“Grab ahold of something,” Sam called.
She wrapped her free hand around the webbing. “Done!”
Sam tested the helicopter’s cyclic control between his legs, then the collective stick at his side, gauging the blade pitch, then finally the antitorque foot pedals until he had a feel for them. He engaged the collective, and slowly the helicopter lifted off. He tested the cyclic, moving the helicopter first left, then right, then nose up and down.
Remi yelled, “Sam, we’ve got a problem!”
“What?”
“Look right!”
Sam glanced out the side window. It took a few moments for him to register what he was seeing: Yaotl and the others were scattering across the pad as a dark rectangular shape bumped over the pad’s rock-lined perimeter and headed toward the helicopter. It was the Cushman. Sam caught a glimpse of Rivera in the moon’s pale glow hunched over the wheel.
“Nap time’s over,” Remi called.
“I knew I’d forgotten something,” Sam shouted. “The keys!”
He returned his attention to the controls, working the collective to gain altitude. In his haste he jerked the cyclic to the right and pressed the rudder pedal. The helicopter dipped right, and the tail spun around. He overcompensated. The helicopter dropped straight down, bounced off the pad, rose again. Sam risked another glance out the side window.
The Cushman was thirty feet away and closing fast. To one side a figure—Nochtli, it looked like—dashed across the pad and threw himself into the Cushman’s cargo bed.
“Slow them down!” Sam called. “Aim for the engine! Bigger target!”
In the back, Remi opened up with one of the AK-74s, firing controlled three-round bursts into the ground ahead of the Cushman, but got no result. She switched targets. Bullets pounded into the cart’s front end, sparking off the bumper guards and shredding the fiberglass. Steam gushed from the engine compartment. The Cushman stuttered and began slowing, but not before it slid from view beneath the helicopter.
Sam lifted the collective, trying to gain altitude.
“I can’t see them anymore,” Remi called.
Sam glanced out one side window, then the other. “Where—”
Suddenly the helicopter lurched sideways and down, the open side door facing the ground. Remi’s feet slid out from under her, and she skidded toward the opening. Instinctively, she released her grip on the AK-74 to latch onto the safety harness. The rifle slid down the deck, bounced off the bell’s crate, and disappeared out the door.
“We lost an AK!” Remi called. A moment later a hand appeared in the opening, clawing at the deck for a handhold. Nochtli’s head rose into view. “And we’ve got a passenger!” Remi shouted.
Sam glanced over his shoulder. “Kick him!”
“What!”
“Smash his fingers!”
Remi coiled her leg and lashed out, slamming her heel into Nochtli’s pinkie finger. He screamed but held on. With a grunt, he heaved his upper torso onto the deck and reached for the tie-down straps attached to the crate. Remi curled her leg for a second strike.
From below came three overlapping cracks. Bullets thunked into the cabin’s doorway.
“Sam!”
“I hear it! Hold tight, I’m going to try to shake him!”
Sam jerked the helicopter to the left and looked out both side windows, trying to locate the source of the gunfire. Below and to the right, Rivera stood in the cargo bed of the Cushman with Remi’s fallen AK-74 tucked into his shoulder. The muzzle flashed orange. Sam’s passenger’sside cockpit window spiderwebbed. He shifted the cyclic again, continuing to slide the helicopter left toward the trees at the edge of the pad. He pulled up on the collective to gain altitude.
In the cabin, Remi cocked her leg again and heel-kicked Nochtli in the thigh. Nochtli grunted and collapsed face-first onto the deck, shattering his nose. With one hand still entwined in the safety webbing, she reached over her head, groping for one of the weapons.
Sam looked left, saw the dark outline of the treetops looming before the window. A bullet tore through the passenger-seat headrest, zipped past Sam’s chin, and punched through the windshield. He grunted and lifted the collective, but it was too late. Tree limbs scraped the belly of the helicopter. “Come on, come on . . .” he grumbled. “Remi, can you—”
“Little busy here!”
A branch snagged on the helicopter’s tail boom, and the craft spun clockwise like a top. Alarms began blaring in the cockpit. Red and orange lights flashed on the dashboard. Sam worked the cyclic and collective, trying to compensate. Tree limbs slapped at the cockpit window.
Remi’s hand touched the wooden butt of one of the AKs; she grabbed it, pulled hard, and it slid from the webbing. It stopped. She craned her neck back. The AK’s front side was snagged on a strap. In the doorway, Nochtli was pushing himself upright. He hooked one of his knees over the edge of the doorway and began dragging himself toward Remi. Her hand slipped off the AK’s butt; her fingers touched something metallic, tubular—a pistol barrel. She grabbed it, jerked it free of the webbing. Nochtli latched his free hand onto her ankle. Remi set her teeth and swung the pistol in a backhand. The butt caught Nochtli on the side of the chin. His head snapped sideways, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Still kneeling, he teetered for a moment, then tipped backward and disappeared through the doorway.
She called to Sam, “He’s gone!”
“You okay?”
She gulped a few breaths and replied, “Shaken and stirred but still here!”
Bullets peppered the fuselage. Sam saw an opening in the canopy and worked the cyclic and rudder pedals, crabbing the nose around until it was pointed in the right direction, then nosed down and lifted the collective. With the shrieking of wood on aluminum, the helicopter lurched forward and into the clear. Now he lowered the collective and dropped the helicopter below the tree line. He stopped in a hover twenty feet above the slope, looked around for the H-V-C-P Jingaro had mentioned, and flipped it on. The helicopter shuddered slightly, slid sideways, dipped, then settled into a steady hover. The alarms and the flashing lights stopped. Sam tentatively took his hands off the controls and exhaled heavily. In the back, Remi scooted sideways and slid the door shut. The thumping of the rotors faded.
Sam turned in his seat and extended his hand between the gap. Remi grabbed his hand and pulled herself toward him. Sam asked, “You okay?”
“Yes. You?”
He nodded. “Let’s get out of here. I think we’ve fully worn out our welcome.”
CHAPTER 20
BIG SUKUTI ISLAND
THEY HAD JUST CLEARED THE ISLAND’S SOUTHERN COASTLINE when Sam realized Rivera’s gunfire had caused more than cosmetic damage. The rudder pedals felt spongy, and the collective and cyclic were sluggish, responding to his commands with a slight delay.
“What do you think?” Remi asked, her face pressed between the seats.
“Hydraulics, maybe.” He scanned the gauges, looking for oil pressure, temperature, revolutions per minute . . . “Engine’s running a little hot, too, and the oil pressure looks dodgy.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing good.”
“How far to the beach?”
“Three miles, give or take.”
“We should assume Rivera isn’t giving up.”
“I agree. Whether they call someone and how fast they respond is the question.”
“Or how fast they can get the Rinkers working again.”
“True. Let me see if I can get her settled down.”
Carefully Sam worked the controls, dropping both altitude and speed until they were a hundred feet off the water and moving at sixty knots—roughly seventy miles per hour. Below them, the sea was flat, calm, and black save the reflection of the helicopter’s navigation strobes.
Remi said, “Sam, they’ll be able to track the lights.”
“Lights or no lights, they’re tracking us through the Big Eyes. Once we cross the beach, I??
?ll switch them off. Against the backdrop of the land we’ll be invisible.”
“You’re assuming they’ll come after us.”
“Have to.” He did a quick scan of the gauges. “The engine temperature’s come down a little bit. But the oil pressure is still hinky. The controls are still soft.”
“Hydraulics, then.”
“At the very least. Any one of those can put us in the drink. All we need is another four minutes or so.”
“And a non-crash landing,” Remi added.
“And that.”
Slowly through the windshield they could see Africa’s east coast turn from a dark smudge to identifiable bits of landmass: trees, white sand beaches, rolling hills, and rivers and streams zigzagging across the terrain.
A half mile from the beach Sam felt the cyclic jerk in his hand, followed by a thump-bang above their heads. The cockpit and cabin began shaking. An alarm shrieked. Yellow and red lights flashed.
“That’s a tad ominous,” Remi said with a tight grin.
“Just a tad,” Sam agreed. “Grab ahold of something. It’s going to get bumpy.”
He lifted the collective and dropped the nose, pushing the helicopter past eighty knots. Through the windshield he saw the shoals slip beneath the fuselage, then the beach, then the black-green of the forest. He reached forward and flipped off the navigation strobes.
“There’s a big sandbar ahead on the riverbank,” he called. “Think you can manage the bell?”
“Define ‘manage’?”
“Shove it out the door.”
“That, I can do. What’s the plan?”
“I hover. You, the guns, our packs, and the bell get off on the sandbank.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to put down in the river.”
“What? No, Sam—”
“You said it yourself: They’re coming after us. If we can ditch this thing, they’ll have nowhere to start looking.”
“Can you do it?”
“If I can get the rotors shut down quickly enough.”
“More ifs,” Remi replied. “I’m beginning to hate ifs.”
“This’ll be the last one for a while.”
“Uh-huh. I’ve heard that before.”
“When you’re on the ground, find the thickest tree trunk around and get behind it. If the rotors don’t spool down enough before she flips over, they’ll tear free and turn into shrapnel.”
“Flip over? What do you mean—”
“Helicopters are top-heavy. As soon as she touches the water she’s going to roll.”
“I don’t like this—”
“The sandbar’s coming up. Get ready!”
“You’re infuriating, you know that?”
“I know.”
Remi mumbled a half curse under her breath, then turned around and released the tie-down ratchets around the crate. She crab-walked around it, braced her back against the bulkhead and her legs against the crate, and shoved it across the deck until it bumped up against the door.
“Ready,” she called.
Sam bled off airspeed and altitude until they were thirty feet off the sandbar and crawling ahead at fifteen knots. The helicopter was wobbling now; the earlier thump-bang had settled into an ominous three-second cycle that shook the fuselage from stem to stern.
“It’s getting worse,” Remi said.
“We’re almost there.”
Sam eased the helicopter downward a foot at a time.
“Check the distance,” he asked.
Remi slid the cabin door halfway open and poked her head out. “Twenty feet . . . fifteen . . . ten . . .”
“Can you make that?” Sam asked.
“I may be well past my gymnastics days, but I can still do ten feet blindfolded.”
Sam flipped on the hover coupler. He took his hands off the controls. The helicopter lurched sideways, quivered, dipped, then steadied itself.
“Okay, go,” Sam called. “Give me a wave when you’re down and safe.”
Remi hunch-walked forward, stuck her head between the seats, kissed him, said “Good luck,” then walked back and shoved the door the rest of the way open.
“Try to miss the skids,” Sam said.
Remi put her shoulder to the crate, took a deep breath, and shoved. The crate tumbled through the opening and disappeared. The guns went next. Remi gave Sam a final glance and jumped out. Ten seconds later Sam spotted her farther up the sandbar. She gave him a thumbs-up and dashed off into the darkness.
Sam counted to sixty to give her time to find cover, then grabbed the collective. He disengaged the hover coupler and seized the cyclic. He dipped the nose slightly and let the rotor blade’s pitch angle ease him across the sandbar and over the river. When he reached a section that was both wide and deep enough for his purposes, he pulled the nose up and worked the collective into a hover.
He took one final look around. Once the helicopter submerged, the interior would be black. With no visual reference points, he’d have to escape by feel alone. He checked his seat belt to ensure he knew how to unhook it, then studied the cabin-door latch, then rehearsed his movements in his mind’s eye.
He lowered the collective ever so slightly and felt the helicopter drop. He pressed his face against the door window. The skids were about five feet off the water. Close enough. Any closer, Sam feared, and he’d have a zero margin for error.
“Here goes everything,” Sam muttered.
He released the cyclic, shut off the engines, pulled the collective up to its stops to slow the blades, and grabbed the collective again. Sam felt his belly shoot into his throat. With a crash, the helicopter struck the surface. He was thrown forward against the restraints. He felt the helicopter tipping right, thought, Collective!, and he jerked the control to the left. The effect was immediate. With the blades already fully pitched, the rotor assembly responded to Sam’s command by angling to the left and shifting the helicopter’s center of gravity. Water rushed up the windshield, horizontally at first, then diagonally as the helicopter pitched sideways. Sam tucked his chin to his chest, grasped the restraints with both hands, and set his jaw.
He felt a bone-shaking jolt. White light burst behind his eyes. Then nothing.
HE AWOKE COUGHING. Water filled his throat. He jerked his head back, sputtered again, and forced his eyes open. Seeing only blackness, he felt a moment of panic. He squashed it, forced himself to breathe. He reached out, fingers extended, until he touched something solid—the tip of the cyclic. Gravity was pulling his head to the left. The helicopter was lying on its side; the river hadn’t been deep enough for the helicopter to completely capsize. That was the good news. The bad news was that he could hear water gushing into the cabin behind him. Already the level had reached his face.
“Move, Sam,” he muttered.
He extended his right arm up, felt the upholstery of the passenger seat, and kept groping until his fingers found the safety belt. He latched on, then dipped his left hand beneath the water and punched the Release button on his restraints. He fell sideways, then brought his free hand up, joined it with his left hand, and chinned himself from the water until his knees reached the gap separating the cockpit from the cabin. Toes pointed, he shoved his legs through the opening and stretched to his full length until his feet touched the cabin’s bulkhead. He let go of the restraints and slid the rest of the way into the cabin. Now that he was standing hunched over, the water was at his chest. He extended his arms upward, felt the cabin door, and traced its outline with his fingertips. Water was spurting through the seams. He found the latch, tested it with slight downward pressure. It seemed operable.
“Deep breath,” Sam told himself.
He sucked in a lungful of air, shoved the latch down, and slid the door open. Water crashed onto his head. He stumbled backward and slid beneath the surface. He let the wave shove him against the cabin wall, using the momentum to coil his legs beneath him. The pressure subsided. He kicked off, arms spread before him, hands grasping
at the doorframe and pushing, feet kicking—
His head broke the surface.
“Sam!” he heard. Remi’s voice.
He opened his eyes and turned in the water, trying to get his bearings.
“Sam!” she called again.
He turned again, saw her standing on the bank waving at him.
“—diles!” she yelled.
“What?”
“Crocodiles! Swim!”
Sam did just that, pouring his last shred of energy into a sprint for the bank. He touched sand, shoved himself to his knees, then to his feet, then stumbled forward into Remi’s arms. Together they slogged up the sand onto level ground before collapsing.
“Forgot about crocodiles,” Sam said a couple minutes later.
“Me too. I spotted them in the shallows about fifty yards upstream. The commotion must have woken them up. Are you okay? Any broken bones?”
“Don’t think so. How’d I do?”
Remi pointed toward the middle of the river. Sam focused on the spot, but it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust. All that remained visible of the helicopter was a branchlike shard of rotor blade jutting a half foot above the surface.
“The rest of the chunks went into the water.”
“Just as I planned,” Sam said with a weary smile.
“Planned?”
“Hoped. How’s the bell?”
“Aside from a few cracks in the wood, the crate’s surprisingly intact. I collected our packs and the guns. Let’s find some cover in case we have visitors.”
CHAPTER 21
WARY OF LEAVING TELLTALE DRAG MARKS, THEY CHOSE TO LEAVE the crate where it sat. Unintentionally, they’d dropped it in an ideal location—a dry rivulet near the riverbank. They covered it with scrub brush and then, using bundled foliage to obscure their tracks, they back-walked off the sandbar to solid ground and into a copse. A hundred feet inside the tree line they found a ten-by-ten-foot depression surrounded by fallen logs. It gave them a vantage point of not only the crate but the open ground down to the beach.