I just use it to track my fitness information.” “Please, ma’am. I was told to collectĪll communication devices before I’m permitted to go airborne.” He glanced at her Apple Watch. “Ma’am? Please place your cell phone in that envelope. Her new pilot had looked back at her and nodded toward a large manila envelope on the seat beside her. She’d put them on and adjusted the microphone as her escort closed and locked the door, then ran back toward the plane. The too-large headphones had been sitting on the backseat of the helicopter.

The night sky was black and gray, filled with dark, churning clouds. She could see nothing beyond the lights of the airstrip and a group of hangars off in the distance. “Where are we?” Martha had asked, attempting to take in the air- field as they ran, ducking as they approached the spinning blades, her leather overnight bag slapping against her leg. The moment the plane stopped moving, the pilot was back, unfastening the safety harness and ushering her down the steps to the awaiting EC135 chopper less than fifty feet away. Aside from the two of them, she was alone in the large aircraft as it lumbered down the tarmac and took flight. She’d noted his fatigues bore no name badge or insignia of any kind same with the other pilot. She’d felt like a child as one of the pilots helped secure her with a double- banded belt, tugging it tight over her shoulders.

After getting picked up at just after two in the morning from her apartment in San Francisco, she’d been shuttled to a C-1 transport plane at Yerba Buena Island, rushed from the Army sedan up the steps and into one of the jump seats on the port side of the aircraft. “They’re the smallest I have.” He’d apologized twice now.Īt only five foot one, Martha was no stranger to things not fitting, particularly when it came to military aircraft. The heavy thwack of the helicopter rotors were reduced to a rhythmic thump with the metallic breathing of her pilot amplified over the speakers. Even with the band adjusted to the smallest setting, they kept slipping down her forehead-she found herself holding them in place, alternating from her right hand to her left and back again whenever her arm got tired.

The noise james patterson