Christian

Samantha (Sam) Maguire is a young Christian who just happens to fly helicopters, haul freight, rescue lost hikers and skiers, and fight forest fires in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  When she loses a firefighter in a daring rescue attempt she also loses her faith, feeling that God has abandoned her.  When the man in her life becomes lost in the vast wilderness Sam becomes obsessed with rescuing him on her own terms, angrily rejecting God and her faith.  Will her pride lead to her fall?  Will God accede to her wishes and let her go in abandonment?

 A lesson in faith.

Excerpt

Sam twisted the throttle wide open and discovered what she had feared; the engine was not making full power because of clogged air filters and she would not be able to make her normal nose down takeoff.  Because of the conditions, canyon walls behind and ahead, fire on one side, trees on the other, she must bring the bird straight up in a hover, and she didn’t have the power to do it with the eight firefighters and their equipment on board.  The chopper strained but the skids rose only a few feet before crashing to earth again.  She hit the intercom and advised the men to throw out every possible thing to lighten the load.

 Sam heard a door opening and could only imagine the hundreds of pounds of expensive firefighting equipment that was being abandoned.  Unfortunate, but there was no other way to lighten up unless one or two of the men wanted to stay, and she had no doubt that, faced with that possibility, that men would volunteer to save their brothers.  That was the caliber of men she carried.

 When she heard the door close again Sam twisted the throttle and tried again.  This time the chopper did lift, though sluggishly, seeming to wallow in its own wake.  A sudden gust of hot wind hit the chopper sideways and pushed it from the approaching flames.  Before Sam could compensate, she felt the shudder as one or more of her rotor blades contacted something solid, probably one of the trees she had narrowly missed coming in.  This was followed by a violent shaking of the craft and she knew that she had lost a piece of a rotor and now the whole assembly was unbalanced!

 Sam mentally assessed her situation.  The chopper was losing engine power, it had lost a part of its rotor blade, she was at 8000 feet and she had eight lives in her hands, not counting hers, a fact she never considered.  It was as if the fates were working against her.  She glanced at the empty seat.  “C’mon, God,” she said to the seat, “How about a little help here?”  Sam realized that she was getting angry and that wasn’t going to help the situation, but she couldn’t help it.  Lives depended on her!

 After the damage to the rotor the craft again wallowed toward the ground, Sam fighting the vibration and noise and crosswind and all the other variables.  She twisted, pulled and jerked the controls, willing the craft to fly, or at least rise high enough to get them out of immediate danger.  Out of the corner of her eye she could now see flames intruding into her little space and she knew that if she couldn’t get the bird to rise quickly they would all suffer a fiery death!  “C’mon LIFT!”  She screamed into her faceplate.  The fire-generated wind gusted against her, blowing the chopper into the trees, drops of water splattered against the windshield incongruously as the fire made its own rain.  An idea pushed its way through her near panic and she considered it for about a second; she couldn’t fly away from the fire without hitting the trees.  How about flying TOWARD the fire, hoping its heated updraft would lift the chopper into the air?  Sam banked the aircraft into the mouth of hell.

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