22
The takeoff still sounded odd to Connie’s ears. The new rotors and blades had made the Black Hawk sound different. Over a hundred yards away, they’d be essentially unidentifiable directionally. The noise signature had been changed drastically, and large caps over the rotor hubs had significantly decreased their radar signature.
“Half-stealth,” the Sikorsky techs had called it. There hadn’t been time for a major overhaul—replacement of all the skin panels, radar-deflecting enclosures for the weapons, wheels that folded into the fuselage, and so forth—but the Hawks were now significantly quieter. She liked that.
That they’d only taken the time to install half-stealth said that a real mission wasn’t merely pending, but rather that it was pending soon. A hot one.
“Okay, Vengeance.” Majo
