Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [7]
By God, this time Steve would not go down with the ship.
With as good a running start as three steps could give him, he leaped out of the helicopter.
Spreading one hand to protect his crotch, he placed the other across his chest and assumed a cross-legged position. His stomach felt as though he left it ten feet above as he plummeted.
Hurtling toward the water, Steve remembered his life vest beneath the front seat. He’d followed the pilot’s lead in not wearing the bulky, bright-orange device. Hot shot Deering must have thought a quick turn over the lake didn’t count as flying over water.
Coming up fast was all the deep blue one needed to drown in on a perfectly beautiful day.
Steve hit feet first with a mighty impact and drove deep. The cold shocked him, once, and then again, as he plunged into a more frigid layer. Spreading his arms, he pulled down until he felt his rate of sinking begin to slow.
Finally, he poised motionless in the dark.
It could have been peaceful, realizing that he’d safely separated himself from the flying machine, but it took him back, painfully, to that potent instant when the screaming metal of the Triworld Air 737 had fallen silent.
Just before he turned toward his family.
As if they remembered, too, Steve’s debilitated knees throbbed in the cold water.
He began to swim up. His heavy boots and clothes acted as sea anchors, trying to take him back to the depths. It was a good thing he’d once been a strong swimmer, but how would he fare now?
As he pulled toward the light, it began to brighten from cerulean to the shade of an October sky. He kicked the last few feet into slightly warmer water and his head and shoulders broke the surface. Chest heaving to suck in air, he found that panic’s icy fingers gripped his lungs.
A loud whining surrounded him. He swiveled his head and found the chopper still in the air. For a paralyzing moment, he watched it skate straight for him. Through the windshield, a flash of light caught Deering’s sunglasses.
With a desperate gasp, Steve dove back into the lake’s cold embrace. The frigid water compressed his chest as he kicked and pulled through the first thermocline. The Bell’s impact pushed him deeper. Water churned as the tail and main rotors of the helicopter thrashed up a wake. He kept stroking, expecting any second to be chopped to pieces.
Whispering tendrils of black began at the edge of Steve’s consciousness.
“Mayday, Mayday.” Deering spoke tersely into his headset. “I have ditched off West Thumb.” Water rose over the windshield.
He’d done a helluva job leveling out and pulling off power, if he did say so himself. Despite the rough setdown, he’d hit the water without the transmission coming through the cabin and taking out the pilot’s seat. Back in Vietnam, Deering had lost his friends Joe Silva and Skip Harlan to just that accident. One night they drank tequila shots together, knowing they would still be lit when it came time for the predawn climb into the cockpit.
The next evening Deering drank alone.
Despite the shaking up, he’d climbed into the next available Huey and taken the controls. Flying was his life, all he’d wanted to do from the time he was six and his father had taken him to the Pocatello airport to gaze wide-eyed at the planes.
“Will have to abandon.” He stripped off his headphones and reached into the cold calf-deep water for the personal flotation device he cursed himself for not wearing.
The omens had all been bad this summer.
It had been years since Deering had seen a firestorm like the one sweeping toward the campground at Grant Village with those poor S.O.B.s trapped and waiting for it. He should be helping instead of sitting on his ass in a brace position while his helicopter filled with water.
Where in hell was Haywood?
Dr. Steve Haywood had rubbed Deering the wrong way from the moment