The Genesis Plague (2010)

Jason.
    ‘You still know how to fly one of these things?’ Jason asked.
    Meat gave the chopper a sideways glance. ‘No worries, bro,’ he said, patting Jason on the shoulder.
    Meat hurried to the chopper, opened the cockpit door, and hopped in the pilot’s seat.
    Camel and Jam crested the hill and scrambled down to Jason.
    Seeing them alive gave Jason relief. At the onset of the attack, they’d all been safe inside the cave helping to clear debris.
    ‘It’s pandemonium back there!’ Jam said.
    ‘Where’s Hazo?’ Jason asked.
    ‘He’s fine,’ Camel said. ‘He said he’ll stay here and keep an eye on things.’
    With Crawford unaccounted for, Jason wasn’t thrilled about the idea. But there was no time to deliberate. ‘Fine.’
    The Blackhawk’s engines fired up. Seconds later, the turbine whined to life and the flopping rotors began turning, gathering momentum.
    ‘You’ve got to be shitting me,’ Camel said, with frightened eyes on the cockpit window where Meat was putting on his flying helmet. ‘You’re letting him fly?’
    ‘We’ve got no choice,’ Jason said. ‘Meat said the pilots were inside the first Humvee that blew.’
    ‘Mother Mary,’ Jam said.
    ‘He figured out how to turn the thing on,’ Camel offered with a sigh. ‘It’s a start.’
    Jason trotted to the chopper and slid open the fuselage door. He leaped inside, Camel and Jam coming in behind him.
    While Jason settled in the copilot’s seat alongside Meat, Camel and Jam each claimed a jumpseat and began buckling their harnesses. Jason looked over to Meat. The guy’s eyes were nervously roving the controls, hands splayed flat on his thighs.
    ‘You sure you can do this?’ Jason asked him.
    ‘Just like riding a bike, right?’ Meat chuckled nervously.
    Jason wasn’t so sure. It had been eight years since Meat’s brief stint with the Coast Guard. Shortly after 9/11, sea patrol and rescue missions had become increasingly dangerous as Islamic extremists used sea routes to circumvent US border patrols. Homeland Security responded by cross-training military personnel to accompany Coast Guard crews. Most of Meat’s training had been inside a simulator, and he had only logged a few flight hours inside a Sikorsky Jayhawk. The Blackhawk’s instrumentation and gadgetry, though, was more complicated and he could see that Meat was mentally running through the mechanical sequences, reacquainting himself with the gauges and controls. And unlike the Jayhawk, its bigger cousin was fully outfitted with armaments and countermeasures.
    Suddenly, something flashed along the hill’s crest, burst bright orange and rang like a thunderclap. The chopper rocked sideways as blast debris clanged against the fuselage. Stones strafed Meat’s window and fractured the glass into a web of cracks.
    ‘Go!’ Jason yelled into the helmet microphone.
    Meat excitedly pushed down too hard on the collective control stick, forcing the Blackhawk to jolt upward. As if he weredriving a car, his right foot instinctively stomped the anti-torque pedal so that the nose yawed perilously to the right, swinging the mountainside into full view.
    Jason grabbed hold of the grip bars, bracing for collision.
    Then Meat got the feel for the pedals and used his left foot to rotate the chopper and orient the nose back towards the plain.
    Camel yelled through the intercom, ‘Grenade!’
    Meat saw it streaming towards them. He pushed the cyclic control stick forward and left, to pitch the vector. The nose dipped and the chopper shot forward. The RPG mortar practically skimmed the Blackhawk’s belly before striking the cliff face, throwing off a concussion wave that whumped the chopper like an invisible fist.
    Meat fought with the controls to keep the chopper straight.
    ‘Get us clear!’ Jason yelled, pointing out over the plain. ‘Then move into firing range!’
    ‘Roger,’ Meat said.
    ‘Firing range?’ Camel muttered over the intercom.
    ‘We can’t abandon the platoon,’ Jason said. ‘They won’t be able to hold off those gunners. We’ve got enough firepower to take them down.’
    ‘What about the truck? Al-Zahrani?’ Jam said.
    ‘We’ll catch up to them,’ Jason replied confidently. ‘Don’t worry.’
    ‘You’ll need to work the weapons console,’ Meat said, glancing over at Jason. He pointed to the copilot controls in front of him.
    Staring down at the switches, gauges and computer interfaces, Jason felt instantly overwhelmed.
    Meat flipped