by E. E. Giorgi
Sorry, hon.
The first time in a helicopter had the same effect on her. The rocking and shaking is brutal for somebody not used to it. And winds weren’t cooperating either. Yet now up in the air, her hands and feet sensing every movement of the aircraft, she felt in control.
“That’s them,” she said, once David was able to look up again.
“How can you be sure that’s them?” he asked, still pale, yet his jaw and brows a bit more relaxed now that he had nothing else left to barf.
“Have you seen any other aircraft fly by recently?”
“What about the Sikorsky that came by earlier?”
“That was over an hour ago.”
David shrugged. “Lost track of time.”
The thought that they could be chasing the wrong chopper did cross her mind. It was a tiny dot over the horizon and even though the shape and size looked like the Koala aircraft the kidnappers had fled with, from this distance there was no way to tell for sure.
She nudged the cyclic forward and pulled in a little more pitch. The helicopter accelerated and gained speed.
“Better not get too close, though,” she said. “Not sure they’d be too thrilled to learn somebody else joined the party.”
“I don’t want to find out,” David replied.
Below them, the parched land looked red and dry, trails of ancient rivers carved into the rocks and etched around the mesas. So different from the Pacific Ocean she’d flown over years earlier, yet so equally enchanting.
They were northbound again, the lab sprawling to the left, a tiny spot of artificial green suffocated by white smears of smoke. Farther north, a checkerboard of circular fields mottled the gray and beige land. The center pivot irrigation system had probably been abandoned. What once had looked like green disks were now yellow and dry, the soil sculpted into waves that reminded her of an ocean long drained of all its color.
“When did you learn how to fly these things?” David asked.
“Three years ago,” Anu replied. “I was still working at the Scripps.”
“You were in California? You never told me.”
I never told you anything, she reckoned, the thought laced with regret.
She told him about her dad, his sudden death, her paralyzing fear of helicopters.
He whistled. “From terrified to pilot. That’s quite the leap.”
She smiled. “The key to overcoming your fears is taking control.”
He bobbed his head and swallowed hard, his eyes straying to the view opening below them. “Which is why I’m ready to pee in my pants right now.”
Anu laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said. And then added, in almost a whisper, “Thanks for doing this with me.”
He looked at her, his soft smile resurfacing, together with a hint of color underneath his ash-caked cheeks. “Anytime,” he said, and brushed the back of her hand clutched around the cyclic. Her fingers let go of the handgrip for a brief second and went searching for his touch, rugged, and scraped, and yet so comforting. A gust of wind made the aircraft rattle, prompting every fiber in her muscles to return to its task in the cockpit. Her eyes scanned the horizon.
“David?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t see the military chopper anymore.”
David leaned forward, then turned to look back. “Shit. It was right in front of us!”
Anu pushed down the collective lever and pulled back slightly on the cyclic. The helicopter slowed down and started turning, giving them a three-sixty degree view of the sky.
“How did it vanish just like that?”
“Did it land?” David wondered.
Anu felt her face go hot. She would’ve noticed if the chopper had started maneuvering for landing! How could she miss it? She lowered the collective and reduced their cruise altitude, searching the landscape below for aircrafts or places where the chopper could’ve landed, but the ground was uneven and rocky everywhere. Pinnacles of gray rocks rose in a lunar-like landscape, chiseled by old rivers that had long lost their load of water.
“We would’ve seen it if it crashed, right?” David ventured.
“Yeah. Choppers make a big mess when they crash.”
He gulped loudly, the thought clearly not appealing him.
She thought she heard something, then lost it in the loud background noise of the rotor blades. She banked the helicopter to the right and nosed the aircraft further down. A red mesa sprawled below them, split in the middle by the zigzagging crack of a canyon.
The Koala appeared suddenly at their side as though it had materialized out of nowhere and charged toward them.
Anu screamed, “Son of a bitch! It was hiding in the canyon!”
“Damn it,” David yelled. “It’s an ambush!”
Anu lowered the collective, losing altitude. The Koala whirled past them, then turned around. Anu quickly pulled the collective up and increased rotor speed, lifting the aircraft above the other’s trajectory.
“Damn it, Anu, they’re after us!”
“I can see that, ok? I’m doing what I can!”
Something tapped at the canopy, leaving long skid marks across it.
Tap, tap, tap.
Cold sweat dripped down Anu’s neck.
“They’re firing!” David shouted. “Great. We’re cooked, no way we’re gonna—”
“Shut up!” Anu bellowed. “Just. Shut. Up!”
She gripped the cyclic and banked away from the chopper, yet the aircraft came right after them, faster and more agile.
Damn it, I was never trained for this.
David swallowed, his hands tightly wrapped around the seat cushion. “Can bullets break the fuselage?” he asked, almost whispered this time, his voice barely picked up by the mike.
Anu ground her teeth. “We’re about to find out.”
She dipped down toward the canyon, her smaller aircraft defter along the sharp bends between the two walls of rock. It was the only chance against a faster chopper.
David kept shouting, “Watch out!” at every shift until he finally just shut both his eyes and mouth.
She nudged the T-bar forward and lunged the R22 toward the rocky walls of the canyon. Collective lever down a notch.
“Oh God, no!” David whimpered.
One. Two…
Her knuckles became white, so tight was her grip on the controls.
And… Three.
She jerked the collective up and pushed the T-Bar to the right. The R22 jerked up, one of the skids scraped the rock and made the whole aircraft rock. Still in hot pursuit, the Koala passed to the left, avoiding the collision by inches.
“What the hell are you thinking?” David bellowed. “It’s a miracle we didn’t crash!”
“They’re faster than us, can’t you see? I gotta trick ‘em if we want to get away from them!”
“I wanna get away alive! Watch out, here they come again!”
“Shit.”
She swayed the R22 away and climbed up in altitude again, her cheeks burning hot for the stupid failure. The military aircraft opened fire again. The R22 engine made a strange noise, spluttered and then died. They were in midair, cruising at 600 feet over the mesa at 80 knots. The sudden silence was deafening.
The Koala swooshed by and then swerved away, apparently satisfied with the inflicted damage.
“What—” David stuttered. “Why is it suddenly so… quiet?”
Anu gulped. She tightened the fists on the controls and instinctively lowered the collective to compensate for the nose swinging.
“Anu? What the hell’s going on?”
“The engine died.”
A panicked, guttural sound came out of David’s throat. “What?”
“That’s ok,” she mumbled. “I can handle this. We can glide and land. Trust me.”
She wasn’t sure she could trust herself but last thing she needed right now was a panicky passenger screaming in her ears.
Think, Anu, think!
Engine failur
e—autorotation, she thought. If only she could remember what the instructions were! She lowered the nose to keep the airspeed up while scanning the ground for obstacles.
“High rocks to the right,” David said, his voice strangely calm.
“Thanks,” she whispered, nudging the T-Bar to maintain the gliding direction. They were no longer shouting, no longer yelling at one another. The silence seemed sacred, broken only by the winds howling against the cabin.
“You’re clear ahead, just maintain direction.”
“Yes,” Anu replied, strangely focused. Suspended. The R22 wobbled. She banked lightly to readjust the heading and began flare at fifty feet.
“You can do this,” David said. “I know you can.”
She held her breath, the ground coming closer and closer.
At twenty feet she started pulling the collective, compensating with the left pedal. Nose up, she thought, but jerked the cyclic too far back and the chopper scraped the ground with the tailskid. The aircraft jerked.
“Fuck!” she yelled and hauled on the collective. Tail-low, the aircraft skidded along the dry edge of the mesa for what felt forever, the cabin rattling like a train with no wheels.
“Down, Anu, down!” David yelled, and they both doubled over covering their heads. The chopper spun, decelerated, and finally came to a halt.
Silence.
No engine, no wind.
Just their heavy, broken breathing.
Her head spun, her heart thumped against her throat. Her ears buzzed.
David raised his head, slowly, gingerly. And then he exhaled, a long sigh of relief, and slumped back against the seat. “Wow,” he mumbled. He pressed his palms against his face and repeated it, louder this time. “Wow!”
Anu was shaking. She straightened up and slid her hands underneath her thighs to stop them from quivering.
“Wow, Anu, wow!” David kept yelling. He unbuckled, grabbed her, and squeezed her in his arms. She felt tears in her eyes and she didn’t know why. He draped his hands around her shoulders and shook her. “That was incredible, Anu. Wow! And you’re still chasing that stupid virus? You’re a born pilot, that what you are!”
She wiped a tear from her eyes and laughed, her hands still quivering like leaves. And then she turned serious. “Born pilot or not, we lost them. Who knows where Joyce is now.”
A distant thrumming resonated in the air and became gradually louder. They held their breaths. A shadow rolled over the cockpit, the thrumming of a chopper now covering all sounds. Strong gusts of air blew down in front of them, sending red dust flying over the R22 canopy. The Koala made its descent and landed in front of them.
“Good news,” David said. “Looks like we haven’t lost them after all.”
* FOURTEEN *
Now that they’d left the fire behind, the sky had turned its usual New Mexico deep blue. A warm breeze blew over the mesa and drew swirls of red sand into the air.
Would be a pity to die on a day like this.
“What now?” David asked.
“Disembark the aircraft with your hands raised,” the metallic voice of a speaker said.
Anu snorted. “We do as we’re told,” she said, bitterly.
David swallowed. He thought of the gun tucked in his waistband. He pulled down his shirt and checked that it would hide the bulge. Thank goodness I wear one size over. He turned, looked at Anu and winked. “Wicked landing. The rest will be a piece of cake.”
She forced a smile through her lips.
The front doors of the Koala swung open. Naga’s bodyguard stepped out, his bald pate shiny under the harsh sun. The general’s hefty aide, the same man who’d brutally shoved Joyce inside the MRAP when she’d failed to enter the vehicle. He braced a rifle and pointed it at the two of them.
David raised his hands up into the air, and made sure with a sideways glance that Anu did the same.
“Away from the helicopter,” the man shouted.
They moved to the left. The air was dry and smelled of scorched land. There were no trees, no houses, not even antennas. Only gashing canyons and rocks layered on top of one another like wedding cakes.
Another shadow emerged from the Koala. David squinted, the sun shining in his face. This second man was lanky, with long bony limbs and an equine face that bobbed awkwardly as he strode toward them.
“Good to see you again, Stein,” Anu snarled, squinting at the tall drink of water.
Stein stretched his mouth into a lipless smile. He took one more step but Officer Baldy raised his right arm—his bulging bicep pumped with steroids—and stopped him. Stein seemed annoyed at the gesture but complied anyway.
Officer Baldy stood inches away from Anu and David, stared down at the two of them for a good minute, and then, without any forewarning, lifted his rifle and shoved the butt into David’s jaw, knocking him off his feet.
David flopped to the ground, pain exploding deep inside his skull. He howled yet no sound came out of his throat. No sound came to his ears, either, not even when he felt the thug’s boot in his stomach and blood squirt inside his mouth. Rough hands frisked him. No sounds at all, only the distorted face of Officer Baldy yelling in his ears, showing him the gun he’d just torn away from his waistline.
He didn’t hear the yelling, he didn’t feel the boot in his stomach. Only the wobbling of his brains inside his skull, laughing, yes, laughing and thinking, So much for wearing one size over.
The officer’s boots kicked dust in his face then retreated. He looked up, pain throbbing inside his forehead. The rifle was pointed. Not at him.
Damn it. Anu.
He fought the pain. He fought his body fighting back. He sat up, slowly, to see Anu on the ground, spite written all over her face. Officer Baldy kept the rifle pointed at her head. The man she’d called Stein looked down at her and smirked.
Sounds came back to his ears. Slowly, muffled by the static buzzing in his head.
“You wouldn’t understand, Dr. Sharma, would you?”
David tried to get up but the rifle barrel instantly shifted to cover him.
“And yet I thought you were so smart. So promising,” Stein was saying.
A thump, something heavy hitting the ground. David blinked and stared at the Koala. Something was lying by the skis, a sac, no, a body. It’s moving. A person. A woman, her hands tied behind her back.
And then the general finally came out of the helicopter. Big. Dark uniform plastered with shiny insignia. Imposing stance, square face, ink black hair, the kind some dictators used to wear back in the day. He deftly skipped over the tied up woman he’d just dropped to the ground and walked, no, strolled to where Stein and the Baldy Officer were standing. Hands balled in fists, casual gait. A leisurely walk, his. He stopped a couple of feet away from Anu, still down on the ground, helpless yet defiant. He tilted his head, something like a smile crawling up his lips, yet subtler, and nastier.
Definitely nastier.
“Doctor… Sharma, you said, Stein? Is this whom we have the pleasure of meeting today?”
Stein nodded, his long thin neck barely holding the heavy weight of his head. “Yes, General.”
General.
General Naga, the guy Joyce mentioned in her speech over the phone, the visitor. She called him a visitor. And suddenly David realized the woman in a salmon pink suit sprawled on the ground by the chopper was Joyce. Bound and beaten.
“Doctor Sharma,” the General repeated. “What a stupendous pleasure.”
“Not reciprocated,” Anu snapped back.
The General stiffened, as though miffed by the remark. “Oh. Well, that’s not kind for somebody who’s known your mother since she was—let’s see—just about your age now.”
The words, carefully enunciated, carved, almost, out of his mouth, dropped like bombs on Anu’s face.
“My… mother?”
He nodded. By his side, Stein smirked.
“A renowned scientist. Like yourself, I believe?”
The General
bent over and clasped Anu’s chin between his thumb and index finger.
“Get your hands off her!” David yelled. He jerked up, the ground spinning around him, and dropped on his knees again. Officer Baldy raised his rifle, ready to strike a second time. The General stopped him. “Save it, Harry. He’s harmless,” he said. He stood up, sent one last pitying glance at the two of them and then added, “I changed my mind, Harry. Load them up on the chopper, we’re taking them with us.”
He strode off, dust swirling off the trail left by his boots.
Officer Baldy—Harry, as the General had called him—pointed the rifle to David’s head. “Get up, loser.” And then, to Anu: “You too, scientist. If you don’t want to see his brains splattered down the canyon.”
David met Anu’s eyes. Lost, terrified.
Wicked landing, he told her in his thoughts. The rest will be a piece of cake.
* FIFTEEN *
“No wonder your research plans totally sucked lately, Stein,” Anu said, as the man rolled duct tape around her wrists.
“Shut up, Sharma,” Stein snarled.
She didn’t shut up. “With the luck of funding we’ve experienced lately, it sure makes a much more promising career to kill off the competition and run with the prize.”
“I said shut up!” he yelled, and slammed her head against the fuselage.
She ground her teeth, swallowing the pain, not letting a single sound come out of her mouth. Harry—the big, bald guy with the rifle—wrapped an arm around her waist, hauled her up the aircraft and shoved her to a corner seat. Her eyes fell on Joyce, strapped in the seat across from her. She had a black eye, a split lip and blood smeared all over her face and blouse. Her blond locks, always perfectly arranged in every ceremony, talk, or event she’d seen her in, were disheveled and plastered with dried blood. Eyes half open, Joyce attempted a feeble smile. The wound on her open lip reopened and fresh blood oozed down her mouth.
Anu felt a pang of regret. If only we’d arrived on time.
I’m sorry, she mouthed.
Joyce closed her eyes.
Harry shoved David next to her, then buckled both of them up, tightening the straps.
