Wind River Protector – Excerpt

August 15

“Well, hell!”

Captain Andrea Whitcomb hissed out the epithet. She was in trouble. Her harness bit deeply into her shoulders as she hauled back on the stick of her A-10 Warthog, having swooped within fifty feet of a hill peppered with Taliban guns firing back at her. The Gatling gun beneath the nose of the aircraft made her entire body shake from the fire power she’d just delivered against the enemy.

It was dusk, the lurid red color of the sunset dying behind the Afghanistan mountains to the west. Her A-10 had a helluva lot of armor, especially around the seat of the cockpit where she sat, but bullets had done damage to both engines on her stalwart close air support jet. Her gloves were sweaty with adrenaline as she felt the gravity pinning her back against the seat. She silently pleaded with the ailing combat jet to climb and get the hell out of bullet range of her attackers.

Jerking a glance to her left, looking through NVGs, night vision goggles, she saw the Black Hawk helicopter was trying to make an escape out of that deadly valley. It had just dropped a SEAL team near the wall of the canyon when it came under fire. She had been called in from another mission to protect the Army helo. It was always dangerous dropping or picking up black ops, and it was done after dark, if possible.

This time? She was in trouble. And so was the Black Hawk. The Taliban weren’t stupid. They had the helo caught in a bracket, heavy fire aimed at its rotor assembly area.

Their enemy knew if they could destroy that one mechanical mechanism, the helo was grounded and everyone on board would eventually be killed—by them.

Sucking in a breath of oxygen through her mask, eyes narrowed, Andy saw the warning black smoke issuing from the helo’s two turbo engines. Not good. Not good at all.

There was a mountain range to the north end of this box canyon-type valley and the helo was hobbling along, clawing for air and trying to get away from the bullets of the Taliban, too.

Her gaze snapped to the engine indicator, the dials telling her she was in equally bad shape as that limping along Army helo. From muscle memory, she went into ejection-seat mode. First, mayday calls to Bagram. Her combat jet would have to be destroyed, provided she could safely eject out of the crippled craft. Nothing could be left of it to be picked through and then sold to China or Russia, who would want avionics, for starters, from the jet. There were so many top-secret black boxes on this jet, they had to be destroyed, instead of hoping a fire or explosion would do the job. She set the detonation assembly.

Her gloved hand flew over the cockpit array, prepping the jet for the series of internalized explosions that would be initiated upon crashing to the ground. Hopefully, with her ejected, the parachute opening and being far enough away from where the A-10 augured in, she’d survive this.

A landing area was critical. She had a GPS radio on her flight suit and that would continually broadcast her whereabouts. That way, she could be picked up by either the Air Force or some other rescue operator helo that might be nearby. Sweat stood out on her upper lip, her mind moving at the speed of a computer.

 

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