“They’re timing our response, no doubt,” Jackson said. “Seeing how long it takes us to clean up whatever mess they’ve made. All ahead full.” He turned to Laura Kelso, his executive officer, who repeated the order to the helm. On the
Jackson caught Kelso’s eye. “XO, have the birds report back to us as soon as they have visual.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Commander Kelso said, and went to work.
A
Sometimes called a Marine Uber,
“ETA twenty-two minutes,” Commander Kelso said. Like Jackson, she was an Annapolis grad. She expected nothing extra for it, and kept her ring-knocking to a minimum, intuiting early on that with this skipper past accomplishments mattered far less than present duty. Everyone on the ship knew that Jackson’s uncle had been President of the United States until he was assassinated. But Rosey Jackson never mentioned that part of his past. His father had taught him well. There was tremendous gravitas in the things a man left unsaid.
Of all the training the U.S. government had afforded Ding Chavez, the thing he’d hated most was the dunker. At a nod from the sadistic instructor, the mock — helicopter cockpit slid down a rail, slammed into the surface pool like it was concrete, and then inverted as it sank to the bottom. Chavez had never been afraid of flying, or the water, but he’d dismissed the dunker as serious overkill. He was a ground pounder, an infantryman. If he went down in a chopper he would either walk away or his shit was toast. He saw no need in getting jerked around on a million-dollar government carnival ride with water up his nose and a couple of Navy divers waiting in the deep end, laughing into their regulators while they watched him try to figure out which way was up. Clark had mandated the training for every member of Rainbow, and Chavez had pretended to be on board. The man was his father-in-law, but he’d hated every sputtering minute of it.
Now, hanging by a nylon harness from the inverted floor of a rapidly sinking Russian helicopter, with his ass above his head, ears buzzing, and darkness fast closing in, Chavez found himself reliving every detail of his previous training. John Clark’s adage of doing something not until one got it right, but until one didn’t ever get it wrong, played out in spades. Without conscious thought, Chavez found the harness release and gave it a twist. Underwater, he didn’t fall to the ceiling as he would have on dry land, but floated, trapped inside the body of the sinking chopper.
Chavez’s first thoughts were for his teammates, and he found himself flooded with relief when a sweep to his left found an empty harness where Midas would have been. Chavez kicked forward, feeling in the darkness for the last place he’d seen Dom and Adara, his shoulder bumping into Midas as the former Delta officer performed the same search. Quickly running out of air, Chavez gave Midas a squeeze on the shoulder and pointed toward the cockpit. The pilot met them head-on, swimming his way aft to check on his passengers. With Adara and Dom apparently out, Chavez motioned toward the open door and followed the other two men out. He kicked toward the surface, feeling the searing pain of some unidentified injury in his neck. His lungs screamed for air. His ears chirped and whistled as the pressure against them dropped. Above him he could see light, legs dangling below the surface.
And fire.
