CHAPTER 44
Dixon heard the helicopter’s engines whirl into high gear. He pushed himself to run faster, conscious now that his salvation was within reach. He ran and he ran, long legs striding, lungs wrenching against his ribs, eyes scratching the dark night to make out the helo. Finally he saw it, out ahead across the road, its dark hull stuttering, the rotor blades whirling. It seemed like a mirage.
It wasn’t. It was real and less than a half-mile away. He could feel the ground pounding with the heavy twin motors. He ran and he ran, forgetting his wounds and his hunger, his thirst and his fear, forgetting most of all his conscience and the ghosts.
And then he realized that the helicopter was moving, speeding away; already it was growing slower, already it was too far to stop. He ran another few feet and launched himself, arms grabbing the empty air in despair, two hundred yards away from being saved.
CHAPTER 45
Sergeant Rosen strained against the seat restraints in the AH-6 Little Bird, watching the narrow fringe of reddish light at the horizon sift into blackness. The desert before her lay empty, its vastness turned from idea to fact. Something in the human imagination hated the void, made it feel cold; Rosen braced herself against the frame of the small helicopter and stared. She had seen a great deal in her life: raised by her grandparents and aunt in a rough neighborhood; working her way through all kinds of crap growing up and then in the military. But she had not understood the fierceness at the edge of the horizon until the war. She had not understood that every human soul had a hollow place inside, a pocket where it could go to survive.
A strong gust of wind smacked against the helo’s bubble nose, whistling over the Allison turbo shaft and its main rotor. Whipping over the desert at almost a hundred and fifty miles an hour, the crammed chopper drew a straight line toward its rendezvous, skids less than six feet from the sand. It was their third and next-to-last trip. Only a half-dozen troopers and their gear were left at Fort Apache now.
The Little Bird had first undergone trials as the Army Defender light helicopter in 1963; christened the OH-6A Cayuse, the chopper saw extensive duty in Vietnam as a support and scout craft. The first production helicopter in the U.S. to use a gas turbine engine, the OH-6 was fast and maneuverable. It could sport a variety of weapons, starting with the smallish but popular 7.62mm minigun and progressing right up to TOW missiles. The versatile design had been enhanced several times after its introduction, proving more versatile than craft twice as costly.
Rosen admired the simplicity of design. Despite the high-tech cockpit with its fancy night-gear and radar, the Spec Ops AH-6G melded function with design without excess. It was like a stripped ’63 Chevy Nova, all engine and drivetrain, no BS like leather or climate control. You gunned it and you knew what you had.
“Sixty seconds to Sandlot,” announced Fernandez, the pilot. He turned his head slightly in Rosen’s direction; he’d donned night-vision goggles before taking off and looked more cyborg than human. Rosen turned back and looked over her shoulder at the three Delta troopers crowded into the back of the tiny helo; they all had heard and gave slight nods.
She couldn’t see the big PAVE LOW they were meeting until Fernandez whipped the tail around to pull the craft to a landing. The pilot of the big bird had found a shallow depression to sit in, waiting there patiently as the two AH-6s ferried men and supplies from the clandestine fort roughly forty miles away. The troopers in the back jumped from the Little Bird even as it settled in near the big helicopter, no doubt glad to stretch their legs after the knee-crunching shuttle. They were the Pave Low’s last passengers; the Little Birds would return and top off by themselves from the tanks the Pave Low had brought north for them. Then they’d zigzag across the border on their own.
“Okay,” Rosen shouted to Fernandez as the others got out. “Let me check the wires again.” The jury-rigged wire harness had slipped a bit on the last flight and she worried it would pull loose in mid-air, not a good thing.
“You want the rotor off?” the pilot asked her.
“Don’t get nervous,” she told him, grabbing her flashlight and screwdriver. The tech sergeant jumped from her seat and ran around the front of the helo, tucking her head down though with her short frame she had plenty of clearance. The repaired wire harness sat in the housing next to the AN/ALQ-144A omnidirectional infrared jammer, which meant there was less than a foot— a lot less than a foot— of clearance between the cover and the whirling rotor blades. But Rosen wasn’t attempting an overhaul. All she had to do was fight the damn tornado of wind and shine the flashlight in the right place.
She threw herself against the side of Little Bird, toeing the rocket tube. Grabbing the rear radio fin with her right hand, she worked the flashlight with her left as she inched upward. She slid the screwdriver out along the flashlight with her thumb, then poked forward to nudge the metal back — she’d rigged the access panel for an easy view after the first flight, when her check cost them nearly fifteen minutes.
She leaned in to look. The thick electrical tape she’d wound around the harness to hold it was still solid. She craned her neck just to check the front of the assembly when she felt her legs shifting out from under her. The Little Bird began to rise and move backwards. She lost her grip and started to slide in the rush of wind. Her instinct was to hold the flashlight and the screwdriver, but something inside made her let go. She found herself falling, and in that moment her eyes went hard and her hands turned to claws. She grabbed for the rear door handle, kept falling. For a second she felt herself getting chewed up by the rear rotor, sliced and diced into dog food. Her soul fell into its secret niche; she fought to remove it, not ready for salvation, or at least not death. Rosen managed to kick her leg into the helo’s body, then rolled her torso around to grab onto the rocket launcher tube, landing half in and half out of the craft. She managed to push herself into the back of the helicopter.
Fernandez’s horrified face loomed over hers.
“Okay,” she shouted, getting up. “Okay, okay. Go. Go.”
“Are you all right?”
“Go! Go!”
He waited until she had strapped herself in before pulling ahead.
The shadow of the Pave Low in the distance told her what happened— the draft from its massive whirly nearly knocked the Little Bird over.
“I’m sorry,” Fernandez shouted back to her. “Christ, I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” she said. “Next time I’ll wear my magnetic boots.”
CHAPTER 46
Major Horace “Hack” Preston scanned the F-15’s instrument panel, moving quickly through the dials and indicators on the Eagle’s high-tech dashboard. The large screen at the top right was clean— no enemy radars were active, at least not at the moment. He had plenty of fuel for the two more turns they planned before going home; the rest of his instruments declared the F-15C in showroom shape. Preston turned his gaze back to the HUD, which was projecting its white lines, letters, and numbers in front of a steadily darkening sky.
Their tour of Iraq had been extended due to some last-minute tasking snafus. Hack had welcomed the double shift, hoping it would give him a chance to redeem himself for the botched chance earlier in the day. But now he was just tired. Piranha One and Two were due to be relieved in less than fifteen minutes; he’d go home eagerly and very possibly fall asleep before the debriefing ended.