Risk Taker

by Lindsay McKenna

  Sarah pulled her NVGs down across her eyes, and flicked them on; the world became a grainy green in the blackness of the night. “Tait, I’m putting in the heading on the computer,” she told him, punching in the latitude and longitude of some unnamed ridge in the Hindu Kush mountains, where Ethan and his men were fighting for their lives. The computer would then give her the waypoints, invisible positions that would be route markers to get her to the hill in the shortest amount of time.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tait murmured, his Louisiana Cajun voice a combination of fear and adrenaline.

  Sarah’s job was to ensure everything in the cabin of the shaking, shuddering Black Hawk was ready to receive wounded. She worked with Pascal, who knew the drill. The aircrew chief, Potter, verified two litters were attached to the wall and ready to receive the wounded. Her mind revolved around Tait’s being scared. Her crew chief would handle any emergency in the rear, behind their seats. Pascal was the best in any medical emergency.

  She had a green copilot up front with her on his first night flight. It wasn’t a good formula to have under the circumstances. Night flying was the most dangerous of all because the NVGs did not give the pilots depth of perception. All a pilot saw was a flat, two-dimensional surface, when in reality, it could be anything but that. Sarah wasn’t going to let Tait do the actual landing. There was no way. Not tonight.

  Ethan was out there. Was he wounded? His voice had sounded harsh. It took everything Sarah had to push her own personal feelings out of the way. Why had she run away from him?

  After receiving permission from the tower, the Black Hawk lifted off; gravity pushed them down into their seats. She’d let Tait fly them in. No harm in that, but Sarah still watched the instrument panel, the FLIR, which was infrared radar that showed elevation of the mountains, and she constantly checked their altitude.

  Many young pilots unused to night flight could lose the horizon, lose their sense of up and down. It was called spatial disorientation. And when that happened, and it would sooner or later to a new pilot, they had to trust the horizon indicator in the helo to stop them from crashing. She switched radio frequency to TOC, Tactical Operations Center, at Bagram Air Base. They would be their clearance and where they’d get their final orders.

  She switched another channel, connecting with the SEAL team. “Gator Actual, this is Falcon Actual. Over.” Her heart pounded, waiting for Ethan to reply. When he did, she heard screams, yells and bullets being fired in the background.

  “Falcon Actual, this is Gator Actual. Over.”

  Ethan sounded so damned unruffled. As if he were talking to her over a meal at the chow hall. SEALs had nerves of steel. Closing her eyes for a moment, Sarah heard a massive explosion. Her ears rang from it. An RPG had exploded nearby, and she waited seconds for the booming sound to dissolve. “Gator Actual, we’re on our way to your position.” She read him off the coordinates, making sure they were the same as what Donaldson had handed her earlier.

  “Roger that, Falcon Actual. GPS position is accurate.”

  “Our ETA is thirty-one minutes. Over.”

  “Roger.”

  She heard the calmness of Ethan’s voice, but the strain was there. Sarah could feel his worry, his attention elsewhere. “Gator Actual, give me a tally of wounded? Over.”

  “Two down, one critical. Head wound. Thigh wound, no broken femur. Over.”

  Her heart tore over that information. “Roger, Gator Actual. This is a casevac. Will radio Bagram hospital with details. Over.” Sarah wanted to say so much more. So much. God, if she could only apologize for being so afraid of a relationship with him. Mouth tightening, perspiration popping out on her upper lip, Sarah knew all their transmissions were monitored by all parties back at Camp Bravo as well as SEAL HQ at Bagram Air Base. She could say nothing. “Gator Actual, will apprise you five minutes out from your position. I’ll need landing GPS coordinates from you. Over.”

  “Roger that. It will be ready for you. Gator Actual out.”

  She wondered if that would be the last time she heard Ethan’s voice. Terror gripped her heart, but Sarah automatically watched the instruments. She gave a swift glance at Tait, who seemed all right now. He knew how to fly this bird. She glanced over her shoulder. Pascal was sitting at the rear of the cabin in one of the jump seats, his hands draped over his drawn-up knees. He’d heard the transmission and already had supplies laid out nearby for both types of wounds on the individual litters. Sarah was proud of her crew. She trusted Pascal. Often, on firefights, the two medics who normally flew in would reduce to one. The helicopter could only carry so much weight, and Donaldson had made the decision tonight to carry one medic. That way, if other SEALs became wounded, they could be brought on board and safely carried out. Weight was always a contentious beast in a Black Hawk. Sarah was glad Donaldson had made the decision he did.

  She switched to SEAL HQ at Camp Bravo and heard Master Chief Hunter’s calm voice speaking to Ethan, giving him intel. In the background, Sarah listened to the escalating firefight. The patrol was pinned down by a large, unknown-size force. The CIA was trying to get a drone into place over the ridge to give them thermal imaging capability of just how many Taliban were hiding in that wadi. Frustration moved through her.

  They were twenty minutes into the flight and Sarah could now see the area ahead of them. The FLIR display on their computer screen showed the mountains and valleys in front of them. These were high-altitude, rocky, miserable areas to land on, and Sarah knew it.

  Ethan’s voice came over her headset. “Falcon Actual, this is Gator Actual. Over.”

  “Falcon Actual. Over.”

  “Be apprised there will be JDAMs falling in two minutes.” He gave her the GPS coordinates. “Fly clear of that area. Over.”

  “Roger, Gator Actual. Received the info and will redirect our flight.” Sarah turned and told Tait to bank right, away from that mountain ten miles away from them. She’d seen JDAMs light up the night and take out the whole top of a mountain before. The concussion waves of the bombs exploding would ripple through the air like invisible fists. If their helo was too close, it would cause hellacious turbulence, throwing crewmen around in the back and causing major and sometimes dangerous havoc. She quickly reset the GPS to create different waypoints that would still get them to that ridge, just a different flight route.

  “I’ll take over,” she told Tait. “I have the controls. Potter, Pascal, strap in.”

  “Strapped in, Chief,” Pascal confirmed.

  “You have the controls,” Tait said, releasing them to her.

  “I have the controls.” After wrapping her Nomex gloves around the cyclic and collective, boots on the rudders, Sarah felt better. She knew her bird as intimately as she knew her own body. Although she flew with instruments, there was another invisible connection she had to her Black Hawk and that was the seat-of-the-pants one. Sarah could feel the shuddering vibration running through her bird; she sensed its stability, the strains on the two engines, the sound and pitch of the blades above them. She melded, metal to human, with the helicopter. Now, they were one. Now she would feel subtle changes, shifts, stresses and anything else that would impinge on her bird. It was years of experience, intuition, that would keep them alive as they flew toward hell.

  Tait gasped. “Man, look at that!” He pointed out the Plexiglas.

  Sarah refused to look. The JDAMs had hit their target. Her hands grew firmer around the controls; her booted feet monitored the rudders. “Don’t watch,” she snapped at Tait. “It will destroy your night vision!”

  “Damn,” Tait rasped, amazement in his voice. “What a helluva show!” He turned away and followed her order.

  Sarah knew what it looked like. There would be massive yellow, orange and red roiling, fiery clouds bursting out into the night sky. It would resemble a nuclear bomb, lurid red, dirty orange and yellow colors and fire churning upward into the blackness.

  “Make sure your harnesses are tight,” she warned her crew over the inte
rcabin frequency again. Sarah knew what was coming. And so did Pascal and Potter. Tait didn’t.

  Tait quickly tightened down his harness, pushing his NVGs up because watching the string of blasts had destroyed his night vision. It would take precious minutes for his eyes to readjust.

  Sarah felt the concussion wave of the JDAMs’ energy stalking them. In seconds, the first one struck the Black Hawk. One moment they were flying level. The next, an invisible fist lifted the bird nearly five hundred feet straight up. Sarah wrestled with the controls. She heard Tait gasp and curse. The first wave rolled past them, and she got her bird straightened out once more, flying level and straight.

  “Holy hell,” Tait gasped. “What was that?”

  Sarah grinned a little. “Blast concussion waves. They travel faster than the speed of sound. And they tend to suck you back toward them.” Sarah knew he’d never experienced them before. “There’s more coming. Hang on….”

  The Black Hawk shuddered violently as two more concussion waves struck them in a row. The helicopter’s engines changed, strained, and the bird got thrown sideways, sliding through the air on its starboard side. Tait was on the engine throttles, monitoring and changing them as demanded. Instantly, Sarah corrected with hard left rudder, jamming her boot down on it, swiftly making corrections with the cyclic and collective between her gloved hands. This was where physical strength counted. If she couldn’t stop the helicopter from wanting to roll, which would put them into an out-of-control situation, it was brute strength that would help right the bird. Gasping, Sarah tightened her grip, her arm muscles tensing. Her boot held down that left rudder to stop the skid, and her hands finessed the bird such that it would respond to her efforts.

  “Damn!” Tait yelled, gripping the fuel throttles.

  “Relax,” Sarah said. She hauled the Black Hawk around, feeling it respond. In such a flight situation, rough, quick jerks and pulls on the flight controls would send them into an even worse crisis. Knowing it had to be subtle, minute movements to not yank the helicopter around, Sarah felt the helo responding, righting itself. She heard less strain on the floundering engines. The blades were working hard, sucking air beneath them in order to rebalance. Some of her tension bled off, easing as the Black Hawk finally smoothed out to stable flight once more.

  Tait was breathing hard, his eyes huge as he stared over at her. “Jesus, that was close!”

  Sarah’s mouth quirked. Tait was getting a hell of a lesson tonight, something every medevac pilot would potentially encounter sooner or later. “Get your goggles down, Tait. I’m going to need your eyes on the landing zone in a minute.” Sarah’s heart began a long, slow thud in her chest. She told Tait to switch channels so she could talk to Ethan. He was going to have to bring her in, guide her into the blackness of the night into somewhere on that rocky ridge to save SEAL lives. The FLIR would help her once he chose the spot.

  Sarah’s gaze moved to the digital clock on the instrument panel. “Gator Actual, this is Falcon Actual. Over.” She would use the clock’s seconds as a countdown to landing.

  She waited. Nothing. Damn. Sarah called again, her heart rate amping up with fear. Was Ethan down? Wounded? Oh, no…please don’t let that be.

  “Falcon Actual, this is Gator Actual. Over.”

  Sarah heard the rasp in Ethan’s voice, and the gunfire was loud and clear. What was happening? He sounded out of breath. “Gator Actual, I’m four minutes and thirty seconds out from your position. Give me GPS landing instructions. Over.”

  Tait wrote down the information, then quickly punched in the position into their computer on board the helo. He then called Bagram and received authorization to go in. Sarah’s gaze whipped to the display showing the nine-thousand-foot mountain they were approaching. There was a crest-like ridge, and she memorized the land just below. There was nothing but rocks and very little soil and only some struggling brush trying to survive at that harsh altitude. Her worry focused in on the landing site. She saw the wadi two hundred feet away, to the north of the LZ. There was a slight knoll, about twenty feet high, just enough to set the two front wheels of her bird down on, but that was all. She’d have to keep the tail up in the air. Tait was running up the fuel throttles, giving the bird takeoff power to hang there and yet keep the front wheels on the earth so the men could be loaded on board. This was going to be dicey.

  The surrounding area had fallen away, giving the blades of the helo enough room so that they would not accidentally strike any of the land formations, shattering the rocky outcrop and sending her and her crew into a crash. Judging from all the surrounding terrain, Ethan had chosen the best landing spot out of a bad situation. Sarah noted a hump of land to the north of her landing spot. She quickly estimated there was less than ten feet between that rocky cliff that jutted outward and the length of her bird’s rotor blade tip. If she didn’t set the helo down very carefully, her blade could strike that massive rock. And then they’d all be lost.

  Sweat began to trickle down inside her uniform as she melded herself completely with her Black Hawk once more.

  “We’re committed,” she told her crew, her voice tight. Somewhere down below, Ethan had the wounded SEALs waiting to be brought on board once she got the bird on the ground.

  As she swung the Black Hawk around, banking in, Sarah knew they’d take on enemy fire. Praying that the Taliban would not shoot and destroy the Jesus nut on the rotor assembly, thereby causing them to crash, her mouth thinned into a single line, her eyes narrowed. They were going in….

  Chapter 14

  Ethan’s heart wrenched as he followed the progress of the Black Hawk being flown in by Sarah. He crouched behind rocks; the two wounded SEALs were nearby. The firefight behind him was furious and escalating—the Taliban threw everything they had at them. Breathing slowly, the adrenaline giving him that cold, unemotional focus needed in battle, he heard the whapping of the blades puncturing the skin of the night. He worried about RPGs being fired at her helicopter from over the hill.

  Tolleson was going to order the team into fire suppression mode, sending a wall of bullets into the wadi, hoping to stop that from happening. The LPO gave the order quietly over his mic to the SEALs. A roar of concentrated gunfire into the wadi began, booming thunder, lacerating the night.

  Ethan knelt, waiting, rifle in hand, listening to the Black Hawk approach. He’d thrown four green chem lights that would show her exactly where to place those two front wheels on the earth. Sarah was smart; she was coming in from the south, as far away from the wadi as she could get to protect her bird and crew from possible RPG attack.

  His throat tightened as he watched the Black Hawk come in, flare, its belly up to quickly bleed off the forward air speed, the blades slicing heavily through the air. His mouth compressed into a hard line and his eyes narrowed as she set the bird’s two front wheels down lightly on that knoll. Christ, she was good. He bowed his head, feeling the blasts from the rotors nearly knocking him over backward. Sarah had to come in hot, had to keep the power up to takeoff speed and she knew there was no place to put down the rear wheel.

  The door slid open on the Black Hawk. He recognized Pascal and the crew chief leaping out onto the rocky ground, NVGs on. Instantly, Ethan waved, getting their attention to where he had the wounded SEALs. Slipping the M4 over his shoulder, he got ready to carry the most critical SEAL, Dylan, the one with the head wound who was unconscious. It would require all of them to carry the SEAL to the hovering Black Hawk.

  “This one first,” Ethan yelled to them, pointing down at Dylan. “Head wound.”

  Pascal nodded, his face unreadable. The medic and crew chief each took Dylan’s shoulders and Ethan took his friend’s feet. They started carrying him as fast as they could toward the helicopter. Bullets started snapping and popping around them. Ethan crouched, cursing. Where the hell were those bullets coming from? His eyes were riveted on the helo. The rotor wash slapped them brutally, tearing at their clothes, making it hard to move forward or see where they
were putting their feet. Ethan helped ease Dylan up and into the deck of the helo.

  Pascal and Potter quickly hauled him over to the other side and placed him in the top litter.

  “Stay there!” Ethan yelled. “I’ll get the other SEAL!” He turned, nearly losing his footing on the bumpy ground and rocks. Bullets were flying into the Black Hawk. He could hear them hitting the metal skin, ripping it open. Just as he crouched and lunged down the knoll, he heard the Plexiglas on the left side of the helo crack as four bullets smashed into it. The hardened plastic shattered, raining down around him like snow.

  It was on Sarah’s side of the helo, dammit! Ethan couldn’t stop to look to see if she was all right or not. He raced down the knoll, heading for the second SEAL, Bristol, who was wounded in the thigh. The bullets spit up geysers around his boots as he raced toward the safety of the rocks.

  Ethan grabbed his friend, sliding his arm around his waist, hauling his arm around his shoulder. Bristol had a tourniquet on his upper thigh, but he was weak from loss of blood. The SEAL was semiconscious, trying to get his legs under him as Ethan hauled him up to his feet. Gasping for breath, his lungs burning like fire because of the high altitude, Ethan knew he had to hurry. The longer that Black Hawk was on the ground, the bigger and better target it was for the Taliban.

  Ethan made sure he was on the mountainside where the bullets originated. It had to be a new group swinging around to try and attack the SEAL force from the rear. The Taliban in the wadi were silenced by the continued fire suppression laid down by the SEALs.

  Sonofabitch! He tripped and scrambled, lunging forward with Bristol, practically dragging him along. Climbing, slipping and nearly falling several times, Ethan managed to haul the heavier SEAL up to the lip of the helo. Pascal was there, hands outstretched to receive the wounded man. Ethan pushed Bristol up into the helo. Gasps of air exploded out of his mouth from the monumental rescue effort.

  As Ethan turned to leave, he took a bullet to his Kevlar. It spun him around, knocking and lifting him off his feet, throwing him backward. He slammed into the ground, rolling.