The Night Stalkers White House - Books 1-3

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

They unpacked one of the Black Hawks from the C-17.

Alice watched from inside the cavernous cargo bay of the transport jet as the crew chiefs hauled one of the helicopters down the rear ramp and out into the chill rain. It required the better part of thirty minutes for Tim and John to unfold the rotor blades and prepare for flight. The Majors had spent about ten minutes circling the bird doing the external preflight checks before moving into the cockpit. Captain Smith had tagged along and now squatted just behind the pilots’ seats, clearly talking shop.

They were all acting as if it were a normal day. Perhaps it was for them. Alice was ready to find the nearest walk-in freezer to warm up. It was merely freezing in Washington, D.C. The Pacific Northwest weather had supplied a slanting rain that was several degrees warmer and felt twice as cold. Even though she’d been sitting dry inside the belly of the C-17, she could feel the cold wind as it tested and probed the entire length of the cargo bay through the open rear ramp.

Daniel stood outside too, the hood of his parka up. Not quite in the way, but not out of it either. Clearly enjoying being a guy around other guys doing guy things. He’d watched as they pinned the rotor blades in place. Once they showed him how, he’d tossed a line over the ends of the long rotor blades that had been tucked over the tail. He towed each one so that Tim and John who were perched atop the Black Hawk could pin them into place. Then as the crew chiefs worked their way around the bird undoing covers, checking door latches, and a hundred other little details, Daniel asked questions.

Alice would bet that he didn’t forget a single detail either. Every item finding its cubbyhole in his neatly ordered mind. Her own mind felt more like a filing system crossed with a smallish hurricane. Her ability to retrieve and relate facts remained a constant mystery whenever she tried to explore her own process. Daniel didn’t appear to go there. His mind, while at least as exceptional as his body, appeared to be something he simply used. Didn’t analyze. Didn’t deconstruct. He just used it.

Sounded like a nice, gentle place to be. She wished she could try it someday.

They finally waved her over and she scampered through the rain. Only Daniel’s quick hand atop her head spared her cracking it on the cargo bay doorframe. The Black Hawk’s deck was a high step up, but the bay itself measured barely over four feet from deck to roof of the cabin. A couple of small seats had been attached there, three across the back facing forward and two at the front facing backward.

She and Daniel took two of the seats in the back. He patted the middle seat and she slid in gratefully, as far as possible from the freezing outside world and able to rub shoulders with Daniel.

Captain Smith sat across from them.

The two crew chiefs went forward and took their own positions after sliding the cargo bay door shut. They rode sideways, each facing out a small window. The windows actually only appeared small. Each was mostly filled with a steerable minigun capable of firing six thousand rounds a minute, a buzz saw of death.

A shiver having nothing to do with the temperature shook Alice so hard it almost hurt. Never had it been so personal, seeing the danger she was placing people in. She rarely left her cubicle at CIA headquarters. She’d make an analysis, and people would act on it. These people, ones she now knew, would fly into harm’s way because of what she’d learned. They were sitting in a craft of war. And this time her analysis would be sending them into North Korea.

The Majors closed their own doors and within moments the twin turbines had spun up until they were a high background whine, a sound she knew would be in her sleep for days to come. The heavy thud of the rotors began to beat the air hard enough that it felt like a body blow.

With a deepening of the rotor’s roar and a slight forward tip, they were airborne. Within moments they were over water, barely, but above it. She knew that Puget Sound was close to the south end of the runway, but she knew they were supposed to heading northwest. Maybe they were circling around to make sure no one had their trail. At twenty-feet above the curling winter whitecaps of Bellingham Bay, no radar would be following them.

Daniel slid an arm over her shoulder, but there was no way to talk. She leaned in for the warmth and comfort, and watched the world flash by out the large windows in the closed cargo doors. Steep islands appeared abruptly, stabbing their conifer-covered heads briefly toward the sky before sweeping back toward the roiled ocean waters. They slalomed between the islands as smoothly as any ice skater, at least one dumb enough to be gliding a half second above instant death. If they caught a wave at this speed they’d be dead before even the best pilots could react.

Somehow the impossibility of the situation didn’t worry her. Whatever the fates had in store, they were in control at the moment. Not Alice Thompson. Not even a little.

With Daniel’s arm warm about her, she felt safe. She felt for the first time as if she belonged.

The brilliant outsider, the analyst that no one could feel comfortable around, faded away. The one that everyone assumed could see right through them. But she couldn’t. She didn’t understand individuals, herself least of all. Politics, sure. Socio-economic dynamics of battle, no problem. What the guy next to her was thinking, never. At least not until Daniel.

She lay her head against his shoulder and soon fell asleep in the safest place she’d ever known.