SecondWorld (37 page)

Several warning indicators flashed. Alarms sounded. Miller wanted to slap the helicopter. Tell it to stop screaming like a little girl. But all he could do was hang on and trust The Kidd.

Hammaker fought the storm for control of the aircraft. While they were still far from vertical, the altimeter showed them rising slowly. At an angle.

Miller searched his memory. What had the surroundings looked like? They were surrounded by flat ice, but there had been mountains inland, to the east. He found the compass. They were facing north, but moving west.

As they continued to rise, the helicopter’s roll leveled out. Hammaker turned to Miller. “Sorry about that. Wind was intense.”

“That Katabatics,” Vesely said from the back. “Luckily they flow out to sea, which is where we want to go.”

“We’ll make it to sea,” Hammaker said. “But landing on the
George Washington
in this mess is going to be a trick.”

The chopper shuddered and dropped fifty feet.

“Storm is reminding us who is in control,” Vesely said.

A gust struck the chopper’s side, rolling them to the left. Miller sensed that if he could see, he’d be looking down at the ground through his window. The helicopter was close to tipping.

Either God heard someone’s quickly-said prayer or Hammaker was the best damn closet-pilot in the navy, because the helicopter righted and all three men sighed with relief.

Miller looked at the GPS screen. They were headed in the general direction of the
George Washington,
but couldn’t see beyond the helicopter’s nose. He picked up the radio transmitter.

“
George Washington, George Washington,
this is Lieutenant Lincoln Miller. Do you read? Over.”

There was a moment of silence and Miller opened his mouth to repeat his message, but then heard, “Miller, this is the
George Washington,
Ensign Partin speaking, reading you five by five. Are you all safe? Over.”

“That remains to be seen,” Miller said. “We are en route, over.”

“Did you say you were on your way here?” For a moment, Miller waited for the man to say over, but the surprise in his voice marked a shift in the conversation from trained radio operators to normal conversation.

“We’re a mile out and closing on your position,” Miller said. “But we can’t see anything. Do me a favor and light that boat up like it’s the Fourth of July. Over.”

Miller expected a statement of shock or outrage, but all Partin said was, “Copy that. Consider it done. Out.”

For a moment he thought the change in the man’s demeanor was strange, but then he remembered that the ship was missing the majority of its crew, and Partin might actually have to run around switching on the lights himself.

Two nerve-wracking minutes passed as the helicopter pitched, rolled, and shook. Had the helicopter been a news chopper and not an aerial tank designed to handle extreme weather and machine-gun fire, they would have crashed long ago. That wasn’t to diminish The Kidd’s piloting abilities. He was better than he claimed. But the chopper was a beast.

“There she is!” Hammaker shouted.

Time seemed to pass more quickly as they closed the distance to the ship, but as soon as they descended over the
George Washington
’s deck, a new level of hell gripped the helicopter. The lower they flew, the stronger the wind became. The Katabatics rolled down Antarctica and spilled out over the ocean. That was normally bad enough, but the storm added power to the wind and turned the normally unidirectional force into an omnidirectional maelstrom. Giant waves, fifty to seventy-five feet tall, hammered the aircraft carrier. The massive vessel surged up and down, its decks repeatedly drenched with freezing seawater.

They could see the lights blazing on the deck, rising and falling with the waves, but there were no colorfully clad crew on deck to guide them down. No one was that stupid. They were on their own.

The helicopter spun as Hammaker guided it down. Sweat dripped down his forehead. “C’mon,” he said to the helicopter. “C’mon!”

A gust of wind sent them flying to the side.

Miller saw the control tower come into view as they flew toward it, seconds away from becoming a bloody, oily smear on the metal wall. Then they tilted away. After leveling out again, Miller could see the deck just ten feet below.

“Almost there!” he shouted.

Then the deck fell away.

“Why are you pulling up?” he asked Hammaker.

“Not me,” Hammaker said. “The ship’s in a wave valley. I’m still descending.”

Miller saw the deck lights rising to meet them.

Fast.

“Pull up!” Miller shouted, but he was too late. The giant deck of the aircraft carrier slammed into the bottom of the helicopter. Its legs folded and its belly struck hard.

The impact hammered the three men inside. Miller felt his head spin.

“You okay, Survivor?” Vesely shouted from the back.

He shook his head, shouted, “Yeah,” and looked over at Hammaker. The Kidd was unconscious.

A blast of ocean foam struck the helicopter’s windshield. When it cleared, Miller saw the
George Washington
’s deck. It was slick with snow, ice, and ocean water. The ocean lay beyond the deck, lit by the ship’s array of exterior lights. And it was getting closer.

No,
Miller thought.
We’re getting closer!

The aircraft carrier had entered another giant wave valley and pitched forward, its slippery deck acting like a slide—straight into the water.

Miller shouted as the ocean reached up to swallow them. “Oh shi—”

An impact shook the helicopter.

Water surged over them.

Miller’s thoughts flashed back to his Navy SEAL training. Thirty months of the worst the military could legally put a man through. The infamous “Hell Week” alone included sitting in freezing water, endless running, miles of swimming, and pushed the human body to ten times the amount of exertion of which the average person was capable. He could overcome almost anything. A dip in the Antarctic Ocean on its own could kill a man—any man—in two minutes. But being sandwiched between giant waves and an aircraft carrier would mean a much quicker death. Granted, being crushed by the hull of an aircraft carrier would be a merciful ending as compared to freezing in the water, but Miller didn’t like either option.

When the water fell away, Miller saw the ocean recede. The
George Washington
rose above the waves. The helicopter sat ten feet from the edge of the deck. Then fifteen. Then twenty. They were sliding back as the ship rose up the next wave.

Miller knew the ship would pitch forward again after cresting the wave and had no doubt the ocean would swallow the chopper whole when it did.

“Get ready to jump!” Miller shouted to Vesely.

The man already had the laptop, secured in its case, in one hand, and his other on the door handle.
He would have made a good SEAL,
Miller thought, and then turned his attention to Hammaker’s unconscious form. The SEALs had a long tradition of teamwork. It was essential to everything they did. And as a result, they had never—not once—left a man behind, dead or alive. Miller wasn’t about to let Hammaker be the first.

As the metal underbelly of the helicopter struck a clear portion of the deck, it screeched and came to a stop.

Miller heard the back door slide open. A burst of cold air filled the cabin with a violent swirl of snow. He leaned over to Hammaker and fought to unbuckle him. His sore arm and the weather slowed him. As the ship, and helicopter, pitched forward once again, Miller heard Vesely shouting his name like a distant foghorn. But he wouldn’t leave Hammaker. He couldn’t.

Then he remembered Adler. Captured.

And the rest of the world. Red flakes would soon fall from the sky and kill every last non-Nazi on the planet.

For a moment, he considered leaving Hammaker, measuring one life against billions. But then he thought of Arwen. She wouldn’t leave the man. She’d die trying to save his life.

He pushed Hammaker forward, thrust his arms under the man’s shoulders, and dragged him into the passenger’s seat. The pain in his left arm was excruciating, but focused him on the task.

The helicopter skidded over the ice again, headed for the ocean.

Miller twisted the door handle, pushed hard with his legs, and emerged from the door like a penguin leaping from the water.

He hit the deck hard. Hammaker landed on top of him, knocking out the little air left in Miller’s lungs.

The helicopter, riding on a bed of smooth metal, slipped past them.

There was a crash.

The sting of freezing water covered Miller’s body.

He heard shouting voices, but couldn’t make out the words.

All of his effort went into one thing—holding on to Hammaker.

Even if it meant they would die together.

50

Miller was back in the cryogenic chamber. Cold stabbed his body with icy talons, piercing his muscles and scraping his bones.

But his arms locked around Hammaker’s body and never let go. Not when frigid salt water filled his mouth. Not when the stitches in his arm popped like over-tight guitar strings. Not even when he felt himself lifted up and dragged away.

When his senses returned he found himself on a stretcher covered in heated blankets, being carried through the delightfully warm hallways of the
George Washington.
He recovered from the cold more quickly than when he was in the actual cryogenic chamber, and realized that the burn of recovery lacked the intensity of his time in the heated river.

Exposure must not have been that long,
he thought.

He looked for Vesely, somehow knowing the man would never leave his side. He found him following the pair of medics carrying the stretcher. “How long were we out there?”

The man smiled wide. “I told them you would not stay unconscious long.”

The man carrying the stretcher confirmed it with a grin and a nod. “He did.”

“More than once,” said the other man.

They turned the corner and Vesely said, “You were hit by two waves. Nearly swept you off deck.”

“Was it you?” Miller asked. “Did you pull us off the deck?”

“No,” Vesely said. “Was them.” He motioned to the men carrying the stretcher. Miller looked at them. Their faces were red from exposure to the elements.

“Thank you,” he said to them.

“Just doing our jobs,” said the man in the back.

Miller had never felt more proud of his navy service. Never mind the fact that a portion of the armed services had been infiltrated by the enemy, those that were true Americans never ceased to make him proud.

Like Hammaker.

Miller opened his mouth to ask about the man, when Vesely said, “Kidd is unconscious, but alive. Hit his head hard, they think. Getting X-rays. Will live, but will not be coming with us.”

Probably for the better,
Miller thought. The Kidd was brave as hell, a good pilot, and had earned his Vesely-style code name. But his inexperience in a down-and-dirty, no-holds-barred firefight could be a liability. It was always harder to kill people when you were worried about someone else’s well-being. Vesely had no formal training—that Miller knew of—but had proven himself more than once.

“Did he just say ‘coming with us’?” asked one of the men carrying the stretcher.

“He did,” Miller said, sitting up. His head ached, as did most of his body, but he pushed through it. The motion caused the two men carrying the stretcher to stop. Miller spun his legs around and got to his feet. Veseley helped keep him up, but he stood on his own after a moment. He turned to the first man. “Find someone who will patch me up fast. Meet me on the bridge. Go.”

The man nodded quickly, impressed and intimidated by Miller’s show of strength, and then hurried off. Miller turned to the second man.

“How long is this storm supposed to last?”

The man nodded. “Four hours, tops.”

“Any F-22s on board?” Miller asked.

“Yes, sir,” the man replied. “Four of them.”

“Find Ensign Partin. Tell him I need two F-22 Raptors and two F/A-18s fueled and ready to leave the second this storm lets up.”

The man nodded and left.

Miller looked back to Vesely. “Go find our pilots. Bring them to me.”

“Is fun to see you in action, Survivor,” Vesely said with a grin, and then went in search of the pilots. Satisfied that the three men would follow his orders, Miller headed for the bridge, and when he got there, he cranked up the heat.

*   *   *

The storm let up three hours later, just as the black sky turned a dark hue of purple. The sun would rise slowly, peek over the horizon for a few hours, and then begin its slow descent. But Miller planned to be in an entirely different hemisphere by the time that happened.