Sam tried to take all that in. He tried to read between the lines for some kind of gap between Ben’s words and the man who was sitting beside him in the JetRanger.
“You did pretty good taking me hostage for a guy with no military experience.”
Ben shrugged. “Football in high school and college. Running back. I was pretty good, too. Could have made it big, but I had other plans.”
“You were holding back. You’re agile enough that you could have gone pro, if that’s what you wanted.”
“Maybe I didn’t feel like taking football too seriously. It’s just a game. Besides, it’s one of those jobs. You get injured you’re out.”
“Did you? Get injured?”
“No. Never.”
“Do you do any drugs? For football or otherwise?”
“I tried weed in high school. Just to be friendly. But no steroids or experimental drugs or anything hard. I never had any need for them.”
Sam shook his head, his lips curled into a slight grin.
“What?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to work out if you’re the most unlucky son of a bitch, or the best liar I’ve ever met.”
In the distance three Earth shattering explosions filled the velvet of night. They were followed by the loudest clap of thunder Sam had ever heard. They seemed to shatter the entire sky.
Ben squinted, his eyes searching the clear horizon for the sound’s origin. “What was that?”
“Sonic booms,” Sam replied.
“From what?”
“My guess…F16 Fighting Falcons!”
Ben felt his gut lurch with the inherent rise in fear of something sinister approaching. “What does that mean?”
Sam swallowed hard. “They’ve found us.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sam banked the helicopter to the right, taking a northern course into the Appalachian Mountains and the densely forested Shenandoah National Park. He dipped the nose, descending hard into an unknown valley.
Fifty feet off the valley floor, he pulled the cyclic collective back, leveling the JetRanger until it was riding just above the canopy of the thick forest below.
Ben shouted, “You have any idea where we’re going?”
“Not a clue,” Sam replied, taking the helicopter so close to the spur of the mountain that he had to watch that its rotor blades didn’t nick the tree line. “But we have to find somewhere to put down before those fighter jets reach us.”
“Agreed.” Ben played with the JetRanger’s GPS digital map. “It says we’re over the Shenandoah National Park.”
“It sounds like a beautiful spot, but that doesn’t help me much!”
“What do you need?” Ben asked.
“I need a clearing!” Sam replied, his voice only just able to be heard over the whir of the rotor blades overhead. “Somewhere we can put down, where the fighter jets can’t follow us.”
“They won’t be able to spot us once we’re on the ground. I’ve hiked in the Shenandoah National Park. The forest canopy is so dense it’s hard to see out and impossible for an aircraft spotter to see in.”
“That’s great, but I still need that clearing!”
Ben said, “I’m looking! I’m looking!”
High above them, three F16s raced by, the flames of their afterburners leaving a trail like rockets in the sky above.
Sam said, “I suggest you look faster!”
“I found it!” Ben yelled.
“Where?”
“Over the next ridge at your nine o’clock!”
Sam’s eyes darted toward the ridge. “That’s the peak of a mountain!”
Ben ignored the semantics. “On the other side is a deep valley, in which the Piney River runs. There’s a small clearing a couple of klicks north of it.”
“That’s the best you can do?” Sam asked, turning his head to look across his shoulder, where the fighter jets had headed. “It won’t take those fighter pilots long to realize we’ve turned off I-211!”
Ben looked at him through raised eyebrows. “You got a better idea?”
Sam gritted his teeth. He didn’t. “All right. Here goes.”
He banked to the left, following the natural curvature of the mountain range, keeping his nose mere feet off the tree lined ridge. In the darkness of night, the canopy looked like a blanket of black velvet, impenetrable to his gaze.
Behind him he heard the sound of the fighter jets changing direction.
As soon as the JetRanger cleared the crest of the mountain range, he lowered the nose and raced down into the deep valley below. With no moonlight penetrating the valley to assist his vision, the river below appeared a slightly darker shade of black.
Sam brought the helicopter down toward the river, careful not to let the rotor blades overhead catch on the valley wall.
Three F16 Fighting Falcons raced through the valley, coming within twenty feet of the JetRanger before racing by, pulling up hard, and racing toward the sky in a near vertical display of the jets’ raw power, then disappearing over the distant ridgeline.
Sam glanced at his radio, confirming that it was still set to the local frequency. None of the fighter jet pilots had tried to communicate with him. He expected they would have tried to direct him to a specific landing location of their choice, but instead they had flown by without a delivering a single radio transmission.
It was impossible to think that they had missed him completely. The squadron of F16s flew close enough that Sam could see the whites of the pilot’s eyes as they raced past.
Ben asked, “What the hell are they doing?”
“I don’t know. A reconnaissance flyover, I guess.”
“Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Sam replied. “Maybe they send in a helicopter with a team of elite soldiers on board just to make sure they don’t lose you. I don’t know, but I’m not sure if it’s still in our interest to land.”
“Can you turn around, find somewhere else to land?”
Sam nodded. “We can try that.”
He slowed the helicopter to a near stop and planted his foot on the left pedal, turning the JetRanger round on its axis until they were facing the way they had come.
Sam lifted the nose of the helicopter and raced along the steep slope of the valley wall. They needed to get out of the valley if they were to lose the F16s before they returned for a second flyover. The forest was a dense mixture of chestnut, oak, spruce, fir, and poplar tulips.
He wondered how much of a radar shadow they would provide.
Above them, he spotted the three F16s flying in formation. They were making a broad turn, setting up to fly above the valley, in a bombing run.
Sam swallowed hard. “Get your harness unhooked.”
Ben looked blank. “What?”
A flash erupted from the wing of the first fighter jet, followed immediately by a second one.
“Jump.”
“Are you fucking crazy?”
Sam peeled out of his harness and ripped the helmet’s comm cord out of the panel. He threw the JetRanger door open. No time to waste arguing with a civilian.
It might already be too late.
“Jump!” he shouted, already putting action to word.
Chapter Sixteen
The VIP VH-60 Black Hawks of the Army’s 12th Aviation Battalion’s Executive Flight Detachment raced across the Shenandoah Valley.
In the executive seats at the rear Tom Bower sat next to the Secretary of Defense. He took in a long, slow breath.