“Bug out! We gotta bug out! Holy shit. Get this thing in the air!”
Sam flung his weapon over his shoulder, batting away the underbrush as he ran full out. Fifty yards ahead, his newly souped chopper sat on a stone slab near the river like a bird perched on the edge of a cliff. “What’s the deal? Turn the engine over.” Logan was a field surgeon and an ex-Navy Seal. He had skills aplenty, but flying wasn’t one of them.
Sam burst out into the open, and froze, his eyes going wide. A wall of water thirty feet high rolled toward him, toward the chopper. Sam bolted, trying to outdistance the rush.
The Kukule Ganga Dam. Shitty timing.
Logan was tossing in gear, and trying to raise a warning to Riley and Max. Sam threw himself into the seat, flipped switches, and turned over the engine. The rotor blades were slow to move.
The water wasn’t.
“Come on, sweetheart, wake up, wake up.” He gave it some juice, risking stalling the engines. The blades gained speed. Out of the corner of his vision, the water swiped the land, taking resort homes, docks, and Jesus, people. Soldiers not caught in the dam break ran to the hills. Water rushed over the riverbanks, covering the chopper’s landing gear and sliding in over Sam’s boots.
“Christ, Sam, get it up!”
“She’s female, she needs foreplay.”
“She’s gonna get us killed! Riley, Max!” Logan shouted into his mike.
Then the blades hit the sweet spot and Sam glanced to his left in time to see the brunt of the water coming right at him. He pulled the stick, lifting the chopper off the stone in a sharp vertical climb. “Maybe you should hold on.”
The water rushed beneath them, splashing the windscreen, and he banked left, speeding toward Riley and Max’s last location.
Sam worked on his helmet with one hand, looking at the ground. The water was moving fast, nothing to stop it.
“That was too close,” Logan said, and Sam glanced down. The spot where they’d stood was engulfed in water, trees torn out of the earth and shooting like rockets downriver toward the basin.
“You see them?”
“Not yet.”
Floodlights on, Sam went lower, skimming the water, reducing speed, but the wind shears in the valley rocked and bumped the chopper. But the cockpit was his comfort zone and he wore the chopper like his favorite shirt. He glanced at the small GPS screen marking Max and Riley with a yellow dot. “Should be coming up on Max any second.”
“Riley, Max, come in! Answer me, Godammit!” Logan pressed the headphones tighter, then shook his head.
Then the GPS area came into view. Rapids of fast-moving water, wood, even concrete from the shattered dam.
Logan rushed to put on a harness, hook up. “Where the hell are they?”
“Got Max, nine o’clock.” Sam steered toward the area.
“I see him.” Logan already had the yoke snapped to the cable.
“Wait till I get over him. Can’t chance debris hooking that yoke and taking us for a ride.”
“Hurry, man, he’s hanging onto the top of a tree and it’s not going to be there much longer.”
Sam couldn’t look. He had to use the GPS marker as a judging point.
“Riley?”
Sam’s gaze searched the green grid. “His marker’s gone.” Oh, man. He swooped low and daring, over the waves of water breaking down the valley like strip mining. Land broke away, trees tumbled into the current, twisting up, spinning, nearly colliding into the underbelly of the chopper. Sam jerked the stick and the chopper rose short and fast like a bucking bronco.
Logan let off a string of curses, gripped the straps, then poised at the door of the chopper, his feet braced wide. “Thirty yards, there he is. He looks okay.”
Sam flipped the switch and the cable whined, lowering the yoke toward the water.
“Get lower!”
“Negative, the trees are spiking! They’ll take us out.” He heard the rush of the water all around him as it battered anything stationary. Keeping his attention on the terrain, Sam couldn’t see anything in the dark except the glare of his searchlights.
Logan directed him. Below, Max clung to what was left of a tree, the charge of water rushing past in a hard flow of jungle debris, old farm equipment, and corpses. Sam couldn’t save them all, but he wasn’t letting his buddies die.
Max hooked his knee over a broken tree limb, his body twisted to reach out to the yoke. The chopper jolted and Sam cursed, the hot wind shear driving it upward. He struggled to get back in position and could hear Logan’s voice inside his helmet.
“Godamn wind. Okay, okay, right there. Shit, that’s it for the cable!”
Sam had to get lower. The water splashed in thick, foaming waves. One clip by debris and they were toast.
“Good, good. That’s it. Come on, Sam.”
“This thing isn’t amphibious, dammit.”
Below, Max strained to reach, but the yoke swung like a pendulum, weighted and heavy.
“Shit, missed him, too far to the right.”
“I’m coming in again, get ready.” Sam made another pass and dipped the chopper as low as he could, hovering. “Logan, get him the fuck up, it’s coming!” He could see it, another roll of water and matchstick trees.
“We got him. Up, up! Go! Go!”
Sam hit the cable switch, then pulled the stick back, lifting the chopper out of the water’s path. A huge wave crested, sped past as the cable whined at the swinging strain, rolling in and bringing Max to the edge of the chopper.
Feet braced on the door ledge, Logan grabbed what was left of Max’s shirt and yanked hard, pulling him inside. “He’s in, he’s in.”
Sam glanced back. Max’s face was shredded with cuts on one side, and his finger looked dislocated. “Where’s Riley?”
“Downriver,” Max gasped. “We got separated at the first blast of water.” The dismal look on his face said he didn’t think he’d survived.
Sam was having none of that shit. He hit the thruster and the redesigned chopper shot over the water like a first-strike launch.
Logan unhooked the harness, shoved a cloth at Max, then took the night vision binoculars to search for Riley.
Sam swooped low and slow, hovering, leaning for a visual, passing the search lamp back and forth. Looks like bubbling stew. All they saw was what the moon reflected. He couldn’t be this far out, he thought. Debris slid weightlessly, roofs, tractors, entire walls off buildings bobbed on the surface. Then he saw him. “There, two o’clock!”
Riley rolled with the flow of mud and water. His dark clothing and the mud hid him, only the flesh of his face and hands were visible and popped through the surface. Like a leaf, nothing stopped him, nothing held him above water.
Logan directed Sam into position over Riley, Max on his knees at the door of the helicopter. “He stopped!”
Sam shined the spotlight. Riley was like a rag caught on a rooftop, his body flung back, water rushing over him. Hold on buddy, posse’s coming. Sam dipped the chopper nose down, the wind making it rock. Logan put on the helmet and clipped the harness. At a thumbs up, Sam hit the cable switch. Logan lowered it over the side.
“Christ,” Max said. “He doesn’t look good.”
A chill tightened his skin.
“Hold it steady.”