by Susan Grant
Bree shoved the stick the opposite way and forward. Her seat belt and shoulder harnesses kept her bottom pressed firmly on the seat cushion, but negative g’s thrust her insides upward, as if she’d just crested the highest hill on the world’s biggest roller coaster. But her tactics weren’t working. She’d have to reverse course, fly into the missile, and then hope her angle and speed would be enough to throw it off her tail.
Her threat warning alarm blared. She flew wildly. Ground became sky and the sky ground. Then, a painfully intense flash of light half blinded her. For one infinitesimal slice of a tick of the clock, Bree thought that the missile had missed, and that she was watching its flamboyant suicidal finale from the front row. But when something unimaginably powerful slammed her jet from underneath and threw her forward into her shoulder harnesses, she knew better.
The second missile had found its target.
Chapter Two
Transverse g-forces shoved Bree sideways. Her helmet clanged against the side of the canopy. Streamers of fuel gushed out of her left wing. The HUD gave almost too much information for her rattled brain to process. And then it blanked, giving her none at all. She hoped her mind wouldn’t do the same.
Bree fought to keep control of the jet. A vibration in the fuselage swelled from a background buzz into a teeth-jarring rumble. Something screeched like the brakes of a freight train. It sounded as if the F-16 was coming apart. She’d have to bail out, she realized.
“If you’re thinking of ejecting, you probably should have done it already.” One of her instructors at basic fighter training school at Holloman AFB had told her that, and made her repeat it back to him. Too many pilots die because they stay with their jet too long,” he’d explained. “If you’re ever in that situation, lose the pride—don’t let your ego kill you. Get out while the going’s good and live to fly another day.”
But had her instructor ever lost a wingman? Had he ever watched a friend fall into enemy territory? Surely, she had a few more seconds to pinpoint Cam’s location, to ensure her rescue. The best chance at finding Cam would come from landing as close to her as she could. With their radios, they could communicate. Using global positioning units contained in their survival kits, they could locate each other. And then, together, they’d stay out of enemy hands until U.S. search-and-rescue forces caught up with them.
Bree’s jet shook. Smoke began filling the cockpit. Then her engine shuddered and finally quit. Time attenuated, stretched out—a false impression. It was as if she had all the time in the world . . . and yet none at all. In that eerie in-between, she spotted a U-shaped patch of forest. There! It was the landmark she needed. She was outta there.
Bree took aim, grasping blindly for a handle between her legs. It was yellow with three simple words printed in bold lettering: pull to eject. Her gloved fingers closed over the handle and she pulled.
The canopy blew. Her seat rocketed up and out of the jet—with her strapped into it. The upward acceleration squished her like a bug. She seemed to hang in the air a few heartbeats. Then the earth called her back and she plunged out of the sky, still attached to the seat.
Wind beat at her exposed skin like icy paddles. She sucked in great gulps of dry air from her face mask until her throat was raw. She sensed rather than saw the ground rushing up to meet her. It was a sight she couldn’t bear to watch. Luckily, she didn’t have to for long.
She separated from the seat. The automatic parachute release worked as advertised. Silk boiled out of her backpack, jerking her up with ruthless force. Her hands clutched the risers, instinctively, hanging to the rough straps at her chest. Heart pumping, breaths ragged, she tipped her head back, examining the parachute above for rips and tears even though she felt more like blowing kisses of gratitude at the multicolored fabric outlined crisply in winter sunshine.
Then, her relief fizzled as the truth sank in. You’ve been shot down, Banzai-baby. Over enemy territory. What could the North be thinking, shooting down a peacekeeping patrol? They’d been making headway at the peace table over the past week. And now this: out of the blue, a reckless, hostile act. The Koreans needed peace, not more war. The act reeked of bad judgment.
As she drifted down, she knew that at that very moment in Paris an international tribunal was listening to testimony about the North’s brutal treatment of South Korean soldiers captured a few months back and then released. She remembered the news photos of the survivors, and felt ill.
What waited for her down there? Beatings. Rape, surely. Bree shook her head. She couldn’t think of that now. She was a soldier, all she’d ever wanted to be her entire life. Now it was time to step up to the plate and prove she deserved the title. From this moment on, her mission was to evade and survive. And to get her wing-man home safely, a boggling responsibility that she couldn’t allow fear to erode. So, she swallowed her nausea; puking seemed extraordinarily self-indulgent, under the circumstances.
Bree’s gaze tracked downward to where a vast forest waited to swallow her. Trees, and more trees, as far as the eye could see. Landing in them would be like trying to hop across a bed of nails barefoot without getting stuck—or in this case, impaled on a branch. But there was something she could do to help her situation. She could try to steer. A pair of red lanyards hung behind her head, one on each side, designed for that purpose. By pulling on them, she detached four lines that released un-needed panels in the parachute, allowing her to maneuver. She liked being a driver a whole lot better than being a passenger, but the new configuration also made her fall faster. Buffeted by the wind, she plummeted toward the pointy treetops.
The ride rapidly neared its end. It was no longer a forest that she observed, but a series of trees that she skimmed. The trip would have been memorable in its beauty if only for the terrifying circumstances. Desperately, Bree tried to clear the tallest trees, but hundreds of shorter ones looked just as dangerous. Her boots began hitting branches and made a terrible scratching sound. The collisions multiplied, slowing her and pulling her down into the green obstacle course.
Branches scraped across her helmet visor as she crashed through the trees. Twigs slashed at her with ear-piercing raking noises, leaving behind bursts of pain where they penetrated her uniform. Would she ever reach the ground? she wondered, her mind filling with nightmarish visions of human shish kebob. Her risers jerked, giving her whiplash. Crunching sounds added to the brutal beating as she flipped upside down. And stopped.
The hush was deep and immediate. Bree dangled like a discarded marionette while her brain tried to catch up to what had happened. Powdery snow floated in the air, forming tiny rainbows where the sunshine pierced through. Then a whiff of pine-tree sap hit her like a bracing slap in the face. It spurred her into action.
One of her knives was a hooked blade created precisely for the purpose of slicing through tangled risers that bound her to the tree. Hoisting herself up, bent double, she went to work cutting cords. It was an awkward position. Her stomach muscles burned and trembled, but she couldn’t rush her selective hacking unless she wanted to do a Humpty Dumpty on the frozen ground, a good fifteen feet below where she hung.
One last cut, and she flipped over. Hitting the ground boots first, she absorbed the shock of landing as she’d been taught by falling onto her side. Using that momentum, she rolled into a clump of underbrush—dead twigs and old leaves clogged with snow. She discarded her mask but kept on her helmet. On her belly, she drew her 9mm and waited, straining to hear who or what was around. Her descent had been so noisy that anyone within miles would have heard it.
Her breaths sounded like thunder; her heartbeat was even louder. But other than that, all she heard was the hiss of wind passing through the branches high above her. No shouts. No shooting. Not yet.
Bree tore open a Ziploc-type bag containing her radio. With her thumb pressed over the transmit button, she whispered loudly, “Scarlett, this is Banzai.” She released the button and listened. Nothing. She tried again. “Scarlet, Banzai. Do you read?
”
This time when she released the transmit button, she heard two clicks. Her heart jumped, and she wanted to whoop for joy. Two clicks meant yes. Three clicks meant no. If Cam was clicking, it meant she didn’t feel safe enough to talk. Bree chanced one more whispered transmission. “You okay?”
Three clicks came in reply.
Aw, hell. Was Cam badly injured, or were North Korean soldiers surrounding her? Or both?
“I’m coming for you. I know where you are.” Well, she had a reasonably good idea. Okay, maybe a fuzzy idea, but she had to stay positive, to keep the faith. She waited a while for Cam to respond, in hopes she could get to a safer place and pass along her coordinates. But nothing. Not a sound. Not even the clicks.
It was time to raise the rest of the team. “Iris,” she transmitted. “This is Razor-one.” Static. “Iris, Razor-one.” More static. “Anyone...this is Razor-one.” Nada. She tried five more times with the same result.
With a sinking feeling she eyed the trees surrounding her. Beyond them were tall hills. It didn’t make for ideal conditions for communicating with anyone. With a flick of her thumb, she turned on the beacon that anyone listening to Guard frequency would hear. Even the enemy. She had to risk it, though. Search-and-rescue teams wouldn’t launch a retrieval effort unless they knew you were alive.
Bree let the beacon warble for as long as she could stand before cutting it off. The other prerequisite for the launch of a rescue operation was a location. As soon as she made radio contact, she’d pass hers along. The handheld GPS in her pack could triangulate three satellites to calculate position within fifty feet. Pretty darn Star Trek, she thought. Too bad she couldn’t program the unit to “beam her” back to Kunsan Air Base.
Pain soared out from her cuts and bruises, taking root in a sharp hammering in her temples as she stowed the radio. Her flight jacket and g-suit were tattered. Snow had found bare skin at her wrists and neck, stinging pinpricks of cold. She hurt, too. Everywhere. Some of those aches and pains were gashes from the trees. Others were bruises from bailing out. But before she could tend to her wounds, she had to erase all evidence of her landing here. With both friendly forces and the North Koreans on their way to find her and Cam, she wasn’t about to give the bad guys a head start.
Her breaths rang harshly in the wintry silence as she yanked the mangled parachute out of the trees. After hacking the silk loose away from the remaining cords, she rolled it into a tight, wadded-up ball. Now she had a blanket or shelter if she ended up having to spend tonight in the open. In the patchy shade of the woods, she sorted through what she wanted to take with her: olive-green woolen mittens and a hat, a survival kit loaded with water, medical items, and maps. Then she discarded what she didn’t think she’d need, like the life raft, the discarded parachute pack, and her helmet. Those items she shoved deep into the bramble bushes and snow so no one would find them easily. After checking for chambered rounds in her 9mm pistol, she replaced it in her holster. Then, using a compass, she jogged in the direction of the hills where she’d last seen Cam’s parachute.
She ran all afternoon. Except for brief pauses, taking cover to analyze the next chunk of woods for threats and a place to hide before racing onward, she kept moving long after her energy ran dry, her survival kit smacking against her hip, her gear rattling. The terrain was hilly and wooded and fought against her every step of the way. But she couldn’t stop, even when it was apparent that Cam wasn’t answering her repeated attempts to reach her. A sense of urgency drove Bree, a feeling that she was running out of time. Plans and backup plans formed in her head. She’d find Cam, pull her into a hiding place if she wasn’t there already. Then she’d patch up her wing-man, if she was hurt, and figure out how to keep them both alive until they could pass their location on to search and rescue.
As the day wore on, she began to worry that someone had spotted her and was on her tail. The hunch intensified hour by hour and made the back of her neck prickle. For the hundredth time, Bree stopped to scan the desolate landscape around her. A lone bird warbled; a crow screeched. No people; not a soul in sight, but that didn’t mean they weren’t around, looking for her. The memory of the news reports of dazed, brutalized soldiers released from the North Korean prison camp invaded her mind. She shrugged off the horrible images—they’d only shake her up when she needed her wits about her. Standing, she drank deeply from her water bag as she studied the hills ahead that were her goal. It wouldn’t be far now, she thought, and took off again at a full run.
Only when it was dusk did she finally stop. The air had chilled. The scent of pine filled her nostrils. No scents of human habitation came on the slight breeze. Listening and seeing as best the fading light would allow, she searched the area around her. It was empty, utterly remote, but the gnawing dread that she wasn’t alone lingered.
She took out the radio. “Scarlet, it’s Banzai.” Cameron Adele Tucker, answer me, y’hear? Never in her life did she want so badly to hear someone on the other end of the line. The wind swished high above in the pines, where stars glinted icily, the way they did only in a winter sky.
With the volume control rolled way down, Bree listened for chatter, a signal. “Scarlet, you up?” she asked in a low voice. And waited, her heart slamming. “This is Banzai. Do you read?” Faint static only. Maybe Cam had left her radio off for the night so the batteries wouldn’t run out.
Then...three clicks answered.
Three? Bree’s heart lurched. Something was wrong. She wanted to get back on frequency and ask Cam a million questions, but if her friend could talk, she would have. “Hang in there, girlfriend. I’m on my way.”
Radios worked better at night. Maybe this time she’d have luck if she broadened her plea. “Anyone, do you read? This is Razor-one.” She tried a few more times in hopes that someone could hear her and she couldn’t hear them—like when the mountains back home interfered with making cell phone calls.
Behind her, a twig snapped. Bree’s head jerked up. Fumbling for her gun with thick mittens, she spun around, pulling the 9mm from her holster. Past her misty breaths, she saw three pairs of eyes glinting in the shadows behind the trees.
Yellowish eyes. Unblinking. The kind that belonged to animals, not people. They stared, unblinking, their bodies barely visible in the shadows. Were they wolves? No, too small. Probably foxes or coyotes. Or wild dogs. Yeah, the size and shape fit the dog category. Not that it mattered—she didn’t plan on being dinner for these oversized pups.
One of them whined slightly and licked its chops. She could relate to the hunger. It’d been a long time since that candy bar. “Shoo. Go on. Get!”
When they made no move to leave, she took the initiative.
She kept her aim on the dogs as she backed up, carefully. A bark would carry for miles. But the dogs followed, their eyes intently focused on her. One of them growled. Bree released the safety on her pistol. It made a crisp click, loud in the quiet woods. That’s all it took to spook the animals. They darted away like wraiths in the twilight.
When she was sure they were gone, Bree lowered her weapon and saw how tightly her finger pressed the trigger. That’s how close she’d come to shooting at them. Stupid, stupid. She was too jumpy. Not only would noise have drawn attention, pumping valuable ammo into a pack of starving wild dogs would have been a total waste.
Bree holstered her weapon, checked the heading on her compass. She’d better get moving, even though she lacked a moon to give some light. The next creatures she encountered might not be so easily dismissed.
Riddled with bruises and sore muscles, hungry and cold, she pushed her pace. Exhaustion numbed her after a while, but she maintained a near run. A horizontal smear of shadows stained the ground ahead. Bree stepped into it and her foot kept going, followed by the rest of her.
The plunge took her down a steep bank. She landed in a heap just short of the edge of a fast-running creek.
Close call. Loose dirt and rocks continued to tumble past, plunging into what
she’d bet was extremely icy water. Bree wanted no part of that swim. Cold, she could live with. Shivering, she could handle. But hypothermia would kill her.
She grabbed hold of a sapling and dug in her heels. It was all that kept her from slipping into the stream as she climbed back uphill, tripping and cursing as she went. She held a first-degree black belt in tae kwon do, a Korean form of martial arts, but there were times, like now, when she was convinced that she didn’t have an ounce of grace in her entire body.
Her teeth started to chatter. She’d been resting for only a few minutes and already she was shivering. Her toes were going numb, but to make a fire was unthinkable. She had to stay low, real low.
The parachute, she thought, yanking it out of her pack. The silk would camouflage and warm her, something she’d learned in Survival Evasion Resistance Escape training, SERE, where she’d been beaten and interrogated in a simulated prison camp and then half starved while trekking for four days with two classmates through the Rocky Mountain National Park. It was one of those brutal courses from which you were proud to have graduated and glad you’d never have to repeat. But now she was damn grateful for every day she’d suffered that summer. The training would save her life.
She found some scrub for shelter. The branches were prickly and dry and smelled sharply of resin. Her body rested, but her mind couldn’t. Images kept surfacing of her parents’ faces when they would find out that she was missing in action. Bree was sure they knew by now. The story would be on every news channel, everywhere on the Internet: two women, in enemy hands. Bree squeezed her eyes shut and sent a mental message to her parents. I’m alive. Alive!
An owl hooted in the distance, and then again, farther off. Other than the lonely sounds, the night was one of black, crystalline silence. It was so dark that it made the air feel thick.
Bree hunched her shoulders and shuddered. Wasn’t she a bit old to want to hold someone’s hand in the dark? Who’d guess that an F-16 fighter pilot, a USAF Academy graduate, needed to sleep with a night-light?
