The Night Is Mine

Chapter 6

6

The swabbie delivered two sharp knocks on the Captain’s door, gaining Emily a call to enter. He swung open the door, dropped to a parade rest so lazy that it bordered on insolent, and shut the door behind her as soon as she’d passed in.

The air-conditioned chill of the office hammered against her sweat-soaked chest through the open flight suit. A quick glance down as she slammed to attention precisely three steps into the room revealed that, well, way too much was revealed.

Too late to do anything about it.

She snapped a salute as if she were in Class-As with a spit shine on her shoes that she could see to brush her hair in. Not scuffed boots that hadn’t seen a cloth in a month, sun-faded flight suit that was once flight-crew brown but now more of a dull tan except where it sported circles of oil-stain black, and helmet hair waving and weaving down past her sweat-stained collar.

“Captain Emily Beale reporting, sir.”

Captain Tully’s lazy salute emphasized how disheveled she looked, hardly worthy of a serious effort. Of course he sat comfortably in his office with its large oak desk, leather office chairs, and perfectly starched and creased khakis made so by some poor schmuck of a one-tour orderly. The place smelled of lemon polish. Her own office measured one bucket seat wide, exactly as long as hip to pedal, and reeked of jet fuel, cordite from spent ammunition, and sweat. Those were the good days. On the bad ones it also smelled of blood.

“Hi, Emily.”

She snapped a salute at Rear Admiral James Parker. “Hello, sir. Good to see you, sir.”

He returned the salute a less casually than the commander, but it wasn’t exactly singing with respect either.

“You’ve certainly grown up since the last time I saw you.” He had the decency not to look down her front like most guys. She’d developed two responses. If they made no comment, rare, neither did she. If they leered and went for the lame joke, she bloodied their nose but good. Usually once or twice proved sufficient to drive the message into their thick skulls.

As basic career advice, she decided not to bloody the admiral’s nose if he did start staring at her chest. For one thing, flying a helicopter would be impossible from a stockade.

“How long has it been, Captain?” The admiral’s slacks and shirt were as starched and pressed as the commander’s. The latter had returned his attention to his paperwork without as much as another glance in her direction.

“Four years, sir. When we were operating cleanup during that Sri Lankan mess, sir.” That’s when he’d personally recommended her for the Air Medal for Valor for exceptional ingenuity under pressure.

She’d been unable to fire into the rioting crowd, though they’d been perfectly comfortable shooting at her. It was against the rules to shoot up a bunch of civilians, no matter how unruly. So, she’d had her entire flight blast the crowd apart with the Hawks’ downdraft. Every time the crowd tried to reassemble, she led her four Hawks to a mere fifteen feet above street level, down tight between the buildings, easy prey if the crowd had a single decent shooter among them, and they’d literally blown the rioters apart with rotor wind and dust until they gave up.

“Sri Lanka. That’s right. You like flying the Hawk?”

“Best bird in the sky, sir!”

“At ease, soldier.”

“Thank you, sir.” Was that enough permission to zip up the flight suit before the trickle of sweat between her breasts turned into an air-conditioned icicle?

Her body answered with a clear, “No,” as instinct and years of training dropped her into parade rest, feet spread shoulder-wide and hands clasped behind her back, shoulders still back and chest out. The action pulled the flight suit wider open, but what was a girl to do? At least the green tee and shorts were regulation.

“You like that cooking stuff, too?”

“Always have, sir.”

“I recall you were damn good at it.”

“Thank you, sir.” She’d cooked for him more than once at her father’s house. She’d felt far more at home in the kitchen with her parents’ French chef than she had in the museum-quality rooms of her mother’s Architectural Digest house. Domicile. Work of residential art. And her mother had been much happier to have her uncomfortable daughter out from under foot and out of the public’s social eye.

Emily learned to cook at Clarice’s knee, French toast by the time she was five, and soloed on her first apple tart at seven. It had been a complete mess, the crust singed to charcoal, but she still had a Polaroid of it on the bulletin board behind the door of her bedroom back in DC. She’d considered being a chef until the first time her father took her along for a helicopter ride. One flight and her life had been set. From that moment on, she only cared about being best at one thing, helo pilot.

“Richard,” he turned to Captain Tully. “If you ever have a chance to try her rack of lamb with white truffle sauce, do. It’s exquisite.”

The captain merely grunted without looking up from his paperwork.

“Nice of you to remember, sir.” She filled the silence.

The Admiral slid down into one of the leather armchairs. Then he waved her toward the other one.

She remained riveted to the steel plate. It was never good when a top officer wanted a lower rank to sit in his or her presence.

By the sheer brute strength gained from years of hurking ten tons of armored helo across the sky, Emily managed to wrench herself free of parade rest and sit in the chair. As she sat bolt upright on the edge of the seat, the front of the flight suit billowed outward. She grabbed at the zipper and hauled it up. So tight to her neck that her gag reflex tried to kick in, but her hands were already folded neatly in her lap, and she wasn’t going to do anything more to make herself look stupid. If possible.

“I have a special assignment for you. Indefinite time period. Completely optional, no repercussions, though I hope that you’ll consider it seriously.”

Meaning she had no choice whatsoever.