Off Limits

U.S. Marine Corporal Jim McKenzie knew a hundred ghastly ways to kill, a thousand ugly techniques to survive the perils stalking war-torn Vietnam. And these bloody talents had plunged his tortured conscience into unspeakable horror....

Then into that darkness fell a tempting ray of hope. Congressman's daughter Alexandra Vance, her helicopter shot down over McKenzie's particular purgatory, was in mortal danger, and only his damnable talents could help her. Yet to save her, McKenzie would have to destroy himself....

Previously published.

OFF LIMITS

LINDSAY McKENNA

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

“W
e're hit! We're hit! Prepare for emergency landing!”

Alexandra Vance gasped as the pilot yelled the warning. The marine helicopter suddenly shuddered, a hail of bullets slamming through the aircraft's thin skin and peppering the cabin. She gripped the nylon seat as the aircraft jerked upward. Its engine shrieked and groaned, the blades flailing awkwardly, like wings on a wounded bird. The crew chief gave a startled cry, gripped his chest, then crumpled to the deck. The smell of hot oil stung Alex's nostrils as the door gunner began returning fire, and the pounding
chut, chut, chut
of the machine gun reverberated through Alex's body like pummeling fists. Black, oily smoke spewed up in front of the cockpit's shattered Plexiglas windshield. Directly above where Alex sat, the pilot and copilot worked feverishly to keep the helicopter airborne over the enemy jungle.

Like the crew, Alex wore a helmet, the wire jack plugged into the intercommunications system. Curses, screams and groans filled her ears as the world seemed to shatter around her.

Oh, God!
Alex cried out involuntarily as bullets smashed through the cockpit again, striking behind and around her. The gunner screamed and was catapulted backward. Alex threw her hands up to protect her face from flying debris. She was being wrenched from side to side as the aircraft bucked and lurched drunkenly. One of the pilots slumped forward, struck by a bullet. Without warning, fire and shrapnel exploded through the cockpit.

A hot, stinging sensation seared Alex's shoulder, and she was slapped against the bulkhead by gravity as the helicopter wrenched downward. Heat scorched her, and she gagged and choked on the nauseating smoke filling the cockpit. Then the aircraft nosed over, its engine still shrieking like a wounded person.

Everything began to reel off in single frames, as if Alex were viewing a movie—only it was a movie in which she was the main participant. The seat belt held her captive as the Sikorsky helicopter brushed along the tops of the triple-canopy jungle. The trees acted as a last-moment cushion to the crippled aircraft, so instead of nosing down and grinding with savage, killing impact into the red earth of Vietnam, the helicopter caught in the trees as its airspeed bled off.

The helicopter was on fire, with smoke funneling out of the cockpit and escaping through the open rear door near Alex. There was a great screech as it listed unexpectedly, its tail flipping into the air as it settled on its starboard side, finally halting.

Alex hung suspended upside down in the cabin, the nylon seat belt nearly strangling her. Frantically, she looked around. No one else moved. Her heart denied that her companions might be dead. Alex clawed wildly at the metal clip. Her gaze locked on the machine gunner's window—her only escape route. Brush, leaves and limbs had collected in the usual exit area during the helicopter's long, downward slide. The window was partially blocked by the vegetation.

Fire and smoke, too, continued to pour into the cabin as Alex struggled with shaking fingers to release the safety harness. Suddenly the belt gave way, and she fell hard against the aircraft wall below her. Panicking, she flailed blindly around to check the crewmen who lay unmoving at her feet. Anxiously, Alex tried to find pulses on their necks, but her desperate fingers felt nothing. Coughing and choking violently, she tried to make her way forward to the cockpit to see if the pilots were still alive and needed help escaping, only to be driven back by the flames and intense heat.

Her eyes blinded with tears as she groped her way through the dense, thick smoke, Alex fell onto wobbly knees. Which way was the window? She couldn't see a thing. Heat scorched her skin.
Die! She was going to die!

On bloodied hands and knees Alex crawled toward the rear, trying to find the exit. There! Her hand met the leaf-and-branch barricade. She lunged through the window. A scream caught in her throat as she threw herself from the burning helicopter, thinking the ground must be nearby. But she fell a good twenty feet, before slamming onto the damp, leaf-strewn floor of the jungle.

Panting to regain her breath, Alex groaned and rolled onto her back. Tears ran down her smudged cheeks as she struggled to move. Directly above her, the helicopter burned furiously, a huge column of black smoke drifting lazily into the clear blue sky. She had to get away from the inferno as soon as possible. Rolling onto her hands and knees, Alex crawled shakily away from the aircraft, moving through the thick foliage. Branches swatted at her, stinging her face and bare arms. Her breath coming in huge, ragged gulps, she moved jerkily, without thought. A powerful numbness took over, and she felt oddly detached, as if she were having a bad nightmare.

Alex had crawled nearly two hundred yards from the initial crash site when she heard voices. She pressed a bloodied hand against her parted lips and froze. Shaking badly now, in the aftermath of an adrenaline rush, she sat back on her heels on the jungle floor.
Vietnamese.
They were Vietnamese voices. Relief swept through her.
Rescue!
She was going to be rescued by the friendly forces of the ARVN!

She tried to rise, but her knees collapsed under her and she fell to the ground. Dirt and damp leaves stuck to her face and short brown hair. Struggling, she tried again to rise. Agony spread from her left shoulder like an out-of-control wave of fire into her neck, down her arm and into her chest. The savage pain caught at her breath, and Alex groaned softly, unable to move. She crumpled slowly into a fetal position. For the first time, she examined her shoulder.

Thirty minutes earlier, when they'd left the marine base at Marble Mountain, Major Gib Ramsey had insisted that Alex climb into a dull green, single-piece flight suit, pulling it on over her buttercup yellow blouse and jeans. Now, staring uncomprehendingly at her shoulder for long moments, Alex finally realized the dark stain spreading across the olive green cotton on her left shoulder was blood. Lifting her right hand, she touched the area lightly. It was not the blood of the brave marines who had just died, but her own.

Alex released a little breath of air. Sweat trickled off her face and soaked into the coarse flight-suit fabric.
Wounded. I'm wounded. God...

The Vietnamese voices grew louder, more excited. Alex lay, unable to move, frozen into immobility by the realization that she had been hit and was bleeding heavily. Her mind refused to work, except in stops and starts. The pain grew in volume while she focused disjointedly on her shoulder wound. As a fourth-year nursing student, she should know what to do.
Think! Think, Alex. What do you do for a bullet wound?
Squeezing her eyes shut to prepare herself for the pain, Alex pressed her hand against her shoulder. Direct pressure on a heavily bleeding injury would stop the flow. Blackness began to dim her vision, and she quickly released the wound, unable to staunch the bleeding under the wave of unrelenting pain.

With a little cry, she struggled into a sitting position, well hidden by the profusion of plants on the jungle floor around her. Dazed, going into shock, Alex stared at her left shoulder. Had she been hit by metal fragments from the explosion, perhaps? Shrapnel? Feeling light-headed, she fell back and rolled onto her right side as numbness spread down her left arm, rendering it useless.

The Vietnamese were all around her. Alex tried to gather her thoughts but couldn't. At one point she saw a young Vietnamese man, armed with a rifle and dressed in black pajamas, pass within feet of her. She thought he was ARVN and tried to cry out, but nothing came out of her constricted throat and dry mouth. He passed by without realizing her presence. Helplessly Alex lay there, barely conscious. She knew she wasn't dead, and finally, after half an hour, her mind cleared momentarily and she realized she was in deep shock.

Nothing in her affluent Virginia background, growing up with Hiram Vance, her famous congressman father, had prepared her for this. Alex had reluctantly agreed to visit her father, who was touring bases and military positions all over Vietnam on a fact-finding mission. He'd said it was safe.
Safe!
Why had she allowed her father to browbeat her into coming? Their relationship was tenuous at best. Alex knew that deep in her heart she wanted her father to like her—love her—as much as he did her brothers, so she had come, against her better instincts. Hoping to heal the widening rift with her father, she had rationalized that flying to Vietnam to tour the bases with him would work as a peace offering to help mend their differences.

Still lying on the jungle floor, Alex began to shake uncontrollably, her arms and legs taking on a life of their own. It was shock, Alex knew, the continuous surge of adrenaline through her bloodstream causing the reaction. Suddenly, a huge explosion rent the air, sending a thundering clap of sound booming through the jungle like the pounding of a hundred ear-splitting kettledrums. The echo was a physical force, pummeling Alex as wave after wave rolled past her. Wincing, she realized that the marine helicopter had just blown up.

Over the next hour, clarity returned slowly to Alex's mind. On its heels came a wall of chaotic and panicky emotions. Finally tears came, leaking down her muddy cheeks. She cried for the marine crew. They were all dead. At Marble Mountain, they'd treated her like a star because of her popular father's influence and power. The door gunner, a red-haired boy of eighteen, had shyly asked for her signature on a sweat-stained piece of paper pulled from one of the pockets of his flight suit. He'd told her excitedly that he collected autographs.

At first, Alex had protested, saying she wasn't famous, just an unknown person in the shadow of her larger-than-life father. But the door gunner, Private First Class Ken Cassle, had gently insisted. Squeezing her eyes shut at the memory, Alex sobbed. The cry jerked through her like a convulsion, and pain flared hotly in her left shoulder to remind her of the wound. Still, she knew, her heart bore an even larger, invisible, wound for those four marines.

As if her brain was stuck on that time frame, Alex couldn't shake the memories of the past hour's conversations and the images from before she'd left the marine air base. Captain Bob Cunningham, the helicopter pilot, was married—the father of two young children. He'd proudly showed Alex their pictures when she'd asked about them. He'd patted the pocket near his heart where he kept them, saying that the photos were his good-luck charm, that they were going to get him home safely to his family. And his copilot, Lieutenant Jeffrey Whitmore, had just gotten married. His wife was expecting their first child. Now none of that crew would be going home alive. Alex sobbed quietly, unable to stop the deluge of loss she felt for them and their families.

By the second hour since the crash, the bleeding in her shoulder had stopped, and Alex drew in a shaky breath of relief. She focused her limited senses on her surroundings. The sunlight, what little there was, had slanted in a more westerly direction. They'd started the flight to the firebase at noon. Alex looked down at the watch on her dirty, bloodied wrist. It was now 2:30 p.m. She sat up and tried to assimilate and understand her own dilemma. Light-headed, she knew she'd lost more blood than she should have. As a nursing student in Washington, D.C., she had seen blood from time to time, but never like this. She tried to study her left shoulder with impartiality. The flight suit was soaked with blood in a large, uneven circle that surrounded her upper arm, encompassed her left breast and reached halfway across her chest.