Flying Over the Waves Read online

  Flying Over the Waves

  M. L. Buchman

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy:

  Target of the Heart (excerpt)

  About the Author

  Also by M. L. Buchman

  Sign up for M. L. Buchman’s newsletter today

  and receive:

  Release News

  Free Short Stories

  a Free Starter Library

  * * *

  Do it today. Do it now.

  www.mlbuchman.com/newsletter

  Chapter 1

  “Since when do people get shot down on training missions?”

  “At the moment I’m more worried about the North Sea,” her copilot shot back.

  Night Stalkers Chief Warrant 3 Debbie Rosenthal decided that he had a point.

  Tonight the North Sea was being thrashed by a mid-December Force 9 severe gale—that felt like a Force 12 hurricane the way it shook her helicopter. It slammed them around in all three dimensions with the ease of a beach ball. Command had decided that gale force winds in the fifty mile-an-hour range was a good excuse for training.

  Debbie hadn’t argued.

  First off, Command wouldn’t care what a mere CW3 said any more than her father had. He’d disowned her the day she’d joined the Army rather than marrying a good Jewish boy.

  Second, such an on-the-edge flight fit her own idea of a good skills freshener, well, other than being slammed about the sky. The Night Stalkers of the US Army’s 160th SOAR 5th Battalion E Company were tasked with flying their helicopters through every form of ugly and it was great practice—when they weren’t shooting at you.

  When they weren’t supposed to be shooting at you.

  From a thousand feet up, flying over the North Sea in the middle of the night had merely been a good ride. From a thousand feet up over freezing waves two-to-three stories tall, breaking in huge sheets of slashing spray—with no engine—it was far less amusing.

  The external cameras were good enough to paint the picture across the inside of her visor in horrifying detail despite the darkness.

  “Are you sure we were shot?” It was a dumb question, but it came out anyway.

  Chief Warrant 2 Silvan Exeter just pointed at the hole in their windshield that was currently shooting a stream of cold rainwater between them. The radio and engine had vanished at the same moment as their engine. The miracle was that neither of them had been hurt.

  The other Little Bird in their flight hadn’t been so lucky, but she couldn’t think about Junker and Tank at the moment.

  Their two-helicopter flight had passed above a fishing trawler seventy miles off Aberdeen, Scotland. At the time (all of sixty seconds ago) it had seemed like a good idea to do hover practice over a clear reference point. Could they hold position, in formation, directly above the trawler no matter what the wind and waves were doing? The trawler probably wouldn’t even know they were there, testing hover skills in the night.

  Thirty seconds ago, the trawler had unveiled a Soviet ZU-23mm anti-aircraft gun.

  Not fishing trawler.

  Russian spy trawler.

  Her aircraft was damaged first. Then the ship had swung fire against the other Little Bird and held it there. The second aircraft had plummeted out of the sky, no attempt at control or recovery. They were swinging back to finish her off as well, but it took too long. By then Silvan had fired a trio of Hydra 70 rockets into the trawler.

  Debbie felt the billow of the massive explosion despite the gale-level wind. Everything above sea level was erased—gun, gunner, the entire trawler. In her infrared night vision—which was still working by some miracle—she could see the remains of the hull were awash and would sink soon. Even if it was an act of idiocy, it was also an act of war. There was going to be hell to pay if anyone lived to report it.

  There were only two of them left out here in the middle of the North Sea and the odds didn’t look good.

  Per protocol, Silvan kept calling out the engine restart procedures while going through the emergency checklist…not that anything was likely to work.

  Any further disbelief that her subconscious was tossing out upon the waters would have to wait until later. After she didn’t die.

  Debbie could feel the heavy weight of the wind shuddering through the controls.

  No hydraulic assist in a MH-6M Little Bird.

  No crew chiefs in back performing some miracle, like fabricating a new engine out of old bullet casings in the sixty seconds she’d be able to keep them aloft. That was the land of Black Hawks and Chinooks. In the Little Bird, it was just the two of them.

  Autorotation was dicey at the best of times. Autorotation with winds gusting past fifty and nowhere to land just wasn’t going to work.

  “Can you reach the raft?”

  Silvan hesitated in mid-“Ignition-test on, negative indicators, Ignition-start press and hold, negative start.” She’d already lost half her altitude and was descending through five hundred feet. They were at max glide time, minus a factor of extra speed so that the storm didn’t flip them too easily. Better faster with less flight time than upside down with only seconds to go. Head-on into the wind to get maximum lift…it didn’t matter where they went, so she wasn’t worried about distance.

  No one ever survived bailing out of a crashing helicopter, so the requirement to carry the small raft on long crossings was silly, but it was on the books. Ditching was something you only survived if balanced perfectly with no rotors catching the water—and in dead calm weather. And then only if you were lucky. Actually, there were survivors during storm ditchings, but they were very rare—more statistical anomaly than fact. A Little Bird wasn’t some old-style US Coast Guard HH-3F Pelican designed to float. They were going to sink so fast that hitting the water was barely going to slow them down.

  “I can only reach the raft if I go outside,” he sounded grim. A Little Bird had a cockpit small enough that Debbie had never understood how two men could fly one. At least her shoulders were narrow enough that they only bumped together half the time they were aloft. The back two seats were even smaller. “Outside” meant stepping out onto the skid, shuffling backward in a roaring wind, and yanking the rear door open—all while she was busy pitching and yawing like a drunkard on a bender.

  “Three hundred feet,” was the only answer she had for Silvan.

  Chapter 2

  “Silvan? Like Tolkien’s elves? You’re tall enough to be one.” Debbie leaned back against the nose of her Little Bird, warm in the April afternoon. She looked up at the new guy—six-one, maybe six-two, a long way up. The sun caught his blond hair and made it shine. He was also slender like an elf, except for a very nice set of soldier’s shoulders.

  “Mom was a fan. And with our last name being Exeter… Exeter College was Tolkien’s alma mater. I never stood a chance,” new guy shrugged. Very nice shoulders. Good smile too. Debbie liked good smiles.

  “I didn’t know there were elves in the Army. Something’s wrong with your ears though.”

  He fell for it and actually reached up to touch them, before he sighed. “Not pointed. Right. Maybe I’m a deformed elf.”

  “Or a reformed one.” Not one bit deformed from where she was watching. Hide his ears and he’d make a very fair Legolas in the Lord of the Rings movies. His hair was still Army-short, but maybe she could corrupt him. Her own was down to her shoulders. Very un-Army, but very Night Stalkers.

&
nbsp; The Night Stalkers’ customers—Delta Force especially—let their hair go long to help them blend in when infiltrating undercover. And there wasn’t a Delta operator who didn’t also glory in the chance to say “up yours” to the military hierarchy that they’d voluntarily sworn to serve to the death. A lot of the fliers in the 160th SOAR took their close association with Delta and SEAL Team 6 as an excuse to let their own hair get long.

  “Let it grow out. That’ll hide the defect.” Because otherwise he was damn near perfect. Not gorgeous, though not homely by a long stretch, but rather cute, strong, and funny. “Besides, you’d look good in long hair.”

  He squatted down, flexing arms and clenching fists, and grimaced horribly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He looked like he was holding himself back from pummeling something.

  Or maybe trying to give birth right there on the runway in front of her helicopter.

  “Is it working?” His voice little more than a grunt.

  “Is what working?”

  He stopped whatever it was he was doing and patted the top of his head. “Crap!”

  “What?”

  “A beautiful woman tells me to grow my hair long, I wondered if I could hurry up the process. You know, like the Incredible Hulk.” When he resumed the hunched, grimace-riddled stance—she recognized it, right out of the movies.

  “An angry roar and you’ve got it nailed.”

  And he roared! Right there in the middle of Fort Rucker, Alabama airfield. Other crews were turning startled looks in their direction, but Silvan didn’t seem to care.

  When he finished, he stood up normally, as if nothing had happened and half the field wasn’t watching him, and patted the top of his head again.

  Then he whispered a soft, “Damn! No change.”

  Debbie would have burst out laughing at that moment if she could have, he was awfully cute.

  But she couldn’t.

  Because she knew that in that instant, whether or not she was his commander, she was gone on him.

  Chapter 3

  Silvan popped loose his harness then turned to her.

  “Remember, jump into the top of a wave. If you jump into a trough from a height, you’re going to fall that extra thirty feet.”

  They were crossing down through the two-hundred-foot mark and the difference from crest to trough was looking more like five stories than three. These waves were huge.

  “After I get the raft, we jump together, from opposite sides,” he shouted for emphasis.

  “Roger that. Go!”

  And he was gone: yanking free the data-and-communications umbilical cord to his helmet, jamming open the door with a shoulder, then leveraging his way out onto the bucking skid. The wind roared and swirled about her for a moment before the wind slammed it closed.

  She should have said something.

  Something to show that she cared.

  That he was important.

  That even though they’d never had a chance, she wished they had.

  A vicious gust slapped them hard. She managed to lean her side of the Little Bird into it. It cost her some altitude, but it would spare Silvan the worst of it.

  She was way too busy to look to see if he was still there, clinging to the outside of the helo.

  One-fifty.

  The wind’s roar in the cabin returned with double the volume.

  The rear door was open. Silvan was still with her.

  “I’ve got the raft!” Debbie could barely hear his shout.

  “Keep growing your hair!” Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

  That was going to be the last thing she ever said to him?

  Chapter 4

  “Keep trying,” Debbie managed past a constricted throat, trying not to make their first meeting too awkward. “Six months tops and it should cover those awkward ears.”

  “Mom would like you.”

  “She doesn’t like the kind of trollops you normally drag home?” Maybe it was the Alabama heat shimmering off the airfield that melted what little manners she normally maintained.

  Silvan had the decency to laugh despite her catty remark. “Not much. Would you believe that some of them haven’t even read The Hobbit?”

  “Horrors!”

  “Indeed,” he agreed.

  And that had set the tone for their entire first meeting. They’d shared stories of trainings and missions, of joining the military and that they were each nearing their first decade of service.

  She’d felt bad about not sharing her past, but Silvan made it easy with stories of his own. His family life wasn’t some picture postcard, but it wasn’t a dysfunctional TV sitcom either. Engineer mom, professor dad, older sister lawyer with one kid and a divorce.

  For eight months they’d flown together, laughed together, and survived every mission thrown at them.

  In eight months he’d never done a single thing to reverse her initial impression.

  Silvan was a seriously decent guy who easily kept up with her quirky sense of humor. Even better, together they forced each other to become better fliers.

  It seemed they’d done everything together—except one.

  Chapter 5

  Well, two things. They’d also never died together but, odds on, they were about to.

  She didn’t dare take a hand off either of the controls, so she couldn’t do anything to prepare for the jump except rehearse the steps in her head: release controls, punch harness release with one hand, then yank out the helmet’s umbilical cord while opening the door with the other. Thankfully, she and Silvan were already wearing inflatable life vests on top of their standard gear.

  With her left thumb she flicked the landing light switch on the end of the collective control. The sudden glare revealed a nightmare landscape of sheeting spray and breaking waves covered with foaming spindrift.

  A wave crested fifty feet below her.

  No time to grab anything, just enough to—

  Down in the trough was what remained of the spy trawler’s hull.

  A flat structure. The lowest deck had survived the blast. Now just barely awash.

  If she could land there, even for a moment, their chances of survival were going to skyrocket.

  Chapter 6

  “Why don’t you have a past?”

  Debbie sat slouched beside Silvan after a brutally long mission deep into Libya to take part in wiping out an al-Qaeda camp. They’d made it back to the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier with the first of the predawn light. By unspoken mutual consent, they’d found a corner of the hangar deck with a view out over the ship’s wake. There they’d collapsed and settled in to watch the sunrise over the Mediterranean.

  For a long time—from dark blue to soft pink—Debbie just let the waves hold her attention. She felt their beat in her aching body. Little Birds were meant for two-hour out-and-back operations. Muhammad Ali’s “Sting like a bee”—that was a Little Bird’s sweet spot. Which fit her perfectly, as her full name, Deborah, meant “bee” in Hebrew. Long missions took their toll. Ones long enough to require multiple refueling stops really took the honey right out of her mood.

  Silvan waited her out. He was good at that, sensing her mood and letting her have that space. There was so much to appreciate about him aside from his skills as a flier.

  “You weren’t born the day you joined the Army.” He was also good at calling her on her own bullshit avoidance, even if she didn’t appreciate it.

  “I’m a bad Jewish daughter. I didn’t marry a Jew. I didn’t even go into business or law. Except my family isn’t just Jewish, they’re Orthodox Haredi. It means we aren’t supposed to even mingle with non-Jewish cultures.”

  “So the Army ticked them off. Is that why you joined?”

  Debbie had to smile, “Can’t say that I minded that aspect of it, but no. There was a boy at our yeshiva—think Jewish high school that only reluctantly allows girls—Moshe. He was by far the best of us all. But he was in the wrong place at the wrong time—a muggi
ng that escalated badly. Anyway, he was dead before they got him to the hospital. That was the moment I truly became aware of the outside world. The more I learned…” she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “The more you felt a need to fix it?”

  She could only nod. She didn’t even mind Silvan’s habit of being able to finish her sentences because he was always right when he did. The waves of her life kept flowing by like the sunlit wake of the aircraft carrier as she watched—no way to ever hold onto them. No way to ever bring them back.

  Chapter 7

  “Hull!” Debbie shouted as loudly as she could.

  By the wind’s roar—now augmented by the breaking waves—she knew the rear door was still open and Silvan was still with her.

  If he responded, she couldn’t hear it. But the roar filled her ears—they’d jump together.

  She flew so close above the next crest that she could have stepped out onto the wavetop. A second later, she was over the yawning chasm of a trough. But the hull had survived or at least a piece of it.

  Forty.

  Thirty.

  At twenty she reefed back on the cyclic hard, a final flare to dump speed and trade it in for a momentary, unsustainable hover.

  A last kick of the rudder pedals.

  Impact!

  More of a crash than a landing onto the trawler, but it had worked.

  Now all her years of training kicked in.

  Not turning to Silvan—not even hesitating to be surprised that she was still alive—she slapped, pulled, opened, and leapt out.

  She dove into the freezing sea and slammed against the two feet of the trawler’s outer wooden hull, then collapsed onto the flat deck. She ate a mouthful of saltwater as she groaned at the abuse. A glance up revealed the Little Bird’s rotors still windmilling at lethal speed.