She gulped a few breaths and replied, “Shaken and stirred but still here!”
Bullets peppered the fuselage. Sam saw an opening in the canopy and worked the cyclic and rudder pedals, crabbing the nose around until it was pointed in the right direction, then nosed down and lifted the collective. With the shrieking of wood on aluminum, the helicopter lurched forward and into the clear. Now he lowered the collective and dropped the helicopter below the tree line. He stopped in a hover twenty feet above the slope, looked around for the H-V-C-P Jingaro had mentioned, and flipped it on. The helicopter shuddered slightly, slid sideways, dipped, then settled into a steady hover. The alarms and the flashing lights stopped. Sam tentatively took his hands off the controls and exhaled heavily. In the back, Remi scooted sideways and slid the door shut. The thumping of the rotors faded.
Sam turned in his seat and extended his hand between the gap. Remi grabbed his hand and pulled herself toward him. Sam asked, “You okay?”
“Yes. You?”
He nodded. “Let’s get out of here. I think we’ve fully worn out our welcome.”
CHAPTER 20
BIG SUKUTI ISLAND
THEY HAD JUST CLEARED THE ISLAND’S SOUTHERN COASTLINE when Sam realized Rivera’s gunfire had caused more than cosmetic damage. The rudder pedals felt spongy, and the collective and cyclic were sluggish, responding to his commands with a slight delay.
“What do you think?” Remi asked, her face pressed between the seats.
“Hydraulics, maybe.” He scanned the gauges, looking for oil pressure, temperature, revolutions per minute . . . “Engine’s running a little hot, too, and the oil pressure looks dodgy.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing good.”
“How far to the beach?”
“Three miles, give or take.”
“We should assume Rivera isn’t giving up.”
“I agree. Whether they call someone and how fast they respond is the question.”
“Or how fast they can get the Rinkers working again.”
“True. Let me see if I can get her settled down.”
Carefully Sam worked the controls, dropping both altitude and speed until they were a hundred feet off the water and moving at sixty knots—roughly seventy miles per hour. Below them, the sea was flat, calm, and black save the reflection of the helicopter’s navigation strobes.
Remi said, “Sam, they’ll be able to track the lights.”
“Lights or no lights, they’re tracking us through the Big Eyes. Once we cross the beach, I?
?ll switch them off. Against the backdrop of the land we’ll be invisible.”
“You’re assuming they’ll come after us.”
“Have to.” He did a quick scan of the gauges. “The engine temperature’s come down a little bit. But the oil pressure is still hinky. The controls are still soft.”
“Hydraulics, then.”
“At the very least. Any one of those can put us in the drink. All we need is another four minutes or so.”
“And a non-crash landing,” Remi added.
“And that.”
Slowly through the windshield they could see Africa’s east coast turn from a dark smudge to identifiable bits of landmass: trees, white sand beaches, rolling hills, and rivers and streams zigzagging across the terrain.
A half mile from the beach Sam felt the cyclic jerk in his hand, followed by a thump-bang above their heads. The cockpit and cabin began shaking. An alarm shrieked. Yellow and red lights flashed.