Daughter of Destiny (23 page)

As she closed her eyes, the only thing Kai wanted was a deep, long sleep without any dreams at all. She'd had her fill of them and then some. Spiraling down into the folds of darkness, feeling her body begin to release its tension one muscle at a time, Kai found her last conscious thought was to wonder if they would get safely to Adelaide without any other problems. As sleep enclosed her like a pair of owl wings, she felt danger would stalk them again—a matter of life and death.

But it had to be her imagination….

“R
ed storm rising,” Jake warned, pointing to his right out the Plexiglas window of the Bell Longranger he was piloting.

“What?” Kai looked up from the air map she was studying. They were flying at five thousand feet, a good two hours south of Alice Springs. It was nearly 0800, the morning air smooth and the sky cloudy.

“Sandstorm,” Jake warned. “Again.” He frowned and looked at the wall of red dust rising well over ten thousand feet—and coming toward them.

“Dude, that is some serious dust in the air,” Kai muttered, her gaze narrowing. She hadn't forgotten about the sandstorm at the canyon. “The meteorologist at the weather desk didn't say anything about this….” She dug under a bunch of papers resting on her lap to reread the weather forecast for the Alice Springs–Adelaide flight route.

“Listen,” Jake said, giving her a glance, “when I was stationed over in Saudi Arabia, these sandstorms could blow up out of nowhere. There's no way, usually, to forecast
them on any given day. They kick up when a cold front's coming through, and we'll be flying through a low later today. That sandstorm is the front of the weather change.”

“Rotten,” Kai muttered, staring out the window. To her left, the sky was a light blue, with long, gray strands of altostratus clouds below. Her gaze settled on Jake for a moment. His profile was so strong and masculine. He was handsome, not matter how much she tried to ignore that fact. This morning he wore a short-sleeved, white cotton shirt and a pair of dark blue chinos. His chin was nicked from shaving and she felt an urge to touch the small wound in a soothing gesture, but squelched that unexpected response. It wasn't much of a cut, but for whatever reason, Jake suffering any kind of pain bothered Kai.

“What do you do in a sandstorm if you're piloting a helo?” Kai asked him. “I know what I'd do if I was in an F-14—avoid it.”

Grimly, Jake studied the threatening wall of sand. It stretched from northeast to southwest like a huge, impenetrable red barrier slowly advancing upon them. “That's right. Avoid at all costs. These storms follow the line of the cold front that can be hundreds of miles in length and there's no way for a helicopter to get above it or fly around it. Usually you land and wait it out. The grit can get in the rotors and cause a lot of problems.”

“Aren't Aussie helos somehow prepared for this?” Kai waved at the curtain of sand. It was a good thirty miles away from them, but given the direction they were heading, it would eventually overtake them.

“Probably are,” Jake said. “For example, the Apache I
fly has titanium-edged blades. Even when I was flying in Saudi Arabia on top secret missions, we'd have to replace those blades about once a week, because the sand is silica, and penetrates any metal over time. Then you have pitted blades and you're going to have in-flight problems with stability, for starters. It goes downhill from there real fast.”

“Oh…” Kai frowned. She picked up the thermos of coffee stowed in a net pocket beside her seat. Their flight was smooth this morning, nothing like yesterday, during the heat of the afternoon. She could pour a cup of coffee now without spilling a drop.

“Want some?” she offered.

“No…” Jake's attention was on the wall of the storm. It was a deep red color, the colder air scooping downward and lifting the crimson sand off the floor of the desert, then whipping it upward on a fast, rising thermal of super cooled air. The front of the wall looked like the endless curve of a wave that was continuing to ascend and was finally going to come down and crash upon the beach, only it never would. The crest would churn endlessly high in the air, slowly rotating ahead of the major wall of the storm. The winds in that frontal crest were rough, and dangerous to all aircraft.

Kai sipped her coffee after she'd stowed the thermos back in the side pocket of her seat. “Have you flown in a sandstorm before?”

“Yeah…once. We were on a mission to protect an Army Special Forces A team of ten men who were hunting down terrorists. They were pinned down and needed air support in the middle of this sandstorm, and we had to fly even though we shouldn't have.”

Looking at the grim set to his square-jawed face, Kai realized the memory was a brutal one. “Pretty rugged?”

Giving a sharp bark of laughter, Jake said, “
Rugged
is a good word. We were able to supply them the firepower they needed to break free of the jam they were in. They made it by foot to a mountain, where they lost the enemy, then they hunkered down to wait out the rest of the sandstorm. After it rolled by, a Blackhawk went in and extracted them.”

“What happened to your helo?”

“The blades were so badly pitted from us flying thirty miles into that storm and out of it that it was rough getting away alive. I wasn't sure we'd make it back to base. The controls were loose and I thought we would crash, but we made it back to the base okay. They removed all those blades immediately. When we looked at them in the hangar later, they were so pitted that I didn't know how they'd held that bird up.”

Eyeing the sandstorm, Kai said, “Then we need to set down.” She began searching the map for the nearest airport.

“Yeah, that's the long and short of it,” Jake said, glancing over as she ran her long, slender fingers across the map. How beautiful Kai looked this morning. He hadn't slept much on the bed he'd made on the floor, and not because the carpet was hard or uncomfortable. Just being in the same room with Kai was an aching torture for him.

He'd tossed and turned all night. The air-conditioning had been on and it had muted the sounds of his restlessness. Knowing Kai lay sleeping in the bed about five feet away ate at him. Jake wanted to be up on that bed with her,
beside her, holding her…just holding her, as he had so long ago. As he'd done just a few days ago. He had gotten up at last and quietly taken a shower, then dressed and left the room. But not before looking down at Kai, who was sleeping the sleep of an angel.

He would never forget what he'd seen this morning. The image was branded forever on his heart. Kai had worn a pale lavender nightgown and she'd been lying on her back, one hand near her head, her fingers slightly curled. Black and loose, her hair had formed a beautiful halo about her head and shoulders, emphasizing her coppery skin, her softly parted lips and high cheekbones. Jake had stood there absorbing her beauty into his heart like a thief. He'd felt guilty standing there, slobbering like a rabid wolf, but couldn't help himself. He had been rooted to the spot, hands just itching to reach out and caress her thick, silky hair, to softly touch her smooth cheek once more.

Kai lay there like an innocent, the covers down to her hips, exposing the ripe curves of her breasts, which rose and fell slowly with her breathing. In that moment, Jake saw the real Kai Alseoun. Not the embattled survivor who had clawed and scratched her way out of her dangerous childhood. Not the combat warrior who had, until very recently, rode and tamed the most powerful fighter jet in the world. No, he saw the woman herself. The person who was open and vulnerable, with no walls erected to keep her tender emotions protected. Oh! How he'd wanted to simply step forward, sit on the bed and tell her what a fantastic woman she was, how much he admired, respected and loved her.

Swallowing hard, Jake looked away from Kai as she studied the map. Love. Yeah, well, that's what it was. She was the first love of his life. And when she'd been wrenched unexpectedly out of it, Jake had thought he'd die of grief, his love for her had been so deep and true. Now, so many years later, he was finding that the love he'd held then had matured, grown and was now so powerful he couldn't ignore it. Jake didn't know what to do with that realization. It was the wrong time. The wrong place. Wrong everything.

“Jake…”

He heard the tension in Kai's tone. Looking in her direction, he saw her staring out at the cloudy sky. “What?”

“I see a helo coming at us—fast. They're on our six.”

That was bad news. The “six” position was the tail of their copter, a place where enemies could sneak up to get a shot at them without them shooting back. That wasn't a good sign. “Get the binoculars. Check it out.” His mind spun with questions—and options. There was no way Marston's men could fix a Huey overnight and get it airworthy. Or could they? And how could they follow them? Of course, Jake knew that the Longranger was the only other helo there at Yulara, and anyone could walk in and see that they'd filed a flight plan for Alice Springs. That had been a mistake, Jake realized now. He should have lied about their destination.
Damn.
There was nothing they could do about it now. Lesson learned, Jake told himself. He watched as Kai drew the binoculars from the case that sat between their seats. Dreading what she might see, he glanced over at the approaching wall of red sand. It was much closer. Threatening.

“Damn!” Kai rasped. “It's
them,
Jake!”

“Are you
sure?
Same color scheme? The
same
Huey?”

“Yeah, I'm positive.” Kai watched as the helicopter continued toward them at a rapid rate. “Blue-and-yellow paint scheme. The same bastards.”

“What about the tail numbers?”

Kai searched, and as the Huey turned slightly, she read them off to Jake. Pulling the binoculars away, she said, “It's the same damn helo. How'd they get it fixed so fast?”

“I don't know. It doesn't matter. What matters is they're stalking us and we're helpless in the arms department. I wish we had an Apache. We'd have seen those dudes stalking us a long time ago. We'd have rockets and a chain gun to blow them out of the air. Right now, we have next to nothing.”

Kai stowed the binoculars. She quickly grabbed her pistol from the canvas bag that sat behind her seat. “Well, we know what he's going to do. He's going to get close enough to start firing at us. And I'm not going to sit here and let that happen.” She slammed a clip into the butt of her pistol. Placing a bullet in the chamber, she turned and studied the door on her side of the aircraft.

“Did you see rocket launchers on the Huey?” Jake asked. His gaze moved across the dials in front of him. They had half a tank of fuel left.

“No…nothing outwardly that I could see.” Grimly, Kai watched the chopper, which was a thousand feet above them and hurtling down toward them. Her pulse leaped. “They may have an elephant gun this time. I sure wish we had that Remington right now. My pistol is only effective
at close range. If they have a rifle, they have a much longer reach and we're dead meat. I'll never be able to hit them with a bullet, but they'll sure as hell hit us….”

“Yeah, I know,” Jake said worriedly. “Get on the satellite phone. Call Mike. Tell him we're under attack again. Give him the details. If we go down, he's got to know our coordinates so they can send a team from Adelaide to search the wreckage….”

“That's no consolation,” Kai muttered. She eyed the storm, which was less than five miles away from them. Grabbing the phone, she dialed in the number.

Jake divided his attention between the Huey, which was now diving directly at them, and the wall of sand. They were bracketed between two evils and had nowhere to escape to. What should he do? If he flew into that sandstorm, they could be in real jeopardy. What if sand got into the rotor area? The silica could jam up the oiled mechanism and cause all kinds of problems. Furthermore, he had no sophisticated instruments that could fly him successfully through a sandstorm. He would for all purposes be flying blind. Worse, vertigo could occur, and he would have no sense of up or down, right or left. He had to rely on his instruments, and the ones aboard the Longranger weren't fine enough for the job.

Hearing Kai get off the phone, he saw her tuck it into her canvas bag.

“Mike's on it. He's calling the Royal Australian Air Force base in Adelaide to get us help.”

“Too little, too late,” Jake muttered, perspiration popping out on his brow. Glancing from the approaching Huey
to the wall of the storm again, he growled. “By the time they get here, it will be all over, Kai. Those jets scrambling from Adelaide have got at least thirty minutes of air time before they reach us.”

“You're right.” Fingering the side of the fuselage, Kai found there was a small window that could be pushed open and closed. Large enough for her to shoot through? “What are your options?”

“We've got to duke it out with them. I can't go into that storm, Kai. We could crash.”

“That's what I thought,” she muttered. The Huey was coming down fast. “Okay, do what you gotta do. Want me to call out his position to you?” She knew Jake would need another set of eyes to help him avoid any gunfire. He had no instruments to help him locate their stalking enemy. Looking over at him, gripping the pistol in her hand, she saw that his face was set, his golden eyes dark and filled with frustration. About now she'd like to be in the seat of an F-14 Tomcat with her RIO—radar information officer—calling out the coordinates to put a lock on this bastard and blow him out of the air.

“Yeah, let me know where he is. I'm going to try maneuvering first. A Huey's a lot more nimble than a commercial helicopter, though, so I don't know how far that will get us.”