“Surrender or die?”
“My guess too,” Ethan agreed. “But no. They’re our escort for the rest of the exercise.”
“Well, that’s handy.” She tested a sigh of relief—but didn’t feel it. Needing their protection meant that there would be more twists and turns inbound during this exercise.
The Little Birds fell in to either side of her Chinook…then began falling behind.
Abby eased back on the thrust control. The Chinook could outstrip the Little Birds by forty klicks an hour. That meant that she had lost most of her flexibility for achieving their assigned landing times. “How bad?”
She didn’t have to be clearer for Ethan to know what she meant. “Uh, at their max cruise, we can still make our assigned time with, wow, a whole two minutes of flex in the next hour. That’s assuming nothing?—”
Just as they hit a stretch of clear water over the Lake Martin Reservoir on the Tallapoosa River, a Black Hawk came racing toward them from the west.
It didn’t report in as being friendly.
3
They arrived at Fort Rucker shy one Little Bird from mechanical issues—it had recorded a simulated hit to its main rotor from the unfriendly Black Hawk. Per new training orders, they had autorotated all the way down, just as if they’d actually been hit. You did that to one of those new Valors that the DoD-heads had selected and the crew would be dead.
Instead, her Little Bird crew was down safe, except they’d mired in the mud alongside the Tallapoosa River. Now they sat there, waiting for the beaten Army National Guard Black Hawk to circle back and lower a cable to extract them from the swamp. The Night Stalkers had beaten the ARNG’s Black Hawk bad. The single Little Bird strike they’d managed before being declared damaged definitely belonged in the lucky-shot category. Her guardian Little Bird would remain parked in the stinking swamp for a long time before the Black Hawk could be bothered to extract them.
Abby hit Fort Rucker, Alabama, seven seconds ahead of her mark. Parked it clean.
A pair of nine-man DAGORs—Deployable Advanced Ground Off-Road, Spec Ops light-tactical vehicles—raced toward them. Big tires, a suspension designed for crossing absurdly rough terrain, seats, engine, and roll cage. They were bare-bones, insanely durable, and could travel five hundred miles on a single tank of a variety of fuels, so long as the passengers were absolute masochists. They were not comfortable rides.
“Ramp! Ramp! Ramp!” The air marshaler who’d guided the last few feet of their landing was shouting.
Only thirty seconds allowed down didn’t leave much time for doubts and guesses.
Charlene was parked on a supposedly friendly base, so Abby called the order back to Sam, her senior crew chief. Five seconds later, she felt the cool November air roll in off the Alabama lowlands as the wide tail ramp hit the ground. It brought back memories both good and bad. Too many trips down here to face the brutal instructors at ACE, Aviation Center of Excellence, and that was the good bit.
The sharp pine resin and noisome swampy scents that the two DAGORs pushed in as they rolled aboard made Abby’s stomach churn.
It hurt despite her best intentions to never again think of or repeat her mistake when she’d been a gullible second lieutenant here, one dazzled by a major’s attentions. By the time she’d found out he was married, she’d been sufficiently compromised to ruin her career if she didn’t acquiesce to his wishes. Then she’d figured out he was just as vulnerable, more so for taking advantage of a lesser officer. But a woman never won tit-for-tat battles in this man’s military. At least not until she’d thought to send a letter to the major’s wife. He’d become far too busy to bother her after that.
“Nineteen…twenty…” Ethan was counting seconds since they’d gone wheels down. Their brief had said precisely thirty seconds on the ground.
“Twenty-one…”
Abby resisted the urge to turn around and watch. A pair of DAGORs was a tight fit for a Chinook with little more than inches to spare. The crew chiefs, who must be doing their jobs while clinging to the hull’s structure like chimpanzees, would tell her when they were ready.
“Twenty-five…twenty-six…”
“Brakes set! No chains!” someone shouted over the intercom. His voice was so distorted that she couldn’t even tell which of her crew it was.
“Raise ramp twenty percent up.” Abby kept her voice calm, because that’s what pilots did in times of crisis. That should keep anything from rolling out the back of the cargo bay. But they couldn’t close it until the DAGOR’s engines were shut down and no more exhaust was pumping into the cabin.
“Twenty-nine…”
Abby eased up on the thrust control. Charlene One was now near her max load as they’d just acquired nine thousand pounds of vehicle and another forty-five hundred of men and their gear. She’d be over her limit if she hadn’t just burned off three hundred kilometers of fuel. Someone on the ground knew that.
“Thirty!”
She was airborne. Abby held the hover at one foot. Orders were to land for precisely thirty seconds, not a word about staying in the neighborhood up to her time limit. Thank God she’d hit seven seconds early. With her plus-minus window, that gave her team thirty-seven seconds before they had to clear out. Until then, if the load shifted unexpectedly, she’d only crash down one foot.
“Chains on.” The call that the vehicles were now anchored to the decking and couldn’t shift during maneuvering came at nine seconds remaining.
Charlene still felt tail-heavy. It was minor, but she could feel it. “Shift two guys as far forward as you can.” She could trim it out, but that might limit handling in an extreme flight envelope.
