Sergeant Connie Davis felt the metallic stutter before she heard it. It broke the rhythm of the music that usually floated in the background of her thoughts when flying.
She began counting seconds… four, five. Again.
A third time to be sure.
“Major?” she called on the Black Hawk helicopter’s intercom.
“What!” Major Emily Beale’s voice made it damn clear that whatever Connie wanted had better be more important than the firefight going on all around them.
The copilot and the other crew chief, Staff Sergeant John Wallace, kept their silence. It surprised Connie that she’d heard it before Big Bad John. He was the most amazing mechanic she’d ever met.
“We have,” Connie estimated quickly, “about five minutes until lift failure. We’re losing a main blade.” And without that, ten thousand pounds of US Army helicopter and her four crew members were going to fall out of the sky far too fast.
“You sure?”
Connie leaned out the left-side gunner’s window to unleash another spate of fire from her Minigun on the bunkered-in machine gun nest that was giving them such trouble tonight. A hailstorm of spent brass spewed out the window as she pounded sixty-eight rounds a second of tracer-laden hell down on the aggressors. More raw power than the cannons in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
For the three long seconds that the nest was in her range, the tracer-green fire whipped and coiled across the sky like a nightmare snake. In three seconds she hurled two kilos of lead. Four-point-four pounds didn’t sound like much until it was pumped along as two hundred separate pieces of lead moving at three times the speed of sound. She raked her flying buzz saw back and forth twice over the enemies’ position in the time they were in view.
“She’s right. Maybe ten minutes if you ride it soft,” Big John chimed in. He might not have caught the problem, but as soon as she pointed it out he’d found the vibration rippling through the frame of the highly modified MH-60L DAP Hawk helicopter, had counted the seconds, and he knew. The DAP—the Direct Action Penetrator, an exclusive design for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (airborne)—was the most powerful gunship flown by any military, and this one was badly broken.
It was her first time in full combat with John. But already he was a man she’d learned to admire during training flights. A man she had real trouble not noticing. She kept finding herself watching him when he wasn’t aware. Big John Wallace fully deserved his nickname. He was six-four, mountain-strong, with skin the rich luster of good earth. He was definitely the largest and perhaps the most handsome man she’d flown with in six years aloft. He also was a crew chief who loved his helicopter like a child and that was the most captivating piece of him. He was a mechanic to the center of his being—a feeling she understood well.
That she was a step ahead of him would have been satisfying in any less hazardous situation. One look out the window was enough to wipe any thought of a smile entirely out of her mind.
Even at night, the Hindu Kush mountains of northeast Afghanistan looked ugly. And tonight’s mission had taken their flight in deep, way past five minutes to safety, or ten. Base lay forty-five minutes away, with four good blades, and the area around that base was at least marginally friendlier than the people shooting at them now.
They might be known as the Night Stalkers, the fliers who ruled the night. But if they went down here, they wouldn’t be ruling the night for long.
“Viper, this is Vengeance.” Major Beale, the first woman ever in the Night Stalkers, had long since proved her ability as a pilot and commander when fast decisions were needed.
Helicopters never flew alone into combat, and tonight’s mission had paired them with Viper.
“We’re losing a blade and running for home. Won’t make it.” Then she took one last turn, wide instead of her normal hard slam, giving Big John a final chance at clearing out the problem they’d been sent to solve. The copilot fired four rockets, and whatever they opened up, John drove home.
The shock wave hit them hard enough that Connie half feared they’d lose the blade now.
…Four, five, shudder. Still right on cue. Okay for the moment.
