Athena Force: Books 1-6

by Justine Davis, Amy J. Fetzer, Katherine Garbera, Meredith Fletcher, Catherine Mann

  “That bitch.” She wondered why she hadn’t thought to ask him about an ex in his past. Hadn’t Diana hinted Diego had been married? “What she did was inexcusable. You deserved better than that.”

  Diego shrugged. “Well, I was an ass…and an idiot. I didn’t believe what my buds tried to tell me until I saw it with my own eyes—her in a bar parking lot on the hood of a car with her dress hiked up around her hips. She was quite clear on the fact it was totally consensual.”

  Seeing her plastered against the side of Bridges’s car would have been a hellish replay for him. “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Nearly three years ago.”

  Which would have been shortly after his recovery from the accident. The bitch had left him because he couldn’t fly. Josie knew it with a certainty that fired her righteous indignation over the injustice of it all. He’d lost so much in a short time.

  Josephine gave up the fight against forgiveness.

  He continued to study the tops of his dusty boots. “I would have sworn it didn’t bother me anymore. I got most of my anger out during the six months I was too damn afraid to have sex for fear she’d brought some disease back to our bed. Once the last round of lab results came back, I got rip-roaring drunk and—”

  “I get the picture.” Or rather, didn’t want that picture anywhere near her head. Yeah, jealousy bit the big one.

  He shifted his focus from the floor to Josie, eyes direct, hard and still more than a hint angry. “When I saw the two of you, I went a little nuts again. Not your fault and I apologize.”

  Yet even with all that baggage, he’d helped her and been fair in not assuming she would welcome Bridges. Diego had anticipated Bridges’s next move, even offered to help her. In light of what she’d learned about Bridges from Kayla, how could she not admire Diego’s grassroots honesty and integrity?

  She touched his arm lightly. “You’re forgiven.”

  “That easily?” His muscles tensed under her fingers.

  “Oh, somehow I don’t think it was all that easy.”

  He sketched his knuckles across her cheekbone. “You’re too good, Josie Lockworth.”

  A few days ago she would have invited him to help her be bad, then. But while she’d forgiven him, she wasn’t ready to hop into bed with the guy. Before, it had been about sex. Now the whole relationship had somehow become more complicated by his personal revelation.

  Her hand fell away from his arm. “Let’s hope I’m more than good when it comes to flying this aircraft. Time to roll, Morel.”

  Josie settled behind the controls in the windowless room, preflight complete. After today’s mission there wouldn’t be any question for the oversight committee but that her test project was fast on its way to being an unqualified success. Furthermore, her unspoken fears that maybe, just maybe, her mother had been wrong would be laid to rest.

  Would that send Diego out of her life? Or only out of her work world, since he did live in the area? An hour wasn’t that far, although it had been far enough to keep their paths from crossing in the past.

  She needed to shuffle questions aside. None of it mattered if she didn’t get through this flight. Thanks to Mike “Small-minded” Bridges, she was stuck with this last-minute change. She knew the mission inside out, due to the practice runs she’d made to insure the plan was pristine for Craig to pilot from the remote-control booth. Frustration over being on the ground today churned anew.

  Josie adjusted the fit of her headset earpieces, then the small boom mike by her mouth. “Cowboy, how’s your mojo today?”

  “This filly is ready to go, P.C.” Craig Wagner’s voice flowed through loud and strong. Enthusiastic. Pumped to fly. “Say, could we change the call sign of the control box to Bunkhouse to go with my new name here? I kinda like the whole cowboy theme.”

  “I’ll think about it.” His enthusiasm was infectious, darn him. She settled deeper into her seat. “Ready for power?”

  “Roger, ready for power out here.”

  Josie flipped switches, ran further checklists with the sensor operator, Don Zeljak. Displays and gauges hummed to life.

  When her pilot-view camera on the nose of the craft materialized, the screen filled with a man in a Stetson on top of his headset. Afternoon rays sheened the image.

  Laughing, she keyed up her radio. “Cowboy, you may be getting a little too into character.”

  “Gotta have fun with this.” The pilot struck a six-gun-drawing pose with a vast desert backdrop. “We may be the last of the cowboys out here.”

  “Roger that.” And the sooner they got this mission complete, the sooner she could breathe easy again. “Now put on your helmet. Ready for engine start whenever you are.”

  “Copy, give me a few minutes to change headgear and strap into the saddle.” He disappeared from view, minutes passing. “Okeydoke, P.C., all set to go.”

  Josie called back, “Prop clear?”

  “Roger. Prop clear.”

  Josie flipped the starter and advanced the throttle. Her engine instruments began a steady climb until all indications entered green bands. “All indications good here. How’re you doing up there, Cowboy?”

  “Systems nominal. Feels like this baby is ready to slip the surly bonds.”

  Josie switched radio frequencies. “Palmdale ground, Pred two-zero, spot seven, ready to taxi.”

  “Copy Pred two-zero, altimeter is three-zero-zero-one. Winds are from the north at ten knots. Cleared to taxi to runway twenty-five. Hold short of the active. Cleared local area VFR.”

  Josie repeated back the required information to the ground controller in the tower responsible for deconflicting aircraft on the ground. The Predator proceeded to taxi toward the runway, holding at the hammerhead. “Palmdale Tower, Pred two-zero ready for take off.”

  Finally the tower responded, “Pred two-zero, cleared for take off. Altimeter three-zero-zero-one. Cleared test profile altitudes.”

  Advancing the throttles, Josie guided the aircraft around and onto the runway. “Ready to ride, Cowboy?”

  “You bet. Put the spurs to her.”

  Josie swept her instruments one last time, then ran the throttles up to the stops. The aircraft advanced, sped, the front camera providing a straight-ahead view. She tapped the rudder pedals a touch here and there to stay centerline, ever aware of Craig, strapped into the saddle seat, out in the open.

  At rotation speed, she gently raised the nose, her camera switching from desert to sky. She set her climb angle and began instrument cross-checks while Master Sergeant Zeljak smoothly did the same. Zeljak was a great old guy with solid test knowledge honed in the early days of stealth. He had hands to trust.

  The test profile had a planned level-off at three thousand feet for final checkout of the new instrumentation before climbing to the nine-thousand-foot test altitude. Once she leveled at three thousand feet, she allowed herself an exhale of relief. Most accidents happened at take off and landing. She eyed the screen full of sky. Clouds puffed past.

  God, she wanted to be there. No matter what doubts she may have had lately about her profession and future, she did love to fly. She knew if she turned to Diego, she would find his gaze glued to the screen image, hunger in his eyes.

  The sky image swooped upward, fast, steep. What the hell? She glanced down at her hand, doing exactly what she told it to on the stick, a slow and steady climb. Not this screaming ascent that had taken over.

  A scan of the instruments showed the aircraft climbing at too high an angle. Her throat closed. She called on training to override niggling panic. She pushed the throttle all the way forward and lowered the nose.

  Nothing happened.

  All right. No sweat. That’s why they had secondary override controls on the craft to abort the flight and bring the Predator home. Craig would have some piloting fun now and the craft wouldn’t go crashing into anywhere dangerous, risking lives on the ground. “Cowboy, assume control of the craft. My controls have malfunctioned.”

&n
bsp; A single crackle over the headset echoed before, “Roger. Taking control.”

  Craig’s heavy exhales echoed over the radio waves. Josie kept her gaze locked on the dials, the climbing altitude. Too steep. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry, Craig.

  “Crap, P.C.,” Wagner barked. “Mine aren’t working either.”

  No freaking way. This shouldn’t happen. Didn’t happen.

  Screw calm. She shouted into the headset, “Get the hell off that thing. Now!”

  “I’m fixing to, P.C.” Panic lent a shake to his tone.

  Heavy breaths huffed through the audio waves while Josie scrambled to regain control of the Predator. She felt Diego at her back, leaning, watching. Even the seasoned sensor operator beside her tensed. She jammed code after code into the system and nothing changed.

  Memories sledgehammered her brain of being a little girl on the edge of the runway, so proud of her mama’s work, then seeing it all explode into a ball of flames. She could still smell burning flesh.

  Her breakfast revolted upward. She swallowed it down through sheer will alone.

  “Diego,” she snapped without looking up. “If you have any ideas, speak.”

  “Bailing out’s the right call,” he answered, fast, clipped. “No question. There’s nothing else. The whole computer system’s crashing.”

  Airspeed bled from the craft. Dials fluctuated.

  The Predator stalled.

  Her heart pounded denial in her ears. The aircraft rolled over, lurching into an inverted spin toward the ground. Her screen, as well as the sensor operator’s multiple screens, all showed variations of the same image.

  Tumbling sky.

  Oh, God. “Cowboy, did you get off?” Please, please be long gone with your parachute inflated.

  No answer came but the roar of winds and whisper of her prayers.

  Her hands sped over the controls as if she could force her will into the malfunctioning equipment. She stared, riveted by the spinning camera image. Then at the altimeter.

  The screen went blank.

  Chapter 12

  Whomp. The explosion rocked the ground, rattling the walls and up through her boots.

  Josie tore off her headset, blasting out of her chair on the way to the door. Already she could hear fire-truck sirens screaming outside.

  She started a nonstop prayer chant.

  Diego jammed open doors ahead of her so she could continue to run unfettered down the hall, around corners. She accepted now that she would see flames, a crashed craft, but none of that mattered as long as she also saw a parachute drifting down.

  Panting, she dashed through the last door out onto the runway.

  Black smoke bloomed from the cracked desert about a hundred yards from the cement’s end. Fire trucks, security police, an ambulance all raced across the packed earth. She scanned the horizon for the speck that would prove Craig had made it off in time, even looked behind her, praying that for once her eagle eyes were wrong.

  She flagged a military Suburban and crawled inside, Diego still less than a second behind her. The door slammed behind him as the tires squealed against pavement.

  Diego’s hand dropped onto her shoulder. She shrugged off his hand and comfort, because, if she took it she would have to step into that next realization and into a reality she wasn’t ready to accept.

  For some absurd reason, she kept thinking Craig couldn’t be dead. There hadn’t been time to have his new call-sign naming ceremony so he could officially be called “Cowboy” instead of “Opie” from The Andy Griffith Show, a reference to his clean-cut looks.

  Sirens and wind swirled through her brain. She kept searching the sky through the window and found…

  Nothing.

  Boom.

  The first reverberation of the twenty-one-gun salute vibrated from Diego’s feet, up his spine and through his memory. Seven gunmen, firing three times in tribute to a fallen comrade in arms.

  Captain Craig Wagner’s funeral mirrored the one Diego had attended three years ago. Back then, he’d left the hospital against orders, stumbled into his uniform and somehow managed to stand unwavering while they buried his wingman.

  Today, Diego wore the uniform again, hand still snapped to his forehead for the twenty-one-gun salute.His uniform fit looser, but he’d resurrected the precise creases for the pants. Shine for the shoes. Alignment for his rows of ribbons.

  Wind skimmed his hair along the sides beneath his hat, hair freshly shorn to regulation out of respect for the funeral, for the uniform. For the man being buried.

  Boom.

  Now, as then, planes roared overhead, flying the missing-man formation, signifying that one of their own had been lost. Through it all, Josie stood tall in her military precision and pressed blue uniform. Dry-eyed. Stoic. He’d expected as much. The emotional crash would come later. Hard. Fast. And unrecoverable even years later.

  The crowd was packed with uniformed service members. Wagner’s death sent far-reaching shock waves through the air force testing community. Every one of them almost certainly imagined themselves strapped to that aircraft, unable to cut loose in time to parachute.

  Even General Quincy had attended. Diego refused to look over at Mike Bridges. None of them needed extra crap messing with their heads right now.

  Diego knew there wasn’t a way to get over carrying the weight of another person’s death on your shoulders. Nothing could replace what a widow and her children had lost.

  Boom.

  Flanked by her parents, Wagner’s wife clutched a folded flag to her chest above her pregnant belly, a flag that had minutes prior draped her husband’s coffin. A toddler girl gripped her mother’s dress in one fist and a basset hound Beanie Baby in the other.

  Lowering his salute, Diego adjusted his hat. That other funeral washed over him again, threatening vertigo on the ground. But that was in his past. This was about Josie’s present. He’d patched his wounds alone.

  He would make damned sure Josie didn’t have to do the same.

  Josie dropped into the front seat of her car. Alone. Oh, she knew Diego was only steps behind her, but she couldn’t face all the emotions that knotted whenever she spoke to him. Her control frayed by the second. How odd to feel so numb yet fragile all at once—an alien emotion for a woman used to fighting the world head-on.

  She’d felt his presence throughout the afternoon, looming there quietly behind her. Yet somehow that support made her eyes burn and she would not crumble.

  Although she had almost lost it when he’d walked into the church. Seeing Diego in his full dress uniform with his stacks of hard-earned ribbons—and, oh, God, his beautiful hair gone—somehow that had broken her heart all over again. She barely recognized him, had in fact almost scanned right over him at first. Everything was different, and she wanted more than anything to rewind a few days.

  Four, to be exact.

  Eyes on her rearview mirror, she watched him close in on her Mustang while a few desert trees rustled overhead. Even his walk now fine-tuned that military essence he’d never totally lost. The even steps clipped with more exactness as if the shined shoes had retrained his feet.

  She gripped her steering wheel in white-knuckled fists. “Diego? Thank you for being here, but I can’t talk to you today.”

  “Well, fine then,” he drawled, and at least sounded like himself inside that crisp uniform. “We won’t talk, but you’re not driving. Slide on over.”

  Hadn’t she made herself clear? Could this man be so dense? Or was she? Heaven knows she had been in a fog, running on fumes and autopilot since realizing Craig hadn’t made it off the Predator. Her Predator. The ride she should have taken to test the modifications she’d ordered. Had her insistence on proving her mother right cost Craig his life? Oh, God, she was going to be sick.

  Pressing her hand to her stomach, Josie worked down bile again. She wouldn’t dishonor her fallen friend by puking in the cemetery.

  Who was she kidding? Diego was right. She wasn’t in any shape to drive.<
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  She dared a look up at him, his face all strong angles that somehow seemed older and even harder without the wild hair. “You really don’t want to talk? You just want to see me home?”

  He swung wide her door. “I’ve been wanting to drive this car since you gave my Harley a run for its money across that dried-up lake bed. Now move on over.”

  “What about your bike? You can’t leave it.” She offered up a token last effort at arguing even though her heart wasn’t in it.

  “I left it at the base chapel and caught a ride here. It’s safe there.”

  He’d planned to go with her from the start.

  His thoughtfulness and concern flicked warmth along the iciness inside her. She shifted her legs out of the car. No way could she scoot over to the passenger seat in her pencil-straight uniform skirt, especially not when her every move felt like swimming through peanut butter.

  She circled the hood while Diego took off his uniform jacket. He folded the coat in half lengthwise and draped it on the backseat then unhooked the tie from his starched shirt, transforming the service dress uniform into regular blues.

  Gravel crunched under her military, low-heeled pumps all the way to the passenger side. She removed her own jacket and placed it on top of his in back, a somehow intimate mingling that brought an unwelcome shiver.

  Josie settled into the embrace of the leather bucket seat. How strange that her senses were so in tune to the sound of cars lining to leave, the rustle of wind in the cemetery trees. The sickening smell of graveside flowers. The urge to hurl.

  And yet she couldn’t “feel” a thing.

  “That’ll come later,” Diego said from behind the wheel, tucking on sunglasses and apparently reading her mind.

  “What?”

  “The letdown, the rush of emotions,” he answered as he pulled out onto the road. “You’re numb now. Be grateful and hang on to it for a while longer to give your body a chance to rest.”