. Once he was out of air, seawater would rush into his lungs, shallow water blackout would be rapid, and he would simply drown, sinking to the ocean floor with the wreckage. Really, Kolt certainly knew, no different from Yellow Creek.
Kolt did his best to stay calm, but with only two to five minutes of air, and a sinking helicopter, he needed to move fast. He used basic hand-over-hand and controlled pulls, working his way free of the wreckage by feel. Once he cleared the fuselage he knew his body’s natural buoyancy would right him head up and point him to the surface. With the HIT horse collar, even better.
But Kolt had swallowed too much seawater and struggled to juggle air from the HEED and the water in his lungs. Feeling with his hands, he found the outer edge of the submerged cabin, and felt the weight of the wreckage pull his hands downward. He let go to prevent himself from being dragged to the ocean floor and pushed off from an unseen hard point with his right assault boot.
Unable to see, even with his goggles still in place, the front end of Kolt’s Ops-Core brain bucket bumped into something blocking his escape route.
The surprise startled him, knocking the HEED from his mouth. Kolt reached out with his right hand to assess the obstacle while he ran the length of the dummy cord to secure his HEED and reinserted the mouthpiece. Again, he pressed the top of the air bottle to purge the regulator. Again, he coughed deeply, fighting the natural urge to spit out the mouthpiece.
A human!
Kolt quickly grabbed the upper body of the person in front of him. He ran his hands along the edges, determining the body was actually upside down and unconscious. Or quite possibly even dead.