“Sto sparato!” Vanessa’s curse was emphatic.
“Vanessa?” Gordon grabbed the microphone with the hand that had been cradling Ripley’s head a moment before. His other hand was still deep down inside her flightsuit. She was frozen in mid-arch against his palm.
“We are, I am shot. No, not me. My helicopter. It is shot. At least that is what Tham Chau says. Several times. I know that we are still flying, but my hydraulics are very bad.”
Gordon pulled his other hand free.
Absurdly, Ripley had been so close that his final gesture tipped her over the edge and her body shook and shuddered with her release as she struggled to sit upright.
Gordon wrapped his arm about her waist for a second and just held her tightly against his chest. She rested her forehead on his strong shoulder, giving herself a few seconds. Hardly daring to believe that she had found a man so thoughtful.
“Talk to me,” Gordon said.
For a moment she was wondering if Gordon had lost his mind and was too thoughtful, but then she heard the click as he released the transmit switch.
Ripley pulled herself together. Grabbing the back of the two pilot chairs, she hauled herself up out of his lap and managed to collapse into her seat and pull on her helmet.
She cycled up Diana Prince’s engines and looked up at the sky. The gray dome of hot smoke still danced across the surface of the cool wind rising out of the cave. Well, she was about to show it just what a pair of Wonder Women could do.
Gordon climbed into the seat beside her and donned his helmet. He continued talking to Vanessa through the drone’s link. Keeping the conversation steady and calm.
Just as she was finishing the last of the pre-takeoff checks, Gordon reached out and ran a hand along her cheek. He smiled despite what was happening, despite the fear she had felt jolt through him just as strongly as the pleasure he’d given her. His smile said a thousand things.
It said just how much he had enjoyed doing what he had done to her.
It also had a softness. The alpha might revel in the sex, but the man loved her. And that was more than she had ever imagined to be possible, because she loved him back. Their situation was utterly ridiculous at the moment, but she finally knew that one thing—all the way down to her still-shaky core.
Ripley heaved up on the collective, put the nose down, and drove straight up. This is what the Erickson did better than any other helicopter made—it climbed like a demon. It held the world record for the fastest time to reach altitudes of three, six, and nine kilometers and also the record for highest level flight by any helicopter at eleven kilometers—one of the few helos able to even climb over thirty-five thousand feet.
A single ember had started a fire in the jungle on the cave’s floor.
She circled closer to the wall, flicked the water-release setting to salvo, and hit the release on her cyclic. Twenty-five hundred gallons of water blasted the fire out of existence. In seconds she was ten tons lighter and taking the escalator straight up.
Even as the small fire below died in a shroud of steam, they slammed into the smoky dome above. The ride was rough, but they had enough vertical speed that it took less than thirty seconds to punch through into clear air.
Gordon slashed a hand toward the northeast and Ripley raced in that direction. A final glance back revealed that their temporary haven was indeed lost beneath the seething ocean of smoke, but it was there. Deep inside her, for the first time ever, she knew that there was a perfectly safe, perfectly clear space. A space where Gordon’s love would always reside.
Three kilometers and less than a minute later, they cleared a ridge and could see her. Vanessa was easy to spot, the smudge of burning hydraulic fluid created a black plume behind her. Even with the smoke of the approaching fire filling the valley, the burning black trail stood out.
There was nowhere to land except in the trees. No river. Not even a clearing.
She was racing down the valley toward them, trying to get clear before losing altitude or control. The other problem was that she was racing directly toward the face of the oncoming fire.
“Vanessa. Gordon here. Ease down. The hydraulic system on the MD 530 is only about vibration dampening. You should still have control; it’s an all-mechanical control linkage.” His voice was good, soothing.
Ripley’s reaction to a partial loss of engine power had been to punch her copilot. Gordon’s reaction to having one of his closest friends shot at was to talk her down. Yet something else she had to learn from him. Or was it another reason that this could never work between them? Just how much did love conquer? She had no real experience to judge by, because what she’d felt after a year with Petty Officer Williams paled in comparison to what she felt after two weeks with Gordon Finchley.
“It is not only my hydraulics,” Vanessa answered back and continued to race in their direction.
Ripley used her altitude and position ahead of Vanessa to survey the area at the mouth of the valley. No clearing, but there was a river. She slewed the Diana Prince over for a look and could see the rocky bottom. It looked fast, but not deep.
“First possible landing is directly below me,” she moved to hover over the area of a relatively calm pool. Ripley wondered why the other MHA helicopters weren’t responding. Then she saw that she and Vanessa were still on the encrypted radio. No one else except Steve would know what was going on.
“Water?” Vanessa groaned. “Like Gordon, I must crash in water? That is not fun.”
Ripley moved farther aloft to get a wider view. Over a small hill she spotted a cleared area that might have been a farm. “Swing wide around this hill below me. There is a clearing on the other side.” Fire was fast approaching the area, but there should be enough time for a rescue.
“Thank you, Ripley. I will try.”
Vanessa carved a turn around the hill and Ripley could see the MD 530 appear to stumble in the air.
Gordon cried out as the little helicopter tumbled viciously onto its side in mid-flight.
By some miracle Vanessa forced it back into level flight, though now she was flying more sideways than forward.
The next fifteen seconds she and Gordon could do nothing but lean forward and watch. The MD made another near fatal twist toward the trees, but finally settled on its skids with a hard thump at one edge of the clearing. One of the skids buckled, tipping the helicopter halfway over, and the rotor shredded itself as it beat on the field. It almost flipped the helicopter, but finally it stayed upright and the now bladeless rotor began to slow.
Despite the destruction of her rotor blades, the small clearing didn’t seem big enough for both helicopters to land. But with some creative thinking, it was. The top of the MD’s broken rotor stood barely ten feet above the tilled soil and the Aircrane’s rotor blades spun at over fifteen feet. Ripley was able to land with the crippled MD parked under the canopy of Diana Prince’s spinning rotor.
Ripley tried not to feel bad about settling in the middle of someone’s neatly-arranged vegetable garden. It was a home that the residents must have evacuated just ahead of the oncoming fire. Of course, in minutes the fire would be here and the loss would be far more than the damage of having a couple of helicopters parked in their garden.
“Keep it running,” Gordon commanded before racing out of the Aircrane. When he opened the door, the stink and heat of wood smoke swirled into the cabin. The smoke was thick enough that she could see it veiling Vanessa’s crashed helicopter though its crumpled remains were barely thirty feet away.
In moments, Gordon was helping both women out of the crashed MD. He and Vanessa embraced tightly, the hug of two good friends. She could see that now. Besides, if she couldn’t trust Gordon, who could she?
There was a good joke. She’d never trusted a man, not even Weasel back before he earned his nickname. That’s what had sent her searching for him that day. If she’d been more trusting, he could have had his caterer and her as well.
How was it that she’d learn
ed to never trust? Her parents were completely trust wor—
“Gordon?” Steve called on the radio.
“This is Ripley, he’s out helping Tham Chau and Vanessa. They’re okay.”
“That’s great, but we have another problem.”
“More important than the forest fire that’s about overrun us? Excellent. I need a distraction.” Just because this wasn’t the main leg of the fire, didn’t mean that it couldn’t kill them.
Steve paused for a long moment. He always took a moment to digest her statements like that. It was as if he was always searching for a comeback, but was too straightforward a guy to think one up. Gordon never missed her sense of humor.
“I found their base. I was able to follow the shooter with one of the drone’s infrared cameras. He’s warmer than the jungle by just enough and he led me right there. I’d never have seen him if he hadn’t shot Vanessa’s helicopter.”
“Great! Send in the Army.”
“There is no one in that area; you landed in the area that Gordon said to keep clear. And they’re fortified inside a small cave. I guess with over three hundred caves in the park, that’s no surprise. But I mean fortified. They built a wall across the front. Sunset is in half an hour and we can’t lose them.”
Ripley looked up trying to see the long shadows, but it was already mostly dark down here in the shadowed valley. And that was without the smoke.
The smell abruptly intensified when the cockpit door was opened again and first Tham Chau, then Vanessa stumbled into the cockpit.
Tham Chau collapsed into the aft-facing pilot’s seat, cradling her arm carefully.
Vanessa leaned forward and hugged Ripley, partly around the shoulder and partly around the helmet. She planted a kiss on the top of the latter.
“Your guidance was very timely. Thank you.” Then she too collapsed to sit on the floor facing backward with her feet in the stairwell.
Gordon began clambering over Vanessa to get to his seat. “The MD is a total loss. Get us out of here.”
“No!” Vanessa wrapped her arms about one of his legs to keep him in place. “We have over fifty gallons of thermite powder and magnesium ribbons on my MD in five gallon buckets. If that much burns, then this fire will never stop.”
Gordon grunted and remained still for a moment, one hand on the back of his seat and Vanessa’s arms still wrapped around one of his legs. There wasn’t room in the cockpit for four people and all those buckets. She didn’t even want them on her aircraft.
“Ripley? Can you lift the Little Bird?”
“Easily, if I dropped the tank and hooked up a hoist. That would take me about two hours, if I had the right equipment. I’ll get right on it, though the fire is about five minutes away. So you might think about a different plan.”
“How about those mounting holes beside the tank…and some rope or wire?”
“That’s…” she hadn’t thought about that. “Brilliant! She’s not certified for it, but each of those loops can carry the MD’s entire weight a couple times over. Rig it to both sides so that I’m balanced and there shouldn’t be a problem. Check the locker by the base of the ladder for some line.”
He turned to go and Ripley stopped him and told him what Steve had found. For a moment Gordon grimaced, looking toward the conflicting priorities of the imminent fire, the crippled MD, and the location of the fire-wielding terrorists soon to be lost in the night. If she was them, she’d be on the move at the moment of nightfall, untraceable under the jungle’s canopy.
Then Gordon smiled brilliantly, grabbed Ripley by the chin strap, and kissed her hard. Hard enough to make her lips hurt and her head spin, though so briefly that she didn’t have a moment to do more than groan against the kiss. He grabbed Vanessa and was out of the cockpit.
Gordon scrabbled through the locker Ripley had indicated and found the rope he needed. The first problem was that the loops on the frame that he needed to thread the rope through were ten feet in the air.
He squatted in front of Vanessa. “Up on my shoulders.”
“You are serious?”
“Yes. Now.” Gingerly she placed a leg over either shoulder and he rose carefully to his feet. “Here,” he handed her one end of the rope. “Run it through that loop,” he indicated the heavy bracket mounted on the side of the Erickson’s spine above the water tank. It must be for mounting some other piece of equipment.
She looped it through and pulled an extra ten feet.
“Same thing on the other side. Watch your head,” and he walked around the end of the water tank hanging down. She didn’t have to duck to be clear of the high spine of the Aircrane.
Through the open door at the rear of the cockpit he could see Tham Chau watching him from the aft pilot’s seat and Ripley twisted around to see what was happening. He shot her a teasing grin and patted his hands where they were holding onto Vanessa’s thighs.
Ripley shot him a thumbs-up.
They had the rope looped through the other side in moments. Then he eased Vanessa back down to the ground. He quickly tied a loop around the crippled MD 530’s rotor head.
He had to stare at the line for about thirty seconds, with Vanessa fidgeting beside him and watching the thickening smoke, before he figured out how to make the knots do what he needed. If there was one thing he’d learned riding after cattle on a Wyoming ranch, it was that if you just thought hard enough about it, you could make a good piece of rope and the right knots do almost anything.
Gordon tied everything off, but didn’t have quite enough slack to run the loose ends back into the cabin. He wasn’t exactly sure what he had planned to do with them, but he’d expected to figure that out once he got there.
But they were too short. The red glow running toward them through the trees told him that he didn’t have time to retie them.
Those ends had to be held, tightly.
That’s when he spotted the open doors on the firefighting water tank. At the bottom edge of the big orange tank were two, twenty foot long, steel louvers. They were hinged down their length so that they could swing open and release the water. If they were strong enough to hold back ten tons of water, they were strong enough to hold his two ropes.
He held the two ends side by side and yelled for Ripley to close the drop doors. They snapped shut abruptly enough to make him jump. He tugged on each rope. Secure as could be.
Now for the tricky part.
“You’re going to do what?” Ripley yelled at Gordon.
“Don’t have time for this, Rip,” Gordon nodded toward the trees.
The fire was close enough that she could feel the air temperature rising.
Trying to tease her with a beautiful woman on his shoulders had been a cute joke.
Using the rope harness and the drop tank’s louvered door to lift the entire broken helicopter—once she understood what he was trying to do—was brilliant.
But this next part was utter lunacy.
“If you have a better solution, Ripley, I’m listening.” But he wasn’t stopping. He continued tying knots every two feet down another length of rope.
If she had a better idea, she wouldn’t be so upset.
She glared at the little helicopter. A dozen plastic buckets of thermite powder and a lucky thirteenth, with dozens of section of magnesium ribbons to ignite them. And Gordon was proposing riding in the towed helicopter to set them all off.
“If you die doing this stunt, I’m gonna track you down and kill you.”
“Deal.”
The gaps in the jungle had resolved from red glow to active flame.
“Gordon…” But she couldn’t find the words. There was too much to say. Too much she wanted to share. Not that she’d ever been big on sharing, but with Gordon she wanted to experiment with changing that.
“Trust me.” He stepped into a rescue harness, pulled the straps over his shoulders—she flipped a twist out of one of them and used it as an excuse to brush a hand down his shoulder—and buckled himself in. He t
ied the end of the rope to the big D-ring on the front of the harness.
“Not giving me a lot of choice.”
He gave her one of those charming smiles. “I am sorry about that. All the choices you want—after this is over.”
“Promise?” She didn’t know quite what promise she was asking for.
“Promise! Now get along.” He turned her toward the cockpit and slapped her butt like she was some cow to shoo along.
If it was to be their last contact ever, she didn’t want it to be a slap on her butt. She took an extra moment to turn back to him.
“Remember. Return or I kill you.”
“Got it.”
She dropped a kiss on his cheek and then they both rushed aboard their separate helicopters.
In moments he called “Ready” over the radio and she fed power into her rotor with a raised collective. The fire had reached the jungle wall and she could feel the heat radiating through her windshield as she pulled aloft.
“Vanessa, call it out.”
“Call what out?”
“Slack on the line.”
“Oh, of course. I am sorry. I still cannot believe you are letting him do this.”
As if Ripley had a choice. Maybe she did. Maybe if she’d told him not to do this, he wouldn’t have. But she also knew that his solution was so far out of the box that even with a week of thinking, she wouldn’t find a better one.
“Forty feet,” Vanessa called out. “Thirty, twenty…”
Ripley slowed her ascent so that she didn’t jolt the lines as they took the weight of the MD helicopter. She could barely feel it when Diana Prince picked up the light load.
“You should climb quickly now,” Vanessa called out. “The flames are very close to him.”
Giving it all the power she dared, they were soon above the clearing, then the flames…and wallowing in blackout smoke.
“Vanessa, get up here. Right seat. I need some help.”
One pilot could fly an Aircrane by herself…if she had six extra hands.
“Get on the radar and keep me from running into any mountains.” Then she hit the radio. “Steve, I need the coordinates of their hideout.”
Wild Fire Page 26
