He and John kicked into high gear on the preflight.
Dilya was coming, so that meant weapons shouldn’t be needed, but Tim checked them anyway, while John preflighted the engines, fuel, and exterior of the craft. Captain Richardson, the copilot, was already on the avionics. Tim made sure that fresh belts were laid into the miniguns and the Vulcan 20 mm cannon. He grabbed the nose of each Hellfire missile and gave it a good shake to check the seating of the clamps. He checked that the reds, the armorers easily identified by their red vests, had indeed refilled both 19-tube FFAR rocket pods.
At twenty minutes from the warning, Major Henderson climbed aboard and thirty seconds later they were airborne. Tim glanced to the side in time to see the Vengeance rising up in their wake. The knife-edge desert sunset slashed the day from night, darkening the arena even as they cleared the stadium’s rim.
Right behind them, the big Chinook, which had the captured truck aboard, lifted clear. Only after they were airborne did the ring of Delta Force who had been guarding the chopper disperse.
Tim wondered what the hell the Delta Force operators had dug up out in the Iranian desert. An itch between his shoulders told him that his first guess was wrong. He was going to find out.
***
With the sole instruction of “Full force protection, follow Viper,” Lola found her mind free to wander. It was dark night now, but Viper was a clear beacon on the projection against the inside of her visor. Four rotor diameters ahead and one to the side, allowing for concentration of force while also providing clear forward vision and an open field of fire.
Their heading made no sense, but that wasn’t a first.
And there was no question what they were to be protecting—the laden Chinook floated along right behind them.
They had a child aboard a fully armed, secret military helicopter, which was a new one for her, but she could shrug that off if others could. And Sergeant Kee could be a bloody pain in the ass, but she guarded over the kid with her whole heart. No chance she’d put the kid in harm’s way.
Lola was starting to see the woman’s strong core through all of the rough edges. Could see that Kee had clearly grown up like a wild weed running loose on the streets. Word around camp said East LA, which was a hard road to be sure. But it was as if she and Kee came from rival gangs and no quarter could be granted, ever.
Well, that wasn’t how Lola had pictured SOAR. She’d pictured camaraderie. She’d pictured a tight team that flew together, partied together, kicked ass together, and unquestionably had each other’s backs. Lola would lay safe ten-to-one money that Kee wouldn’t even miss Lola if she fell over dead this instant.
The feeling was mutual. If Kee was shot, there was no chance that afterward Lola’d be wishing it had been her instead of Kee.
Then she glanced to her right and eyed the Major. Not that you could see anything beyond the helmet not much smaller than an astronaut’s, the full flight suit, survival vest, and FN SCAR carbine folded across her chest, but she sat there like an absolute rock. An icon to her crew.
Lola wanted that. Suddenly wanted it so bad it was like a knot in her chest. So sharp that if she didn’t know better, she’d think she was having a heart attack. But it wasn’t.
Nor was it envy.
It was hope. A hopeless hope. She knew the combination well, and the diagnosis was easy—she was totally screwed. She could dream of being like Beale all she wanted. She could strive all she wanted.
And in the end she’d choke on it.
Then Major Beale took her hand off the collective control, not a problem as Lola was pilot-in-control at the moment and Beale was just feathering along out of habit.
But what she did was rub that hand gently across her belly despite all of the heavy gear. A gesture Lola had seen many times in Mama Raci’s Storyville kitchen. When some working girl would come in, scared to death and knowing she was—
Beale jerked her head around at Lola’s gasp and then punched mute on the intercom. Not just for her station, but for the whole chopper. She never did that. Major Beale always kept all of the comm channels open so that her crew was always informed.
Lola agreed wholeheartedly. She didn’t like her first trainer who had insisted on isolating the back-enders from strategic chatter with other birds or the Air Mission Controller. Kee and Connie had their butts on the line just like Lola and the Major, so they deserved to know what was going on at all times.
It took Beale three tries but she finally managed to set the intercom so that only she and Lola were in the circuit.
“Not one word!” With that tone, Emily’s voice could have commanded a battalion to fly into the valley of death. “I’m late is all. I’m just late. Not a word to the crew. Not to Mark. Not to anyone. Do you understand me? Not one word.”
“Yes, sir!” Lola snapped it out instinctively even as Henderson began curving his helicopter down toward a landing in the middle of nowhere. She checked the charts again, truly nowhere southwest Pakistan.
“May I ask one question, Major?”
Beale paused before suddenly puffing out a breath and in a much quieter voice saying, “Go ahead. Ask it.”
“If you’re not ‘just late,’ are you to be congratulated that there will be another generation of Viper in the world? Or not?”
Again the silence and the long puff of breath as Lola landed in desert-nowhere-in-particular, close behind Major Henderson.
If the rotors hadn’t already been winding down and the cabin growing quieter with the last of the descent, Lola would not have heard the expectant mother’s response despite the intercom feeding her voice directly to Lola’s helmet.
“Damned if I know, Chief Warrant. Damned if I know.”
Lola reached across and squeezed the hand of the Major, who clutched at it convulsively. Lola’s left hand on the collective, the Major’s right hand controlling the cyclic, they descended the last few dozen feet together.
“It’ll be okay, Major.”
“How do you know?”
Lola laughed and tightened her grip to match the Major’s.
“Damned if I do, Major. But it’s what Mama Raci always told the girls who came into her kitchen to tell her they’d just ruined their livelihood.”
“Was it okay?” The Major’s voice was a bit thin and breathless. Grasping for hope.
All Lola could do was shrug and tell the truth as the wheels touched the ground. “Not often, but sometimes. Sometimes it was definitely alright.”
***
Beale waved Lola off from the shutdown, so she jumped down to see what they were doing out here in the untracked desert. She peeled her helmet just in time to get a face full of dust from the big Chinook that landed right behind them.
Once their rotors began winding down, she heard Major Henderson’s call from where he stood by the other Hawk, “Wrap ’em up tight.” Well, that answered that. They weren’t going to be staying anywhere local, nor returning soon to Bati. They were headed beyond the range of a simple chopper flight.
In moments Connie and Kee had closed the cargo bay doors, exposing the footholds built into the side of the chopper behind the door. They scrambled up onto the top of the fuselage. Lola grabbed a monkey-line strap from where it hung inside her door.
The two women up top shoved the rotors around until the fixed blade lined up with the tail, then they set to work unpinning the remaining blades one by one from the rotor’s head.
Lola went to the end of the blade they were working on and heaved the strap up and over its tip.
“Walk ’er in,” Connie called out softly, and Lola grabbed the two strap ends and began towing the released blade around on its pivot, dragging it toward the tail. When she got it nearly to the tail, she slid the strap free and the blade swung home under its own momentum, nestled against the blade already lying in place.
Lola still w
asn’t used to the five-blade rig. The blades were quieter and the rig let them fly faster than the standard four-blade Hawk. She was starting to learn that because the blades were shorter, she could slew a turn about ten percent harder. The DAP Hawk with the five blades and the bigger engines really did make her feel all-powerful when she flew.
So why did she feel so powerless in the face of this crew?
Major Beale arrived at her shoulder, and they watched the two crew chiefs finish buttoning down the blade and start unpinning the next one.
Without turning to Lola, the Major whispered, “Not a soul.”
Lola only had to think a moment to realize the comment wasn’t about the mission, but rather about the possible change to the Major’s future. Lola raised her right hand in a three-fingered salute. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were a Girl Scout?”
“No.” Lola grinned at some of the memories. “But I tripped more than my fair share of Boy Scouts. Does that count?”
Beale laughed aloud. “God, it feels good to laugh. We were careful. We were always so damned careful.”
“Nothing’s a hundred percent. How long have you known?”
“Yesterday. Maybe.”
Lola could hear the tentative in the Major’s voice. “Not a lot of pee sticks in a forward operations theater. The military still isn’t used to women.”
“I know. Ticks me off.”
Lola could think of a thousand things that ticked her off about how the military didn’t understand women, but that was something you signed up for. You had to outfly, outfight, and outsmart the men, especially in the lower services. By the time you got to SOAR, the worst of the jerks had been winnowed out, a surprising number actually.
It was just surreal that the ones she was having problems with were the women. Lola towed the third blade around for the crew chiefs before returning to the Major’s side.
“You do recall that I used to fly CSAR?” she asked the Major.
“I do. Remember you saving my butt. Literally.”
And Lola had. “Wasn’t sure you remembered that. You were pretty far out of it by the time I came along.”
“Not that far.”
Again Lola’s respect for the woman went up another notch. Concussion and pain and way too much blood loss, and the Major had not only completed the mission but remembered the medical crew who had come for her. No, more likely she remembered the pilot who had finished flying her helicopter home when she was no longer capable.
“Well, I’ve restocked our med kit knowing we’d have four women on board. I’ll get you a couple EPT sticks the next moment no one is around.”
“You stocked a military bird, a DAP Hawk, with early pregnancy tests?” Lola could feel the woman’s smile in the dark. “Thanks, Lola. I’m really glad you’re aboard.”
Lola laughed but couldn’t hide the bitter edge to it. “That makes you and nobody else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Connie won’t speak to me.”
“She doesn’t speak to anyone except Big John. Mr. Garrulous and Ms. Silent. No one understands that relationship except them, and I guess they’re the only two that matter. But don’t take that one personally.”
“Sergeant Stevenson wishes I were dead.”
Lola could see Emily’s nod in the dark. “She does. That one you’re going to have to work out.”
“Why me?” Lola felt cornered. Trapped. They walked side by side as she hauled the next rotor blade into place and returned to wait for the last one.
“Part of being a pilot. You are responsible for making your crew into a team.”
“But it’s your team.”
Lola could hear the distant roar of the big jet engines that must be on a C-5 Galaxy transport, the only military plane big enough to carry the Chinook and both of their Hawks.
Beale didn’t bother responding, she just stood there.
Someone must have scattered some infrared markers to lay out an impromptu runway in the desert.
If Beale really was pregnant, Lola would bet she’d want to keep the kid. Most of the girls in Mama Raci’s wanted to keep the kid, even when they didn’t dare or couldn’t afford to.
The C-5 roared down onto the desert a couple thousand meters away, quickly looming larger and larger in the night. The reversers doubling the volume and tripling the dust cloud that the transport kicked up as it came in. An experienced desert pilot would be throttling back right about now to make sure he didn’t get lost in his own personal dust storm. Right on cue, the engine roar faded and the jet rolled more slowly toward them.
If Beale kept the kid, she’d be out of the pilot’s seat almost immediately. Then it really could become Lola’s flight.
That thought was even scarier than Tim being all gone on her.
Chapter 25
The next thirty minutes of havoc passed as they always did—in meticulously ordered and well-orchestrated military mayhem fast enough to keep Lola very warm despite the cooling night air, but slow enough to allow no mistakes.
The monstrous C-5 jet transport, as large as a 747 but lower to the ground, rolled to a stop with its nose less than a rotor from the Chinook. With a characteristic groan, four stories worth of nose cone detached from the fuselage and began swinging up into the air on giant hinges until the nose cone towered high above the cockpit. The raised nose exposed the cavernous cargo bay interior, lit softly in red light to preserve everyone’s night vision.
The moment the loading ramp hit the dust, two small tractors descended the ramp. Too small for a person to sit on, but strong enough to move a C-5 fully loaded if they were run in tandem. Two loadmasters followed each tractor, one with a wireless remote control strapped to his wrist. They steered the tractors toward the waiting Black Hawks.
Almost before the two crews could tie down the last blade and scramble out of the way, the C-5 loadmasters had latched the two Black Hawks’ front wheels onto the tractors and begun towing them backward onto the looming airplane. Just under a football field long and with a cargo bay that could swallow of couple of Abrams main battle tanks, the C-5 quickly gulped down the DAP Hawks.
By the time they were up the ramp, inside, and tied down, one of the tractor crews came back out to the Chinook. With the help of the D-boys, the SOAR crew had the two three-bladed rotors folded with seconds to spare. Not tens of seconds, but they beat the tractor crew.
All four loadmasters worked to make sure the Chinook made it up the ramp clean and was pegged down so that it couldn’t shift in flight. They went over their checklists again, double-checking that the choppers were placed properly on the position markers running down the inside of the plane’s cargo bay. Off by just a couple feet and the center of gravity could be far enough off to cripple the jet in flight. Or cause a crash on attempted takeoff.
The ramp was already lifting as the crew stumbled aboard.
As soon as the nose cone thudded into place, the engines roared from idle back to takeoff speeds. In the trackless desert, it didn’t matter. No taxiing back to the head of some runway, no other air traffic or buildings in their way. They just continued pointing into the wind and opened up the throttles wide.
Lola checked her watch. Total time on the ground for the C-5, twelve minutes, forty-seven seconds. For the Black Hawks and Chinook, just a few ticks over half an hour. They rotated and became fully airborne faster than Lola and the rest of the SOAR crews could find jump seats down either side of the aircraft and buckle in.
A plane capable of carrying 125 tons shot upward with a load of barely forty-five.
There wasn’t any point in asking where they were going. When Major Henderson wanted them to know, he’d tell them.
Once they reached cruising altitude, Lola unbuckled and wandered as nonchalantly as possible toward the rear of the aircraft where Vengeance had been tied down.
> The Chinook had been resealed. A lone D-boy had apparently decided to toss down his pack and sit on it where he just happened to have a perfect view of both the chopper’s rear ramp, where it had picked up the stolen truck, and the pilot’s door, both closed. At least the pack was probably more comfortable than the folding jump seats that lined the walls.
Lola rather hoped that his eyes tracked her for her looks instead of the package he was guarding.
What in the world had they uncovered out there? Seemed like a good old snatch-and-grab operation. Gather a bunch of intel and turn it over to the CIA or whoever cared about such things. But a twenty-four-hour watch and a surprise trip on twenty minutes’ notice…
Stateside. That’s where they were headed. Pentagon probably. They had to be going somewhere seriously secure. New bomb design maybe? Perhaps final proof that the Iranians really had become the planet’s newest nuclear power. Maybe their first bomb, stolen right from under their noses.
Well, her current mission had nothing to do with whatever lay inside the Chinook. She was half past the Viper when she heard the double footfall close behind her. The sound of someone dropping from the Black Hawk’s cargo deck down to the steel plating of the C-5’s deck.
She turned and, sure enough, Tim Maloney stood there looking all handsome and swaggery. It was easy to imagine just letting him wrap her up in his arms and burn away all of her fears about the crew and her own abilities with one of his searing kisses. Well, more than one.
But then again, he was also becoming one of her fears. Time to deal with that. If what she suspected was coming down the pipe at her with Major Beale’s news, she didn’t need any distractions, no matter how cute.
“Hey there, Sergeant.” Lola did her best to keep her voice light.
“Hey, yourself.” He took one of those easy, swagger-style steps toward her, but stopped when she took a step back.
Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers) Page 12