Authors: Alan Jacobson
75
C
old did not begin to describe what Vail felt when she penetrated the surface. It was numbing, paralyzing, and breath-taking; she literally could not breathe.
Find Hector, Karen. Focus.
Vail opened her eyes, now completely submerged, and looked around. Nothing.
Where the hell is he?
The Osprey’s spotlight provided some illumination, but it was moving, searching, which did not help. And the fire from the boat, while intense, was not nearly luminous enough to pierce the dense water.
She was suddenly bathed in darkness.
Vail forced herself up and broke through the surface. She kicked her feet in all directions, hoping to—
Wait,
I hit something.
She turned toward the object and reached out with her hands, and felt something hard, floating—a body.
Hector
. She pulled him up, doing her best to keep his face out of the water. Whether he was conscious or not—alive or not—she could not tell.
Vail craned her neck up toward the sky, hoping to catch the spotlight so that Rodman or Uzi would see her.
She could no longer feel her feet, her legs, her arms. She fought to maintain a grip around DeSantos’s torso, counting the seconds, willing the light to hit her in the face.
A moment later, it did just that.
And then it was gone, as the Osprey rotated away from her.
Wait—where the hell are you going?
After completing a 180 degree revolution, the hoist swung toward her again. Uzi was hanging from the rear opening of the plane, steadying the cable, attempting to prevent it from swinging. Steering it toward her.
Vail caught the hook with her right hand, the electric shock and smack of cold metal against her skin numbingly painful. She secured it around DeSantos’s torso and signaled Uzi to raise them up. It took a moment for him to climb back into the cabin, but seconds later, the hoist lifted them from the water.
The chill became worse as they rose toward the plane, and the downwash was blowing so forcefully that they found it difficult to breathe. Halfway up, the plane started moving forward, away from the burning wreckage below. Vail fought to hold onto the cable—and DeSantos—but they were now only about fifteen feet from the open mouth of the cabin.
As they approached, Vail looked up—and saw Uzi on all fours, ready to receive them. When his hands gripped them and guided them aboard, she felt a sense of relief envelop her. More likely, it was sheer exhaustion.
76
“T
hey’re aboard,” Uzi said into his mic as he struggled to unwind the cable and hook from DeSantos’s body.
“Copy that,” Rodman said. “Heading out to sea. Let’s hope our tank doesn’t run dry—and we’re not intercepted by a very pissed off air force.”
Uzi reached over to the cabin wall and pulled the lever to close the ramp loading deck.
“How’s GQ?” Rodman asked in his ear.
“Working on it,” he said as he tossed the hoist assembly aside. He took DeSantos’s pulse and checked his airway. “Nice work, Karen. Are you all right?”
“Frozen to the bone,” she said with a shiver. “Nothing a hot chocolate and a change of clothes won’t cure.”
“Let’s get him on his side.”
Uzi delivered a few blows between the shoulder blades and DeSantos coughed up some water. He slowly opened his eyes and tracked from Vail to Uzi, and back. He coughed again and tried to sit up. They helped him onto one of the padded seats along the side of the cabin.
“Welcome back,” Vail said.
DeSantos rested his head against the bulkhead, but an intense shiver racked his body, sending him forward. “My skull feels like it’s gonna explode. And talking over the engine noise definitely doesn’t help. Makes it pound.”
Vail wrapped her arms over her chest. “Can we shut that window?” she asked, gesturing at the hatch Uzi had opened earlier.
He closed it, then gave DeSantos a cursory exam. In addition to a large welt and laceration on the back of his head, there were several gashes, none requiring immediate attention. “Looks like the hook may’ve swung around and clocked you good.”
Uzi checked the cabin and found a pair of communication headsets, which they slipped over their ears, and a couple of thick military-grade needle-punch wool blankets.
He handed DeSantos a gray hand towel that was protruding from a metal task bin along the cabin wall. “Hold this over your scalp wound. You could use a few stitches, but the pressure will slow the bleeding. And no jumping out of planes for a while. Best guess, you’ve got a concussion.” He changed the frequency on his helmet and spoke to Rodman. “Hot Rod, I’m gonna need your flight suit.”
Uzi unzipped his overalls and handed them to Vail. “Take off your wet clothes and change into this.” He unfolded one of the blankets and held it up as a curtain. A moment later she emerged, still shivering. Uzi wrapped the blanket around her and then retrieved Rodman’s flight suit from the cockpit. He helped DeSantos change, then likewise swathed him in the other wool shroud and propped the towel between his head and the cabin wall.
“How you doing?” he asked.
DeSantos reseated his headphones. “Starting to feel a little more human. Head’s not as fuzzy. We got any water?”
“We don’t have much of anything. We’ll get you looked at as soon as we get there.”
“Get where?” Vail asked. “What’s our end game? Can this thing make it all the way back to the States?”
Uzi took a seat beside her. “We’re rendezvousing in the Atlantic with an amphibious transport dock. The USS
New York
. It’s going through ship handling drills.”
“And they happened to be in the neighborhood?” Vail asked.
“Not exactly. They were a couple hundred miles away. They’ve been underway for nine hours. They should be closing in on the RVP.”
“I can’t believe they diverted here for us,” DeSantos said.
“Make you feel important?”
“Kind of,” DeSantos said, touching the back of his head—and wincing.
“We’re talking Knox and McNamara.” Uzi chuckled. “I’m not surprised.”
“That’s gonna be a tricky landing, especially at night. Can Hot Rod set an Osprey down on one of those ships? Landing pad’s not that big.”
“Of course. Piece of cake.”
More like: we have no choice.
“Can’t be any worse than what we just went through,” Vail said. “Can it?”
Uzi and DeSantos looked at each other.
“I’d better get up there,” Uzi said, “and help fly this thing.”
“HE DIDN’T ANSWER ME,” Vail said.
“Just a guess, but you probably don’t want to know,” DeSantos said as he warded off a shiver.
“Still cold?”
“May take me weeks to warm up.”
Vail moved closer and wrapped her blanket around the both of them.
DeSantos shivered again.
“You know, you don’t make it easy, Hector. Trust is important to me.”
“This again?”
“This again. Trust is everything.”
“In a marriage, I totally agree with you. But this isn’t a marriage. It’s black ops. Sometimes your life depends on what you
don’t
tell people. It protects you—and it protects them.”
“I get it,” she said. “I just don’t like it.”
“You want to tell me what happened back there?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I really want to know what happened. We were on the RIB, we saw the Osprey approaching…and then I woke up in here.”
Vail pursed her lips. “We were on the cable, about halfway up, when the boat exploded. The flares ignited the fuel tank. And something slammed you in the back of the head. Next thing I knew, you were in the drink.”
“Considering how wet I am, that much I figured out.”
“So I jumped in after you.”
DeSantos tilted his head and twisted his torso to get a good look at her face. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“I don’t know what to say. Thanks.”
“You look surprised. Don’t you know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you?”
DeSantos grinned. “I thought that was my line.”
77
U
zi settled into the copilot’s seat and took another look at the fuel gauge.
“Yes,” Rodman said.
Uzi faced him. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’m worried. I don’t think we’ve got enough in the tank.”
“This thing can fly on one engine. What if we shut one down to save—”
“No. Don’t even go there.”
“I know it’s normally prohibited, and definitely risky.”
Rodman laughed. “I was thinking more like ‘insane.’ Seriously, if you were my pilot and you said something like that, I’d push you out the back of the plane.”
“I still think we should consider it.”
“Uzi, shutting down an engine is a drastic measure, even to save fuel. We’d be dooming ourselves to some kind of crash landing if we couldn’t get the engine relit. And don’t forget—we’re landing on a ship, which is tough enough.”
Uzi knew Rodman was right—but he could not take his eyes off the fuel gauge. Either they would run out of gas and plunge into the Atlantic Ocean, or they would be unable to restart the engine and crash onto the flight deck. Tough choice.
“What if we flew a bingo profile?” Rodman asked.
“I flew helicopters, Hot Rod. And I tend to stay out of churches. Don’t know what this bingo thing is.”
“We climb high and fast to max altitude, then pull the power back to an idle and basically coast the rest of the way in. It’s the best way to conserve fuel in a fixed wing craft.”
“Sounds like we’d be turning this baby into a flying Prius.”
Rodman looked at him. “You didn’t just say ‘Prius,’ did you?”
“You ever done it? This bingo profile?”
“Once. Almost ran out of gas in a U-28 over Iraq. Bailing out was not an option. It worked and the Air Force was thankful I didn’t ditch a seventeen million dollar plane.”
“Can’t see where we have much choice,” Uzi said, “or much to lose. If we’re gonna take a swim in the ocean, we may as well do it knowing we tried everything.”
“I agree. So grab that flight manual again and look in the back for bingo profile numbers.”
Uzi reached beneath the seat, pulled out the book, and located the section. “Whoa. You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“Ignore all those confusing charts. We just have to crunch some numbers, calculate the climb airspeed and distance to begin a descent. Here, let me see it.”
Uzi handed it over, then switched channels on the comms. “Karen, Santa, you there?”
“Here,” Vail said.
“We’re going to change our flight plan. I need you two to strap in. We’re gonna make a high power climb. It’s kind of abrupt.”
“A max-range profile?” DeSantos asked.
“Hot Rod called it a bingo, but it sounds like the same thing.”
“If you’re looking at a max-range profile, then that means we’re seriously low on fuel.”
“Need to know, Santa.”
“Boychick, that makes no sense.”
Uzi cleared his throat. “After what you’d been through, I didn’t think you needed to know.”
DeSantos groaned. “Fine. We’re ready.”
“Wait,” Vail said. “We are?”
VAIL NUDGED DESANTOS. “Now you know how it feels when you’re not told everything.”
DeSantos gave her a look.
“Just sayin’.” As she latched her belt, she asked, “So what the hell is this ‘max-range bingo’ thing?”
“A way of conserving fuel. You climb toward your maximum altitude and then turn your plane into a huge glider.”
“That doesn’t sound reassuring.”
“I wasn’t trying to reassure you, Karen. I was giving it to you straight. Don’t ever say I never tell you the truth.”
Vail pulled the seat restraint tight. “This is one of those times when lying to me might’ve been the better way to go.”
DeSantos shook his head. “You’ve spent this entire mission lambasting me for not telling you the truth, and when I finally do, you say you would’ve preferred a lie. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the female psyche.”
You wouldn’t be the first.
“Will this max-range idea work?”
DeSantos turned to Vail, his eyes searching her face.
“What?”
“I’m trying to figure out if you want an honest answer or not.”
“Yes—give it to me straight.”
“If Uzi and Rodman are doing it, they feel it’s the best course of action. But I’ve never actually done it. A buddy of mine has, and he told me it works. Of course, he’s a habitual liar.” DeSantos laughed, a release of nervous energy. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”
Vail closed her eyes.
I’m in a flying metal coffin rocketing toward the sun. How did I get myself into this?
UZI SWITCHED OVER comms and nodded at Rodman. “They’re ready.”
“We’ve got another problem.” Rodman set the pocket checklist down. “The cabin’s not pressurized, so we’ll have to use our oxygen masks, but—”
“Karen and Santa don’t have any.”
“Right. So they’re gonna pass out once we climb past eighteen thousand feet.”
“Do we have to go that high?”
“We’ll actually be going to twenty. But I’m not sure how the Osprey uses gas, and the checklist doesn’t cover it. But one thing’s for sure: the lower we go, the less fuel we save. And the more we sit here and dick around about it, the more we waste.”
Uzi swung his head around and looked into the rear cabin. He keyed his mic. “Uh, one more thing, guys.” He explained the situation.
“Hypoxia,” Vail said. “You’re joking, right? Are we really gonna wake up?”
Rodman broke in. “Somewhere between ten- and thirteen-thousand feet, you’ll feel a bit lightheaded. When we get closer to eighteen, you’ll drift off to sleep. After we drop down below that, you’ll be fine. There’s a risk of altitude sickness, but we won’t be above eighteen thousand very long.”
“Understood,” DeSantos said.
“Karen?” Uzi asked.
“I was held prisoner in a closet and came down with claustrophobia. Now you’re trying to give me acrophobia. Sure, let’s go for it. I don’t mind being a mental wreck by the time I hit forty.”
Uzi switched channels as he swung his head back to the front of the plane. “Let’s take her up.”
“Just so you know, the bingo is charted in the checklist for a max altitude of thirteen thousand feet. For twenty, I’ve had to extrapolate.”
“You mean
guess
.”
Rodman shrugged. “Basically, yeah.”
They donned their oxygen masks and made the necessary flight adjustments. A moment later, the Osprey began a rapid ascent of three thousand feet per minute, pinning them into their seatbacks.
As they climbed, Uzi’s eyes found the fuel gauge. The numbers were dropping precipitously, like an elevator in free-fall. “Uh—Jesus Christ. Our fuel is—It’s—”
“Don’t watch the levels, Uzi. It’s going to freak you out.”
“Going to?”
“It’s only gonna get worse. Those numbers aren’t going to reverse. But soon as we reach max altitude, the fuel burn will drop and we’ll be sipping gas the rest of the way down—when we ‘go Prius,’ as you put it.”
“I’d feel a little better if we’d done the calculations so that we know for sure we’ve got enough fuel to pull this off.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t really guess.”
Uzi tilted his head. “You didn’t?”
“No sir. No point in guessing. We didn’t have a choice, remember?”
“Doesn’t make me feel any better.”
A minute later, Rodman said, “We’re at our ceiling, twenty thousand feet. Cutting back.” The drop in velocity, as well as the change in pitch of the plane, was immediate.
Uzi stole a look into the rear compartment and saw Vail and DeSantos slumped against each other. When he turned back to the cockpit, he did what Rodman told him not to do: he snuck another look at the fuel gauge. And immediately wished he hadn’t.