It sounded like a hailstorm against the armored underside of the craft. Multiple firestreams raking the metal at once. Rachel screamed. One of the lights shattered, and something near the tail rotor gave off a shriek, but the caution advisory panel remained silent.
After what felt like ten seconds but was probably no more than two, the chopper lumbered forward in response to the tilt. In the last moment before it left the airspace above the clearing, the front-right nose window imploded, and Rachel gasped sharply—an involuntary sound that had nothing to do with fear. Dryden had heard men make that sound before.
Leaving just enough of his attention on the controls to keep the Black Hawk climbing away over the forest, he switched on the cabin lights and turned to Rachel. Her eyes were huge, and she was holding her left arm to her side with the other hand. Where the arm met her chest, there was blood everywhere.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They were over open country now, ten minutes west of where they’d taken off. The overspeed indicator was screaming. Dryden ignored it. He ignored everything he could afford to and kept the rest of his attention on Rachel.
There was no way to assess the extent of her injury. He needed both hands—both feet, too—on the controls, and she couldn’t remove the top half of the kiln suit by herself. With the suit still on, Dryden could get only the roughest visual sense of where she’d been hit. The arm, at least; he could see the exit hole the bullet had made near her triceps. He guessed it’d entered on the inward part of the arm, lower down. Whether it’d hit anything else before that—leg, abdomen, upper torso—he couldn’t tell.
“Keep pressure on the arm,” he said. “I know it’s hard, but you have to.”
Rachel nodded, frantic and exhausted at the same time. Losing strength.
“Take another deep breath for me,” Dryden said. “Slow in, slow out.”
She complied. Over the headset, he listened to the sound as she exhaled.
No rattle. No wheeze. Good signs, so far.
“Any pressure?” he asked. “Anything feel like it’s stopping you from expanding your lungs?”
She shook her head.
Also good—but no reason to relax. Damage to the chest could be tricky, as well as deceptive. A bullet could miss the heart and lungs but still cause internal bleeding, slowly building pressure against the lungs until one or both collapsed. In shock, as Rachel certainly was, it was possible to miss the signs.
Dryden had the Black Hawk as low as he felt comfortable flying—two hundred feet off the deck. Out ahead was Fresno, maybe another ten minutes away, though outlying districts of the city were closer.
He looked at Rachel’s arm again. She had her right hand clamped around it above the exit wound—a far cry from a tourniquet, but the best option available for now. There was some blood visible around the hole in the suit, but there was no way to tell how fast she was bleeding. Anything coming out of her was running down her arm inside the sleeve.
So far, she hadn’t cried. Dryden wished he could chalk it up to heroism on her part, but life had taught him better. It was the shock—she simply hadn’t begun feeling the pain yet.
It was coming though. Coming on right now, he guessed, given her body language.
“It’s starting,” he said.
She nodded, moved her hand to reposition her grip on her arm, and winced hard.
A second airspeed alarm sounded, this one telling him he’d descended too low for this rate of speed. He climbed until it went silent again. Beside him Rachel shuddered, fighting the tears but losing.
*
Gaul paced, his cheeks and forehead flushed darker than any of the techs had seen them before.
The satellites kept up with the chopper easily. Three feeds were dedicated to it, at varying frame widths. A fourth frame was scaled wide enough to take in all of Fresno, along with forty miles of open country to the north and west. There was a reason for that. There were other airborne objects being monitored. Fast-moving ones.
“How’s the math stacking up?” Gaul asked.
“It’s going to be tight,” Lowry said.
Gaul said nothing more. He continued pacing.
*
Watching Fresno rise to meet them, Dryden scanned the outlying grid for a place that met his requirements. It had to be open enough to land the chopper in, but it also had to be crowded with people. The parking lot of a mall might do. He watched for one—then saw something better.
“You like football?” Dryden asked.
“I might,” Rachel said. “I don’t remember.”
The stadium—for a high school, by the look of it—lay a quarter mile ahead, lit up with a night game in progress. The stands looked to be a third full. Dryden pulled back on the stick, slowing the Black Hawk’s forward speed.
Fifteen seconds later they were directly above the field, hovering stationary. Every face below, in the stands and on the turf, was turned up toward the chopper. Dryden dumped it into a breakneck descent, and the players scattered like leaves in the rotor wash.
“I’m going to carry you,” Dryden said, “and it’s going to hurt like hell. But no matter what, you’re going to keep pressure on that arm.”