Night Is Mine (17 page)

Carlson continued, “And this is a chef who can fly to wherever she wants to land.”

Emily in dress blues lifting off the White House lawn in a pretty little Bell 430. The First Lady waving from a rear window.

“On a recent trip to New York—”

Then, the third of the world’s most recognizable faces. President Peter Matthews holding open the door of a long, black limousine. Emily Beale flashing him one of her sparkling smiles as she climbed in.

Mark didn’t hear the rest of the broadcast. Couldn’t face that smile. While it had never been for him, he’d seen it on rare occasion. Knew it. Only those closest to her ever received it, and Mark would bet they never forgot it. It made Jim’s dazzler look like a flashlight left on the shelf for two years too long.

He left the mess tent and slammed into some crewman or other. He mumbled an apology and kept moving.

No one to complain to. Emily Beale happy at the White House. Aiming that smile at the Commander-in-Chief. He’d never have thought she’d do that. Act some part just to climb the ladder. But what ladder? She’d refused promotions, mouthed off enough to earn a couple of demotions over the years, according to her file, but he’d thought it was so she could keep flying. Bottom line, he’d never know. She was so far gone, there was no coming back.

There was an empty spot in his gut, so empty it cramped. He pulled an energy bar out of a thigh pocket. Not a chance it would get near that spot, but he could pretend.

Clearly the First Lady liked having her own airborne chauffeur.

Barely twenty-four hours after the New York trip, Emily once again settled the Bell 430 onto the South Lawn of the White House. It was late evening, the sunset had sparkled over the western hills as she’d flown up from Anacostia. Katherine hadn’t even said where they were going; she’d simply sent Emily to fetch. Like a good lapdog, not like a captain of the U.S. Army. Already any attempt to like the woman on the President’s behalf was wearing thin.

The First Lady and Daniel appeared in moments, and a Marine locked them into the back.

Emily turned and looked back between the seats. “Where to, ma’am? And you’ll need to buckle up.” Daniel already had.

Katherine made a quick pout but reached for the seat belt. “We’re going to Jenny Williams’s house out on Cape Charles.”

Emily knew that was to the southeast, across the Bay. A long drive, but a short flight. Traffic control could route her there, though she hated taking up air-traffic time for directions. But she also knew the First Family had their own controller on their own frequency any time they were aloft who would be glad of something useful to do.

“Okay.” She spun the turbines back up, and after checking in with the controller, she pulled up on the cyclic and got them aloft.

They hadn’t cleared five hundred feet when Emily caught the sparkle of red out of the corner of her eye, off to the right and low. An instant later, even as she was wracking the Bell 430 to the east, a trail of light rocketed from the origin point of the aiming laser that had drawn her attention.

An RPG or something else nasty.

Finally the threat warning buzzed loudly.

She punched it silent. Stupid device. Too little and way too late. The chopper didn’t have a tactical display to track the threat. The radar sweep was far too slow, designed for other air traffic, not missiles in transit.

With the chopper over forty-five degrees and the collective full up, they were already two hundred yards farther from the launcher than they had been when it was fired. She twisted both throttles to the stops, and the dual turbine engines gave her all they had.

She caught a glimpse of the weapon as it crossed over the brightly lit White House lawn. It continued straight at her. Not good news. She dropped the collective, rammed it down like a posthole digger, twisting the rotor blades past flat into negative lift, and the helicopter fell like a brick.

She ignored the curses and scream from the passenger cabin. Katherine and Daniel would just have to deal.

Her seat belts let her twist against the null gravity of the chopper’s fall to see. The damn missile arced to follow her, its motor burning bright against the dark sky, rather than continuing on a simple trajectory path. Really bad news. Tracking warhead.

“Marine Two, Mayday! Mayday!” Not a SAM. Too slow a track. Surface-to-air missiles rarely gave you time to think. They just fried your ass. RPGs burned all their fuel in the first second or so. This one still drove ahead.

The ground was coming up fast.

She jerked the collective back up.

Climb, damn you! The Bell didn’t have the raw guts of a Black Hawk, but she was also much trimmer around the waist, a third or a quarter the weight. Some bizarre part of Emily’s brain puzzled over the math. Either way it roughly balanced out, though she’d bet the Hawk would have a better chance of surviving a hit. The Bell had one fifth the max takeoff weight of the Hawk, her brain finally offered up, as if she cared. Max climb rate was normally fifty-five percent of the Hawk. This souped-up bird was still thirty percent lower than the Hawk’s maximum climb rate. She needed more lift. And ached for her Hawk. Might be the last emotion she felt if she didn’t solve this and fast.

“Tracking RPG fired from area of F Street behind OEOB.” She’d never heard of a rocket-propelled grenade with built-in tracking ability, they were already past any small-device, wire-controlled range yet the thing kept coming. She wasn’t in the mood to brood over technicalities at the moment.

The turbines shrieking past the red line, she slewed back to the left until the chopper was literally flying sideways. Standard RPGs had a range of about a thousand yards. If she could just get a half mile away before it caught up with her…

“Roger. Status?”

Stupid question. Running for her life. Toward the Capitol Building and falling sideways as she went.

She glanced back at the thing’s track. Still gaining.

And then it blew.

Fifty feet out. At most. Proximity fuse rather than impact trigger.

Searing white. Scorching brilliance. Her eyes hurt worse than during a runaway thermite fire in the middle of the night. And the pain kept coming, waves of it. Building layer upon layer. For a moment she might have blacked out.

The first thing she knew coming out of it was she’d been hit.

But only her eyes hurt.

She tried a breath.

Either she was numb, or she hadn’t cracked any ribs. Her limbs still responded. Her hands still rested on the controls.

Her body felt normal. Except for the two pincers of fire burrowing into her brain.

And she opened her eyes. To nothing. Not even big, bright spots. She blinked again to no effect. The pain poured through her.

The turbines still roared wide open. She eased back on the throttles before something blew out.

She keyed the mic as she fought a sudden slew of the chopper. Please let the bird be intact.

“Not an RPG. Repeat, not a rocket-propelled grenade. They launched a flashbang. A big one.”

The turbines were running clean. No fatal wowing sound from the rotors either. The control felt solid, no shudder or shimmy. The craft had survived even if her sight hadn’t.

Even if her sight hadn’t?
There was no such thing as a blind pilot. A roaring filled her ears far louder than any mere helicopter turbine. If she couldn’t fly, she’d—

Emily forced the thought aside. Keeping her passengers and her bird alive were the first priorities.

“Ma’am. Katherine!” she called over her shoulder.

No response. Damn, she didn’t know if she was right side up or power diving toward the White House.

“Daniel!” He better be conscious; he was her only other option.

“Uh, yea? What?”

“What’s my angle of attack?”

“Your what?” His voice sounded a little strangled.

“Which way is up? I can’t see.”

“Not the way you’re going.”

“Which way!”

“Left. Left is straight up.” Which meant the earth was to the right and they were falling directly toward it.

She tried to yaw ninety degrees. She just didn’t know this craft well enough. She could do a ninety-degree yaw in a Hawk blindfolded.

Well, that was appropriate. Blindfolded. Blind…
Don’t think. Just fly.

“I need help. I need you to talk to me constantly about where we are and how we’re flying.”

The radio squawked in her ear.

“What’s the condition of the First Lady?”

“Unknown. She’s—”

“Don’t worry about her,” she cut Daniel off. “If we crash, she’ll be way worse off than she is.”

“I see the White House,” Daniel sounded dreamy, like a sleepy tourist admiring the view. “It’s over to your right and pretty far down. You’re tipped to the left and the nose is up.”

Damn. She’d have bet she was rolling right. A lot of beginning pilots flew out of their first clouds upside down because they trusted their inner ear over their instruments. She knew better than to trust her body signals while flying, they’d always lie about angle of attack. But dammit, she couldn’t see the console to trust or mistrust anything.

“Is this level?”

“A little more. Too much!” Daniel’s shout made her ears hurt. “Shit! Go back! Go back!”

Little adjustments. Little adjustments. Feel the bird. Her stomach was trailing her to the right. She leaned a little on the left foot pedal and the feeling went away.

“This is flight control. Status, Marine Two?” The controller’s voice strident and demanding.

“Flying blind in the vicinity of the White House. Now if you’d shut up, I’m trying to get us back there.”

“That’s a negative, Marine Two. White House is crashed. Full security lockdown. Any craft attempting to land will be fired upon. Proceed Anacostia Naval Support Facility. We have a team converging on the shooter. Escort is scrambled. ETA your vicinity seven minutes.”

“Seven minutes from now won’t matter a tinker’s damn.” Not the best radio protocol but she didn’t give a tinker’s damn at the moment.

She heard a low groan.

“Is that the First Lady?” she shouted back at Daniel.

“She’s out. And bleeding. Not much. Nosebleed maybe. Can’t see. Her arm isn’t right. I’m sure it’s not supposed to look like that. It looks kinda like a doll that flopped down on a pile of…”

She tuned him out as he rambled away to himself.

“Flight. First Lady is unconscious and injured. Need to land and find immediate medical.”

“Reroute authorized. Proceed Walter Reed Medical Center all haste.”

“Damn your eyes,” she regretted that as soon as she said it. “I’m blind. Literally. Not no instruments. No vision. I’m sure not going to find a hospital—I can’t even find a horizon, you damned idiot!”

That gave her a moment of silence that she used to jerk her head toward the empty copilot’s seat. The headset flipped off and good riddance. Flight control wasn’t going to be of any use to her.

“Daniel. You still with me, buddy?”

“Parts of me. You banged us up pretty good.”

“Wear your seat belt tighter next time.” No time for sympathy. “Now pay attention. I need to land, and they won’t let me back to the South Lawn. What can you see? Big and wide open. And how am I flying?”

“You’re going in a pretty big circle to the left, and we’re tilted about twenty degrees to the right. I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“Neither did I.” She did her best to correct it.

“I’m so glad to hear that.” His voice sounded sleepy.

“Daniel! Stay with me.”

“Uh, right. Just really dizzy. I think you kinda concussed me with the window.”

“Someplace wide and open.”

“How about the Mall?”

“Any concerts or protests tonight?”

“Not that I can see. Turn right and slow down. It’s off to the right about two o’clock, but I have no idea how far down.”

“Can you see my console?”

“Yeah. But none of it makes any sense to me.”

Did she dare let go of the cyclic and point? She’d bet they were out of trim and she’d lose what little concept she had of their orientation if she let go.

“Two big screens right in front of me. Two dials to the right. Top one. Short, fat hand.”

“How many screens?” He must have hit his head hard.

***

Emily was never quite sure how they got down. Daniel stuck with her, and though she smacked the Bell down the last fifteen feet, the landing was better than that carrier landing Mark had hammered hard a lifetime and two days ago. No. Yesterday morning.

Well, maybe the landing wasn’t so great. One of the wheels let go. She could fell the rotors hammering against something as she shut down the engines, but they didn’t shatter. She was feeling pretty woozy herself as the adrenaline rush eased off. Then her face began to throb and her feet were cold.