Hover

by Anne A. Wilson

  But I wonder how long he’s going to tolerate me. He wants nothing more than to end my life, and I can see and feel the clock of a psychotic time bomb ticking. I know my one chance for escape lies in an option I can’t fathom. My gaze moves beyond Jonas to the ever-patient sea.

  You’ve already done it once today, I remind myself.

  His head whips around to the distant whopping sound. The sweet, sweet sound of an H-46. And then a second helicopter, the blades beating the air with a deeper, heavier pitch. Scanning the horizon, I enjoy the briefest moment of relief. Rescue is on the way. But that sliver of hope fades with the stark realization that Jonas is getting cornered.

  Would he endure a standoff with a hostage? Would he engage in negotiations for his release and mine? I answer no to both. Would he enjoy pointing the gun he holds at my heart? Would he relish pulling the trigger? I answer yes on both counts.

  You’re going to die in this boat, Sara.

  For the second time within the span of an hour, Ian’s voice spurs me on. I react before my brain can convince me otherwise. While Jonas’s head is turned, I jump over the side.

  47

  My decision on what to do next is made for me. Gunfire sends me downward, clawing my way through the water directly beneath the Zodiac so Jonas doesn’t have a line-of-sight target.

  This is already a bad idea. No way can I swim fast enough to evade a Zodiac. But worse, every molecule in me wants to swim upward. Up and out of this aquatic hell. Another gunshot. Shit! I start a panicked paddle downward through murky water until I can no longer discern the bottom of the boat, hoping this means he can no longer see me, either. Surely I’m out of range if he decides to fire again. I turn parallel to the surface, probably twenty feet below, my arms and legs moving in uncoordinated, erratic strokes.

  Slow down! Slow down! Relax!

  Despite my protestations, my body bristles with tension, scrabbling and fighting with the water, going nowhere.

  Relax. You’ve got to relax! Breaststroke. You remember the breaststroke? Pull, push, and glide. Pull, push, and glide. Remember?

  I extend my arms in front of me, pull them toward my hips, and push back. That’s it! You’ve got this! Pull, push, and glide. Do it again! Somehow, muscle movements ingrained from childhood are still there for me.

  I’m spurred on by the incessant whirring of the motorboat’s outboard engine. I wonder fleetingly why it’s sticking around. I can only guess that they feel having a hostage would be a good idea and it would be worth the wait to have me surface.

  Pull, push, and glide. Pull, push, and glide.

  The sounds from the outboard engines, from both the Zodiac and the motorboat, begin to diminish. Perhaps they don’t know in which direction I’m swimming. Maybe they’ve slowed or changed heading trying to find me. Or, even better, maybe they’re running from the approaching helicopters.

  Pull, push, and glide. Pull, push, and glide.

  I need air. Damn it. And I need it now.

  I shift my gaze upward and begin swimming for the surface. My lungs burn. My muscles scream. And I suspect I look like a breaching whale as I explode through the surface.

  I whip my head about. Jonas speeds toward me, forty yards away, reaching for his sidearm. I look left. The motorboat converges from the side, twenty yards behind Jonas. Their weapons are up.

  An H-60 helicopter races toward us, one hundred yards out. I wonder if they can see me. They must see the boats. At least, I hope they can.

  I dive again, but not as deep this time, just trying to move away.

  Pull, push, and glide. Pull, push, and glide.

  I know I can’t do this. He’ll catch me soon, but I swim anyway.

  Pull, push, and glide. Pull, push, and glide.

  I swim and I’m getting heavy.

  Pull, push, and glide.

  I have to go up. And this is it. He’s going to be waiting. Jonas will be waiting this time.

  I burst through the whipped-up, whitecapped surface. Rotor blades thwack the air and the outboard motors wail. Jonas raises his pistol. I dive under, but not before a searing, stinging pain rips through my thigh. I grab for my leg, clutching the wound. But I’m floating to the surface.

  I can’t break the surface. I wind my hands in a reverse propeller-like motion to push me deeper. Wisps of red rise before me.

  I try to swim, using arm strokes only, but without my legs to help me kick downward, I start rising again. I scull frantically to stay under, arms swirling through a spiraling column of blood. So much. I look down, afraid to see the wound responsible for this. My survival vest blocks the view of my leg. I tug at it to pull it out of the way.

  My hand falls on my left chest pocket. That’s right! I have a gun! I have a—

  I pat at the pocket, squashing it flat. And then I remember. Just prior to jumping out of the Zodiac, I saw Captain Plank’s Beretta 9mm still attached to Jonas’s waistband.

  But my air is out now and I have to swim up.

  When I break the surface this time, agitated water stings and whips my face. The rotor wash from an H-60 is stirring the sea into a frenzy. Bright white numbers, 67, reflect in the sun on the tail boom. Jonas balances in the Zodiac ten yards away. His gun is aimed … but not at me. I follow his line of sight, watching in horror as he tracks the falling object from Shadow Hunter 67.

  Someone has jumped from the left seat of the aircraft. The mission commander’s seat. Eric. He doesn’t wear a helmet. And he has to be at least fifty feet in the air.

  Jonas fires and Eric’s body jerks as the bullet hits.

  “No!” I scream.

  My voice is drowned out by the heavy whopping of an H-46 that passes immediately to my left, ten feet above the water. It’s Sabercat 54. Sabercat 54? How—? It splits the distance between the two boats, its .50 caliber machine gun aimed at Jonas. The one doing the firing? I can see him from here. Senior Chief Makovich.

  A hailstorm of bullets riddles Jonas’s Zodiac, rapidly deflating the pontoons. The weapons fire is returned, but not from Jonas. The men in the motorboat shoot at the helicopter, so Sabercat 54 circles in, pointing its machine gun to its new target.

  “Sara!” Eric swims toward me, leaving a wake of blood swirling behind him.

  “Eric! You … you’re…”

  “I’m fine, but—” He eyes the pool of red that surrounds me. “Oh, Jesus…”

  “I’m okay—”

  “Get down!” he shouts. A protective hand moves in front of my face, while he raises his other arm, Sig Sauer in hand, and fires. Jonas ducks, crouching low in the sinking Zodiac. Taking advantage of the fact that Sabercat 54 has shifted its fire to the fleeing motorboat, Jonas raises his sidearm.

  Eric shoots again, hitting Jonas near the shoulder of his firing arm. Jonas folds over briefly, his other hand clutching his shoulder. But Jonas and Eric must have fired almost simultaneously because Eric lets out a grunt of pain and blood sprays from his hand. He can no longer hold his weapon, which dangles precariously on his index finger, snagged in the trigger housing.

  The .50 cal from Sabercat 54 pummels the motorboat, only one of the occupants standing now.

  Eric looks at his damaged hand. “Fuck!” he shouts angrily.

  It affords Jonas the time to pull his torso upright and take aim—not at me, but at Eric.

  And the slow-motion sequence happens for the second time today. My eyes are drawn to Captain Plank’s Beretta 9mm, the wooden pistol grip visible above Jonas’s waist.

  “I was there when Mr. Plank told Mr. Amicus you were to have this,” Jonas said. “Something about how impressed he was with your ability to perform under pressure.… What a disappointment!”

  I suck in my breath, pull Eric’s gun from his hand, and aim it at Jonas. And still, I hesitate, registering that I’m about to shoot another human being.

  But the next thing that registers is the smirk on Jonas’s face.

  An explosion of sound rockets through my ears as I pull the trigger. Jona
s’s hand recoils from the hit, his pistol jettisoned into the sea. I continue to fire until Jonas drops.

  Someone must have called for reinforcements because I see and hear the cavalry approaching. Nighthawks streak toward us, and the destroyer Leftwich, along with the frigate Robert G. Bradley, speed over the horizon.

  The last standing member of the motorboat falls to Sabercat 54’s attack. The helicopter circles and dives for us. It moves so fast, surely it’s going to fly right by. But the pilot does an amazing 180-degree rotation, a sweet buttonhook, that stops the aircraft dead in front of us. The ramp opens and Lego and Messy are there, soaked, to pull us into the aircraft.

  The helicopter accelerates forward and the med bags are out. Lego turns to Eric, a pair of scissors in his hand, while Messy kneels next to me.

  “Don’t touch me until you’ve finished with her,” Eric orders.

  Lego nods, and together, he and Messy start to cut away my flight suit.

  I glance behind me. Senior Chief Makovich kneels over Animal, but I’m unable to ascertain more because the effort to hold my head up is too great. I lay back and turn to Eric, who lies by my side, propped on his elbow. His face is blurry. I blink to bring him in focus.

  “Sara, you’re going to be okay,” he says reassuringly. My body starts to shake, freezing. “Guys, let’s get her out of these wet clothes.”

  “Roger that,” Lego says.

  “I’ll get a blanket,” Messy says.

  My ears … the sounds are fading. Black curtains begin to close around my eyes. Eric places his hand on my head and gently strokes my hair.

  “You’re going to be okay, Sara. You’re going to be okay.”

  I reach for his hand, lace my fingers through his, and the curtains close.

  48

  It’s the familiar drone I recognize first. The whirring, the constant hum, the smells … I’m on a Navy ship. My eyes flutter open, focusing on the neatly stenciled ducting running across the overhead. I’m lying in a bed, white curtains hung on either side. Tubing runs from my left arm. I follow it upward to the IV bag that hangs above me.

  I feel a squeeze of my hand and roll my head sideways. Glassy green eyes peer into mine.

  “Hey,” Eric says.

  “Hey,” I whisper.

  He sits in a chair next to me, his head level with mine.

  “You’re okay,” I say.

  “Now I am,” he says, putting his other hand around mine.

  “But you were hit. I remember.”

  “Yeah.” He motions to his leg. Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, he has a bandage on his right thigh.

  I look at the dressings on my right thigh and then back to his.

  “We match.”

  He laughs lightly, his eyes glistening. “That we do.”

  “And your hand,” I say, my eyes drawn to the gauze covering his right palm.

  “Looked a lot worse than it was,” he says. “And you?” He motions to my left hand, the one that I just now realize is wrapped like his.

  “It’s fine.” I trace my fingers across his bandaging. “Where are we?” I ask.

  “In sickbay on Nimitz. You have one of the few private rooms here, actually.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “You know, special treatment for the female.”

  My grimace quickly spreads into a grin.

  “It’s been almost twenty-four hours since your surgery.”

  “I had surgery?”

  He nods. “They removed the bullet.”

  “And you?”

  “Same. I woke up last night, though, so I’ve been waiting for you for a while now.”

  He shifts slightly in his seat, adjusting his hands to rest more securely around mine. “How do you feel? Do you need anything?”

  I shake my head. “Just you.”

  He brings one of his hands to my face, running his fingers gently across my skin before combing them lightly through my hair.

  “So I guess you were right to be worried,” I admit.

  He bites his lip.

  “Did you know?” I ask. “About Jonas?”

  “I had a hunch,” he says, bringing his hand back to cover mine. “We had intelligence that something was going down and leads that pointed to Jonas, but not definitively.”

  “The earpiece? Is that why…?”

  “Everyone felt the intel guys were reading it wrong, but I couldn’t let it go. I had this gut feeling, so yeah, that’s why I gave you the radio.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me your concerns?”

  “Because I started wondering if the guys were right. Mike, Animal, they thought I was taking it too personally. That I was too quick to point the finger.”

  “But why would you do that?”

  “Remember when I said Jonas and I had a history? Well, it’s a sordid one.”

  “I remember, but we’ve never had a chance—”

  “I know. The short story is we’ve conducted joint missions with him and his guys in the past. He didn’t care to follow orders. He was reckless … dangerous. And the two of us? Butting heads would be an understatement. I had the lead on every mission we did together, and you can imagine how well that went over. And then, the sordid part…”

  He stops, lifting his shirt, pointing to the bullet wound on his abdomen. Pink and raised and circular, it’s just as I remembered. Wait …

  “Are you saying…? Did he—”

  “The bullet that left this scar came from his gun,” he says carefully.

  My hands fly to my mouth. “No.”

  “We were trapped in a firefight. One of his men was killed and another severely wounded. But it wouldn’t have happened had he stayed in position as I’d ordered. He screwed up, plain and simple. I called him on it right there and I could see it in his eyes. Everything that had built up between us. All those years. Something just snapped. It was about ten minutes later when I went down.”

  “He aimed at you? He actually fired at you?”

  “He claimed it was an errant bullet … I don’t know. I couldn’t prove it. But there was no one near me when it happened, and based on past experience, Jonas only hits what he aims at.”

  “That’s unfathomable.”

  “Actually, it’s even worse than that.”

  “How could it be worse?”

  He runs his hand over the scar and it’s some moments before he answers.

  “This is an exit wound.”

  I pause, staring at the scarring. Wait a minute. I look into his eyes and then back to the wound. “An exit…?” And then it registers. “He shot you in the back?”

  He nods.

  “Eric, I can’t even…”

  “I know it doesn’t excuse my actions for trying to keep you off the mission, but I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you. I hope you can understand.”

  “I do,” I say. “Now I do.”

  He pulls his shirt down again.

  “But if you didn’t trust Jonas, and if the others didn’t either, why were you working on such an important mission together? One that involved a U.S. president?”

  “We argued against it, but it was Aussie intelligence that led to the plot discovery, and it got political from there. Our hands were tied.”

  “I see. But when did you suspect something was up during the mission itself? You got to us so fast.”

  “After you took off from the Kansas City, I called and had five four launch right after you. Something nagged at me. The distance between the targets, I think. And then the whole episode on Nimitz. Switching teams around at the last minute. Something wasn’t right.”

  “I know. You didn’t look too happy.”

  “And the sub … Well, we realized pretty quickly we weren’t prosecuting anything.”

  “Jonas told me. It was a diversion to keep you away. There’s so much I need to tell you, but he was hired, Eric. By someone in U.S. intelligence. Very high in U.S. intelligence. He told me.”

  “That would make sense. We kn
ew he had to have had high-level help. We had solid intel, normally reliable intel, of exactly when that sub would be there for the rendezvous. But instead, the Leftwich boys were left scratching their heads with negative sonar readings and Mike was out there just turning circles. Once we realized we were chasing a ghost, we had five four on scene within thirty minutes. We were already en route when I received your SOS call. That was brilliant, by the way. Agonizing to listen to. But brilliant.”

  “Did you think we were really ops normal?”

  “I did. Even though I suspected something was up with Jonas, I had no inkling whatsoever that his plans would involve you.”

  “Did you hear what happened?”

  “Yeah.” He looks down, his thumbs busily rubbing my hand. “God, if I’d seen your bird go down…”

  It’s several long moments before he looks at me again. “You probably don’t know this, but Messy radioed me just after you went in.”

  “Radioed you? But Jonas took their radios.”

  “He used the radio I’d given you.”

  “What? But Jonas ripped it apart. He fixed that?”

  “Yeah. He gave me all the gory details—well, the quick version anyway. We were only twenty minutes out at the time. It’s how we knew you’d been taken aboard Twister.”

  “That means he fixed it while he was floating in the ocean. Unbelievable.”

  “No kidding.”

  Floating in the ocean. Floating with Animal … I hesitate to ask the question. He was hurt so badly.

  “What is it?” he says.

  “Animal?” I ask.

  A slow smile crosses his face. “He’s one tough SOB, I tell you what.”

  “He’s okay?”

  “Thanks to you, yes. He told me what you said. What you did. The way he talks, he’ll be naming his firstborn after you.”

  “What about Lego and Messy? Are they okay?”

  “Fine. I spoke with them yesterday. They spent most of the day with investigators, giving their statements, and they’re doing it again today, but yeah, they’re good. They’re really worried about you.”

  “They were both amazing. Lego repaired the engine oil line using who knows what and then Messy with the AFCS. Genius.”