Daughter of Destiny (24 page)

“I'm more interested in the weapons they have on board. If they've got a rifle, we're in
real
trouble.”

“Yeah, I know that, too.”

“Okay, here he comes. He's about one mile out, eleven o'clock on your port….”

In that instant, Kai heard a pinging sound behind them. “He's firing at us!” she yelled.

Instantly, Jake took the copter into a steep, sliding bank to the right. He had no idea how well or poorly the Longranger could handle air to air combat. It certainly wasn't designed for it! Gripping the collective and cyclic, he felt the harness straps bite into his shoulders and hips as the helo groaned and banked.

Cursing, Kai called, “He's following us down! And I can see a rifle sticking out the window. He's got a rifle!”

“Hang on,” Jake yelled. He kicked the Longranger out of the sliding bank. They'd lost two thousand feet of altitude, and the wall of the storm was nearly upon them. Not wanting to lose much more altitude, he saw the Huey flash past them. It had built up too much diving speed to bank as quickly as he'd just done.
Good!

Heart pounding, Jake felt rivulets of sweat leaking beneath his arms and trickling down his rib cage. His breathing was raspy as he forced the copter higher. If he didn't get air between him and the Huey, Marston's men could pounce on them and fire from above. Not wanting to give them that opportunity, Jake shoved the throttle to the firewall. The Longranger shrieked and he felt the entire airframe shudder as the blades spun, clawing upward through the sky,

Kai was thrown around by the maneuver, but in the process she saw the Huey below them. “He's down a thousand, about four o'clock on your starboard. And he's going to try and make up the altitude.”

“Yeah, he'll do it, too,” Jake muttered. Gaze glued to the
altimeter, he wished this commercial helicopter could climb as an Apache could. His combat helo could leap through the sky like a cougar running full tilt. But this copter wasn't created for combat; it was an excellent commercial aircraft, but not made for this kind of jockeying around in the sky. Jake didn't know the limits of the airframe or what kind of punishment this Bell could take—but they were going to find out fast.

“He's coming around on you!” Kai shouted, rising up out of her seat to keep a bead on the blue-and-yellow Huey. “Less than five hundred feet…”

Ping, ping, ping.

Gunshots riddled the cabin.

Ping, ping, ping, ping.

Glass exploded around Kai. She gave a yell and threw up her left hand to protect her eyes. The window on her side of the helo was blown out. Bullets tore through the cabin. Wind roared in, whipping the map off her knees and sucking it out the window. Anything that wasn't stowed was flying around in the cockpit.

“Damn!” Kai yelled. Instantly, she felt the Longranger lurch to the left. Straps bit into her shoulders and, disoriented for a moment, she gasped. The Huey flashed past them, barely out of the rotor range.

Kai's heart pounded and rage tunneled through her. “Get close to them!” she snapped at Jake. The door was riddled with bullet holes. When the Longranger jerked upward, the engines screaming in protest, her door was suddenly sheared from its hinge, torn off by the maneuver and wind speed.

When Kai saw the door snap off the airframe, she gasped. She now hung by her harness alone, over nothing but air and the ground far below. Scrambling, she slapped her left hand against the frame and pushed herself back into her seat as Jake banked the aircraft once more. The wind was ferocious. Although she wore aviator glasses, which protected her to a degree from the roaring blast circling within the cabin, her eyes still watered badly. Jerking her head up, she frantically searched for the Huey.

“There! Jake, get close enough for me to fire at them, dammit! I'm not going down without a fight! They're a thousand feet above us, at ten o'clock, to port.”

The Longranger groaned. The blades grabbed for air and thumped hard, each rotation causing a thick shudder to ripple through the aircraft. It was vibrating like a wounded beast as it moved closer and closer to the Huey.

Kai unsnapped her harness and shoved it away.

“What are you doing?” Jake yelled. “Get that harness back on!”

“Screw it.” Kai situated herself in the door frame. Four thousand feet below her was the desert, a red blur. Her gaze was pinned on the approaching Huey. Jamming her left boot against the copter frame, she pressed her back against the opposite side. Bracing with her right foot, she effectively jammed herself into the space where the door had been. The good news was she had a clear shot at the approaching Huey. The bad news—she had nothing to hang on to when Jake maneuvered the Ranger. Kai knew she could be torn out into space and fall to her death.

Breathing hard, she yelled, “Closer! Dammit, get closer!
I
want
this son of a bitch!” Air slapped and pummeled her, tearing remorselessly at her eyes. The Huey was coming directly at them. She saw the two men in the cockpit—the same bastards as before.

Raising her pistol, she gripped it in both hands to steady it. This was a game of sky chicken. Kai recognized it for what it was.

“He's coming right at us! Ten o'clock. You have to jump him, Jake! On my word, I want you to bank
toward
him! It'll give me the shot I need!”

That was an insane maneuver! Jake didn't say that, though. Instead he split his attention between flying the Longranger and watching the approaching Huey. Scared to death that Kai would get yanked out the door by his sudden maneuvers, or that a bullet would find her, he clenched his teeth. No! Kai couldn't be killed! She just couldn't be! His heart ached with a fierce refusal to allow anything to happen to her. All he could think about was going after the Huey and knocking it off balance. But Kai was right. If he followed her advice and suddenly lurched
toward
the Huey, it would spook the pilot and he'd bank in the opposite direction. When he did that, Kai could get a clean, close shot at them.

Gripping the cyclic and collective so hard his knuckles whitened, he yelled, “Tell me
when!
”

Seconds flew by. The wind was punching at Kai's body like a boxer, and she had to use all the strength in her legs to keep herself jammed tightly into the door frame. She saw the Huey coming at them like a shark ready to eat them alive. Her hands gripped the pistol tighter. Raising the bar
rel, she sighted on the red-haired copilot, who had his rifle sticking out the window—pointed directly at them.

The distance closed swiftly. Two thousand feet. Fifteen hundred. A thousand. Kai's mouth grew dry as the Huey's nose loomed closer. The wind shrieked around her. The Longranger was screaming with the strain of climbing upward to meet the assault.

Five hundred feet.

“Now!”

Kai felt the Longranger lurch. Gravity pulled at her with invisible hands, trying to jerk her out the door to her death. Wind slammed at her as the helicopter arced and moved directly into the Huey's face.

Kai saw both men's jaws fall open at the unexpected maneuver. She saw the pilot react, his mouth stretched in a scream. Taking aim, she waited for a split second as the Huey came closer and closer.

Kai felt the sickening shudder of the Longranger. Air punched and grabbed at her repeatedly, making it difficult to breathe. Hands sweating, she gripped the pistol with all her strength. Train the barrel…train the barrel…She followed the cockpit of the Huey as it suddenly changed position.

In that instant, Kai squeezed the trigger. They were so close! She saw the black blades of the Huey rotating closer and closer. The Longranger was moving drunkenly, like a wounded dragon. The smell of burning oil filled her flared nostrils as she squeezed off round after round.

When the Huey banked sharply, Jake followed it down with his own banking maneuver. He knew they were close, within each other's rotor circumference, and that there was
a real possibility of their blades colliding. He heard the
pop, pop, pop
of Kai firing her pistol.
Great Spirit, let her be accurate!
Gravity tore at him. The straps of his harness bit savagely into his shoulders as he followed the Huey downward.

The two helos were now plummeting like rocks, the copter below them. Grim satisfaction soared through Jake for a second as he heard Kai give a cry of triumph. He couldn't see the Huey, or even look at Kai—he had to fly this bird for all it was worth. He felt the strain on the engine; they could vibrate apart at this speed, no question. He knew the Bell wasn't built for combat maneuvers like this. The blades were pounding, pounding, pounding, the reverberations thumping like fists through his body. Unable to breathe, he gritted his teeth and held the bird on course.

Kai kept firing. She emptied one clip into the Huey and, with a cry of triumph, saw the bullets land with deadly accuracy. The Plexiglas on the pilot's side exploded inward. She saw blood splattering the cockpit glass on the copilot's side.

Suddenly, the Huey lurched and began an uncontrolled free fall. Kai leaned out to watch, the wind pulling mercilessly at her. She threw her pistol back into the cabin and held on with both hands to the airframe overhead.

“He's going down!” she cried. “He's going to crash!” She watched as the Huey began to turn in wide, wobbling circles. She'd hit the pilot with one or more bullets. He was the only one who could fly, apparently; the gunman in the copilot's seat was just that—not a pilot, just a murderer.

“Die, you sons of bitches!” she shrieked. Hands grip
ping the airframe, Kai leaned out to see the Huey explode beneath them. Then the Longranger lurched upward and she was thrown back into the cockpit. Landing in her seat, she flailed momentarily until she managed to grab the armrest and hang on until Jake leveled out the chopper and put it in hover mode.

Gasping for breath, she scrambled upright and, with shaking hands, fastened the harness across her shoulders and lap once more. Glancing over, she saw Jake looking out of his window at the explosions below. Grinning, she said, “We nailed them!”

Adrenaline was pumping through Jake as he watched the Huey burn below them. Wrenching his gaze away, he looked at Kai. Her hair was torn out of her braid, tendrils curling around her glistening face. Her blue eyes were narrowed with St. Elmo's fire, a kind of lightning that would dance around a ship's mast during a thunderstorm. She was a warrior through and through just then, her eyes fierce, her mouth curved ruthlessly in a smile of triumph.

Shakily, he asked, “You okay?” Those bullets flying through the cabin could have gotten either one of them.

“Yeah, I'm fine…and you?” Kai looked at Jake. If she'd ever had doubts that he was a combat pilot, those doubts were gone now. His face was sweaty, his golden eyes slitted like those of a hunter after his prey, his tensed body flushed with adrenaline.

“Yeah, I'm good. But we've got problems. I think we took a bullet in the fuel tank. We're losing too many pounds of fuel too fast….”

“I lost the map,” Kai said, “but I know that thirty miles
from here there's a dirt strip near a cattle station that had fuel. We could set down there….”

“Yeah.” Jake looked at the approaching sandstorm. It was a few miles away, coming on like a relentless freight train that threatened to run them over. “I think we can make that. Do you recall the coordinates?”

Grinning, Kai pushed loose strands of hair off her damp face and away from her eyes. “You bet I do.” She rattled them off, then, heart pounding, reached back and gripped her pistol. From her pocket, she pulled another clip of ammunition and slammed it into the butt of the firearm. Looking around the sky, she muttered, “I wonder if there's more of them?”

“No way of telling….” Jake concentrated on getting them to that cattle station before they ran out of fuel. “But we need to stay alert.”

“I'll call Mike.” Kai leaned back and picked up the satellite phone out of her bag. The wind was still whipping through the cabin. There was nothing they could do about it now that the door was gone. Punching in the numbers, Kai waited. When Mike came on, she practically had to shout over the shriek of the wind. Reassuring him that they were all right, she gave him the coordinates of where they were hoping to land the Longranger. Once he got the info, Kai knew he'd cancel the military jets out of Adelaide, put a new mission into motion to pick them up, plus contract Australian aviation authorities about the Huey crashing. Mike would have to do a lot of interfacing with not only the aviation department, but the police, as well. Maybe, if there was anything left of the two men, they could find
some sort of identification on them—fingerprints or otherwise—that might give a clue as to who the hell they were.

 

Jake was never so glad to see a silver-green grove of eucalyptus appear on the horizon, indicating the main house of the cattle station was nearby. Below, they saw thousands upon thousands of cattle foraging across the desert, as well as drovers on horseback here and there. Aiming the Longranger toward the small dirt strip on one side of the complex, Jake set the helo down—just in time. He pointed to the fuel gauge before shutting the engine down. “We had fifty pounds of fuel left.”