Suddenly, the shooting stopped. Sachs could hear only the rotor of the Black Hawk’s blades and the howling wind. Or was that ringing in her ears?
“Are you OK?” asked Raghav, helping her up.
Sachs looked across the floor at the bodies and blood. Raghav impressed, after all. But she felt something awful rising up inside her, grabbed her stomach and started to heave.
Raghav gave her a helpful pat on the back and looked around. “Guess they took you for a liberal.”
Sachs noticed Raghav’s lapel pin on the floor and picked it up. “You dropped this.” She turned it over to see conservative TV talk show host Glenn Beck smiling back at her.
Sachs straightened and handed the button to Raghav. The young Republican cheerfully pinned it to his blood-stained lapel with trembling fingers. “Thanks.”
Suddenly the Black Hawk banked sharply. Sachs turned to see the pilot slumped over in his seat.
“Oh, God.”
Raghav climbed over the seat, pushing the pilot’s corpse aside. He then took the controls and tried to level off.
Sachs climbed into the seat next to Raghav. “I suppose you can’t fly, either?”
“Nope.”
“Then let me.”
“You can’t fly,” Raghav said incredulously.
“No, but I watched my husband fly his planes, and I probably have more hours in the air than you do.”
Raghav hesitated, and then the radio headset crackled. It was the pilot from Black Hawk Two. “Black Hawk One, you’re trailing smoke.”
Sachs watched Raghav struggle with the stick. It was a miracle they were still airborne. “If you or I respond, he’s going to know Kyle’s out,” she said. “What’s he going to do then?”
“Shoot us down if he’s in with Kyle, or help us land if he’s not. But we can’t take a chance.”
Sachs saw Raghav flick a switch to arm the sidewinder missiles and stopped him. “You can’t even pilot this thing, and you’re going to try and down that chopper with your own men on board?”
“You are the priority, ma’am, and they know it.”
The radio crackled again. “Black Hawk One, please copy.”
“Shit, they’re locking missiles on us,” Raghav said, looking at the dashboard.
Sachs said, “Radio your men, Rahgav, and tell them to take over that chopper. Now.”
Raghav nodded and spoke into his lapel microphone. “Do not reply. Repeat. Do not reply. This is a Code 33. You have to take over that bird. Repeat. Code 33.”
looked out at the Black Hawk behind them and to the left. It suddenly dipped as she saw a flurry of shadows inside. Then its guns exploded. Sachs and Raghav jumped in their seats as bullets chewed holes around them.
“They’ve opened fire!” Raghav said.
Sachs replied, “I can see that!”
Raghav said nothing, and Sachs felt a shiver up her spine. She glanced over at Raghav next to her and with a shock realized the handle of a knife was protruding from his neck. Her eyes widened as a bloody, monstrous Colonel Kyle reared his ugly head from behind and removed the red-stained blade.
“You’ll never get sworn in,” Kyle said, as he thrust the blade at her.
Sachs leaned away into the windshield, escaping the first thrust. Then the chopper banked sharply, Raghav’s corpse weighing heavily on the stick, throwing Kyle off balance and her head against the windshield.
The flurry of bullets hit nearly everywhere. Dazed, she dragged herself forward and looked up to see Black Hawk Two spiral out of control, a fight for control in the cockpit.
Sachs tried to crawl into the pilot’s seat. She had just about pushed Raghav’s body out of the way when she felt a tug at her legs and looked back to see the bloody face of Colonel Kyle come to drag her back to hell.
“Get off me!” she screamed and kicked him in the face, her high heel spiking his eye.
Kyle loosened his grip and slid back limply as the chopper started to climb.
Sachs gripped the back of Raghav’s bloody head, hoisted herself up on top of him and grabbed the stick. She saw the runway of the White Plains airport dead ahead.
She wiped her wet eyes and took a deep breath. The ground was coming up fast in the windshield, and the chopper began to spin with its own cloud of black smoke, going wobbly as it approached the small airport.
Sachs peered through the cracked windshield, straining to see. Then the curtain of smoke parted for a moment and she could see a team of federal agents and their vehicles waiting on the icy tarmac. A gigantic white jumbo jet dominated the runway.
She strapped herself into the pilot’s chair, so tight she could barely steer. Everything seemed to be whooshing around her, and she felt her stomach drop with the chopper. She could see several Air Force personnel rushing toward her as she plunked the chopper down with a heavy thud. Then something seemed to give way as the chopper tipped over on its side and everything went black.
21
Colonel Kozlowski studied Sachs as she lay on the fold-out surgical table in the Nightwatch plane’s medical center. Her eyes were closed beneath the high-intensity lights, an IV attached to her arm. Her black hair was brushed back from her face, her shoes removed and the belt around her skirt loosened.
The young medic had finished stitching a gash on her shoulder and was studying her with awe. Her bloody blouse was gone, and he gazed at the size C cups of her bra rising and falling as she breathed. He let out a low whistle. “Hail to the Chief.”
“It’s president-designate, Lieutenant Nordquist,” said Koz, feigning indifference. “Nothing official until I know she’s fit for office. Is she fit?”
“She’s in better shape than those Green Berets on that Black Hawk, that’s for sure.” Nordquist started tapping up a chart for her on his tablet computer. “What the hell was that all about, anyway?”
That’s what Koz wanted to know. What kind of remarkable woman could survive that kind of battle? Or cause it?
“You tell me,” said Sachs, opening her eyes.
They were soft and brown, Koz noticed, but her voice was dry and cracked. It was probably the cabin air. He wondered how much she had heard. “Dehydration, ma’am.”
“There’s got to be a better explanation for their behavior than a lack of Gatorade.”
A sense of dry wit too, thought Koz.
“No, ma’am. You’re the one dehydrated. We’ll give the IV another 20 minutes and take you off when we’re at cruising altitude.”
She started. “You mean we’re in the air?”
“Thirty thousand feet,” said Koz. “Welcome aboard the presidential Advanced Airborne Command Post.”
“Then I want to see the president,” she demanded, and Koz didn’t know if she seriously didn’t understand the situation or was testing him.
He paused. “Why?”
“Because those soldiers sent to pick me up tried to kill me,” she said.
Koz blinked. “The Army Green Berets?”
She nodded. “Who sent them?”
“Uh, I did.” He saw her eyes widen. “But I can assure you that I did not give Colonel Kyle orders to harm you or anyone else. He must have gone rogue.”
She looked at him with a glint of paranoia. “Don’t insult me with a lone gunman theory. Because he had a dozen others with him, all wearing the uniform of this country.”
Koz exchanged a glance with Nordquist. “Physically, she checks outs,” the medic said with a shrug. “Mentally, who knows? She’s pretty shaken up.”
“I’m fine,” she said flatly. “Where’s Special Agent Raghav?”
“Didn’t make it, ma’am.”
Her shoulders slumped and she dropped her head. “He was brave.” Then her head snapped up again. “Jennifer,” she said with a start, and swung her badly bruised and cut legs over the side of the table. “I want to talk to my daughter right now.”