" Phobie de l’avion?’ said the man in the next seat.
Marc shook his head, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the helicopter’s rotors. ‘No. It’s more like I have a professional sense of concern . . .’
Beneath them, cerulean-blue waters flashed past as the red-and-white EC130 followed the French coastline north toward the Ligurian Sea. The journey from the airport in Nice was a short one, but flying over the water was always enough to dredge up some of Marc’s more unpleasant memories. He had hoped it wouldn’t show on his face, but that clearly wasn’t the case.
‘I used to fly these things myself,’ he added, feeling compelled to explain away his reaction. ‘I don’t like it when someone else is the pilot.’ For a giddy second, he feared the sea was rising up to reach for them – it could be deceptive that way, easy to gauge your height wrongly if you weren’t paying attention – and he closed his eyes to banish the thought.
It didn’t work. He remembered a stretch of ocean half a world away, and the heart-stopping impact of a Royal Navy Lynx’s canopy hitting the water. He took a deep breath before the recall could take hold and pull him under.
‘Backseat driver?’ Somewhere in his late fifties, deeply bronzed beneath a panama hat and an expensive safari suit, the man next to him studied Marc’s face.
Marc gave a wry nod. ‘Yeah, you could say that. "

― James Swallow , Exile (Marc Dane #2)