Warrior For One Night
"What the hell was that? Mel, what's going on up there?"
"Nothing. Be down in ten. Everything's under control." Five minutes ago she wouldn't have been lying. Jimmy Doolittle once supposedly said there was no good reason to be flying near thunderstorms in peacetime. But then Jimmy had never fought against a lightning storm in a helicopter by dropping water from a Bambi Bucket.
She'd been in the air for five straight hours, swooping down through a double rainbow only once to take on fifty gallons of Jet A fuel. Thunderheads continued to gather mass in the surrounding quadrants, making it harder to dodge around the clouds. Rain battered against her windshield as the ride grew bumpy. When the call came to pull back, she ignored it, shifting her headphones from her ears to ring about her neck. And she kept working, beating back the flames one hundred gallons at a time. Wind swirled around the Long Ranger, hitting her from every possible direction as she went down ... read full excerpt from Warrior for One Night ebook