“John, get aft, make sure everyone is strapped in, and open the door!” Danny shouted.
John staggered back the few feet to the aft compartment, sparing a quick glance at Lee, who truly fit the definition of green faced, shouting for him to tighten his belting. Forrest strapped in across from John and then shouted instructions as to how to open the side door, which John had to struggle with as the helicopter pitched back and forth, the door at last sliding open, the cold blast of winter air whipping by at 140 miles per hour stunning him.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out the message pod, a plastic torpedo-shaped container with a thirty-foot red streamer attached to it, snapping off the rubber band that held the streamer in a tight ball, letting several feet unravel.
He glanced up and through the forward windshield and saw that Maury was banking in toward the airport but was now caught in a strong crosswind, struggling to crab the chopper so they could fly down the length of the main runway. There was a hell of a bounce as Maury nosed over, Lee looking at John wide-eyed and a second later disgorging what was left of his breakfast and dinner from the night before onto John’s lap.
“They’re threatening to shoot if we don’t land!” Maury shouted, barely heard above the roar of the slipstream racing past the open door.
“Tell them to screw themselves,” John shouted, “after we get the hell out!”
They crossed the threshold of the runway, going flat out, Maury, nervous at running so low, bobbing up and down, tail rotor assembly swinging back and forth as he fought to keep control at such low altitude, with a variable crosswind sweeping across the open runway. John glanced up again. They were a hundred or so feet up, crossing over the paved runway, a large white number 12 flashing by underneath. To their right, he could see the airport terminal, the building burned out, collapsed, a couple of dozen private aircraft, long ago abandoned, pushed off to one side of the tarmac and jumbled together. Next to it, the control tower was still intact. He wanted to shout for Maury to try to get closer to the control tower, fearful that the dropped message might not be noticed.
He waited a few more seconds.
“They want us down now!” Maury shouted.
John ignored him, leaning out the open door, message cylinder and red tail ribbon bunched up in his hand, anxious at the thought that it just might get wiped aft and tangled into the tail rotor.
They swept over a grounded Apache, several personnel on the ground craning to look up—or were they pointing something—and in answer to the thought, he caught the flash of a tracer round snapping past the open door.
He threw the message cylinder out, arm getting whipped back by the slipstream, slamming it against the outside of the chopper, the wind sucking the glove off his left hand, shoulder feeling as if it were about to break.
More tracers, a metallic crackling sound behind him, like someone punching a hole through aluminum or titanium, which was exactly what was happening as several rounds slammed into their Black Hawk.
The impacts startled Maury, who instinctively pulled the chopper into a steep banking turn, and if not for the safety harness, John would have been pitched out. Gasping for breath in the violent crosswind, he caught a glimpse of the message cylinder already down on the ground, the red tape attached to the tail still spiraling down, someone running toward it, while at least two others with weapons raised were continuing to fire at them.
“You damn fools!” John screamed, making a universal rude gesture as Forrest, one-handed, stretched out and grabbed the back of John’s harness to help pull him back in. Even as he did so, Maury pitched the chopper hard to starboard, causing John to tumble back in, landing hard on the floor, which was splattered with Lee’s vomit.
Kevin Malady unbuckled himself from his safety harness, half crawled over Forrest, and slammed the portside door shut.
“We okay?” John shouted.
“Sons of bitches!” Forrest yelled and pointed to the side of his helmet. It was dented in, a bullet having creased it.
John looked at it, a bit shaken. A couple of inches farther down and his friend would be dead, and he realized that for the bullet to have entered thus, it must have snapped past him by a margin of only a few inches as well.
“We okay?” John shouted again, Danny looking back at him.
They were past the perimeter of the airport, heading east. Danny returned his attention forward and was obviously saying something to Maury, pointing toward the instrument panel. John unclipped the safety harness and crawled up between the two.
“Problems?”
“Yeah!” Maury shouted. “I think we’ve been hit. And look off to your right. An Apache that was up in the air is peeling off toward us.”
He looked to where Maury was pointing and caught the flash of rotors. The narrow profile of the Apache was hard to see, but he could discern it was headed their way.
“They’re ordering us to come back, land, or we’ll be shot down.”
“Can they?”
Maury was silent for a moment, attention focused to where Danny was pointing at one of the gauges.
“One of the turbines might have taken a hit; it’s heating up a bit, RPM dropping. They’re designed to take punishment; let’s just hope it holds together. Supposedly, you can fly this thing on one engine, but I wouldn’t want to try it right now.”
Maury banked again to port, taking them on a direct easterly heading, away from the Apache.
“Can he catch up to us?” John asked.
“Don’t know!” Maury shouted. “I remember the Black Hawk is a bit faster than the Apache—at least it was when I was flying these things. Wait a second.”
Maury pulled his headphone down over his left ear, listened intently, spoke, and then pushed it back up so he could talk to John.
“Told them we want to come back but call off that Apache first. Telling them that might buy us some time.”
John looked to the glint of rotors from the Apache; it was still on course toward them. It was hard to judge distance, but he appeared to be at least several miles off.
“If he’s got an air-to-air, we’re screwed!” Danny shouted.
Maury looked back at John, raising a quizzical eyebrow, passing the decision on to him.
Air-to-air? He mulled that over for a few seconds. The Apache was doing ground support. Besides, air-to-air was not usual armament for a helicopter unless one was expecting to tangle with enemy air assets. Fredericks didn’t have anything like that; otherwise, the L-3 would have been toast.
“Just keep going straight east for now,” John replied.
“And pray both engines keep turning,” Danny added.
“Can we outrun him?” John asked.
“So far so good,” was all Danny said before focusing back on scanning the instrument panel.
John fell silent, letting them do their job, looking back over his shoulder to see that Forrest had his helmet off, had passed it over to Kevin to examine, the two of them talking away as if this were just another typical day.