Authors: Lindsay McKenna
In moments, the fog closed in below them. Craig used the rudders beneath his feet and pulled the aircraft in a steep bank. How close were they to the trees? He had no idea. Gasping, he tried to ride it out by feel alone. There was absolutely no terrain radar on board the helicopter. It was dark all around them. Which way was up? Down? His eyes strained on the gyroscope and flicked back and forth between it and the altimeter.
"It's all right, all right," Sabra gasped, easing away from Jason. "It's Auntie S, Jason. Look. Look, it's me, honey." She tried to wipe away some of the frightening greasepaint that must make her seem like a monster to Jason. She saw the child's face go from terror to relief. Instantly, he lunged toward her.
"Auntie S!" he shrieked.
Sabra gulped unsteadily and pulled Jason into her arms. They were safe. Safe! She glanced over at Craig. His face was frozen. The wind whipped into the helicopter, buffeting and icy cold. Blood trickled down the side of his face. She felt a huge, bruised area pounding unremittingly in the middle of her back where she'd taken the the hit from the well-aimed bullet. The armored vest had saved her life.
She felt the aircraft moving unsteadily. Anxiously, she looked at Craig again. He was wrestling with the controls. Could he fly it? Was he panicking? What was going on? Afraid for them all, she held Jason to her tightly.
"We're in trouble!" Craig rasped, working the controls. "The oil pressure is going down!"
Sabra could smell something hot and oily invading the cabin. She began to hear a high-pitched screech above them. They were still in the fog. Where the hell were they? How far from the estate? "What can I do?"
"Strap in!" he roared, wrestling with the sluggish controls. "We aren't going to go far. I'll try for altitude. If the engine quits, we'll have to make a crash landing. Get on the radio. Call the airport for help."
Sabra quickly hauled the harness over herself, keeping Jason in her arms. Fumbling because her hands were shaking so badly, she got the radio from her uniform belt and began making a Mayday call to the
Maui
airport. Where the hell were they? The fog was thinning now. The helicopter was bucking and groaning, the shriek becoming louder. Sabra kept shouting into the radio, using the Perseus call sign for help. She knew Killian and the FBI would be monitoring them. If only they could get to the airport or somewhere near it!
The fog thinned even more. The aircraft lunged and lagged, the whine of the rotor above them coming and going. The smell of hot oil stung her nostrils. She flung a glance at Craig.
"Where are we?"
"About ten miles west of the airport. Tell them I'm following the highway in."
It was a good choice, Sabra thought, as she shouted the information over the racket in the cabin. The fog was completely gone now, and she realized they were roughly a thousand feet above the island, limping along. Jason burrowed his head into her chest, and she held him tightly against her. Her throat ached with tension as she divided her attention between him and Craig. Craig was managing the aircraft. Each time the helicopter dropped a little, she watched him struggle with the controls. The physical effort it took was tremendous, and she saw how pale and taut he'd become.
"Can we make it?" she shouted.
His gaze shot to the oil pressure. They were only five miles from the airport. If only they could get there! If only he could set the bird down before the engine quit. The smell of burning metal struck his flared nostrils. His hands tightened on the controls. "We aren't gonna make it. Prepare to crash!"
The order roared through Sabra. She bit back a scream as she smelled the hot odor of melting metal. Without the precious oil as a lubricant, the shriek and grinding of engine parts continued. The helicopter was ceasing its forward motion. She heard Craig curse.
"It's no good! I've got to shut the engine down or it's gonna explode!"
She saw him reach for the control that would switch the engine down. Cold, icy wind whipped into the cabin. She was frightened as never before. The moment the engine was shut down, the helicopter plummeted downward. Jason screamed in terror, his small arms wrapped around her. Sabra shut her eyes, buried her head against the boy and held him as tightly as she could. She heard Craig gasp.
To his left, Craig could see the lights of the airport. They were less than three miles away! Everywhere else it was dark. Murderously dark. The helicopter was dropping like a rock beneath him. All of his training came back to him in a rush. He pushed the nose down, aiming it toward the island. He heard Sabra give a cry, but ignored it. He had to aim the nose down in order to pick up enough speed to haul the aircraft up at the last minute, to flare it so the swinging blades would catch the last pocket of air. If he didn't do that, they would crash and burn. There was almost three-quarters of a tank of fuel still on board and no time to dump it. If he couldn't bring the wildly swinging, bucking aircraft in for a crash landing, they would all die in the resulting explosion or burn to death afterward.
Below, he saw the highway and a few stabbing lights of cars. Wrestling with the aircraft, he shoved hard right on the rudder and tried to get the bird to move to the west of the highway. He couldn't see any lights of homes. Maybe it was a sugar cane or pineapple field. Craig prayed that wherever he was heading, there were no people below.
He had no way of judging anything except through instinct honed by years of experience. The helicopter was picking up speed, the blades still turning sluggishly. It was a matter of intuition to know when to lift the nose, hopefully at the last possible moment. Because he'd shut down the engine, Craig had no instruments to tell him how close he was to the ground. All he had now was his ability to judge where the night sky met the darkened horizon. The smell of hot metal was still strong and stung his nostrils. The engine could burst into flames at any moment.
Something told him to haul back on the nose. He heeded the voice inside his head. Gripping the controls hard, he pulled back, pitting sheer, brute strength against the gravity-driven force of the aircraft plummeting out of the sky. As he reared back hard against the seat, every muscle in his body screamed in sudden protest. Hot pain raced up his arms as he held the controls in place.
Come on, come on! Come up! Dammit, come up!
His lips pulled away from his clenched teeth. His eyes widened.
At the last moment, he saw the ground racing up at them. It was a sugar-cane field! Had he pulled up too late? Were they going to nose into the earth? Die in the explosion as the fuel sprayed around them like a fiery rain? Horrible thoughts paralyzed him as he called on every last ounce of his strength. It couldn't happen again! Blips of the fire after the crash in the Iraqui desert struck him. Savagely, he shook his head, his eyes on the ground coming up fast below them.
He heard Jason crying. He heard Sabra gasp. The nose came up. The flailing blades caught the last of the air. Bracing himself, Craig held the controls steady. The helicopter groaned and shrieked. The blades whooshed thickly overhead. The plummet subsided. The bird steadied about fifty feet from the ground. At the last possible moment, Craig guided the bird downward, playing the rudders with his booted feet. He felt the tail strike the field first, the jolt vibrating through the cabin. Because he wasn't strapped in, he was thrown forward. The aircraft bobbled. He jerked back on the controls, hearing the tail drag more deeply into the ground.
The aircraft groaned and slammed onto a left skid. Craig felt himself being torn out of the seat, and he threw up his arm to protect his head. The aircraft plowed into the field, metal tearing and scraping. He heard the blades striking, breaking. A person could be cut in half by one of those blades. The aircraft rolled over and over. Craig found himself lying against the instrument panel. Sobbing for breath, he realized they'd stopped tumbling.
"Sabra!" His voice was scratchy with terror. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes. She was hanging upside down, he saw, trapped in the harness. Jason was still in her arms, alive and unhurt.
"Get me out of this," she gasped.
Craig scrambled toward her, feeling like he was moving in slow motion. He experienced pain in his left arm, but ignored it as he pushed himself upward on unsteady feet. In one motion, he took the knife strapped to his left leg and began to saw through the harnesses to free her.
"We've got to get out of here," he rasped. "I smell fuel leaking. This bird could go at any moment."
"I know, I know," Sabra sobbed, allowing Jason to crawl out of the broken window. The last strap was sawn through, and she fell unceremoniously to the floor of the aircraft.
"Get out. Get out!"
Sabra felt Craig's hand biting into her arm, shoving her through the broken nose of the helicopter. She could smell the nauseating odor of fuel around them, as well as the hot metal of the rotor assembly. Craig was right: the aircraft could explode at any moment.
She fell out onto the damp soil, on her hands and knees. Jason sat there, his eyes wide with terror, looking up at the broken helicopter.
"Craig?" She stumbled to her feet and twisted around. Where was he?
"Get Jason. Get the hell out of here!" Craig shouted. His foot was trapped in some wreckage.
Damn!
He leaned down and jerked on a piece of metal that had been twisted in the crash. He was breathing in sobbing gasps. Yanking at the metal that held him, he cursed. Glancing up, he could see Sabra pick up Jason and start flailing through the eight-foot-tall sugar cane.
"Son of a bitch!" He used all his strength on the metal. There! He was free! In one motion, Craig dived out of the broken nose. He hit the ground hard, rolling to reduce the impact.
Suddenly, he heard a
whoosh.
He was less than six feet from the aircraft when he got to his feet. His eyes widened. Fire had started on the rotor assembly. Damn! Scrambling, he dug the toes of his boots into the damp soil. He had to get away. Any second now the bird would explode.
Craig had made it barely twenty feet from the helicopter when the explosion occurred. A powerful shock wave hit him first, scorching his exposed skin. The next thing he knew, he was flying though the air, knocked at least twenty feet more by the blast. The whistling and shrieking of metal torn loose in the explosion screamed about him. He slammed to the ground, throwing his arms over his head, rolling end over end.
Hot, burning sensation struck him in the legs and arm. Shrapnel. He knew the stinging bite well. Dazedly, Craig rolled over and sat up. The flaring fire from the burning aircraft made it seem like daylight for several hundred feet in every direction. The thick stalks of sugar cane, with their sharp, cutting edges, had been laid out horizontally, flattened like so many toothpicks in the wake of a hurricane.
Above the roar of the fire, he heard a child scream. Jason! Shaken, Craig shoved himself to his feet. He wobbled unsteadily, suddenly dizzied. Where were they? Anxiously, he searched the hellish landscape of dancing firelight and shadows. Stumbling around the end of the wreck, he saw Jason standing about seventy-five feet from the aircraft. His eyes narrowed. Sabra! He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. She lay unmoving at the boy's feet.
Oh, God, no!
He dug his feet into the slippery cane stalks, running brokenly, as fast as he could. Jason's small face was dirtied, streaked with tears as he stood helplessly beside Sabra's body. As Craig approached, the boy covered his face.
Craig fell to his knees near Sabra's head. She lay on her belly, her face buried in the flattened sugar cane. One arm was outstretched, the other tucked beneath her body. Gasping for breath, he called her name.
"Sabra? Sabra…." His hands trembled as he rapidly skimmed her body, searching for wounds. Had the blast knocked her unconscious? Slowly, he turned her over on her back, her head and shoulders resting against his knees. A cold, violent fear gripped him. In the dancing firelight, he could see a dark trail down the side of her neck.
Reaching down, Craig's fingertips touched the black surface. It was warm. Sabra's blood. Wildly, he searched her hair and the back of her skull. A piece of shrapnel lay buried in the rear of her neck. Leaning down, sobbing, Craig could see by the glow of the fire that the metal had partially severed an artery.
Oh, God, no! No!
Sabra was bleeding to death beneath his hands! She couldn't die! His mind whirled with options—and near-paralyzing terror.