Swiftwater Rescue by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

10

“How’s the old pulse rate now?” He reached out and checked Allyson’s pulse.

“Dead man.” She lay splatted out on the muddy bank beside him like a beached perch—one pretty well done with flopping.

“While that’s a fairly accurate assessment of my condition. Yours is still good. And the wet look definitely works on you.”

“I don’t have follicles anymore, I have icicles.”

They still had on their float suits, but they only wore bicycle-style safety helmets for these exercises. The electronics of flight helmets weren’t designed for swimming.

“Will you two just get a hotel room already?” Noreen mumbled somewhere nearby.

“I tried,” Allyson heaved out a long-suffering sigh. “Not even a decent grope. Not even a little one.”

Noreen smacked the back of his head, almost hard enough to drive Reuben’s face into the mud as well.

“I was being a gentleman.”

“There’s gentleman then there’s just plain thickheaded.”

Allyson offered him a seraphic smile at Noreen’s answer.

“What are we missing?” Reuben pushed up to a sitting position and went for a subject change because one Jewish medic against the force of two Night Stalker women was not a scenario he’d be winning any time soon.

“A hot shower with a man willing to offer at least a good grope,” Allyson muttered. But she too sat up, and glared at the landing helicopters.

All morning they’d been the test subjects for how water moved around a hovering helicopter. They’d tried floating buoys down the river but they’d been too light, too susceptible to the massive downblast of wind from the rotors. No, they’d needed to send people. Them.

And what they’d learned was that most of the profiles were terrible.

Head-on into the current, a Black Hawk pushed the water to either side rather than just downward. But, after passing the narrowed nose, the water pressure swept the victim wide, out of reach from the cargo bay doors.

Also, while the rear rotor didn’t get too close to the water for flight safety, it was terrifying to be swept past instant death spinning mere feet above the water.

The Chinook, with both of its rotors mounted on top, had seemed like an obvious solution. As a bonus, it was able to turn tail and lower its rear cargo ramp into the water while hovering. SEALs raced loaded Zodiac boats aboard partially submerged Chinooks in a maneuver called Delta Queen.

It did work well enough with floating victims, in the slower parts of the stream. But as soon as they escalated to faster swiftwater, they were swept away to either side except with the most carefully controlled approach.

They hadn’t come up with any innovative ideas by the time they were called to lunch.

Chelsea, Julie, and Lauren were the three horsewomen who had ridden out the morning before and had helped with the ropes. Today, other than tossing the recovery line for each failed experiment, they’d had little to do with the test.

Instead, they’d spread a feast around the campfire. BBQ chicken, potato salad, and bear-meat hot dogs abounded.

“Bear meat?” Reuben hadn’t thought about bears. “Very few of those in Brooklyn.

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