Lakeshore Chronicles
MIRA
March 2010
On Sale: February 23, 2010
Featuring: Claire Turner
400 pages ISBN: 077832799X EAN: 9780778327998 Mass Market Paperback Add to Wish List
His breakfast consisted of
shoestring potatoes that actually did look and taste like
shoestrings, along with reconstituted eggs, staring up at
him from a compartmentalized tray in the noisy chow hall.
His cup was full of a coffeelike substance, lightened by a
whitish powder.
At the end of a two-year tour of
duty, Ross Bellamy had a hard time looking at morning chow.
He'd reached his limit. Fortunately for him, this was his
last day of deployment. It seemed like any other
day—tedious, yet tense with the constant and ominous hum of
imminent threat. Radio static crackled along with the sound
of clacking utensils, so familiar to him by now that he
barely heard it. At a comm station, an ops guy for the
Dustoff unit was on alert, awaiting the next call for a
medical evacuation.
There was always a next call. An
air medic crew like Ross's faced them daily, even
hourly.
When the walkie-talkie clipped to his pocket
went off, he put aside the mess without a second glance. The
call was a signal for the on-duty crew to drop everything—a
fork poised to carry a morsel of mystery meat to a mouth. A
game of Spades, even if you were winning. A letter to a
sweetheart, chopped off in the middle of a sentence that
might never be finished. A dream of home in the head of
someone dead asleep. A guy in the middle of saying a prayer,
or one with only half his face shaved.
The medevac
units prided themselves on their reaction time—five or six
minutes from call to launch. Men and women burst into
action, still chewing food or drying off from the shower as
they fell into roles as hard and familiar as their
steel-toed boots.
Ross gritted his teeth, wondering
what the day had in store for him, and hoping he'd make it
through without getting himself killed. He needed this
discharge, and he needed it now. Back home, his grandfather
was sick—had been sick for a while, and Ross suspected it
was a lot more serious than the family let on. It was hard
to imagine his grandfather sick. Granddad had always been
larger-than-life, from his passion for travel to his
trademark belly laugh, the one that could make a whole
roomful of people smile. He was more than a grandparent to
Ross. Circumstances in his youth had drawn the two of them
close in a bond that defined their relationship even
now.
On impulse, he grabbed his grandfather's most
recent letter and stuck it into the breast pocket of his
flight jacket, next to his heart. The fact that he'd even
felt the urge to do so made him feel a gut-twist of
worry.
"Let's go, Leroy," said Nemo, the unit's crew
chief. Then, as he always did, he sang the first few lines
of "Get Up Offa That Thang."
In the convoluted way of
the army, Ross had been given the nickname Leroy. It had
started when some of the platoon had learned a little—way
too little—about his silver-spoon-in-mouth background. The
fancy schools, the Ivy League education, the socially
prominent family, had all made him fodder for teasing. Nemo
had dubbed him Little Lord Fauntleroy. That had been
shortened to Leroy, and the name had stuck.
"I'm on
it," Ross said, striding toward the helipad. He and Ranger
would be piloting the bird today.
"Good luck with the
FNG."
FNG stood for Fucking New Guy, meaning Ross
would have a mission virgin on board. He vowed to be nice.
After all, if it weren't for new guys, Ross would be here
forever. According to the order packet he'd received, his
forever was about to end. In a matter of days, he'd
be stateside again, assuming he didn't get himself greased
today.
The FNG turned out to be a girl, a flight
medic named Florence Kennedy, from Newark, New Jersey. She
had that baby-faced determination common to newbies, worn as
a thin mask over abject, bowel-melting fear.
"What
the fuck are you waiting for?" demanded Nemo, striding past
her. "Get your ass over to the LZ."
She seemed
frozen, her face pale with resentment. She made no move to
follow Nemo.
Ross nailed her with a glare. "Well?
What the hell is it?"
"Sir, I…Not fond of the f-word,
sir."
Ross let out a short blast of laughter. "You're
about to fly into a battle zone and you're worried about
that? Soldiers swear. Get used to it. Nobody on earth swears
as much as a soldier—and nobody prays as hard. And I don't
know about you, but I see no conflict there. Pretty soon,
you won't, either."
She looked as though she might
cry. He tried to think of something to say to reassure her,
but could come up with nothing. When had he stopped knowing
how to speak kindly?
When he'd grown too numb to feel
anything.
"Let's go," he said simply, and strode away
without looking back.
The ground crew chief barked
out a checklist. Everyone climbed aboard. Armor and helmets
would be donned on the chopper to shave off run
time.
Ross received the details through his earpiece
while he consulted his lap charts. The call was the type
they feared most—victims both military and civilian,
enemy still in the area. Apache gunships would
escort the medical birds because the red crosses on the
nose, underbelly and each cargo door of the ship meant
nothing to the enemy. The crew couldn't let that matter;
they had to roll fast. When a soldier on the ground was
wounded, he needed to hear one key phrase: Dustoff is
inbound. For some guy bleeding out in the field, the
flying ambulance was his only hope of
survival.
Within minutes, they were beating it
northward over the evergreen-covered mountains of Kunar
province. Flying at full speed across the landscape of
craggy peaks, majestic forests and silvery rivers, Ross felt
tense and jittery, on edge. The constant din of flight ops,
along with strict regulations, kept conversation confined to
essential matters only over the headsets. The rush into
unknown danger was an everyday ordeal, yet he never got used
to it. Last mission, he told himself. This is your last
mission. Don't blow it.
The Korengal Valley was one
of the most beautiful places on earth. Also one of the most
treacherous. Sometimes the helos encountered surface-to-air
missiles, cannonade or tripwires strung between mountain
peaks to snag the aircraft. At the moment, the gorgeous
landscape erupted with lightning bolts of gunfire and
ominous plumes of smoke. Each represented a deadly weapon
aimed at the birds.
Ross's heart had memorized the
interval of delay between spotting the flash and taking the
hit—one, two, three beats of the heart and something could
be taken out.
The gunships broke off to fire on the
areas blooming with muzzle flashes. The diversion created a
lull so the medical choppers could circle down.
Ross
and Ranger, the other pilot, focused on closing the distance
between the bird and the other end of the radio call.
Despite the information given, they never knew what might be
waiting for them. Half of their flights were for evacuating
Afghan civilians and security personnel. The country had
lousy medical infrastructure, so sometimes a pickup was for
patient transport, combat injuries, accidents, even dog
bites. Ross's unit had seen everyone's horrors and ill luck.
But judging by the destination, this was not going to be a
simple patient transport to Bagram Air Base. This region was
the deadliest of Taliban havens, patrolled on foot and
referred to as the Valley of Death.
The chopper
neared the pickup point and descended. The tops of the
majestic pine trees swayed back and forth, beaten by the
wind under the main rotors, offering fleeting glimpses of
the terrain. Wedged between the walls of the valley lay a
cluster of huts with rooftops of baked earth. He saw
scurrying civilians and troops, some fanning out in search
of the enemy, others guarding their wounded as they waited
for help to arrive.
Muzzle flashes lit the hillsides
on both ends of the valley. Ross knew immediately that there
was too much small-arms fire below. The gunships were spread
too thin.
The risk of drawing enemy fire was huge,
and as pilot, he had to make the call. Bail now and protect
the crew, or go in for the rescue and save the lives below.
As always, it was an agonizing choice, but one made swiftly
and followed by steel resolve. No time for a
debate.
He took the bird in, hovering as close to the
mark as he dared, but couldn't land. The other pilot shook
his head vigorously. The terrain was too rough. They'd have
to lower a litter.
The crew chief hung out the cargo
bay door, letting the penetrator cable slide through his
gloved hand. A Stokes litter was lowered and the first
soldier—the one most seriously wounded, was placed in the
basket. Ross lifted off, hearing "Breaking ground, sir,"
over his headset as the winch began its fast
rewind.
The basket was nearly in the bird when Ross
spotted a fresh plume of smoke—a rocket launcher. At an
altitude of only fifty feet, he had no time to take evasive
action. The miniature SAM slammed into the
aircraft.
A flash of white lightning whipped through
the ship. Everything showered down—shrapnel, gear, chips of
paint, and an eerie flurry of dried blood from past sorties,
flaking off the cargo area and blowing around. Then a burst
of fire raked the chopper, slugs stitching holes in the
bird. It bucked and vibrated, throwing off webbing, random
bits of aluminum, broken equipment, including a couple of
radios, right in the middle of Ross's first Mayday call to
the ops guys at base who were managing the mission. A
ruptured fuel line hosed the flight deck.
He felt
slugs smacking into his armored chair, the plates in front
of his face, the overhead bubble window. Something thumped
him in the back, knocking the wind out of him. Don't
die, he told himself. Don't you fucking die.
He stayed alive because if he got himself killed, he'd
take down everybody with him. It was as good a reason as he
knew to keep going.
He had landed a pranged chopper
before, but not in these conditions. There was no water to
hit. He hoped like hell he could set it down with everybody
intact. He couldn't tell if the crew had reeled the basket
in. Couldn't let himself think about that—a wounded soldier
twisting and dangling from the bird.
Ranger tried
another radio. The red trail of a smoke grenade bloomed, and
then the wind swept it away. Ross spotted a patch of ground
just as another hail of fire hit. Decking flew up, pieces
glancing off his shoulder, his helmet. The ship whirled as
though thrown into a giant blender, completely out of his
control. There was no lift, nothing at all. The whistles and
whines of the dying ship filled his head.
As the
earth raced up to meet them, he found himself focusing on
random sights on the ground—a tattered billboard for baby
milk, a mangled soccer goal. The chopper roared as it hit,
throwing up more steel decking. The jolt slammed through
every bone of his body. His back teeth crunched together. A
stray rotor slung free, mowing down everything in sight.
Ross was in motion even before the thing settled. The reek
of JP4 fuel choked him. He flung out a hand, grabbing
Ranger's shoulder, thanking God the other pilot was looking
lively.
Nemo was struggling with his monkey strap,
the rig used to hold him in the chopper during ops. The
straps had tangled, and he was still tethered to a tie-down
clamp attached to the ripped-up deck. Ranger went to help
him, and the two of them dragged away the wounded guy in the
litter, which, thankfully, had been hoisted into the cargo
bay before the crash.
"Kennedy!" Ross dropped to his
knees beside her. She lay eerily still, on her side. "Hey,
Kennedy," he said, "Move your ass. Move your fucking ass! We
need to get out."
Don't be dead, he thought. Please
don't be dead. Damn, he hated this. Too many times, he'd
turned a soldier over to find him—or her—too far gone,
floating in root reflexes.
"Ken—"
"Fuck."
The FNG threw off his hand, hauling herself to her feet
while uttering a stream of profanities. Then, just for a
second, she focused on Ross. The soft-cheeked newness was
already gone from her face, replaced by flinty-eyed
determination. "Quit wasting time, Chief," she said. "Let's
get the fuck out of here."
The four of them crouched
low against the curve of the chopper's battered hull. Bullet
holes riddled the starkly painted red cross and pockmarked
the tail boom. The floor was covered with loose AK-47
rounds.
The Apache gunships had broken off and gone
into hunter-killer mode, searching out the enemy on
the
ground, firing at the muzzle flashes on the
mountainsides and producing a much-prayed-for lull. The
other chopper had escaped and was no doubt sending out
distress calls on the unit's behalf. Pillars of black smoke
from mortar rounds rose up everywhere.
With no means
of evacuation, the crew had to take cover wherever they
could. Heads down, in a hail of debris, they carried the
litter toward the nearest house. Through a cloud of dust and
smoke, Ross spotted an enemy soldier, hunched and watchful,
armed with an AK-47, approaching the same house from the
opposite direction.
"I got this," he signaled to
Nemo, nudging him.
Unarmed against a hot weapon, Ross
knew he had only seconds to act or he'd lose the element of
surprise. That was where the army's training kicked in.
Approaching from behind, he stooped low, grabbed the guy by
both ankles and yanked back, causing the gunman to fall flat
on his face. Even as the air rushed from the surprised
victim's chest, Ross dispatched him quickly—eyes, neck,
groin—in that order. The guy never knew what hit him. Within
seconds, Ross had bound his wrists with zip ties,
confiscated the weapon and dragged the enemy soldier into
the house.
There, they found a host of beleaguered
U.S. and Afghan soldiers. "Dustoff 91," Ranger said by way
of introduction. "And unfortunately, you're going to have to
wait for another ride."
The captured soldier groaned
and shuddered on the floor.
"Jesus, where'd you learn
that move?" one of the U.S. soldiers
demanded.
"Unarmed combat—a medevac's specialty,"
said Nemo, giving Ross a hand.
A babble of Pashto and
English erupted. "We're toast," said a dazed and exhausted
soldier. Like his comrades, he looked as if he hadn't bathed
in weeks, and he wore a dog's flea collar around his middle;
life at the outposts was crude as hell. The guy—still
round-cheeked with youth, but with haunted eyes—related the
action in dull shell-shocked tones. A part of this kid
wasn't even there anymore. When Ross met a soldier in such a
state, he often found himself wondering if the missing part
would ever be restored.