Flight of the Serpent
Page 24
She caught her breath. They were going down. No plane could stay up with damage like this. Yet somehow the B-24 started leveling out.
Correction, she thought to herself. John Gault leveled her. His skill as a pilot was keeping them alive.
Campbell, who’d been thrown against the fuselage during the dive, scrambled to his feet. His intercom connection had ripped away, so he used Yarbrough’s. “John, I’ve got an idea. I’m going to sucker the bastard.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Just keep us in the air.”
After disconnecting his headset, Campbell pulled his white T-shirt over his head and waved it out the firing window to get the Huey’s attention.
“What’s going on back there?” Gault asked.
“Vic’s trying to get himself killed,” Nick answered, shouting so Campbell could hear too.
“Don’t worry about me,” Campbell shouted back. “I’m a dead man already.”
“What do you mean?” Nick demanded.
“John knows,” he replied. “I got my death warrant from the doctors a few weeks ago.”
He tossed away the T-shirt and unzipped his pants. “I’ll piss on the bastard if I have to, just so he comes closer.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Nick. “Get ready. Don’t let them see you or the rifle. Fire through one of the cannon holes. If I do this right, you ought to get at least one clear shot at the bastard.”
As soon as Nick moved into position, Campbell began urinating out the firing window and into the wind stream. “Come on, asshole. Get a little closer. See the whites of my eyes and die!” he yelled.
The hole Nick had picked was pie-size. Through it only a small patch of sky was visible.
“I can’t see him!” she shouted.
“He’s out there. Back toward the tail, out of your line of sight.” Campbell leaned out dangerously far, gesturing obscenely. “He’s moving up, but I’ve run out of ammunition.”
“I see him,” Nick shouted. He was still two hundred yards away, maybe three hundred. Too far, considering the way the B-24 was shuddering and shaking.
“Come on,” Campbell yelled into the wind. “We’re helpless. Come and get us.”
Abruptly, Campbell dropped his pants. “I’ll moon the bastard. Maybe that’ll get his attention.”
Risking a quick glance away from the target, Nick saw that he was doing just that. Quickly, she focused again on the Huey as it came in for a closer look.
“Wait until you can’t miss, Nick.”
The chopper stopped weaving and held a steady course, maybe fifty yards off their port side. At that range, Nick could see the pilot and his passenger laughing at Campbell. Nick clenched her teeth. The passenger, with his neatly trimmed black beard, looked very much like the Internet photograph of Dr. Karl Maitland.
She took a quick breath, let half of it out, and took careful aim just ahead of the copter.
“Now!” Campbell shouted.
Bracing herself against the recoil, she squeezed the trigger. The first tracer reached out, slightly in front of the Huey. Even as she corrected her bullet stream, flame erupted from the gunship’s chin cannon. The impact of cannon shells at such close range was like a head-on collision. The serpent shuddered violently.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Campbell flung backwards. She knew, without having to look, that he’d been hurled out of the plane.
Screaming, she kept firing until her tracers were dead center on the Plexiglas. The Huey was adjusting too, its shells coming her way. Then suddenly blood exploded against the chopper’s windshield where the passenger had been sitting. The Huey’s nose dipped. Then it rolled over and fell from Nick’s field of vision, trailing greasy black smoke.
Chapter 55
Gault fought for control. She was the Lady-A again, not the serpent, and she was going down. That last burst of cannon fire had been her death blow. It was only a matter of time.
He checked the altimeter. Eleven hundred feet, and dropping steadily.
The yoke felt mushy in his hands. If he couldn’t get her nose up, they’d wouldn’t have time to jump. He pulled back on the yoke. Nothing. Christ, maybe the control linkage was shot.
“Annie,” he said, “I need time.”
He was panting now, half-blinded by the sweat flooding into his eyes. Please, he begged, I’ll be with you soon.
He blinked. Was it wishful thinking, or was their rate of descent slowing? Yes, by God, she was leveling off. Nine hundred feet and holding.
“Thank you, Annie.”
He trimmed the plane as best he could, then switched on his intercom mike. “Crew check.”
There was no response.
“Nick?”
Still nothing.
He said a silent prayer, and began switching on the autopilot. Engaging each toggle was a thrill. If the system had been hit, he’d lose control. At this altitude, there’d be no recovery.
But the autopilot engaged, holding the B-24 in level flight.
“You’re the best, Annie.”
He left his seat to look for Nick.
Chapter 56
The Lady-A felt as if she were shaking to pieces. Air whistled through every hole inside the shell-torn fuselage. Loose pieces of jagged metal ricocheted with each jolt of the aircraft. Nick did her best to dodge them, but Gault stood his ground as he helped her with her parachute. He already wore his.
He nodded toward a backpack with parachute attached that lay braced against the bomb racks. Its rip cord had been secured to one of the struts so that the chute would open automatically.
“There’s two gallons of water in there, and a map and a compass,” he shouted over the din. “I’ll drop it just before we jump.”
Thank God one of them had been planning ahead, Nick thought.
“What about Yarbrough?”
Gault knelt beside the gunner and felt for a pulse. After a moment he shook his head and closed Yarbrough’s staring eyes.
The Lady-A lurched to one side, throwing Gault onto his face. The moment he got up, he grabbed her and pulled her toward the open bomb bay. “We don’t have much time.”
Below them, the desert floor looked very close.
“We’re under eight hundred feet, so pull your cord the moment you’re clear,” he said into her ear. “You understand?”
She nodded.
“Wilcox is due north, maybe thirty miles. Can we make it that far?”
“With the water, easy.”
He kissed her. “Remember, Nick, don’t wait to pull the cord.” With that, he sidestepped, grabbed her from behind, and held her over the opening as if she weighed nothing.
“Good-bye,” he said. “If you survive, so do I.” He dropped her out of the plane.
She fell, screaming her protest into the wind. Her hand, operating independently of her outrage, found the ring and pulled the rip cord.
The ground stopped rushing at her as the chute blossomed. Looking up, she saw another canopy suspended in the sky above her. The backpack. But Gault had stayed with the plane.
Already, the Lady-A was growing smaller. Soon the smoke trailing from her engines would be all that remained. When that dissipated . . .
The ground came up to meet her. The impact knocked Nick flat. Scrabbling to her knees, she collapsed the chute.
“Damn you, John Gault.”
The Lady-A looked very low now as it limped toward the horizon. Please, John, make it to Wilcox. Wait for me there.
Nick headed for the backpack, which had landed close by. The plastic water bottles, padded in bubble wrap, had survived intact.
But even with water, the rules for desert survival were absolute. Find shelter and wait for the cool of night. Don’t expend energy. Don’t sweat.
She started walking anyway, north toward Wilcox. By now, the Lady-A was out of sight. Even her smoke was gone.
Nick slowed. What happened if Gault did make it as far as Wilcox? What then? The police would be
waiting for him—if not there, in Salt Lake. They’d be waiting for her, too, if they knew she’d joined the crew. After all, justifiable or not, they’d committed murder on Mesa d’Oro. No one could survive such a holocaust.
She stopped dead in her tracks. Gault was nobody’s fool. Iƒ you survive, so do I, he’d said. His last words to her.
She scanned the landscape for shelter. A rocky outcropping was her best hope. Sundown wasn’t far away. After that, she could move.
“All right, John. You win. If love is a sin, so be it.”
As she settled against the rock, she heard a distant boom, like a jet piercing the sound barrier.
EPILOGUE
The Lady-A struggled on, her propellers clawing at the sky. This was what she was born for. In her final throes she was most alive. Meter by meter she lumbered on, the air tearing at the jagged holes in her skin. Her steel ribs vibrated to the thunder of her flight.
Depended upon; dependent on, the circle was complete. She’d waited these many years and had never for-gotten. Together they were one, apart they were nothing.
He asked for everything she had, and she willingly gave it. She gave him the stern resolve of the men that had made her and the fearlessness of the band of pilots that had gone before. She scraped every inch of air above the deadly ground that she could cheat from gravity’s greedy hold until she could give no more.
When it came, she accepted the final blow with resignation, not regret. She was beyond her time and knew it. She could no longer feel him, but somehow she knew he was still there. They were together again and always would be.
THE END