DEADLY DILEMMA by Dan Stratman (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

Where the building had once stood, a smoldering twenty-foot-deep crater was all that was left. As ravaged as the scene was, Cyndi couldn’t help but think how it would have looked if the warheads had exploded.

“Nice shootin’, Tex,” Cyndi said with a twinkle in her eye. “Let’s go find General McNeil.”

Using her best guess, she steered the helicopter on a westerly heading and hoped that it would be sufficient to get them safely back to the base. She climbed to five thousand feet to make it easier to spot Cheyenne.

The Little Bird helicopter flew serenely along in the smooth air. Cyndi found the controls for the heater and cranked it up to its maximum setting.

Now that she was able to warm up a little, her thoughts shifted to how they could possibly explain everything that had happened at Alpha One to her boss. Odds were low that he’d be thrilled to hear their story. McNeil would immediately order a team to Alpha One to secure the site and the missile. Then a reckoning would be coming.

“Since we have time, we need to talk about how we’re going to break the bad news to the general,” Cyndi said.

“We?” Lance said with mock surprise. “You’re the crew commander. I’m just a lowly deputy. You didn’t actually think I was serious back there when I said we’re in this together.” The goofy smirk on his face told Cyndi he was attempting to be humorous.

“If you’re that worried about McNeil’s reaction, feel free to get out at any time,” Cyndi replied, pointing at the open door next to Lance.

“No thanks. I’ll stay and take my chances,” he said.

Cyndi searched the horizon for any sign of the city. All she saw was an endless expanse of featureless white prairie. She leaned forward and squinted, looking for any recognizable landmarks. Off to her eleven o’clock something caught her eye. A long ribbon of concrete stretched from horizon to horizon. Interstate 80 ran parallel to their flight path. The highway would serve as their guide, leading them directly into Cheyenne.

Pioneers making their way west in covered wagons could never have imagined such a smooth, effortless path to follow on their journey to a new life.

Cyndi turned on the autopilot and sat back in her seat. The tension in her body began to recede. Her shoulders relaxed.

Suddenly, the large plexiglass bubble canopy surrounding the cockpit shattered.

Chapter Forty-Three

The canopy splintered into a spiderweb of cracks. Luckily, it was designed to take battle damage but stay intact.

Cyndi immediately slowed the helicopter to lessen the force of the wind on the windscreen, hoping to prevent it from caving in on them. She scanned the outside of the canopy for the guts of a bird, assuming a bird strike. It was clean. She looked closer. There was one small hole in the center of the glass.

Cyndi stuck her head out the side door and looked back. A thousand yards behind, the second AH-6M was bearing down on them. Muzzle flashes coming from the Gatling gun looked like a strobe light.

“Pierce!” Cyndi screamed.

She slammed the stick to the right. The copter snapped into a violent turn. It dropped out of the sky like a very expensive rock. Airspeed quickly jumped past redline. The damaged canopy began to flex inward.

Pierce mimicked Cyndi’s maneuver, staying right on her tail.

Tracers whizzed by the cockpit.

A shrill tone suddenly went off in their headsets. The missile warning system was telling them they’d been locked on to by a heat seeking missile.

“Flares!”

Lance frantically searched the instrument panel for the switch to deploy the flares to break the missile’s lock before it was too late. He found it.

A staccato of white-hot flares spewed out of each side of the rear fuselage until the flare canisters were empty. They arced across the sky then looped downward.

The seeker head on the missile broke its lock. The warning tone stopped.

Cyndi put the helicopter into a dive then leveled off a few feet above the ground, hoping to prevent another lock-on. Cottonwood trees and sagebrush rushed by in a blur. A rooster tail of snowflakes shot up into the air behind the helicopter.

Bullets from Pierce’s Gatling gun stitched a line across the snow off to their left.

“Do something!”

“I can’t outrun him; the windscreen might collapse on us,” Cyndi warned.

She looked back. Pierce was closing in.

The turboshaft engine suddenly went from a roar to a purr.

“What are you doing?” Lance gasped.

Cyndi had chopped the power to idle.

She was far too busy trying to avoid being shot out of the sky to spell out her plan. Cyndi put the helicopter into a series of S turns over the highway, making it impossible for Pierce to get off a clear shot at his distance. The gap between the two aircraft quickly closed. Pierce was now only one football field length behind them.

He slewed the Gatling gun straight ahead and waited for his prey to cross in front of him.

Lance looked back and yelled, “He’s going to fire!”

“Wait…wait…” Cyndi said calmly.

When Lance turned around, he jolted back in his seat. “Holy shit!”

A highway overpass loomed directly in front of them. Cyndi kept the helicopter inches above Interstate 80. Showers of sparks trailed behind them as the skids occasionally skipped off the concrete.

Barreling toward the reinforced concrete overpass at over ninety miles per hour, the bright yellow sign mounted on it was clearly visible: 16’ CLEARANCE.

When he saw what she was doing, Pierce’s eyes bulged out. He debated following Cyndi on her suicidal maneuver. Uncharacteristic doubt shoved aside his normal approach of reckless abandon. Pierce hesitated for a moment then yanked back on the cyclic. His helicopter zoomed up into a steep climbing right turn away from the overpass. He did a full circle, looping back around to the highway. Pierce slowed to a hover and searched the road for the wreckage. The charred bodies of Cyndi and Lance were nowhere to be found. Pierce climbed up five hundred feet to get a better view.

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