Jeffrey heard the siren alarm again. More missile launches had been detected by the Seahawk’s warning radar.
The view outside was confusing. Missile trails and rocket trails and laser beams intertwined in the sky, and fires burned in several places on the ground — including ones from the infrared flares. Jeffrey knew now why the shuttle’s flight path was set to avoid populated areas. Every piece of ordnance fired had to land somewhere or other, and civilians on the ground could be injured or killed.
There was another hard blast from outside, much closer. The Seahawk shuddered, but continued to fly.
The whole thing started to seem unreal. Jeffrey knew this sensation: It was panic taking hold. There was nothing he could do but stay imprisoned in his flight harness, and everyone in the passenger compartment exchanged increasingly desperate looks. Jeffrey felt like he was in some battle simulator gone wild, or immersed in a demonic video game. The Seahawk pulled hard up and went for more altitude. Jeffrey saw an antiaircraft missile coming at them from the side, rising fast enough to stay aimed at the helo.
At the last possible second, the pilot rolled the Seahawk so that its bottom faced the missile. The sickening roll continued, until the helo was upside down. The helo dropped like a stone, the heat of its engines shielded from the missile by the bulk of the fuselage. The missile streaked by harmlessly above them, through the spot where the helo had flown moments before.
The falling helo finished the other half of the barrel roll. Jeffrey was completely disoriented. He looked out the window to try to regain situational awareness. At first he was looking straight down at the ground — more treetops, very close — and then the Seahawk leveled off, regaining speed.
There was another large explosion on the ground. The air was an even more confusing tangle of tracer rounds and laser beams and heat decoys and smoke trails coming up and going down. The ground now had the beginnings of a serious forest fire.
Another missile was coming right at the Seahawk. The Apaches did what they could to divert it with their spoofing lasers. The Seahawk popped two more heat flares, but then ran out. It had lost too much altitude to maneuver aggressively now, and the enemy missile still bore in.
The missile warhead detonated. Jeffrey felt its radiant heat through the windows a split second before the shrapnel from the warhead battered the helo. He was sprayed by a liquid, and was terrified that it was high-octane fuel or flammable hydraulic fluid. But the color made him recognize it as arterial blood. The crew chief’s head had been nearly severed by something that punched through the fuselage wall. Jeffrey watched the assistant crew chief look on, horrified, as his boss died quickly; the young and inexperienced kid went into a trance from mental trauma. Some of the other passengers were bleeding from wounds — Jeffrey wasn’t sure how bad. Pieces of smashed window Plexiglas covered everyone and everything. The Seahawk kept on flying, but the vibrations were much rougher and more ragged. Jeffrey had to do something.
He unbuckled and grabbed fittings to steady himself. He worked hand over hand the few feet toward the rear of the aircraft. He pulled off the assistant crew chief’s helmet, with its intercom headset, placing his own on the kid’s head as best he could. He put on the better-equipped one and spoke into the intercom mike.
“Pilot, your senior passenger. Crew chief dead, and wounded men back here. What are your intentions?”
“AWACS has vectored us north to a well-patrolled area. Ground-attack fast movers inbound.” Fighter-bomber jets, for extra support. “ETA fast movers fifteen minutes.” An eternity. “Apaches both still with us, sir.”
“Can your ship make it to Washington?”
“I might need to put down in the next field we come to.”
“That would make us sitting ducks if there are more bad guys out there.”
The pilot hesitated. “Er, understood, sir…. How bad are the wounded?”
The wounded were another good reason to not land in the middle of nowhere. “Wait one. Where’s the first- aid kit?”
The pilot told him, and Jeffrey spotted the big white box with the red cross on the cover.
The deck of the helo was becoming slippery, with blood. The wounded sat in pools of it. “We need a hospital, fast,” Jeffrey said into the intercom. “It’s a disaster back here.” He took off his life vest; it would just get in the way as he worked.
Three of the other passengers looked very pale and sweaty, and their unfocused gazes kept flitting around, definite signs that they were going into deep shock from their wounds. One suffered ever-worsening respiratory distress. A chief, unharmed like Jeffrey, also got up to help the other passengers. Together, he and Jeffrey searched for sites of bleeding. They bandaged limbs, abdomens, punctured chests as best they could. The overhead was so low they had to move around stooped over. Pieces of loose bandage, and shreds of fuselage insulation, flapped and blew in the wind coming through the open or smashed windows. Sunlight shone through holes that hadn’t been there before the attack. The coppery smell of blood was growing thicker.
Up close, Jeffrey caught the stench of other men’s raw fear. Even though they were strangers, his being so close to them — watching their faces while he worked, offering words of comfort — created a bond. Pleading, agony, stoic resignation, despair and then renewed hope roller-coastered through the passenger compartment, dragging Jeffrey each inch of the way.
He stumbled as the helo tilted.
“Uh,” the copilot’s voice came over the intercom, “we’ve been vectored to a hospital with a helipad. Local fire department is rolling to meet us. Our ETA is six minutes.”
Jeffrey glanced forward into the cockpit. Many panel lights glowed yellow or red, which couldn’t be good news. Jeffrey had visions again of the helo crashing.
“Can you stay in the air for another six minutes?”
“Keep your fingers crossed, sir.”
As he bandaged serious shrapnel wounds, Jeffrey tried to think only positive thoughts. He noticed that his uniform ribbons were thoroughly soaked in other peoples’ blood.
Chapter 2
Thanks to some heroic and desperate flying, Jeffrey’s helicopter barely landed safely at the hospital in Virginia. He helped off-load the wounded onto gurneys already waiting. While the Apaches circled overhead to stand guard, the casualties were rushed into the emergency room. Firefighters foamed down the damaged Seahawk, just in case. The dead crew chief was put into a body bag; his assistant, still dazed from the whole ordeal and barely coherent, was walked inside the hospital by two nurses. Jeffrey was vaguely aware of someone holding a video camera.
Inside, at the nuclear-biological-chemical decontamination point federal law required all hospitals to have, Jeffrey stripped and took a thorough shower. Blood had soaked through to his skin, and only as he scrubbed himself did he realize that some was his own. His cuts and scrapes were minor, but needed attention nonetheless. Then a doctor made sure Jeffrey rehydrated; the energy drink was exactly what he needed.
The next problem was clothing. Jeffrey’s uniform was useless, stiff from caked and drying gore. Even his shoes and socks were ruined. Someone thought to get him a hospital janitor’s clean beige coveralls; beige was close enough to khaki to look military, and the jumpsuit was much like the one-piece outfits submariners wore on patrol. The repeatedly laundered cotton was comfortable, considering that Jeffrey lacked underwear. The local fire chief gave him a spare pair of boots.
Jeffrey retrieved his wallet, with his smart identification cards; he took his rank insignia from the collars of his uniform, washed the silver oak leaves, and pinned them to the collars of his coveralls.
