Survive Until the Final Scene Read online

  Survive Until the Final Scene

  a Night Stalkers CSAR story

  M. L. Buchman

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  About This Book

  The most dangerous mission of all: CSAR—Combat Search and Rescue.

  Captain Kandace Eversmann’s plane goes down hard in the Somali desert. With her life expectancy falling by the minute, she uses tricks from her favorite movies in order to survive.

  Army Medic Bob Redford has run out of reasons to stay in the Army. Until he must use his own love of movies to find the wounded pilot—fast. The race is on to beat an attacking militia that wants to take them both down before the final credits.

  1

  Up until this very moment, Captain Kandace Eversmann had a soft spot for Air America. Even though she and the movie had been born in the same year, 1990, it was the first movie about airplanes she remembered.

  Dad, a computer programmer, chose the Thursday night movies (a lot of espionage and thrillers) and Mom, a small-plane certified flight instructor, chose the Sunday night ones (a lot of flying). The best nights of her life were when the three of them curled up on the couch together with cookies or a slice of pie and watched a movie together.

  Even now as a captain in the US Air Force, movie night served as her litmus test for boyfriends—a gauntlet very few survived.

  Air America, a romp through the CIA’s illegal flight operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, was the identifiable starting point of the journey that had made her an Air Force pilot.

  And at this very moment, she hated that movie.

  The opening had followed a big silver Fairchild C-123K Provider, twin-engine cargo plane across the sky. It zoomed low over the credits, barely above the treetops, making parachute deliveries of pigs, rice, and weapons.

  Then, on its return to base, the Provider overflew a Laotian farmer strolling through his fields. He shouldered his prehistoric single-shot shotgun and fired once at the passing silver beast now high above. As he looked away and resumed his walk, the plane spilled out a smoke trail—ultimately crashing at the airport in a lethal ball of fire.

  She remembered smiling, intrigued at the offhand power of the farmer.

  One tiny shot, one giant plane. No way. It was too bizarre.

  Kandace was presently pilot-in-command of the bigger, badder, four-engined descendant of the Provider, a C-130H Hercules.

  A C-130 had dropped the life raft at the end of Bond’s You Only Live Twice, and the MC-130 variant had rescued the President in Air Force One. It had been used in over two hundred movies and she’d seen most of them, even the bad ones. Kandace had always been drawn to the rescue and humanitarian role.

  This moment had exactly the same feel as Air America.

  But she sure wasn’t smiling.

  Her flight from the US Air Force base in Djibouti was carrying food and military supplies to the Kenyan troops of ANISOM. They were attempting to create some form of peace in Somalia. It had come down to either the fragile official government or the horror of the al-Shabaab religious fanatics. She knew where her vote lay, not that anyone was asking.

  She’d been descending toward a landing in Saakow at the southern end of the country. No sneaking up from the sea because it was fifty miles inland. Instead, command had routed her directly overland from Djibouti, across a thousand miles of Ethiopian and Somalian nowhereness.

  No hiding among other air traffic because there wasn’t any. Saakow didn’t have an airport. The only possible air approaches were for helicopters or short-field masters like the C-130.

  This time she wasn’t even scheduled to touch down. She’d do a combat drop at one meter above the desert, the cargo pallet yanked out of the rear of the plane by a parachute. The load would skid to a stop and she’d climb back up to altitude.

  It was the high-end magic trick of the C-130, yet another reason she loved the plane so much.

  But she hadn’t been worried, everything was reported as being quiet in the area.

  Not so much.

  Out in the middle of that nowhereness, she must have overflown an al-Shabaab training camp. Or maybe just a bored, but very well-armed militia man.

  Either way, her seventy-five-ton baby had just been shot by a technical—a pickup truck with a big machine gun mounted in the rear. Usually such jury-rigged military vehicles carried a .50 cal Browning machine gun. The chances of a few half-inch rounds seriously harming her baby were minimal. Especially as its effective range was barely a mile and she’d still been flying at two.

  Somehow, this technical had mounted a massive Russian ZU-23 twin-barrel anti-aircraft autocannon on its bed. It tossed seven 23 mm rounds a second and could easily reach her altitude. At nearly an inch across and six long, they were far more damaging. Each delivered five times more energy to the target than the Browning as they’d smashed into her Number Two engine.

  In her case? Too damaging.

  If she leaned over far enough to look out her left-hand window, she could see the flames pouring out of the Number Two engine. At least in Air America it had been the starboard engine. If that had been the case, she wouldn’t have been able to see it from the pilot’s seat. Then maybe her copilot Kevin would be rooted to his seat in terror rather than herself.

  It was a good thing that it wouldn’t be night for another few hours. At night, that fire would look ten times more terrifying…whatever terrifying times ten might actually be.

  Pulling the extinguisher, which also cut fuel flow to the engine, hadn’t helped. Flames continued to stream out of the cowling. The fact that the tanks still had six thousand pounds per wing of insanely flammable avgas per wing was not encouraging.

  There was no refueling planned at Saakow: just a desert combat unload, and a thousand miles back to base. That meant a lot of fuel remained in the wing. Explosive fuel in a steel box, sitting in the middle of a fire.

  “We’re VSF!” Kandace yelled out to Kevin her copilot.

  “We’re what?”

  “Very seriously fucked! Air America! Doesn’t anyone watch movies around here? Pull Number One.”

  If the leak was from the feed to the outboard Number One engine…

  Kevin pulled the throttle to Number One, cutting the fuel flow, and feathered the prop. She counted to ten—very quickly—and turned to look again.

  The fire was growing. That meant that the fuel tanks themselves had been breached by the anti-aircraft rounds.

  Kandace triggered the plane’s intercom. “So much for our supply mission. Abandon aircraft. All hands, this is not a drill. Abandon aircraft immediately.”

  Kevin hesitated; his seat didn’t offer a view of the burning port wing.

  Kandace just shook her head. “You, too. Get out of here. Make sure my crew is clear, Kevin. Once you’re all off, I’ll follow.”

  She couldn’t help herself and turned back to look at the wing.

  Flames still growing.

  Majorly bad.

  She wanted another nearby plane to nod at and offer a wry smile the way Richard Dreyfuss had done in Always—just before his firefighting plane had disintegrated in mid-air.

  So not a good image.

  Kevin set the transponder to the emergency frequency. Then he scooted. The last she saw of him was the back of his parachute pack as he hustled out of the cockpit.

  She only had two missions now.

  One, call in the Mayday. She did. They would scramble search-and-rescue ASAP
—from a thousand miles away. Not very helpful, but done.

  Two, keep the plane in straight-and-level flight to give her crew the best chance of escape.

  A mark on her charts showed the location of the ANISOM military installation in Saakow. That was the best chance for her people.

  Taking the risk, she flew over the northwest corner of the town, then hit the internal PA. “Now! Now! Now!”

  No way to know if they’d jumped—she didn’t dare turn the plane to see. Continuing due west away from the town, she was clear of the houses and farms inside of another minute. Now if her plane exploded, the only person it was going to kill was her.

  The Great Waldo Pepper. A Depression-era barnstorming battle between the Red Baron of World War I and an American who never got to be a hero. The inevitable end is never shown, but both pilots know they can never survive landing their critically damaged aircraft as they separately fly into the sunset.

  She was going to die in the Somali desert.

  Once clear of the town, she started thinking again. Would a landing even be possible? Most of the desert around Saakow had too many scrub trees to land a Hercules.

  East of town was her one possible landing zone—a stretch of blood-red desert devoid of any bushes at all. Maybe, if she circled well clear of the town, she might actually be able to land the plane.

  That was at least another five to seven minutes of flying time.

  One look at the wing and she knew it wasn’t going to happen.

  Even as Kandace watched, the Number Two engine broke off the wing and tumbled downward into the desert.

  Yet the wing still burned furiously.

  Time to get out of here.

  She set the autopilot—which immediately disengaged. Autopilots weren’t made to work when half the plane wasn’t functioning.

  Out of options, she trimmed the controls for continued flight as well as she could with no functioning engines on the left wing.

  Then she slapped her seat’s harness release, and raced back through the cockpit.

  The fire was lashing in through the open passenger door at the base of the stairs down to the main cargo deck. No sign of burned-up people there, so they must have gotten clear.

  Give me a wing and a prayer. It was Always again, but that was about as close as she ever got to asking for a little help from the Almighty.

  With the stairs blocked and the stench of burning kerosene interfering with her desire to breathe, Kandace jumped over the rail, and landed on a pallet of crates of 5.56 mm ammunition like a beached fish. She groaned and rolled off the pallet and onto the steel cargo deck. Personally, she’d rather have landed on a pallet of bags of rice.

  There was light at the far end of the cargo bay.

  Some of the crew must have lowered the tail ramp and gotten out that way.

  Pushing to her feet she began sprinting for the tail.

  Even as she leaned into the sixty-foot dash along the cargo bay, the Hercules began rolling onto its side. In moments, she shifted from sprint to hurdles. Thankfully mostly low ones.

  It was like a Mission: Impossible scene—she was suddenly running on the walls.

  The side of the plane’s cargo deck was now downward…and the inside of a C-130 Hercules cargo deck wall was never meant for running.

  Hopping over structural ribs.

  Praying for sure footing on the round electrical conduits.

  Jumping over the emergency water supply like it was a gym class pommel horse. Wow! That was a skill she’d never expected to use again.

  As the Hercules nosed down, the incline to the open ramp fought her, though she was almost there. She could see blue sky.

  Wrapping her arms around the rear ramp’s massive hydraulic piston, she’d reached the open cargo hatch. Except it was now directly above her.

  Looking down, she saw sixty vertical feet of cargo bay stretched out below—a six-story fall.

  That’s when the wing blew.

  A bolt of fire blasted in through the open forward passenger door just below the wing itself.

  The first things it hit were the two forward pallets.

  Two entire eight-by-nine-foot loads of ammunition stacked four feet high. Rifle and sidearm rounds, grenades, RPG loads, and even some howitzer rounds.

  Looking up, she saw the burnt remains of the snapped-off port wing flutter by the open rear cargo hatch.

  Kandace didn’t know how she did it, but by the time the fireball blasted out the rear of the cargo bay, she was clinging to the outside of the plane just like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Except that had been an Airbus A400M Grizzly taking off, not a Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules busy crashing.

  And she definitely needed her head examined.

  There were factoids more important than Tom Cruise stunts here—like her imminent death.

  Besides, he was old!

  Kandace kicked off from the hull as hard as she could.

  —and banged her helmet against the underside of the tail.

  She tumbled away from the plane.

  Blue sky flashing past, then red desert, blue, red—over and over.

  2

  Medic Bob Redford couldn’t stop fretting.

  Tonight’s mission was only half the reason, but he couldn’t help it.

  Worse, the two crew chiefs in the back of the MH-60M Black Hawk with him could see it.

  And the Delta Operator, an easy stand-in for Megan Fox in Transformers, who being true to her role as one of the silent warriors, had said a grand total of one word.

  Her squad had been aboard the aircraft carrier. Apparently, she’d heard there was a downed pilot, and had simply stepped aboard his helo as they were scrambling off the deck. The crew chiefs had looked at her askance, but neither one dared to try and throw her off.

  Her one word so far? “Carla.”

  By her accompanying handshake, he’d assumed that was her name, so he offered his own. She’d nodded, lain down on the cargo deck, and gone to sleep with her rifle beside her. A sure sign that she really was what she said she was. Special operations forces could sleep anywhere—especially before a battle.

  Which left him alone, wide awake, and fretting.

  The CSAR bird wasn’t going to go any faster no matter how much he wished it would. A Black Hawk helicopter, even a Night Stalker one, couldn’t crack three hundred kilometers an hour. At least it felt as if everything happened faster when he thought in kilometers than loafing along at a mere one-sixty nautical miles an hour. Knots were the worst kind of airspeed because each one seemed to take forever to go by.

  “Christ, Bobby!” It took Major Lola Maloney laughing at him from the pilot’s seat to make him stop asking if they had any more information every five minutes.

  He hated being called Bobby. Though it was better than Robert. Only Mom had ever gotten away with calling him Robert Redford.

  “You remind me why I got out of CSAR in the first place. Waiting sucks big-time, doesn’t it?” Lola was still laughing.

  “Major!” he agreed.

  “That’s me, Major Pain!”

  “No, I didn’t mean—” Then he shut up. She knew that he’d meant it as a curse rather than impugning her rank. And—palm slapping front of helmet—that’s exactly what she was teasing him about.

  “She’d rather be in the fight any day,” the copilot, Major Tim Maloney, assured him over the headset. Major and Major, a flying couple who led the Night Stalkers 5th Battalion D Company—he couldn’t ask for a better transport—even if it was weird that they served on the same bird. Rumor was, they were both so wild that no one else could control them, so command left them together.

  That rumor was counteracted by the one that they were the absolute best flying team anywhere in the Night Stalkers since Beale and Henderson retired—whoever they were.

  All Bob cared about was that the downed Hercules crew could be bleeding-out somewhere in the Somali wilderness. Lives he could save, if only he could get there fast
enough. As soon as he caught himself scrubbing his hands together, he forced himself to stop.

  Old habits never died, they just sucked forever!

  The other problem was that he still didn’t know if this was his final mission. He had yet to sign his re-up papers for another tour. Hanging out on an aircraft carrier waiting for a medic flight had been a full-time occupation during the height of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Now it was a lot of sitting on his ass not being useful.

  It had so scratched at his nerves that he’d begged to be dropped out of the back of a C-2 Greyhound small cargo plane just to get to the crash site faster. Greyhounds moved at twice the speed of Black Hawks, but he’d been denied. And there hadn’t been any MV-22 Osprey helos available.

  “It’s fucking Somalia,” his commander had informed him. “The zone wasn’t supposed to be hot, but apparently it is. You’re going to wait for dark and the Night Stalkers will get you in there.”

  The unspoken part of that statement was that no one else other than the Night Stalkers were crazy enough to get him there. And experience had taught him that he wouldn’t trust anyone else to make sure he got back out with both his patients’ and his own ass intact. So waiting was the right answer, didn’t mean that he didn’t hate it.

  At sunset they’d lifted off the carrier.

  Full dark hit as they went feet dry, crossing from the Arabian Sea to over Somali soil. Typical of the Night Stalkers, it seemed as if they were only about five feet over that soil despite the darkness and high speed.

  Fifty miles inland, fifteen minutes at full speed.

  It felt like hours.

  “Hey Bobby?” Tim called out. “Just got word that they’ve got four of the five crew safe. The Captain kicked them out of a burning plane. Then stayed aboard to down it herself.”

  “Good news. That’s good news.”

  “Yeah,” Tim’s voice slowed. “However, word is that the thing went up in a fireball. A ground team of ANISOM guys went out for a look. Thing was blown to hell. But they came under fire and pulled back without a real search. Don’t know if she made it.”