Morgan's Mercenaries: Heart of Stone

Chuckling, Dallas said, “Oh, I’m sure they’re gonna be real impressed, anyway.”

“We’ll see just how tough the good ole boys from Fort Rucker are when they encounter the Eye. I’d give my right arm to see the looks on their faces when they approach it.”

“They’ve been given prior info on it, right?” Wild Woman interjected from the rear cockpit.

Maya nodded. She was ready. They were ready. Excitement thrummed through her. “Roger that, Jess. But looking at it on paper and seeing it in person, and knowing your forty-eight-foot blade has no room for error, despite the winds that are always whipping up from the river, is gonna make it real interesting for those boys.”

Laughter filled Maya’s earphones. She grinned mirthlessly. Yes, she’d like to see York’s face when he came up against the Eye wrapped in thick clouds that were subject to the whim of the winds in this mountainous region. He’d learn to respect Eye real fast. Maya could hardly wait until they returned and she saw the two new Apaches thread it. There wasn’t a pilot around that didn’t approach it slowly and with a lot of trepidation.

The crew chief moved toward the ladder. “You’re ready to go, Captain,” she said, and snapped a salute to the two pilots.

Maya snapped off an answering salute. “Thank you, Sergeant Macedo.”

Macedo then brought down both canopies and locked them into position, making the cabin of each cockpit secure.

Maya rested her gloved hands in plain sight of the crew below. Until everyone was clear, Maya would not start the massive engines of the helo or endanger her ground crew. As the three of them stepped away, their faces shadowed by the low lighting provided by a nearby generator, Maya lifted her hand and twirled her index finger in a circular motion, which meant she was going to start engines.

“Let’s get down to work,” she told Wild Woman, her voice turning businesslike. Maya flipped the first switch, which would engage the engine on the starboard, or right side of the fuselage. Instantly, a high whine and shudder worked through the aircraft. Eyes narrowing, Maya watched the engine indicator leap like active thermometers, bobbing up and down. When the engine was activated to a certain level, she thumbed the second engine switch. The gunship was awakening. In some sense Maya always thought of it as an ugly and ungainly looking thing. The image of a Tyrannosaurus rex came to mind: king of the dinosaurs and a mean bastard who ruled its turf—just like the Apache did. She could feel the sleek shudder that ran through it as the gunship gained power.

To Maya, her helicopter was a living being consisting of metal, wire circuitry, software and engine parts. She found her own power in that machinery. Whatever nervousness she’d felt about the coming encounter with Major Dane York was soothed away. When she was in the cockpit, the world and all its troubles dissolved. Her love of flying, of handling this remarkable machine, took over completely.

As the engine indicators leveled out, Maya engaged the main rotor. The four blades began to turn in a counterclockwise motion, slowly at first, then faster and faster as she notched up the power with the cyclic grasped in her fingers. Her entire left forearm rested comfortably on a panel so that her hand wouldn’t cramp up and the cyclic became a natural extension of her hand.

“Jess, switch on the radar. I need to thread the needle here in a moment.”

“Right… We’re up…go for it….”

Maya saw the full sweep of a bright green set of lines on the right HUD. It looked like a slice of pie as the long, green needle of radar swept ceaselessly back and forth, clearly revealing the hole in the wall directly in front of them, despite the cloud cover beyond.

“Let’s go over our checklist,” Maya ordered.

“Roger,” Jess returned, and they began to move through a sequence they had memorized long ago. Maya reached for her knee board, systematically checking off each station as it was called out. There was no room for sloppiness in her squadron. Things were done by the book. It improved their chances of survival.

They were ready. Maya devoured the excitement still throbbing through her. The Apache shook around her, the noise muted to a great degree by her helmet. She tested the yaw pedals beneath her booted feet. Everything was functioning properly. Proud of her hardworking ground crews, Maya lifted her hand to them in farewell as they moved back to watch the two assault helicopters take off, one at a time, to thread the needle.

“Black Jaguar Two. You ready to rock ’n’ roll?” Maya asked.

Dallas chuckled indulgently. “Roger that, Saber. My girl is checked out and we’re ready to boogie on down the road with you. I want to dance on a Black Shark’s head today.”

“Roger. Let’s go meet those good ole boys from Fort Rucker first, shall we? They might have the new D models, but us girls have got the guns.”

Chuckling, Dallas said, “I don’t think Gunslinger is ready for us.”

Gunslinger was Dane York’s nickname, Maya remembered starkly. He was an aggressive, type A individual who lived to hunt and kill in the air. Of course, so did anyone who got assigned to Apaches. They were a breed apart, bloodhounds in the sky, looking for quarry. Grinning, Maya notched up to takeoff speed and gently lifted the fully armed Apache off the lava lip. Smoothly, she nudged the helo forward into the swirling clouds. Within moments, they were completely embraced by the thick moisture.

“On glide path,” Jess called out.

Maya flew by instruments only. Her eyes were narrowed on the HUD, watching the swiftly moving radar that whipped back and forth on the screen to create a picture of the approaching Eye. The winds were erratic at this time of the morning, because when the sun rose, the land heated up and made air currents unpredictable—and dangerous. Raindrops splattered across the windshield of her aircraft, falling from clouds which carried moisture from the humid jungle below. The Apache eased forward, closer and closer to the opening in the lava wall.

“On glide path…”

Compressing her lips, Maya tensed a little, as always. The aircraft was within twenty feet of the Eye. Right now, the wrong wind current, the wrong move with her hands or feet, would crash them into the wall. Easy…easy… She moved the aircraft smoothly through the hole and out over the jungle far below. They were at eight thousand feet now, and Maya eased away from the cliff to allow Dallas’s aircraft to exit in turn.

“Switching to radar to hunt for the bad guys,” Jess called.

“Roger.” Maya looked up briefly. She could see nothing but the thick, white mists all around them. It was dark and the Apaches ran with no lights on them. Their instruments were all they had. “Keep a lookout for Kamovs. I got a bad feeling on this one, Jess.”

“I thought you might. Scanning beginning now…”

Of course, Maya knew that even with their advanced radar, Kamovs had a certain type of paint on their fuselage that absorbed the Apache’s radar signal, so that what little pinged back to the instruments on board was negligible, and therefore unreadable. A Kamov could spot them in fog like this, providing the cloud cover wasn’t too thick, and nail them. Plus, their radar could send out a strong signal through thinner clouds and get an equally strong returning signal back from its target. Right now, they were sitting ducks and Maya knew it.

“We’re out, Saber,” Dallas said.

“Roger,” Maya replied. “Let’s split up, make less of a target of ourselves. Leave a mile between us and head for the meeting point. Keep your eyes and ears open, ladies.”

“Roger that,” Dallas said.

Inching up the throttles, Maya felt the Apache growl more deeply as it rose higher and higher. She wanted out of this cloud cover, to get on top of it so her 360-degree radar could detect and protect them from any lurking intruders. The Apache felt good around her. It was sleek and smooth compared to many other helicopters she’d flown. With a full load of ordnance on board, she felt the lethal power of it as well. At a flick of a switch on her collective, the stick between her legs, she could send a fiery hell to earth in a matter of moments.

As they rose to nine thousand feet, they suddenly popped out of the cloud cover. Above, Maya saw the familiar sight of the Southern Cross. She smiled a little at the peaceful looking stars as they glimmered across the ebony arc above them. And yet here they were in a cat-and-mouse game with killers who’d just as soon see them dead as alive. The incongruity of it all struck her.

The helicopter dipped its nose forward as Maya poured in more power, and they swiftly moved along the top of the ever-moving clouds.

“Beautiful out tonight,” Wild Woman murmured as she scanned her instruments carefully.

“Yeah, it is,” Maya said. “I was just thinking how peaceful it looks up there, above us. And how Faro Valentino probably has his Russian merc pilots in their Kamovs hunting for us right now.”

“Ain’t life a dichotomy?” Jess chuckled.

Scowling, Maya kept moving her head from side to side and looking above her—“rubbernecking,” a term coined by World War II pilots. The Black Sharks were deadly hunters in their own right. When the Soviet Union broke up, Faro Valentino had marched in with his millions, purchased two state-of-the-art Kamovs and hired a cadre of out-of-work Soviet pilots, who liked being paid big bucks to fly cocaine in South America. The pilots were considered mercenaries for hire. And Faro had his pick of the best, waving his drug money under their noses.

Grimly, Maya kept switching her gaze from her instruments to the space around them. Somewhere off to her left was Dallas and the other Apache. Because the gunships were painted black, she could not see them at all. And because of their stealth duties, they ran without outboard lights.

“This time of morning there should be no other aircraft around,” Maya said to Jess.

“Roger that. The civilians are still tucked in their beds, sleeping in Cuzco.”

Chuckling, Maya returned to her duties. She could fly the Apache blind; she knew each movement and each sensation of this stalwart warrior they flew in. The Apache was a killing machine that responded to the most delicate touch. And had a heart that beat strongly within her. The soothing vibration of the engines moved throughout Maya’s body, and to her, it was like a mother holding a child and rocking it; it gave her that sense of completeness and wholeness. The Apache was one of the most marvelous inventions of the air, as far as she was concerned. It had been built by Boeing to protect the pilots, first and foremost, and secondly, to become a sky hunter that had no equal. And it did. The Kamov’s ability to sneak up on them was the one Achilles heel of this magnificent machine. And because of the type of flying they did, it was a constant threat. The Russian mercenary pilots were the cream of the crop, and they were hunters just like Maya. They lived to fly, hunt and kill. There was no difference between her and these pilots except that they were on the wrong side of the law, in Maya’s eyes. Greed ran those pilots. Morals ran her and her people.

Beneath them, Maya knew, there was thick, continuous jungle. She and her teammates had to constantly fly among precipitous peaks covered in greenery. Most of the mountains were at least ten thousand feet high, some higher. Whatever the altitude, flying was not easy and required intense concentration in order not to crash into one of the unseen obstacles. The radar kept the shapes, elevation and height of the mountains on the HUD in front of Maya so that she could fly around them accordingly.

“Hey, look at that red stripe on the eastern horizon,” Jess called out. “Bummer.”

Dawn was coming. Maya scanned the bloodred horizon.

“Think it’s a sign of things to come?” Jess asked.

Maya took the natural world around her seriously. Maybe it was her background with the Jaguar Clan. Or her innate Indian heritage. It didn’t matter. There were signs all around them, all the time. The trick was in reading them correctly. “Damn,” she muttered.