By the end of getting the bleeding reduced — and he knew it was only reduced, not stopped — he was panting and his vision was going in and out. But he noticed a blue glow from a panel on what would be the top of the bomb. Cautiously, he lifted the panel and then blanched. There was a countdown clock and it was just passing twenty minutes.
He thought about that for a second and then did the only thing he could think of, crawling towards the nearest remaining cigarette boat. He could sort of use his legs, especially the right one, and he used his right arm and that leg to pull himself up with the anchor rope and onto the bow.
He cut the anchor rope and then slid across the front of the boat, around the windscreen and then more or less fell into the driver’s seat, finally crying out at the pain of the impact. There was a dead body on the floor of the cockpit, but he ignored it, taking his weapon off and setting it on the seat beside him.
There was a glowing GPS on the dash with a track on it. Clearly that was the way the boats had taken in and it was, hopefully, a way out.
He started the boat, reversed it, spun it around much more expertly than the muj, and got the hell out of Dodge.
“What is he doing?” Colonel Pierson said, watching the take from the satellite. “I’m pretty sure that’s Winter Born.”
“I don’t know,” the guy in civilian clothes said. He was pretty clearly CIA, but one of the “field” hands, a big, burly, bearded guy who looked out of place in the suit he was wearing. “He’s leaving the device.”
“Is he after the remaining terrorist?” Captain Polumbo wondered. The captain was a SEAL currently working in OSOL like Pierson and had been called in for consultation on the waterborne aspects of the op.
“He looked at the device and then immediately went to the boat,” Pierson said. “We don’t have commo with him, yet, do we?”
“Negative,” the technician manning the console replied. “The FAST team is inbound by helicopter,” he added, pointing to an overhead map. “They’re seven minutes out. The range on those radios is only about ten klicks, though. I’m not sure they’re ever going to be in range.”
Pierson thought about Mike’s actions, then blanched. He picked up a phone at his place at the table and punched a button.
“General,” he said. “Request that the FAST divert to close with Agent Winter Born. The nuke may repeat may be armed at this time.”
Mike could barely keep conscious. He was driving in a pool of blood and his vision kept creeping in and out. But he kept his eye on the GPS and kept driving, going as fast as he could given his condition.
The track was not constant, since it wove in and out of the shoals in the banks. But he was reaching the edge of the Banks now, and as soon as he hit open water he was going to push this thing up to full speed and put his ass to the blast.
He was just reaching the edge of the Banks when his radio crackled to life.
“Winter Born, Winter Born,” the voice said. “FAST Three. What is your situation?”
Mike slowed the boat for a moment and propped the wheel with his still mostly functional right leg.
“The nuke is armed,” Mike said. “Get clear. I read it as about five minutes to detonation.” With that he dropped the radio, put the boat back up to power and headed for the edge of the Banks.
“Holy crap,” the pilot of Seahawk 412 said, turning the helicopter to the side and going to max power, nose down and hauling.
“FAST, this is SOCOM Six,” the sat radio said. “Copy weapon armed. Abort, abort, abort. Move towards Agent Winter Born’s position. After detonation, recover if possible. Navy surface support is inbound. If you have to ditch, they have your location.”
“Roger,” Captain Talbot said, keying his mike and nodding. “We need to get clear, ASAP.” He turned to the team and waved. “Mission is ay-bort! Weapon is armed. Say, again, weapon is armed. Prepared for ditching maneuvers!”
Mike had strapped himself into the seat and the boat was now on autopilot, slamming southeast as fast as it could go. He couldn’t really see anymore, his vision going gray and red at the impacts of the speedboat over the waves that remained from the storm. He wasn’t sure if the thing was going to go airborne first or if he was going to bleed out or the bomb was going to detonate. When it did, it would send a tsunami in every direction. The girls were probably going to be fine. The Banks weren’t going to allow for a major wave and they were not only ten miles away but shielded by the small islands. He, however, was still less than five, with nothing between him and the bomb but open water.
The boat hit a particularly bad wave, going airborne, its engine screaming, as the world suddenly went white. He saw that, but it was really the last thing he remembered.
“Oh shit,” the Seahawk’s pilot said, quietly, as a new sun erupted to her northeast. Captain Kacey Bathlick was a short-coupled brunette with moderate breasts and shapely legs who had wanted to be a pilot since she had read her first Dragonriders of Pern book. She had considered all three services before opting for the Marines. She’d joined the Marines because she considered herself just as much of a warrior as the “cargo” in the back, and over the years she had handled more than a few midair emergencies. But, as her stick and all her instruments went dead from the nearby EMP, she admitted to herself that she’d much rather have been fighting Thread on Pern. “BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!” she shouted in a throaty contralto as she prepared to autorotate.
“EVAC!” Captain Talbot yelled, yanking open the troop door. He grabbed the FAST Marine next to him as the trooper dropped his armor and tossed him out the door, then followed, yanking the quick releases on his armor in midair.
The technique the Marines used was called helocast. It was a fast water entry method that could also be used for just such emergencies. Talbot rotated his body in midair to turn his back into the motion of the helicopter. By holding his nose and putting the body in a “half-pike” position it was possible to enter the water from rather high and rather fast.
But normally not quite as high as they were, and not as fast. And then there was the fact that the helicopter was falling towards them. The last thing Talbot saw before his feet hit the water was the rotating blades of the chopper above him coming down.
As his feet hit, his body was tumbled backwards so that it hit on the legs and then butt, breaking into the water in a V formation with a tremendous splash, the speed of the impact actually causing him to tumble in the water. The impact drove the air out of his lungs, but he automatically hit the inflator on his buoyancy vest and bobbed back to the surface just as the chopper hit, with a tremendous splash, less than thirty meters from his position, one of the still-rotating blades slapping the water not far from his nose and then sinking out of sight as the helicopter rolled over…
Autorotation was, conceptually, simple. As a helicopter fell, its blades tended to pick up the spin of the air running across them. By occasionally reversing the pitch of the blades, it was possible to use their momentum to get momentary lift.
However, it worked much better at, say, a thousand feet, than at two hundred. The props continued to spin for a moment, giving her a smidgeon of lift, then stopped and reversed. She was an expert pilot and had practiced autorotation hundreds of times. And she knew damned well there was not nearly enough rotation going to slow them as she reversed. But they were going in, no question, and any lift was better than no lift as the helicopter plunged towards the tossing sea.
“Oh, well,” her left seat said. “At least the water will be warm.”
“I’m just hoping to survive the impact,” Kacey snapped, reversing the blades at the last moment possible. There was a smidgeon of lift again and then they hit the water’s surface. Hard.