by Sandra Owens
She’d got it, and two years later when she had attended his funeral after he’d lost his fight against the cancer that had killed him, she’d grieved for the loss of a man who had become a dear friend.
“Emergency checklist, Charlie,” his long-gone, smoker’s voice rasped in her ear.
“Get a grip,” she commanded herself as she grabbed the clipboard. Although she had it memorized, she had been trained to follow the written list so that, in a panic, she didn’t forget to do something.
Straightening her spine, she edged up on her seat. Regulations notwithstanding, like any aerobatic pilot with a lick of sense, she wore a parachute, but she refused to ditch her plane unless it was a last resort. She’d worked too hard to own it to see it disappear at the bottom of the gulf.
Throughout her training to become a pilot, it had been drilled into her head that in case of emergency to first aviate, then navigate, and lastly, communicate. She reduced power and then turned the plane toward the airport before radioing the control tower at Pensacola International.
“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Pensacola Center. November Three One Golf Hotel declaring an emergency.”
“November Three One Golf Hotel, Pensacola Center. State position and emergency,” a calm voice answered.
“Center, I’m two point three miles southeast of Santa Rosa Sound. Losing oil pressure and engine temperature’s rising. Request you call Pensacola Aviation Center to advise I will be making an emergency landing.” There was a pause before the controller responded. She could have called her FBO herself, but it was faster to contact Air Traffic Control than to dial up the frequency for her fixed-base operator—her home base—and she didn’t want to divert her attention from what was going on with her plane.
“November Three One Golf Hotel, Pensacola Aviation Center notified. You are cleared for a direct approach.”
“Thank you. November Three One Golf Hotel, over and out.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks,” she whispered. A part of her wanted to keep talking, to keep contact with the voice on the other end of the radio, but getting her plane home would require all her attention.
“You can do this, Charlie. Swear to God you can.” She patted the Citabria’s dash. “Come on, baby, let’s get you back to the barn and see what ails you.”
After a quick scan of the next item on the list, she lowered the nose slightly to increase airspeed. The oil-pressure gauge needle was almost flat now, and she knew she had to land on her first try. She breathed a sigh of relief when she sighted the runway. The operations manager, David, stood outside, watching her through binoculars. A fire truck and the line crew guys were positioned alongside the runway. She hoped to God the fire truck wouldn’t be needed but she was glad to see it there. As she aligned the nose of the plane with the middle of the runway, the engine quit.
“Shit!” Yelling and panicking wouldn’t get her safely on the ground, so she shut everything out of her mind but the feel of her plane and the runway in front of her. An icy calm settled over her as she ticked off the remaining emergency landing procedures.
She raised her flaps to increase her glide range, then flipped off all the switches. Estimating her airspeed and the distance to the runway, her heart almost seized. She wasn’t going to make it to the asphalt.
“You don’t mind a nice, soft grass landing, do you, baby?” Slightly lifting the nose to get some wind under her, Charlie willed the Citabria to do the impossible. As she’d done everything she could except land, she pulled her seat harness tight, then visualized herself bringing the aircraft down on the field in front of the runway. If she hit any holes or ruts, it was entirely possible the plane would cartwheel, definitely not how she wanted to start her morning.
The next few minutes seemed like forever, but each time her mind tried to examine her life and the mistakes she’d made, she shut it down. Not the time to dwell on regrets.
“No tricks for this one, baby, you hear?” Suddenly the airport’s windsock changed direction, indicating she had a tailwind. She made the pitch adjustment required to maintain the proper airspeed. Elation coursed through her when she realized the tailwind was just enough to push the Citabria to the edge of the runway.
“Yes, baby, yes!” She victory yelled when the wheels touched down on the asphalt. “Mama loves you.”
Once the plane rolled to a stop, Charlie sat for a moment in an attempt to calm her pounding heart. Funny how it waited until she was safe on the ground before taking off like a greyhound’s after crossing the finish line. She held her hands in front of her face and willed them to stop shaking, but they were determined to impersonate a wet dog after a bath.
The door flew open, and David poked his head in. “You okay?”
All she could do was nod as he reached in and released her harness. She grabbed his arm and climbed out of the plane, not letting go of him when her feet hit the pavement because her legs refused to support her without help.
“That was a beautiful landing, Charlie,” he said.
Since she was alive, she had to agree. The line crew surrounded them, all talking at once. Even though all she wanted was to find a quiet place to recover her equilibrium, she high-fived them back and grinned a smile she didn’t really feel.
“Back to work,” David finally said, dispersing them.
When they departed and nothing blocked her view, she saw a local news station’s reporter holding up a microphone to one of the firemen. As soon as the reporter realized Charlie wasn’t surrounded by a horde of the airport’s employees, he rushed over, thrusting the mike in her face.
“Did you think you were going to die?”
Charlie opened her mouth to tell him to get lost, but David, knowing her too well, pushed her behind him. “Did you get that landing on camera? I sure hope so because it was a thing of beauty.” He whipped out a business card from somewhere on him and handed it to the reporter. “Call me later, and I’ll set you up an interview with her. For now, leave her alone.”
She leaned her head against David’s back, grateful he’d stopped her from appearing like an ass on that night’s news. The last thing she wanted to do was an interview later, but David would insist. Since he’d just given her time to get her act together, she would do it for him.
The reporter and his cameraman climbed into their news van and followed the fire truck back to the exit. “Thanks,” Charlie said when it was just her, David, and the plane that had brought her home.
He turned and pulled her under his arm. “You’re welcome, but don’t think to get out of that interview. They already have it on film so there’s no stopping it going on the air. We’ll put the right spin on it. It’ll be good business.”
Of course it would be. She was a well-known aerobatic plane pilot, and she was also one of his flight school instructors. He would make sure that last bit of information was included in the interview, no doubt figuring he would get calls from wannabe pilots asking for her as their instructor.
“Yeah, good business,” she sighed. Her student quota had just gone up. Not that she minded. The extra money was always good, and she enjoyed teaching anyone who loved to fly.
Gary, the FBO’s head mechanic, rolled up in a tug. “You lost oil pressure?” he asked as he hooked a tow bar to the plane’s wheels.
With an affirmative nod, Charlie turned to her plane. “Yeah, then the temperature rose. She’s always been steady and reliable. I want to know why.”
“I’m on it,” Gary said, and then hauled her baby away.
If anyone could identify the problem, it was Gary. Knowing the Citabria was in good hands, Charlie slid onto the golf cart next to David. As if he understood she needed time to herself, he didn’t talk to her on their way to the FBO. She settled back onto the seat, closed her eyes, and mentally relived the flight from the moment she’d walked around her plane doing her preflight inspection.
She was a stickler for procedures, and she couldn’t see anything she’d missed that would hav
e warned her of a malfunction. Sometimes shit happened, and that would probably turn out to be the case. Every pilot, especially one who flew aerobatics, had a scare or two in their career.
But she’d had two in a week, and that bothered her. Even though it had been in two different planes, with two different problems, what were the odds of that? Now she was being paranoid. It was just bad luck. That was all.
Too keyed up to think about almost dying, she lifted her face to the breeze and closed her eyes. Much nicer to think of a man who had danced with her under the moonlight in the parking lot of a bar. As soon as she’d arrived home that night, she had downloaded the Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow song and had listened to it every night since. Each time she played it, she would close her eyes and think of his kiss.
What had made him walk away? She’d had plenty of time since that night to think about it, and had decided it had something to do with a woman and a picture. After those lyrics played, he’d tensed, and his whole demeanor had changed. Was he married? Had a girlfriend, or broken up with one? It was useless to speculate, and the question would never be answered as she’d never see him again.
Stupid her, she’d even whispered his name late at night in the solitude of her home. Ryan. She was going to stop thinking about him, stop playing the song, and most of all stop saying his name just to feel it rolling across her tongue.
“We’ll need a medic on this one,” said Logan Kincaid, the owner of K2 Special Services, and Ryan’s former SEAL commander.
Ryan was ready to get back in the action. He’d come to work at K2 two months earlier, and was happy to be reunited with his old SEAL team. They were all at the conference table except for two. Evan Prescott had been killed on an operation in Afghanistan, and the other missing team member, Cody Roberts, a.k.a. Dog, would be coming onboard in a few months.
The other two at the table were Jake Buchanan—Kincaid’s brother-in-law—and Jamie Turner. There was no one Ryan trusted more than the men in that room. He settled in for what would likely be a long session.
The thing he liked most about working at K2 was that they planned the operations, not some behind-the-lines officer who may or may not have ever stepped onto a battlefield. He studied the map, focusing on the city of St. Petersburg. Then his gaze traveled over to Helsinki, Finland, a distance of about 185 miles as the crow flew. Wouldn’t be easy getting into Russia, but by staging the operation in Helsinki, they wouldn’t have to worry about getting shot at before they crossed the border. Once inside Russia, different story, but he’d take that any day over returning to Afghanistan.
“What’s the latest on the daughter?” he asked.
Kincaid thumped a finger on his tablet and scanned the screen. “From what the medical specialist said, she won’t last more than six months without a transplant. A congenital heart defect means she was born with the problem, right?”
Ryan nodded. “Yep. I’ll need to meet with the doctor and find out what to expect and what particular medicines I need to have with me.” He took a sip of coffee as his mind assembled a list of questions.
“The wife’s seven months pregnant.”
It took a second for Kincaid’s words to sink in. Ryan jerked his gaze to the boss. “What?”
Jamie Turner drew something on a piece of paper and turned it toward Ryan. “Pregnant. Means she’s going to have a baby.”
“You could use some art lessons,” Ryan said at seeing the stick figure with a baby bump. Not taking offense, as everyone on the team got off on going at each other, he rolled his eyes. “I know what pregnant means. How come this is the first I’m hearing this?”
“Because we just found out today,” Jake, the lead on the operation, said. He crumbled up the stick drawing and hit Jamie with it, right between his eyes. “Sugar’s turned your brain to mush.”
Jamie—Saint to his teammates because he was about as pure as they came—grinned. “We’re pregnant.”
“Jesus, Saint, maybe you should move up the wedding,” Kincaid said.
“Nah, she and Maria have everything planned. I just keep my mouth shut and show up wherever they tell me. Yesterday, I tasted six cakes ’cause they said my input was required; then they picked the one they both agreed on, a fancy raspberry something or other. Never mind I wanted chocolate.” He sat back, his grin growing wider. “We’re having a baby. Who cares what kind of cake we have at our wedding?”
Jake, Maria’s husband, snorted. “Damn me, Saint. You’re my new hero. My wife decided we’d wait one more year.”
Ryan tried not to envy his friends. Jake, once known to the team as Romeo, was married to the one woman who had been able to tame him. Kincaid was married to Evan Prescott’s widow and happier than Ryan had ever seen the man in all the years he’d known him. Now Jamie was not only about to get married to one of the hottest women Ryan had ever known, but they were having a baby.
He envied them all. They had what he’d once thought was his. As it had turned out, none of it was. Not even the baby. Before he did something stupid like upending the table, he stood. “Pit stop. Back in a minute.”
He walked out and headed down the hall to the bathroom. After dowsing his face in cold water, he lifted his head and stared into the mirror. All he saw was a man who barely made it through each day without returning to Boston and tearing the town apart until he found his wife’s lover.
Why had she turned to someone else? Why hadn’t she tried to talk to him if she was having doubts? Had she ever loved him? Unanswered questions. They were killing him.
Not once had he cheated on her. Had never been tempted to. Kathleen had been his one and only from the day he’d first met her. It had never occurred to him he wasn’t hers. Not until he’d read the autopsy report and learned she was two months pregnant. Big problem that. He’d been deployed for eight months. Unless she had been the latest miracle of Immaculate Conception, she’d definitely cheated. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t forgive her.
Maybe she’d been lonely. Maybe she’d met someone and fallen in love. Maybe—to hell with the maybes, there was no excuse. Nothing that could make him forgive her. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Taking deep breaths, he formed an image of a lockbox in his mind and willed all thoughts of Kathleen into it, then closed the door and turned the key.
It wasn’t foolproof. Sometimes she managed to escape, but usually in the deepest hours of the night, bringing back the anger and questions. It was all the talk of pregnant women that had him hanging over the sink gulping air in the middle of the day.
As his breathing slowed, he splashed more cold water onto his face, then wiped it dry with paper towels. With his rage back under control, he returned to the conference room. As he took his seat, he grabbed the dossier on the targets and began reading.
“You okay, Doc?”
Ryan glanced up and met Kincaid’s eyes. “Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
The boss had a sixth sense, a unique one. He could see things others couldn’t. Not in the literal sense, but more like he always knew when something was off. Ryan had learned how to bury his emotions in the past year since Kathleen’s death, however, and he spread his arms, palms up, as if he had nothing to hide.
“Just thinking about how to get a sick girl and a pregnant woman out of Russia.”
Kincaid gave him a long stare before returning his attention to his tablet. “Here’s a brief summary of the intel we have so far. Up until a little over a year ago, Demetri Akulov was a highly placed Russian official. Then he did something to displease Putin. What that was, the CIA isn’t saying, and we don’t really care. He was banished back to his home in St. Petersburg where he’s been under guard ever since.”
“Do we know how many he’s got watching over him?” Ryan asked, glad the attention was off him.
“Two, around the clock,” Jake answered. “Same two during the day, same ones at night. They trade off at eight in the morning and eight at night.”
Ryan shook his head. “Stupid not to vary thi
ngs.”
“Yeah, but we’re not complaining.” Kincaid scrolled to another page on his tablet. “Four months ago, his daughter’s heart condition worsened, and she needs a transplant, which is being refused as apparent punishment for his sins. At some point, he managed to get word to our government that if they would promise Sasha a heart transplant he would defect, bringing all his secrets with him. Of course, that was immediately agreed to. He’ll only come, though, if his whole family is safely brought to the States. Wife, Tatyana, who we know is pregnant, Sasha, Demetri himself, and their poodle, Valentin.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Ryan said.
“About what?”
Kincaid’s expression was total innocence, but a slight twitch of his lips gave him away. The man had probably loved dropping the poodle bit on him. Note to self: get animal tranquilizers from a vet.
Ryan fell back into his seat. “Oh, I don’t know. A pregnant wife close to giving birth, a dying daughter, a damn dog. Take your pick.”
“How does a poodle say hello in Russian?” Jamie asked.
Refusing to bite, Ryan kept his mouth shut.
“I give up, how?” Jake asked.
“Beats me, but you two better find out.” At that, Jamie burst into laughter. “Rescuing a poodle,” he gasped. “You’re never going to live it down.”
That was probably true. “Swear to God, Saint, you really need to learn some dirty jokes if you ever want to amuse anyone but yourself.” For some reason, that made Jamie laugh harder, and Ryan pressed his lips together to keep from smiling.
Kincaid stood. “I’m meeting Dani and the kids for lunch. Jake has all the intel you need to plan the operation.” Halfway to the door, he turned. “There were dogs involved when I rescued Dani, but they were manly Dobermans. A poodle, though? That actually is funny.” He left then, chuckling his way out of the room.