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“Which means…”
“We’re pissing out fuel at a… concerning rate.”
“How concerning, Foster?”
Foster sighed. “We’ll make it. You just make sure she does, too.”
Chase didn’t answer, and that heavy silence spoke volumes.
All the more reason to squeeze even more out of the chopper. Push it just a bit harder. Until a loud thud echoed through the cabin, the controls getting infinitely heavier.
Zain moved in beside him, sliding onto the other seat. “What the hell was that?”
Foster scanned the instruments, again. “Hopefully, just the hydraulics.”
“Hopefully?”
“There were bullet holes all over the fuselage. I have no way of knowing what damage they caused, so yeah. Hopefully.”
Zain muttered something under his breath. “Do you have any hydraulics left?”
“Nope.”
“Well, shit. Can you ease up at all?”
“That depends. Would you rather I baby her, and we run out of gas, or push it, and chance doing more damage?”
Zain coughed. “Is there a third choice?”
“Not one that I can live with.”
Zain nodded, then buckled up. “Then, give her hell, brother.”
Foster battled the controls, screaming over the Raven’s Watch hanger going some insane speed. Twin vortices trailed out behind him as the rain swirled then blew away. He followed the main road, dropping lower until he was damn near even with the semis kicking down the highway. He kept glancing at the fuel gauge, hoping Atticus had calibrated it because if it was off even a fraction, they wouldn’t make it.
Knowing he needed to perform a running landing didn’t help any. Not when he wasn’t sure if there was even a suitable place to line up the aircraft, let alone drive it on. But he’d worry about that once he reached the hospital. Hell, he’d use the road if needed.
A string of power lines appeared in the bubble, and he barely got the machine up and over them before they’d scraped along the bottom of the skid gear.
Zain shook his head, looking as if he regretted claiming the seat. “I don’t know if you’re more intense than I remember or if I’ve just gotten soft.”
“It’s not you, buddy. And I promise our next flight won’t be like this, but…”
Zain reached over and gave his arm a squeeze. “I know. You do whatever you need to. We’ve got your six.”
“Then, scroll through that nav, and find me a place to run this baby on. Ideally, it’d be long and flat, but I’ll take whatever I can get.”
Zain didn’t even flinch, just started advancing the map, looking at anything remotely viable. “Looks like you’ve got two options. You can chance the driveway or there’s a set of ball fields just south of the hospital. And I doubt anyone’s using them in this weather.”
Foster looked over at the enlarged view of the map Zain had displayed on the screen. “The road’s downwind, and I don’t want to waste time going around. We’ll head for the fields and see if I can make the parking lot work.”
He didn’t add that it was a race to which would ground them first — the machine or the fuel. But Zain knew.
The storm raged around them, the wind and rain trying to blast the chopper out of the sky. Foster held firm, alternating his attention between the map, the fuel gauge and the landscape. Constantly adjusting the controls in an effort to get one more mile in before it all fell apart.
Chase was telling Mac to hold on in the background as that dot on the map seemed to stall.
Foster went against that voice in his head and coaxed a bit more speed out of the bird, fully aware he might eat up the remaining gas too fast. But he’d risk it if it meant he gained that extra minute. Got her to the doctors just a bit quicker.