Freefall by Traci Hunter Abramson

survive falling out of a helicopter?”
    â€œPeople in the military jump out of helicopters all the time,” CJ pointed out. “Let me call Doug and we’ll see if he can find out where this story is coming from.”
    Her hand was shaking when she picked up the phone and dialed Doug’s number. She hadn’t even finished dialing when the doorbell rang.
    â€œI can’t deal with anyone right now,” Matt told her, sitting down next to his mother and reaching an arm around her shoulders.
    Nodding in understanding, CJ walked to the front door and opened it to find Doug on the doorstep. Desperation was in CJ’s voice when she spoke. “Please tell me that the story on the news isn’t true.”
    â€œIt’s misleading,” Doug said, and he walked through the door.
    CJ motioned to the living room. “Why don’t you come tell all of us what’s going on so that you don’t have to explain twice.” She led the way down the hall, and Doug took a seat across from Matt and Katherine.
    Doug waited for Matt and Katherine to look up before he spoke. “First of all, we have every reason to believe that Amy is alive and well. The story about her falling out of a helicopter is somewhat exaggerated.”
    â€œHow exaggerated?” Matt asked.
    â€œWe didn’t give you this information because we didn’t want to worry you, but when the rescue helicopter was leaving with the hostages, it came under fire. The door next to Amy was hit, and during evasive maneuvers she slid through the door. One of her rescuers caught her before she dropped, but they weren’t able to bring her back in safely.” Doug took a deep breath. “Afraid that someone was going to get a clean shot at either her or the helicopter, Lieutenant Miller opted for a controlled fall with her onto a roof. He then instructed the helicopter to leave them behind when he noticed how quickly they were losing fuel.”
    â€œThey could have picked her up and didn’t?” Matt asked incredulously.
    â€œMatt, the lieutenant made the right decision,” Doug said gently. “The helicopter made it within four miles of the border before it went down. Had they stopped to pick up Amy and Lieutenant Miller, they probably wouldn’t have cleared the mountain range near the border. A couple of the other hostages wouldn’t have lived long enough to receive the medical attention they needed.”
    â€œBut she was okay when they left her?” Katherine asked softly.
    â€œYes.” Doug nodded. “The team leader said that Lieutenant Miller had already checked her for injuries before they left and that she was fine.”
    â€œNow that the story is out, will she stay fine?” Anger tinted Matt’s voice. “If they haven’t already left the country, every terrorist in Abolstan is going to be looking for them. It’s going to be impossible for them to get out.”
    â€œFrom what I hear, ‘impossible’ has never been in Brent Miller’s vocabulary.”
    * * *
    â€œTake cover,” Brent whispered at the approach of a vehicle. Darkness was falling quickly, but he knew they were still visible in the fading twilight if someone looked into the trees along the road.
    He slid off his horse, using the animal and the trees to shield him from the road. Amy followed suit. She let her horse have its head so it could graze and pressed herself up against a tree to hide. They had several yards of wooded area between them and the road, but Brent didn’t want to take any chance of someone seeing the movement by the river.
    The first of the headlights came into view, and Brent identified the vehicle as a Jeep. A convoy of at least a half dozen vehicles followed behind it, and in the distance he could hear tanks. Something was happening, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what. The vehicles he saw all appeared to be heading in the same direction they