“There are men dying out there every day, ladies. We are not medevac. If you want to be medevac you should have damned well volunteered to do that kind of service work. Our job—” and she punched an index finger in their direction “—is to protect and defend. The Apache is not a medevac!”
Swinging her attention to Emma, she added, “Dammit, Trayhern-Cantrell, what if you’d got shot coming back? What if you’d needed Nike on the instruments if the Taliban started firing at you? What if, God forbid, we’d needed the two of you on another call on the way back?”
“You’re right, ma’am,” Emma whispered contritely.
“I don’t want to be right!” Dallas exploded. “I want you to know what is right, Captain! You’re a damn poor example for our squadron. It makes all of us look bad.”
Emma’s lips thinned and she said nothing, her eyes straight ahead.
Nike cringed inwardly. In all her years knowing Dallas as the XO of the Black Jaguar Squadron down in Peru, she’d never seen her fly off the handle as she was doing. That was how serious this was, Nike realized. At the time, it had seemed like the right decision to make. She didn’t know yet if Berkie had survived or not. She’d come straight here to HQ from the helo.
“Of all the harebrained decisions the two of you have ever made, this goes over the top.” Dallas glared at them. “What am I to do? If I don’t punish you for your decision, then one of my other pilots will get it into her head that it’s okay to climb out of the cockpit on a mission to give up her seat to another injured soldier.”
Wincing, Nike felt the blast of her CO’s anger. Oh, it was justified. The only question now was what Dallas Klein was going to do to punish them for their blatant transgression. She could feel two spots burning into her cheeks as her CO watched her.
“All right,” Dallas flared, her voice suddenly deadly quiet, “neither of you leave me any choice. Captain Trayhern-Cantrell, you’re stripped of your status as XO. You’ve just proven you aren’t up to the task of reinforcing the rules that we must all live under here in combat.”
Nike winced. She knew that punishment would go on Emma’s personnel jacket and it could stop her from making major someday. There was nothing Nike could do about it, and she felt terrible.
“Yes, ma’am,” Emma croaked, shock in her tone.
“Remember, Trayhern-Cantrell, you did this to yourself. You made the decision! You shouldn’t have allowed that A team captain to influence you as he did. You’ve clearly shown that you don’t have the backbone to enforce the rules.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Emma whispered.
Heart breaking, Nike heard the pain in Emma’s tone. She knew that Emma came from a military dynasty, a very famous one. There were so many medals and awards for valor in the Trayhern family, and now Emma was giving it a black eye. Emma must feel awful about this. Guiltily, Nike knew it had been her idea to pick up Berkie.
“Ma’am,” Nike spoke up strongly, “Emma is innocent in all of this! I—”
“That’s not true, ma’am,” Emma piped up quickly, giving her friend a panicked look.
“Quiet!”
Nike grimly shut up, as did Emma. Her attempt to save her friend was not going to work. When Dallas had been a young pilot, she had to have made some stupid decisions, too. She’d probably been in a similar situation herself.
Breathing hard, Dallas said, “Do you realize what you’ve done? We’re a covert black ops. We’ve come here with an incredibly spotless record of positive work as an all-female squadron. And you two decide to screw it up with this stupid, completely avoidable mistake.”
Nike’d known the chewing-out was going to be bad, but not this bad. She felt guilty that her desire to save Berkie would give all the women of this squadron a bad name, but still couldn’t be sorry for her action. Her decision broke the rules, but wasn’t wrong by moral standards. With that resolve, Nike was prepared for the worst. What made it tough was how Emma selflessly threw herself under the bus. She didn’t have to, but she did. Nike felt awful about that.
“What the hell am I going to do with the two of you?” Dallas spat. “It isn’t like I have women pilots standing in line to fly Apaches! But I can’t trust the two of you in the cockpit, either.” Glaring at them, Dallas shook her head.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” Emma’s voice was quiet and apologetic.
Nike absorbed the brittle tension that hung in the small office. She was sure the office pogues outside could hear everything. It was completely unlike Dallas to scream at anyone like this.
“Captain Trayhern-Cantrell, you’re demoted. It will be reflected in your jacket and haunt you for the rest of your military life. You have not done your proud military family any favors with your poor decision-making. From now on, you will be just one of the pilots in the squadron. One slip-up—and I mean one—and I’ll send your ass back to the States and you can be reassigned into a mixed-gender helicopter squadron flying transports. You got that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nike tensed inwardly as Dallas swung her glare to her.
“And you, Captain Alexander. I have a terrible feeling this was all your idea and that Captain Trayhern-Cantrell was the patsy for your desire to help that man. War is not pretty. I thought you would have got that in Peru, but obviously, you didn’t. You let your compassion for that man affect your judgment. I can no longer trust you in the cockpit of an Apache, can I?”
“No, ma’am, I guess you can’t,” Nike whispered.
“There’s no guess about it, Captain Alexander.” Dallas fumed. “Dammit, you leave me no choice. From now on the only time you’ll have your ass strapped into an Apache is to keep up your flight skills. I’m assigning you permanently to the transport squadron here on base until you can be trusted to fly an Apache properly. I need every woman I have to man the Apaches and you’ve now left me a pilot short. I’m calling back to the Pentagon to see if I can find another female pilot to replace you.”
Nike closed her eyes, taking her CO’s words like punches. She had never anticipated this. Her Apache days were over. “Yes, ma’am,” she croaked.
“I can’t trust you, Captain Alexander. That’s what this really comes down to, isn’t it?”
It was useless to try and fight for herself. “Yes, ma’am,” Nike said.
“Has it ever occurred to you that I could court-martial you, drum you out of the the U.S. Army and send you back to Greece?”
Horrified, Nike opened her mouth and then snapped it shut. The fury in Dallas’s eyes burned through her.
“I could do that, Captain. But dammit, that would be another blow to BJS 60 and frankly, I don’t want that on our record. I wanted to make a positive record of our performance as an all-woman squadron here in Afghanistan. So you’re safe on that score and damn lucky,” she gritted out.
Closing her eyes, Nike swallowed hard. She opened them and stared straight ahead at the light green wall behind her CO. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Dallas sat down. She scribbled out a set of orders. “Captain Alexander, you’re officially transferred to the transport squadron based here. All you are going to do is fly CH-47s. Maybe that will remind you of your bad choices and how you’ve hurt our squadron. Fly with those realities in mind.” She thrust the papers at Nike. “Now, both of you, get out of here. Dismissed.”
“I’m sorry,” Nike told Emma once they were back in their tent area. The night was dark and they had their flashlights. “I didn’t think….”
Emma put her arm around Nike’s slumped shoulders. “I’m sorry, too. I don’t care if I lose the XO position. I know the rules are there for a reason. We made a choice and got caught, was all.”
“There were times in Peru when we would take a sick child or adult out of a village and fly them to Cusco,” Nike grumbled. “And Dallas damn well knew we did it. We’d leave one of the pilots behind, radio in to the cave and let them know what we were doing and nothing was ever said by Dallas or the CO.”
“Yes, but it�
�s different here,” Emma said. “Down there, we had no other military ops around us. Here, the eyes of the whole base watch our every move because we’re an all-female squadron.”
“Humph,” Nike growled. They stepped carefully through the ruts made by a storm the night before. “Dallas knows we did that stuff down there.”
“Yes, but she’s CO now. And the men are watching us,” Emma said. “Dallas didn’t have a choice in this and I knew it.”
Giving her friend a sharp glance, Nike said, “You knew she’d bust you out of XO position?”
Giving her a slight smile, Emma nodded. “Sure. That’s what I would have done if I was CO. I was just hoping she wouldn’t have been so hard on you, that she’d put a reprimand in your personnel file and let it go at that.”
“Dallas knows I was the one who thought it up, that’s why.”
Halting at a row of tents, they turned. It was chow time and most of the women were gone. Nike was glad. Word would spread like wildfire. By morning, the whole camp would be aware of their new orders.
“I’m not hungry,” Emma said, halting in front of her tent, next to Nike’s. “Are you?”
Nike laughed sourly. “The only thing I want is a stiff damn drink of pisco to burn out the tension in my gut.”
Emma grinned. Pisco was the drink of Peru. It could kick like a mule once it was gulped down. “Yeah, that sounds pretty good right now. I’ll bet Dallas has a stash of it hidden somewhere.”
Nike’s spirits rose over her indomitable friend. “I don’t think she’s going to share it with us, do you?”
Giggling, Emma said in a whisper, “Not a chance.”
“I’m going over to the med tent,” Nike told her. “I don’t even know if Berkie made it or not.”
“He was in terrible shape,” Emma admitted quietly. She put her hand on Nike’s shoulder. “I’m going to lie down and try to sleep. I feel like I was in a dogfight and lost.”
Nike nodded. “Yeah, it hurts, doesn’t it? Well, we did this to ourselves. Dallas did what she had to do.”
“Gosh, Nike, you can only fly CH-47s now. That’s terrible! I never thought Dallas would go that far.”
“I know,” Nike whispered glumly. “What bothers me is that if she replaces me, I’ll never get back into the squadron. I could finish out my tour here in Afghanistan flying transports. That sucks.”
Emma nodded. “Putting an aggressive combat pilot to fly a bus is a horrible punishment.”
“It could have been worse,” Nike reminded her solemnly.
“Well, all we can do is be good pilots from here on out and do the best we can. Over time, this thing will settle out and be forgotten.”
“I hope so,” Nike said. What would she tell her parents? They would be shocked. “I still am not sorry we did it, Emma.”
“I’m not, either,” Emma told her. “If Dallas knew that, she would court-martial us.”
Depressed, Nike agreed. “Well, it’s our secret for the rest of our lives. We can’t tell our families, either. You know how word gets around….”
“Mmm,” Emma agreed. “My dad is going to hit the roof and God, my mom is going to be scraped off the ceiling, too. And my uncle Morgan is going to…well, who knows what he’ll do….”
Nike knew that Clay and Aly were very proud of their daughter. The Trayhern family created warriors for the military and Emma was no slouch. She was one of the finest Apache pilots ever to go through the school. And her uncle, Morgan Trayhern, was a genuine military hero who was highly respected within that world. “I’m really sorry about that.”
Emma shrugged. “They’ll understand. I’m not sure Uncle Morgan will, but I know my parents will forgive me and just tell me to keep my head down and do good work.”
“What do you think your uncle will do?” Morgan Trayhern was in a position of power running a black-ops company that helped the U.S. government in many different ways.
“Ugh, I don’t know.”
“He has influence,” Nike said hopefully. “Do you think there’s anything he can do to help you take the black mark out of your jacket?”
Emma placed her hands on her hips and looked up at the stars overhead. “Probably not. He’ll probably agree with Major Klein’s decision. He’s not a rule-breaker, Nike.”
Nike snorted. “I’ll bet he broke plenty of rules when he was in the military. He just didn’t get caught like we did, is all.”
“Listen, head on over to the clinic. Find out about Berkie. I sure hope he made it.”
“I’ll let you know.” Nike opened her arms and impulsively hugged Emma. “Thanks for everything. If Berkie made it, it’s because of you.”
Releasing her, Emma grinned. “Let me know, okay? Come back, and if I’m sleeping, wake me up?”
Nike watched as a medic behind the desk rifled through a bunch of papers. He then consulted the computer, scanning for the name Berkland Hall.
“Yes, ma’am, he’s alive,” the young blond medic finally said as he tapped the computer screen. “He’s resting in stable condition at the hospital at Bagram Air Force Base. Says here they’re going to be transporting him back to the States tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you,” Nike said, relief in her tone. She left the busy medic tent and headed back out into the darkness. Tears burned her eyes. Berkie would live to see his newly born daughter. His wife would have a husband. A sob ripped from her and Nike pressed her hand against her mouth, afraid that someone nearby might hear her. She couldn’t cry here.
There was a spot on the north side of the base where Nike went to sit and clear her head. This night, after this horrible day, she went to her rock, turned off her flashlight and simply allowed the darkness to swallow her up. She loved looking at the myriad stars since they reminded her of her home in Greece. Right now, she felt alone and depressed. And she worried about Gavin, hoping the Taliban weren’t attacking the hill tonight. Because she was between squadrons, there was no way for her to know. Until she took her orders to the new CO of the transport squadron, she couldn’t ask anyone about anything.
Touching the BJS 60 patch on her right shoulder, Nike knew she’d have to take it off tomorrow before going to the CO of the transport squadron at 0800. For all intents and purposes, she had been drummed out of BJS 60 in shame. She wrapped her arms around her drawn-up legs. She had no one to thank for this but herself. Inside, she was a mass of contradictory emotions. Berkie was alive because they’d broken the rules. A little baby and a wife would have a father and husband to complete their lives. It had been a hell of a decision, and Nike didn’t mind paying for it personally. She hated that Emma had stepped in and taken part of the blame, but that was Emma. Nike had often seen her wearing the mantle of the Trayhern dynasty and sometimes, it weighed heavily on her. What a mess. Nike had ended up getting Emma’s fine career smeared permanently.
It all seemed overwhelming in that moment. She balanced out her grief over the decisions that Major Klein had made against Berkie being alive. What was a life worth? Everything, in Nike’s mind. Lifting her chin, she saw a meteor flash across the night sky. How was Gavin? Was he safe? When would he fly back here to be with his team?
Nike realized that she truly missed Gavin. The wonderful, searching talk they’d had last night was burned into her heart’s memory. She was such a coward when it came to trusting love.
Love?
Snorting, Nike released her arms from around her knees and stood up. Am I falling in love with Gavin? No, that couldn’t be. Hadn’t she been punished enough in one day’s time? Did she need this awareness like a curse upon her, too?
Shaking her head, Nike couldn’t assimilate all of the day’s unexpected turns and twists. Yet, as she turned and shuffled back toward the tent city hidden in the darkness, Nike still missed Gavin. If he was here, she could confide in him. He would understand. Right now, Nike ached to have his arms around her. Right now, she needed to be held….
Chapter 11
Gavin sat in the medical-facility
tent on a gurney. The doctor had cut away most of his blood-soaked pant leg, inspected the bullet wound that had created a three-inch gash across his thigh. The place was a beehive of activity this morning. It was raining and he was soaked after coming off a helo that had brought him back to the base.
“Well?” Gavin asked Dr. Hartman, a young black-haired man with blue eyes.
“Flesh wound. You’re lucky, Captain Jackson,” Dr. Hartman said, looking up.
“Shoot me full of antibiotics, sew me up and authorize me back to my team,” he told the doctor.
Hartman grinned a little. A female army nurse came over with a tray that held the antibiotic, a syringe, needle and thread plus some scrubbing material to ensure that the wound was free of debris. “I know how you A-teamers like to stick together, Captain,” Hartman said, picking up a syringe that would locally anesthetize the wound area first.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Gavin said. He sat on the gurney, his good leg hanging over the side. While the army would give him three weeks at the base to let the wound heal properly, Gavin didn’t want it. His team would be ordered out without him and that bothered him greatly. He felt protective of his men; they were his friends. Gavin didn’t want them subjected to someone else’s leadership.
“Mmm,” the doctor said, swabbing down the area with iodine. He stuck the syringe around the edge of the open wound.
Frowning, Gavin said, “Look, Doc, I don’t want a three-week R & R back here because of this.” He jabbed his finger down at the wound.
The doctor waited for the anesthetic to take hold and smiled at Gavin. “I know you don’t want to get separated from your team, Captain, but this is bad enough to do it. If I release you back to your team and you go out on a mission and rip the stitches out, the wound will become reinfected.”
“Not if you give me a steady supply of antibiotics to take,” Gavin said. He could tell this doctor had just come over to the front. And he was probably a by-the-book kind, to boot.
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