Full Blaze

by M. L. Buchman

  They were about halfway back to the fire. It couldn’t have been more than a minute.

  “Commun-i-cate.” It came out between three gasping breaths.

  Right, he had the radio as well. He pushed the radio button on the back side of the cyclic with his index finger.

  “Base, this is Cal.”

  “Remember to watch what you say,” Connie reminded him from her perch close beside him.

  “This is Mark, go ahead.”

  “Hey, boss, we’ve got, uh, a bit of a problem here. Found what we were looking for, and it, uh…” Then he remembered his very first talk with Henderson. “It went about as well as the first time you kissed your wife.” When she’d pummeled his face into a table on an aircraft carrier.

  That earned him a respectful silence. “What do you need?”

  A miracle if they were going to survive with him at the controls.

  “We’ve got”—Jeannie gulped for air—“about two more minutes aloft.”

  Cal glanced over and she nodded down toward something on the console. He looked down, but the amount of information was overwhelming. He did spot something flashing red, but didn’t know what it meant.

  “Put me on,” Connie called over the intercom.

  Cal keyed the mic and nodded for Connie to speak.

  “Hey, boss, we’re back in it again, just like last time I flew. And going about as well as last time I flew with you.”

  Cal clicked off the mic. “What did that mean?”

  “He knows I’m an inexperienced pilot. And that I had to finish a flight after his wife had been shot.”

  “Who’s flying?” was Henderson’s tight response.

  “First time I flew with him”—Connie sounded almost nostalgic—“we were shot out of the sky. A guy named Dusty James took several rounds.” Maybe not such a happy memory.

  “This…” Cal triggered the mic and tried to ignore the console as a second something started blinking red. He had to clear his throat before he could continue. “This is Captain Cal Jackson. I’m in charge of the remainder of today’s flight. We’re at…” He had to look around the console display to identify the coordinate readout of their present location, then read them off.

  “Roger that. We’re—” Something above his head sparked brightly and the radio cut out.

  “Well, that was fun. Is the cyclic supposed to be vibrating like this?” It felt like he was holding a hand mixer.

  Jeannie squeezed her knees together on either side of the cyclic. “Not good. Really, really, not good.”

  Cal returned his attention to outside the aircraft. So, if he was going to land, he wanted somewhere wide, no trees, and preferably very soft. The mountainous terrain of East Timor that greeted him through the windscreen told him he wasn’t going to be finding that any time soon.

  And the fire was too damned close.

  “I need you to climb.”

  “Climb? Did that bullet hit you in the head?”

  “Shut up, Cal, and listen. Pull up on the collective and slow down to a hundred and ten knots airspeed by pulling back on the cyclic.”

  He looked forward at the approaching wall of smoke and fire. Either you were going to trust the woman all the way or not at all. Taking a deep breath, he eased up on the collective. Their heading started to drift and he tapped on the pedals.

  “Don’t do that. Gentle, easy motions. They damaged the tail, and I don’t know how bad it is. We’re in the death zone right now. We either need to be under fifty feet or over four hundred.”

  “I vote for fifty.”

  “Do you? Look down.”

  Cal did, gasped, and continued climbing the chopper. They were on the rugged front slopes of the mountains that defined the country’s border in this area. If they crashed here, they’d tumble down a long way back into Indonesia. Back toward the people in the valley who just shot Jeannie.

  ***

  Jeannie breathed through the fog of pain. Her poor Firehawk. It was crying with so many voices. Hydraulic pressure falling, a fuel leak, though not a dangerous one—they’d be down, one way or another, before they ran out of fuel at this rate. The out-of-balance indicator on the main rotors worried her the most; that was what was making the cyclic vibrate. Some part or parts had been shot away. For now the main rotor was holding up to the imbalance, but for how long?

  Black Hawks were built tough. This was a machine designed for war, and one that had actually served. For now, she’d have to trust the machine to do what it was designed to do.

  She wanted to beg Connie for a painkiller—there had to be something in the med kit—but she needed to stay sharp. And there was no way for Connie to reach around to help with her wounded arm; the high chair back and narrow space precluded that.

  And Cal. He was magnificent. She could hear the strain, but she could also hear him keeping it under control. She’d told him to take over, and he’d done it without question. And he just might get them down. He’d better—he was their only hope.

  “You’re doing great, Cal.”

  “Tell me that after we get out of this, Helitack.”

  “Watch your airspeed, Hotshot.” It helped her ignore the pain if she kept up the tease.

  “One-ten. Why one-ten?”

  “Best rate of glide,” Connie answered for her. “At our current altitude, it provides almost a half mile to find a safe place to land once we have engine failure.”

  “Is that what’s happening?”

  “Well—” Jeannie hesitated. She really didn’t want to scare him. He was in so far past his comfort lev—

  “It’s a race,” Connie informed him in a calm voice. “At this point it’s between engine failure and rotor failure. If rotor failure wins, we die. With engine failure, our chances improve with more altitude at the moment.”

  Jeannie could see that Cal was really sorry he’d asked.

  “Yeah, this is as good as it gets,” she teased him. Except it came out more like a moan than a tease. She reached deep, looking for reserves, and wasn’t having a lot of luck finding them.

  “We need a new definition of good,” he stated definitively, bless the man. The fire lay before them. The black was too far away. They had a choice between level and clear. The clear areas were too vertical and the level areas were… Cal whimpered aloud like a mad cartoon character, almost adding a smile, and then his face sobered. “We’re going into the trees, aren’t we?”

  “Smart, Hotshot. Always said you were.” Jeannie hissed as the chopper jarred in an air current.

  “Sorry, Jeannie.”

  “Just get us down. Then you can be sorry all you want.”

  “Deal. How do I do that?”

  “That fire is really squeezing our options.”

  The smoke was squeezing them worse. They were already past any smoke density Jeannie was allowed to fly into short of a life-and-death emergency. Well, this definitely counted for that, but she doubted Emily would be following them in for a rescue. According to the instrument panel, Emily was back at Suai for refueling—thirty miles and too many minutes away, at least ten, maybe more depending on her fuel status. This would be over in two…if they were lucky. One minute if they weren’t.

  Steve’s drone zipped into view and circled them once before waggling its wings.

  “Don’t answer!” Jeannie snapped just as Cal was about to wiggle the cyclic back and forth. “It just might be the last gesture we ever make.”

  His look of alarm made her smile. He smiled back. In the midst of all this hell, he smiled at her.

  “There!” She pointed and immediately wished she hadn’t. The sudden easing of pressure on her wound sent a wave of pain racing up from her injured arm, making her head spin with nausea. She bit down on her cheek. She was not going to be sick all over herself. She wrapped her hand once more about her arm and m
ade herself a promise not to remove it again until she had some really good drugs in her.

  Steve’s drone circled around them again. She wondered how bad they looked. There’d definitely be a black smoke contrail, maybe—

  The drone exploded right in front of them in a bright flash. She and Cal cursed in unison. Even the unflappable Connie made an unhappy sound.

  “RPG!” Connie announced. “Rocket-propelled grenade. We’ve got to get down now!”

  Jeannie could have avoided the cloud of debris, maybe, but Cal didn’t stand a chance and flew right into it. Her front windscreen star-cracked as a chunk of the drone’s wing bounced off the Plexiglas and disappeared upward.

  Then she heard the cry of metal. The number two engine had just eaten a chunk of Steve’s drone.

  “Connie. Can you pull the number two T-handle?”

  The woman reached forward, whispering a sorry before she leaned on Jeannie’s good shoulder. The pain transmitted sideways, but it was better than the risk of jarring an under-qualified pilot. It was awkward but Connie pulled down on the number two shutdown-and-fire T-handle.

  Jeannie had never had to do that outside of a simulator. Immediately, fuel flow to the number two engine cut off, the loud clanking of the damaged engine began to slow rapidly, and a sharp hiss announced the release of the extinguishing fluid. And they started to drop.

  “Up on the collective, Cal. Connie, strap in. This is it.”

  ***

  “This is what?” Cal yanked up on the collective and the chopper jerked. Then he eased it off. He was overreacting, but he didn’t understand what had just happened.

  “We now are flying on one engine. Head for that opening at about two o’clock. We have enough altitude. Pull back on the cyclic until we’re only going eighty knots.” Jeannie’s voice was rasping against the pain.

  “Lost an engine.” “RPG.” Steve’s drone exploding. He was not ready for any of this.

  “C’mon, Hotshot. Ease the cyclic to the right.”

  To the right. What idiot had put him in charge of a crashing helicopter? “Two o’clock.” All he saw was forest. Finally he spotted a clearing coming around in front of the nose from Jeannie’s side.

  Something on the panel started beeping for attention. When he looked down, he saw a whole lot of red on the displays.

  “Don’t look down!” Jeannie shouted at him, then groaned. “I’ll take care of that.”

  Cal gave up and let go. Let himself become a vehicle for Jeannie’s orders. “A shade forward on the cyclic. A little more left pedal.”

  Any emergency he’d ever been in, he’d always been the go-to guy. He’d never liked it when it was someone else. Following a crew boss’s orders was what you did, but he’d never enjoyed it. One of the many reasons he’d gone freelance. In control of his own destiny.

  But he trusted Jeannie Clark, trusted her with his life. So she commanded and he flew.

  “Cal, see the other T-handle in the overhead console?”

  “The one that isn’t flashing.”

  “Right. Once we hit the ground or the first tree, the controls will be meaningless. I want you to do two things the instant before we hit. Number one, most important, pull that handle. Number two, tuck in your knees and grab your crossed-shoulder harness with both hands. You got that?”

  “T-handle. Go fetal.” He struggled to keep his mind working. “Can’t I just go fetal now? It would make me much happier, Helitack.”

  She laughed, groaned, and told him to pull the cyclic back a little.

  There were so many things to say. But the ground was approaching, fast. They were only seconds above the trees. There were far too many things to say, all of them important.

  “Full up on collective! Full back on cyclic!”

  He did. They slowed abruptly, then with an awful crunch, he watched one of the rotor blades snap in half as it spun by the forward windscreen.

  The most important thing to say rose to the surface just as the remains of the main rotor blades caught the top of the first tree. Way too far past that second step already, but it was what needed saying.

  “Love you, Jeannie!”

  Then they fell from the sky.

  Chapter 17

  The chopper wrenched sideways as the rotor caught the sandalwood tree. Then wrenched again as it caught a eucalyptus. Jeannie kept her focus on holding her shattered arm tightly in place and praying they hit upright.

  Close enough. They hammered into the ground, utterly destroying the wheels and their shock absorbers. Then the crash-worthy seats came into play.

  The land wasn’t as flat as it looked and the damaged chopper tumbled sideways into the trees, the rotor blades flailing, shattering against trees and ground, and firing large chunks of metal and composite off in all directions. They rolled sideways down the hill once or twice, flattening trees as they went. One more roll through a short open section and they slammed into a stand of trees that brought the Firehawk to a rest.

  Jeannie hung sideways in her harness looking down at Cal.

  Slowly, the event unraveled itself in her mind. Then the pain slammed her and she blacked out for a moment while someone was screaming.

  She came to before the scream even had a chance to fully fade from her throat. She swallowed hard and blinked to focus.

  “We’re alive!” That was unexpected. “You’re alive, aren’t you, Cal?”

  He twisted from where he lay mostly on the door that looked down into the soil. “Remember when I said I wanted to do an autorotation landing someday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I take it back.” He began working his way out of his harness.

  “Connie?”

  The woman pulled open Jeannie’s door from above. She was already out and kneeling on the outside of the chopper. “We need to get you out of there.”

  Jeannie inspected the chopper, which was mostly upside down. “Hotshot, you pulled the T-handle.” It too now blinked red and she could hear the number one engine winding down.

  “You told me to, Helitack. So I did.”

  “You do everything I say?”

  He aimed one of those lovely smiles at her. “You bet. You found a way to get us out of the sky alive. That puts you number one on my list of people worth paying attention to. I’d have put good money on this going the other way.” He stood and supported her in his arms as Connie reached down and sliced away the harness with her knife. The earlier scream tried to resurface, but Jeannie managed to downgrade it to a groan through sheer willpower. Also, that scream had frightened her with its complete lack of control.

  With their careful handling, she managed to get out of the Firehawk without passing out, though her vision definitely tunneled a few times. They set her on the grass, and she stared at her chopper. Mark was gonna be pissed. She’d really messed up her machine. Denise could put a lot of things right on a helicopter, but this one was a bit extreme. The rotor blades were gone, of course, no more than broken stubs. The tail boom lay twisted to the side. The tree that had ultimately stopped them had ripped up both engines and knocked the rotor shaft well back out of alignment.

  She sniffed the air, half expecting the smell of eucalyptus or the smoke of the nearby fire. Instead she sneezed. The sharp bite of kerosene. Jet A was leaking out of the chopper despite the crash-rated fuel tanks.

  “Hey,” she shouted, then wished she hadn’t for it jostled her shoulder which… “We need to get out of here now. It’s leaking fuel.”

  Connie and Cal were tossing out gear. An emergency backpack that would have food and water. Several of the wildfire emergency shelters arced out onto the grass. Connie tossed down a rifle and box of ammo. A pair of first-aid kits were tossed out next. A couple of Pulaskis. Three hard hats. Then they both disappeared inside for most of a minute.

  “Hey!” Jeannie shouted again, and he
r head spun as the pain washed through her. Moments later they both clambered up out of the cargo-bay door, which now opened upward, and jumped down to the ground. They stuffed everything into the packs and each slung one on. Cal draped on his precious camera bag over that.

  He came up beside Jeannie, knelt down, and opened a first-aid kit he’d kept with him. Connie disappeared into the woods on the far side of the chopper. He gave Jeannie a couple of painkillers.

  “These aren’t the heavy-duty ones, but we need you mobile, okay?”

  “Okay.” At least until they were safely away from her broken chopper. “We have to move first.”

  “Connie said we’re okay for the moment. Give me your arm, Helitack.”

  He was fast and neat: well-trained or well-practiced. She tried not to think about the latter.

  “I’m leaving the bullet in because I’m squeamish. No more bleeding, Helitack. I might faint.”

  The man actually made her smile despite the pain he was causing. The antiseptic stung, but not nearly as much as the stretch bandage he wrapped over the gauze pad. He was very gentle as he positioned the sling. Then he helped her into a Nomex fire jacket, trapping her slung arm inside, and patted a hard hat onto her head.

  “There, now you look like a real firefighter.” His kiss was sweet, tender, and unhurried. It promised so much. The man had so much to give if he would only let himself.

  Just as he finished, Connie came back. “We have a problem.”

  “Worse than a helicopter crash?”

  Connie nodded. “We came down on the west slope. If they have armored vehicles, we have at least a company, probably a battalion strength unit of the Indonesian Army, down below and a couple of squads or a company climbing up toward us on three sides under cover of smoke. Fast, hard to spot if I didn’t have this scope.” She raised the rifle with a long scope mounted on top in explanation. “Army Special Forces on foot unless I miss my guess, probably their Group 2 Para-commandos.”

  “Are they good?” Cal asked as if he was ready to take them on himself.

  “At least ten of them that I spotted, which means twenty. Plenty good enough to take out the three of us. Without the drone, command won’t know what’s happening, which these guys will know. I don’t want to risk any more comm traffic. First, it will give the bad guys something to triangulate on. Second, it would be better if they thought we died in the crash.”