Scavenger's Mission (The SkyRyders Book 1)

by Liza O'Connor

  She transferred the package rope to her mouth, so she could steer with both hands. The maneuver had taken too much time, and she was now dangerously close to passing her drop target. Pulling hard on her right toggle, followed by her left, she began walking down the wind until she was six feet above the target.

  She knew only one way to get the box to the square without dropping it, and she wasn’t even sure it would work in this catcher, but it was worth a try. Pulling down hard on both toggles, she used the force to swing her body up until her right leg was able to snag the tether line above her head. The additional pressure on the toggles pulled the catcher down until the distance between the ground and her package was only inches. She waited until the box mark was precisely underneath the box and released the rope from her mouth. It dropped perfectly onto the chalk marked square.

  “Mission complete. Land at will, soldier.”

  Easy for him to say. He isn’t upside down in a crappy catcher, Alisha grumbled to herself. She relaxed the toggles, and the catcher rose enough that when she swung her feet down they didn’t smack into the pavement. The moment she was righted, she stalled out the catcher and prepared for the pain of landing.

  She was determined to remain standing, and she did, but her knee let her know it wasn’t happy.

  Ignoring the pain, she unlatched and gathered the pathetically challenged windcatcher.

  Riley drove up in the Jeep and helped her.

  “So how do you think you did?” Riley asked.

  “Okay, I guess. It was certainly harder than I expected.”

  “How’s your knee?”

  “It’s okay,” Alisha lied.

  “Good, because MAC wants you to do it over.”

  Alisha sighed. “I don’t think I can do it any better.”

  “How about if you used your own catcher?”

  “Oh, then I can do it much better,” Alisha assured him.

  Riley gave her a look, then stared forward. “Then let’s do it again.”

  With her own catcher, Alisha was up in less than a minute. Riley never had a chance to call an abort. Two seconds after takeoff, she was at an altitude of three hundred feet, holding her position precisely over his head.

  “Your target is the remaining tree with a box. You know the drill. Straight to the tree, secure the package, and bring it back to the circle.”

  This time, Alisha didn’t need to ask for a deviation to the plan. Her catcher could run a straight line. Due to modifications she had made to her toggles, she could continue to control them even as she reached down and snared the package. She then performed a perfect one-eighty rotation and skimmed over the top of the tree, coming straight down to the circle and placing the box precisely in the square.

  “Before you land, do you want to show MAC any other moves?”

  Alisha maneuvered the catcher over to her pack lying on the ground and pulled one of her slats from its sleeve. While holding her catcher steady, she attached one slat to the boot of her un-injured leg. She then pulled a forward vertical lift. This was a new experience for her. The change she had made gave her the ability to move into the wind—something so impossible that most would equate it to moving backward in time. She laughed and did a celebration flip in her harness.

  She continued her climb until she was at two thousand feet. “This is on purpose, so don’t worry.”

  Facing the hundred-mile wind, she collapsed her catcher and began to surf the powerful wind with the wind slat. “I hope you’re catching the fact that I am moving into the wind.”

  “Noted, along with the fact that your catcher is collapsed and you’re headed into trees. If you have a plan to inflate the catcher, I’d prefer you do it now.”

  Alisha laughed and pulled hard on her top toggles. Instantly the catcher opened and her slat-riding stopped. She pulled a sharp one-eighty and headed back to the testing site. There she performed a perfect crosswind tact with a harness-released landing, pulling the slat to a halt right in front of Riley.

  “You didn’t move,” she teased. “The colonel didn’t either.”

  “Well, since I’ve decided I’m still asleep in my bed, I didn’t need to move. I can be as brave as I like in my dreams.”

  “Then I did okay?”

  “MAC will rate you, of course, but I’d say you did pretty well. How’s your knee?”

  “It’s okay now. It did hurt a bit after my landing with the other catcher, but I didn’t use it at all with the drop-and-slide landing.”

  “Ah, yes, the drop-and-slide, one-legged.” Riley shook his head and smiled.

  “What’s next?”

  “Regulations test. You probably haven’t had a chance to study much…”

  “I’ve been studying them all my life.”

  “Well, then, let’s get you in front of the computer.”

  Again, the test proved to be harder than she’d anticipated. There were references to several regulations she’d never heard of. Of course, they’d have new regulations. Her book was four years old. She should have thought of that and asked the colonel to lend her his copy. Too late now.

  When she’d completed the regs test, she ate her lunch in a windowless room with no furniture other than a chair, a small table and a trash can. She had barely taken a bite when images appeared on the walls. Some were terrible, some sensual, and others were funny.

  Over time, Alisha sensed a pattern. The really horrible images followed every time she ate a portion of the meat. The sensual items appeared when she ate the vegetables, and the Jell-O brought up funny pictures. Alisha avoided the meat and enjoyed the remainder of her meal.

  When she finished her lunch, an image of Colonel Logan appeared on the wall, which surprised her, because she’d just been thinking about him. He looked so stern, and then suddenly he smiled at her. She couldn’t help but smile back. Images of him carrying her out of the wind farm, tending her knee in the tub, examining her for injuries, and then the two of them sleeping appeared on the wall. How did they get those pictures?

  Suddenly the images were replaced with DC’s. Her smile disappeared. She watched as he slammed her against the corner of the bed, as he grabbed her breast and twisted her nipple. The image changed to the ridge. He flew above her and stalled her out on the rocks. The image repeated with a similar result on the second run. The third was different only because she had gained more altitude, but that just made her fall more spectacular and deadly. She relived the pain when the tree gave way and her knee smashed into the rock ledge. Her knee throbbed now.

  The images changed to the fourth run, her crash into the wind farm, and her failure to notice her blood trail until it was almost too late. Seeing the laser bead on her shoulder, she weaved through the wind turbines, trying to confuse the laser’s tracking sensor.

  Alisha felt the same emotions as she watched herself—the same fear, the same fatigue, and the same hopelessness.

  Suddenly, her retrieval work appeared on the wall. Flying over and over through the narrow canyon, retrieving the medicine. Landing in the high-security compound and retrieving the fabrics. Then there were images of her first week on the streets: a pimp named Joey promising her great money as a high-class whore; Betty setting her straight on who made the money. Images of DC forcing the girls to provide free service; Betty refusing and then being forced down the alley. Then the screen filled with Betty’s beaten body, and Alisha cried. She hadn’t cried at the time—she had been afraid to show weakness—but later, back in Doakstown, she had cried, and now she cried again.

  Denny dressed as an old woman, then as a young girl, then as an Asian man. Each time, money passed to him and the medicine passed to her.

  Her grandfather: near death when she had first found him and then better after the medicine. She smiled at the image of Logan and Gramps sharing Ryder stories.

  She finally realized the pictures were coming from her head, but she wasn’t sure what prompted them. They seemed almost random in their sequence.

  There sh
e was climbing out of her bedroom window and down the trellis. Then the image of David Bowan, her fiancé appeared. If that wasn’t a reason to run…

  The images went on for hours. Alisha gave up any attempt to control them with her own thoughts. Instead, she accepted them as they arrived and relived the moments, good or bad, happy or sad. She might have been able to control the first set of images by eating only the Jell-O and vegetables, but control was an illusion in this matter. You were more likely to see what you didn’t want to see. She thought of her grandmother once telling her the way to make gold was not to think of gold monkeys as you polished a rock with a magic cloth. Her grandmother’s image appeared on the wall, along with gold monkeys. Dear Grams, Alisha thought. Gramps missed you terribly when you died.

  Right after Grams’ funeral, her parents had decided to move to Flatland, and poor Gramps had no one left.

  Then the screen turned into pretty swirls of blue and green. Crickets chirped all around her. Alisha crossed her arms on the desk and rested her head. The soothing sound of crickets made her sleepy.

  ***

  Anna Riley woke her and took her to their personal quarters. “If you want to rest, you can lie down in our bedroom. Dinner won’t be ready for about another hour.”

  “That sounds good.” Alisha had never felt so tired in her life. Afraid she’d sleep through dinner and Anna would be too polite to wake her, Alisha set her watch alarm to go off in forty-five minutes. She closed her eyes, sighed with happiness, and fell into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 24

  When the squad returned, Logan noticed the tension in their faces. Their surveillance mission had terrified every one of them. They now understood, in a very personal way, the danger of bad leadership. Washington might not be cruel or vindictive, but his stupidity had almost killed them.

  He asked Washington to attend to his gear while he debriefed the squad. The sergeant seethed with anger but obeyed and left the room.

  Logan asked the rest of the squad to tell him exactly what had happened. For a previously reticent group, they had no problem complaining about Washington. Even Ginnie had harsh words. The group asked for DC to be reinstated as their leader.

  Their request stunned Logan. “Well, that isn’t possible. DC refused to answer questions during his inquiry interview this morning. He’s been stripped of his rank, which means the earliest he could possibly return to being captain is three years from now. Obviously, through bad judgment on his part, Ollie is now in a similar predicament. Normally, a seasoned flyer with three years of experience should be able to take over for routine surveillance. In truth, any of you should have been able to lead today’s mission. Washington’s failure today is a failure on all our parts. I failed to ensure my captain properly trained the squad so it could function as a unit no matter which member had command. And you failed to help him. Philly, do you want to tell me why Washington had the camera?”

  Philly swallowed hard. “I told him we were too far out to get decent footage.”

  “And that’s why he took you to the other side of the ridge?”

  Philly nodded.

  Logan just stared at him.

  “I just wanted to go back to the base, Colonel. I feared he’d get us killed.”

  “And you almost did. Had you taken the shots from the other side of the ridge as he requested, you wouldn’t have ended up like pigeons on the east side.”

  His focus then turned to Jersey. “Did you tell Washington that those packages looked like medical boxes?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So you withheld critical information that might have dissuaded him from going over the ridge?”

  Jersey didn’t answer.

  “And, Ginnie…”

  “I didn’t see the snipers until we were over the ridge, but I should have, sir. I didn’t really look until Washington made us cross over and I knew we might be in danger.”

  He appreciated Ginnie’s willingness to take responsibility for her actions.

  “Now I’m bringing Washington back in here, and we are going to constructively replay this day and discuss how it should have gone.”

  Logan was dismayed by how little his squad remembered about proper protocol. They seemed to think what they learned for tests and what they did in the field were unrelated. He held his temper and patiently worked through the day, explaining why the answers they learned for tests were not just correct on paper but correct in the field as well.

  When the phone rang at 4:15, he dismissed them and took the call in his room.

  “Logan,” Riley said in a somber voice.

  “What happened?” Logan asked, fearing Alisha had permanently injured her leg.

  “It’s never happened before…”

  “What?”

  “MAC made her run it twice.”

  “Why? She could pass the general test in her sleep!”

  “Probably, but she didn’t take the general test. She took the captain’s test.”

  “God damn it! I didn’t ask for that,” Logan yelled. Now people really would question his judgment. Sending a girl who’d learned to fly a month ago for her captain’s test would look insane to anyone.

  “MAC changed it. A little-known fact—and don’t you dare tell anyone—is that the flying test begins the moment MAC picks up the flyer on visual. Thus the arrival landing counts a lot, because that’s how you land on a regular basis.”

  “But Alisha is hurt. I specifically told her to go easy on her landing.”

  “And she did. She looked like she was going for a very lovely landing right on the landing circle, but then decided it was a long way from the front door. So after holding a foot above the ground for almost a minute, just in case anyone watching might think she didn’t know where she was supposed to land, she then eased across the tarmac in the straightest damn line you’ve ever seen and set down as pretty as you please right in front of the door. Anna was beside herself. Before I know it, she’s out there helping Alisha with her catcher, breaking all my damn rules about leaving the flyers to fend for themselves. By the time I get those two separated and give my wife enough hints that she finally leaves, we’re already five minutes behind schedule, so I wasn’t really surprised to get a message from MAC while Alisha is hopping around trying to get that archaic piece of shit we use for a catcher in flying form.

  “I’m expecting it to be a personal reprimand—I hate those, by the way—but instead, MAC has changed the program to the captain’s. And Logan, it wasn’t just any old captain’s test. It was the ‘box in the tree’.”

  Logan sighed. That particular test was loaded with tricks, including the fact that it couldn’t be performed as the tester ordered. But Alisha wouldn’t have known that. She’d just have given it her best try. “Did she figure it out the second time?”

  Riley laughed. “She didn’t have to. She nailed the test. With that piece of shit catcher, she nailed it!”

  Riley proceeded to go through the entire test, maneuver by maneuver, ending with the placement of the box.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. She set the box right down in the outline. I mean right down in it. And then, when she’s done, I ask her how she thinks she did, and she replies she didn’t think it was going to be that hard.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t. I told her it was a simple climb, turn, and set-down routine.”

  “But wait, it gets better,” Riley assured him. “I tell her MAC wants it done again, and she says, ‘I don’t think I can do it better than that.’ When I tell her she can use her own catcher, she changes her mind. ‘Then I can do better,’ she tells me.”

  “She knew she should only be taking it once. The poor kid probably thought she was on the cusp of failing. I still don’t understand why MAC asked her to do it again. She’s injured—why would it do that?”

  “I don’t know why it required her to repeat it unless it suspected someone had tampered with its parameters. On the second flight, Alisha flew exactly as ordered. I told her
to make a straight line to the tree, and she did. Since until today a perfect straight-line crosswind was impossible, MAC should have balked on the second test. Yet it seemed very satisfied after the second run. And get this—after the test is over, it tells me to ask her if there’s anything else she’d like to show us. How’s that for weird?”

  Logan was less amused. MAC knew she was injured. Why was it pushing her so hard? He sighed. “She no doubt took the offer.”

  Riley laughed. “Oh yeah, she had a few other things to show us: a forward vertical climb, some somersaults, then a forward-downward descent using that surfboard thing of hers, another absolutely straight crosswind track, and my favorite—a harness-release landing. Do you realize the advantage a harness-release landing would give us when entering hostile territory?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen that one. And it would be incredibly useful if we can teach it to our combat flyers.” What he didn’t want was Alisha to be the actual flyer going in under fire. “Did you hold your ground when she headed right toward you?”

  “Yeah, I did. Mostly because I was too shocked to even think of moving. She said you stuck as well.”

  “I did, but the rest of my crew took a dive. Truthfully, though, I didn’t see how she was going to pull it off. Still, I told her to land in the circle, and after hopping across eight of them, I was confident she could stick the last one.”

  Riley’s excitement just kept growing. Logan could picture him pacing back and forth. “Damn! I can’t believe what I saw today. I know you told me…but Jesus! She’s better than her grandfather. How can anyone be that good?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself,” Logan admitted. “She’s doing so many things that we teach our cadets aren’t possible. And Riley, she’s only been flying a month. I’ve got to question our teaching methods. Without doubt she has talent, and she has improved the windcatcher, and we need to seriously look at adopting those modifications. But it’s her whole perspective we need to assimilate. In her mind, anything is possible. Maybe we should cease telling a cadet what isn’t possible.”