by Cindy Dees
She did as he suggested. A handful of Marines waved wildly as she brought the Huey to a hover over the far side of the building from them. She didn’t want her downwash to blow any of the Marines off the roof. She landed quickly.
Tom and his men leaped out, ducking under the rotor and heading for the marine position. Tom’s voice came up on her earphone. “How many men can we get in that bird, Annie?”
She glanced back at the cargo space and calculated her maximum possible takeoff weight fast. “Fourteen, if they’re all gonna die if I don’t pull them out.”
“There are sixteen people here including me and my guys.”
Annie’s heart dropped. “Sorry, Tom. Fourteen’s gonna be pushing it as it is.”
“Understood.”
Oh, Lord. Was she going to have to leave people behind to die? Again? The thought made her sick to her stomach. She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.
And then something odd caught her attention. The Marines and Tom’s men were shedding their weapons and laying them down in a neat row in the makeshift sandbag bunker. What in the world were they doing?
A single man in a white dress shirt and gray slacks caught her attention as he stood up from behind the sandbags. Good grief, it was Ambassador Kettering. What was he still doing here?
Tom and the ambassador ran up to her door while Tom’s men unloaded the fifty caliber gun and ammo and herded the others into the back of her bird.
“Captain O’Donnell. So glad you could join us!” Kettering yelled.
She nodded back at the ambassador.
Tom shouted, “The ambassador and I will be staying behind. Take the rest of them out to the Independence.”
Horror filled Annie. No. Not Tom. She couldn’t leave him again. She wouldn’t! “Tom, I can’t!”
“Yes, you can. It’s the two of us or all of them. This is the way it has to be.”
“No!” she screamed over the noise of the helicopter.
“This is an order, angel. Get those men out of here.”
The nightmare was repeating itself. Time slowed around her as disbelief turned to shock. “No-o-o,” she moaned.
Tom leaned through her open door and grabbed her shoulders. “Listen to me. We’ve got a decent arsenal up here, and we’ll be able to hold them off for a while. Maybe long enough to negotiate a surrender. I don’t think they’ll kill Ambassador Kettering if they realize who he is.”
She appealed to Kettering directly. “Don’t do this, sir! It’s suicide.”
He nodded resolutely. “You’re probably right. But just as a captain’s place is with his sinking ship, this is my post. This is American soil, and by God, I’m not handing it over to anybody without a fight. The major and I will let these bastards know they’ve had a tough time before we go down. Now you go on and get those boys out of here.”
She couldn’t believe this was happening. “Tom…”
“Honey, you need to leave. We’ll buy you enough time to get out of here.”
Tears streamed down her face. “I can’t leave you again. I love you!”
“I know, angel. Now go on.”
Tom and the ambassador backed away from her toward the makeshift bunker that had been set up around the flagpole.
Sobbing so hard she could barely see, Annie eased back gently on the controls. The helicopter groaned as it struggled to lift the weight of all the souls onboard.
Inch by bare inch, she lifted away from the ground.
She looked back to see Tom arming himself with an array of weapons while the ambassador stood ramrod straight beside him, holding an assault rifle. The rotor wash caught the American flag on the pole beside the two men and whipped it around their legs.
Without warning, Tom snapped to attention, and threw her a full-blown military salute while Old Glory’s stars and stripes wrapped themselves around him.
She saluted back as tears streamed down her face. Her heart was breaking in two. She finally gained enough altitude to bank away. She took one last look down at Tom.
He lifted his hand in a final wave of farewell and mouthed the words, “I love you.”
Moaning in agony, Annie banked away and accelerated into the morning sun.
SHE PUSHED the helicopter to the very limits of its performance and raced north as if the Devil himself was nipping at her heels. She blatantly ignored the Navy air traffic controller’s repeated instructions to slow down her approach to the Independence, and she flung her craft to the deck of the ship with reckless abandon.
Her passengers, who’d been packed in like sardines, tumbled out the door the second it was opened. A flight-deck officer pulled open her damaged door. “Welcome aboard, Captain O’Donnell. Congratula—”
“Back up,” she shouted.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Stand clear. I’m taking off again.”
“You’re what? You don’t have clearance to do that!”
“I don’t recall asking for clearance!” she shouted back over the roar of her engine. She checked her gauges and throttled up.
Another voice ordered over the radio. “Captain, you are ordered to shut down. You do not have takeoff clearance.”
She picked up the microphone. “Well then, with all due respect, you better give it to me fast. I left Ambassador Kettering and the man I love behind at the American Embassy, and I’m going back for them.”
“This is an order, Captain—”
She turned off the radio.
Flight-deck crewmen scattered all over as she lifted off unexpectedly. She backed the helicopter away from the conning tower and, as soon as she was clear, banked hard left.
“One more time, baby,” she coaxed the helicopter as she pushed the engine well beyond its design limits yet again.
She flew high enough to keep salt spray from fouling the engine, but as soon as she hit the coast, she dropped down to treetop level again.
A strange calm came over her. There was no more fear, no more questioning of right and wrong. She was not leaving Tom behind. They lived or died together.
She did have the presence of mind to swing wide and approach the embassy from the opposite side this time. There was no sense getting shot down because she was too panicked to think straight.
She was horrified as the building came into sight. Soldiers in red berets were scaling the sides of the embassy itself on ropes.
But then the implications of that dawned on her. Tom and the ambassador hadn’t been killed yet! Exultation shot through her.
She could do a little something about those rebels on the ropes. She positioned the helicopter over the edge of the building, then she pulled back hard on the collective and hit the throttle simultaneously. The helicopter leaped straight up in the air and sent a tremendous surge of wind downward at close to two hundred miles per hour. She banked for a second to see the effect of her maneuver.
A bunch of guys in red berets sprawled on the ground like dead ants. Yes.
She repeated the maneuver on the other side of the building.
She glanced quickly toward the makeshift bunker on the roof, looking for any signs of movement, but she saw none. Smoke obscured too much of the view, and she was too occupied trying not to hit the flagpole to take a better look.
At least the immediate threat to anyone still on the roof had subsided for a minute or two. That ought to be all she’d need to find Tom, dead or alive. She landed as near the flagpole as she dared and leaped out of the cockpit, leaving the engine running.
She sprinted across the open space. A hail of bullets flew at her from a neighboring rooftop, and she zigzagged at a dead run while firing her pistol over her shoulder, just like she’d seen Tom do.
The sandbags loomed before her. She took a running leap and prayed she didn’t land on Tom and squash him.
She landed beside him.
He was covered in blood. The ambassador leaned over him, pressing down hard on a wound to Tom’s thigh, and on another high on Tom’s chest.
“Oh, God.
Don’t tell me I’m too late.”
The ambassador didn’t mince any words. “Not yet, but we’re going to lose him soon. Can you lift his legs if I get his head?”
Annie jumped to obey.
They managed to half-drag, half-carry Tom to the helicopter and dump him inside. A pool of blood formed under him in a matter of seconds.
Annie’s heart flew into her throat.
She raced around the helicopter and climbed into the seat. A red beret poked over the wall in front of her.
She didn’t even wait to strap in, but yanked back on the controls. The helicopter lurched into the air. To her utter shock, gunfire started from the back of the helicopter. She glanced back to see the ambassador—and Tom—wielding pistols. Their burst forced the rebels to duck for a split second. But it was enough. She was up and away from the roof.
A hail of gunfire raked their belly, but Annie was too focused on flying to notice the holes in the floor, inches from her feet.
The helicopter lurched. She pushed the craft forward faster and climbed higher. It bucked again. A quick glance at the engine gauges showed the hydraulic system was hit. Her flight controls were going to be compromised soon. She wouldn’t be able to command the Huey to go up or down, left or right.
She couldn’t come this close to saving Tom only to crash now.
He climbed up into the cockpit beside her, and she stared at him in shock.
“What are you doing up here? Get back there and lie down so the ambassador can help you.”
“I can put pressure on my wounds as well as the ambassador can. What in the hell were you thinking, coming back for me? That was insane!”
“Do you want me to turn around and drop you back on that roof?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Inside this bird, I’m in command.”
A pause. One side of his mouth turned up in a grin. “Yes, ma’am.”
She wrestled with the cantankerous helicopter for several minutes in silence.
Tom spoke from beside her. She couldn’t tell if he knew what he was saying or not. His head lolled drunkenly on his shoulders and his color was terrible. “I told you to leave the embassy. You disobeyed my direct order.”
“I did leave. You never ordered me not to come back.”
“I didn’t think I had to. This was a damn fool maneuver.”
The coastline came into view. The helicopter bucked harder this time and fell off to the right slightly. She corrected with the rudder and eased back on the throttle. The helicopter shuddered again.
“Look, Tom, I don’t have time to argue with you. This bird’s getting unruly, and we’ve still got a few minutes to go. Go lie down.”
“Like hell—”
“I give the orders here. Get back there, get horizontal, and don’t you die on me. Got it?”
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Got it.”
He crawled out of the seat and into the back of the helicopter. A sudden lurch threw him against the back wall, and he grunted in pain as he collapsed onto the floor.
Annie muttered to herself, “I went to a lot of trouble to fetch that guy’s worthless hide. If he dies, I swear, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Tom’s voice came over her earphone, amused.
She started. She hadn’t realized she was transmitting over her throat microphone.
“You’ve got a stuck mike, darlin’. That dive you took into the fox hole must’ve jostled something.”
“Great.”
She didn’t have any more time to argue with him because the silhouette of the Independence carrier leaped over the horizon in front of her.
The helicopter was really becoming a handful. It crow hopped and jigged like a bronco trying to toss an unwelcome rider. She babied the controls and coaxed it to cooperate long enough to get them over the carrier’s deck.
But setting the bird down was another matter. Her vertical control was all but gone, and she swooped and dipped like a swallow in flight. Her tail winged around in a sickening 360-degree arc, almost taking out two flight-deck crewmen. But finally her right skid impacted the deck. For a second the helicopter tipped up on its right side. She chopped the throttle, and it rocked down to the deck with a hard thud.
Annie cut the engine and leaped out of the craft, screaming for a medic.
A team must’ve been standing close by because in seconds Tom’s unconscious form in the back of her bird was surrounded by paramedics. Some of them poked needles into him and hung bags of blood and plasma around him, while others worked on stemming the flow of blood from his wounds.
Annie hovered protectively over the whole proceeding, keeping up a constant stream of conversation with Tom, begging him to stay alive and keep fighting. She held on to his hand with bruising force, as if she could will her own life energy into him.
When he was stabilized enough to move, four men picked up the stretcher and lifted him out of the helicopter. They took off running for a doorway with Annie still grasping Tom’s cold fingers.
“Excuse me, Captain. You need to come with me.”
Annie shrugged off the hand that tapped her shoulder. “I’m staying with him,” she replied.
“I’m sorry but that won’t be possible. The admiral wants to see you right away. And besides, the doctors won’t let you stay with him while they work on him.”
“I’m not leaving him!” Her voice climbed on a hysterical note.
The flight-deck officer took her upper arm in a strong grasp and forcibly guided her away from the stretcher. Tom’s fingers fell away from hers, and it was as if a piece of her heart had been ripped out. He couldn’t die. He just couldn’t.
The officer spoke forcefully to her. “You’ve got to let him go, Captain! He needs medical attention, and you’d be in the way.”
She tried one more time to follow Tom’s retreating form, but the flight-deck officer was having none of it. Like it or not, he steered her across the deck and into a different part of the ship.
In a daze, she allowed herself to be led through a maze of corridors and hatches. She only vaguely registered the flight-deck officer’s tirade about snot-nosed pilots who disobeyed orders and endangered his crewmen. Fortunately, he wound down before they got to the admiral’s office.
She was directed to a wooden chair in the admiral’s outer office to wait. Slowly awareness of her surroundings came back to her. It was all well and good to have disobeyed orders and to have done her damnedest to save Tom’s life, but now it was time to pay the piper.
Sick dread filled her. She’d worked hard to be a good officer and, to date, had led a distinguished career. But this episode had pretty much blown it.
A sailor finally led her into the admiral’s beautifully appointed office and left, closing the door behind him with an ominous click. She stood glumly at attention. Her knees were shaking. It wasn’t from fear of the butt-chewing she was about to get, though. It must be shock setting in.
As she’d expected, the admiral worked up a good head of steam and ripped into her hard for disobeying his officers. She put on an appropriately remorseful expression and rode out the storm in silence.
Getting court-martialed would be worth it if Tom lived. Even if she spent the next ten years in jail at Fort Leavenworth, at least she’d know he was alive. She could live with that.
Finally the admiral stopped shouting and came around from behind his desk, his face thunderous. She braced herself. But then he broke into a big grin. And walked right past her to greet someone who stepped into the room behind her. She looked over her shoulder.
Ambassador Kettering shook hands warmly with the Navy flag officer. “George, long time no see! How the hell are you?”
“I’m fine, Jack. But what in the hell were you doing in a firefight on top of the embassy?”
“Defending the good old U.S. of A.”
“Hell, you got out of the Navy twenty years ago. Aren’t you a little old to play soldier?”
Annie stood by quietly as the two men traded quip
s.
Finally the admiral remembered her presence and turned to the ambassador. “So what am I supposed to do with this young captain? She disobeyed a direct order from my flight-deck crew not to take off and go rescue your crusty old hide.”
“Actually, sir,” Annie replied, “I disobeyed several direct orders.”
The ambassador’s mouth twitched, but the admiral looked stony. “I ought to have you court-martialed and strung up from the yardarm, Captain.”
“Yes sir, you should,” she answered.
“But seeing as how you just pulled off one of the sweetest pieces of flying I’ve seen in a long time, I think I’m going to have to shake your hand and tell you to get yourself down to the infirmary to visit the man you love.”
Annie blushed. He’d heard about that, had he?
“Uh, thank you, sir. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen…” She looked back and forth between the two men, not sure which one would give her permission to leave.
“Go. Go.” The admiral waved his hand at the door.
She whirled and managed not to sprint from the room. The admiral’s executive officer showed her through the maze of passageways to the infirmary.
A sailor gestured her to a seat in the outer office. Again.
“Is he all right?” she asked.
“They’re still working on him, ma’am” was the impassive reply.
Each minute that passed was agony for her. He had to be all right. He just had to be.
They’d been through so much together. They’d made it out, just as he promised they would. It seemed unreal to be sitting in a sterile, quiet doctor’s office as if nothing had ever happened. As if they’d never been shot at, as if they’d never had to fight tooth and nail for their very lives.
It all started to feel like a dream, insubstantial and fleeting. Had her relationship with Tom been part of that unreal time? Was there anything left for them, now that the mission was over and they were out of Gavarone?
An officer stepped through the inner door and walked over to her, a sober expression on his face. Dread clogged her throat. She wasn’t very familiar with Navy uniform insignia, but she thought she recognized a medical corps badge.
“You must be Annie,” the doctor said.
