Primed for Action

Chapter 8

“Captain.” Major Henderson’s voice made it a command to follow. As he turned, the laptop’s plastic shell crumbled beneath his heel with a low moan. Stepping out of the tent into the driving sun, he provided no sign that he would ever break a sweat.

Emily tossed her helmet to Big Bad John, her crew chief from Oklahoma farm country. The nickname had been inevitable. Six foot four and powerfully muscled—he looked the cliché of big, bad, black dude. He was also the best crew chief and mechanic she’d ever met, and loved nothing more than telling a good story to get everyone laughing.

She hustled after the Major, out of the tent and across the sandy landing field.

The most common theory placed Major Henderson’s mother as part snake and his father as pure viper. The fastest, most dangerous viper, everyone added quickly. There were debates on exactly what breed that would be.

Others claimed that he hadn’t been born but rather hatched.

But she’d flown with him the first two weeks before being given her own bird, and she’d seen the two small pictures he tucked in his window every flight. Once, when he’d been out of the bird, she’d leaned in to inspect them more closely.

One was of a young boy wearing mirrored shades, exactly like his highly decorated SEAL commander father who had Mark tucked under his arm.

And the other, more recent. It was of Mark and his parents, all mounted on seriously large and majestic horses, and all three wearing mirrored shades. He and his father could be copies of each other, except Mark was darker, his features more sharply defined. She could see where Mark had gotten that and his straight, dark hair. His mother was a tall Native American woman whose cascade of black hair flowed to her waist. Above them arched a carved sign that looked fresh-carved new and proclaimed: “Henderson’s Ranch, Highfalls, MT.” They were as stunning specimens of the human race as their mounts were of the equine.

Outsiders teased their company about being the Black Adders because their company so fixated on the Viper’s nickname. Henderson’s pilots took it as a compliment and painted winged, striking adders on their helos, all sporting Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean smile. About half the winged tattoos worn by the pilots in the tent depicted striking adders, though only Crazy Tim, to no one’s surprise, had placed the classic, beak-nosed Mr. Bean face permanently on his skin.

Major Henderson wasn’t merely the commander of the 5th Battalion D Company SOAR. He was also the most decorated, toughest son of a b***h in the 160th Air Regiment. And, despite her first impression at the airport, he wasn’t much nicer on the ground. But he had the only thing that mattered in covert helicopter operations—he was the best.

A pilot needed an unblemished five-year flying record before they were allowed to fill out a SOAR application. Only the most exceptional fliers were invited to Interview Week at the 160th—an event that few survived with a residual shred of ego intact.

And of the few who made it through the pearly gates of the back lot of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, over half flunked out of the eight months of initial training. The year and a half of advanced training afterward had nearly ruined her. To command? Emily couldn’t imagine what they did to a person before they could become a company commander.

command?Stories of Major Mark Henderson abounded on all sides. One told that he’d taken on a battalion of the Republican Guard during Operation Iraqi Freedom, with only his bird and his wingman’s, and won.

Emily had assumed that they were telling the newbie tall tales. But the crew stuck to the tale of two lonely helos, totaling eight men, against five hundred troops armed with the best the Iraqis could buy from Russia. Around Major Mark Henderson anything seemed possible.

Another told of the time he’d been smashed down a hundred miles behind unfriendly lines and decided to use his time awaiting rescue to blow up a few military targets. He and his three-man crew had done it running from hidey-hole to hidey-hole with a jury-rigged, four-hundred-pound, nineteen-round rocket pod torn off his helo in the crash. His actions supposedly opened a whole section of the battlefront.

Then there were the real whoppers. Tall tales that edged well past surreal—including one which Emily knew from personal experience to be completely accurate. And to this day she counted herself lucky to be alive after that mission.

realShe caught up with Major Henderson around the midfield line. Their base camp was an old Pakistan soccer stadium. Tier upon tier of concrete benches coated in flaking whitewash ringed the field. Too arid to sustain grass, the field now sprouted with fifteen helicopters of varying sizes and capabilities.

Black Hawks, the hammer force, ranged down near the enemy’s goal line.

A flock of Little Birds sprouted about midfield ready to deliver clusters of four SOF operators to anywhere that they were needed fast. The birds were so small that the soldiers didn’t sit inside them, but rather on fold-down benches three to a side. A short step to ground or a thirty-meter fast-rope slide down into a zone too hot to land.

A pair of twin-rotor Chinooks, half-hidden in heat haze and thermal shimmer, lurked around the home team’s goal. The playing field was owned and operated by a well-oiled, three-company mash-up of the 1st and 5th SOAR battalions.

Sentries from the 75th Rangers were perched along the topmost row of the stadium looking outward. Dust rose from every footstep and hung in the still, breathless air for hours.

Emily’s legs were long enough to match Mark’s stride. It was always nice, the quiet moments when they walked side-by-side. The same kind of harmony she’d felt on that very first day. Finally FMQ—Full Mission Qualified—she’d come through the gate, bag over her shoulder, and he hadn’t so much as nodded or smiled. He pivoted easily on his heel and landed in perfect sync with her as they headed toward parking. Like old friends or family so close that no words were needed.

The Major continued to move steadily across the dusty field toward his small command center set up by the barricaded entrance tunnel at the home-team end. Why had he interfered in the tent? She could have laughed it off.

Could have.

Wouldn’t have.

Maybe the Major had been right to shut down the guys’ teasing, but now there’d be a bigger wall of separation to knock down. As if being a female pilot in a combat zone wasn’t three strikes already.

They reached the end of the field together, like a couple out enjoying a quiet stroll. She shook her head to shed the bizarre image. Not with her commanding officer, and certainly not with a man as nasty and dangerous as The Viper.

He stepped onto the sizzling earth of the running track that surrounded the field. They were in Chinook country now. The Black Hawks and Little Birds were but vague suggestions in the morning’s heat shimmer. Down here at the command end, the monstrous Chinook workhorses squatted, their twin rotors sagging like the feathers of an improbably ugly ostrich. These birds looked far too big to fly, yet they could move an entire platoon of fifty troops in full gear, or a half platoon along with their ATVs, motorcycles, and rubber boats.

“I’m sorry, sir. I know I shouldn’t have discharged a firearm in camp. I’ll replace the computer, but I’m a pilot and those news guys didn’t…”

He stopped and turned to look at her. Not a word.

“I just…” She looked small and insignificant in his mirrored shades. Twice.

“Captain?” His voice flat and neutral.

“I… Dammit! I’m a pilot, sir. They had no right. No bloody, blasted stupid right to do that to me. I—”

“Don’t care.”

Her tiny, twinned reflection dropped her jaw.

Then Major Mark Henderson did the strangest thing. He reached up a meat cleaver-sized hand and pulled his glasses down his nose. Now she knew she was screwed. She’d never be able to joke with the guys again about the Major not having eyes.

Steel gray. As hard as his body. The most dangerous-looking viper she’d ever seen. He was but two inches taller, yet he loomed above her like a storm cloud.

Then he smiled. She stumbled back a step. The smile reached his eyes and turned them the soft, inviting gray of a summer sunrise.

“Do you think I give one good goddamn about a lousy piece of hardware or about what CNN thinks? In my command, only one thing matters: are you the best flying? Period.” His voice was firm, but soft and friendly. Almost…teasing?

Then he shoved his glasses back in place, and the smile clicked off in the same motion. He turned once more for the tent.

She tried to follow. She told her feet to move—they didn’t.

Two thoughts rooted her in place.

First, had The Viper actually smiled at her? Been pleasant? It would prove he was human, which didn’t seem much more likely than him pulling down his sunglasses.

Second, she was lightheaded from his simple gaze. Not ravished or raked over like that news camera. Those gray eyes, especially when he smiled… What would she have to do to have them look at her like that again?

That got her head back in gear.

How would Major Mark Henderson like to have his whole career boiled down to “the sexiest major flying?” For that one brief instant it had been absolutely true.

She got her feet moving again.

He’d probably love it—he was a guy, after all.

By the time Emily followed him into the command tent, Major Henderson sat at a small table spread with a large map for sector 62-15. He waved her to a stool.

Her butt hit the seat before she noticed the third man at the table.

The D-boys could do that. The ghosts of Special Operations Forces. There were Rangers, then Green Berets and SEALs, then there was Delta Force. No one knew how many. Few of them spoke to anyone outside their own unit. She’d once heard someone call the man now seated at the table “Michael”—once.

She’d flown support for him several times and never found out his rank, or confirmed that was his name, first or last. But one thing was certain: if he sat at the table, tonight’s mission would not be dull.

“Operational Engagement,” Henderson pointed at a narrow notch on the topographic map, “O. E. Mole.”

Emily inspected where his finger indicated. The elevation lines crowded so tightly together that the valley walls must be vertical cliffs. He spun a satellite photo in front of her. Those large hands, light and fast. She’d always been partial to big, strong hands. The way they could hold—

She shook her head to clear the image and focused on the photo.

Classic Hindu Kush, the mountains of northeast Afghanistan. The desert lay below, desperately dry and hot in the wide valley. But as you climbed the cliffs, holly and cedar trees cluttered the skyline. In places, because of the branches, flying down often appeared safer than flying up, except then the enemy on the high, forested ridge could shoot down onto you.

Helicopters didn’t appreciate being shot any more than the next aircraft, but they definitely didn’t appreciate being shot at from above. Most of the armor ran below and up the sides. There was also no way to return fire without shooting your own rotor blades.

“Recon Team Mouse identified a cave high in this notch. They have reason to believe there is intelligence inside that cave that must be recovered intact, along with several high-level unfriendlies we’d rather interrogate than kill. This is tonight’s target.”

He pointed at Michael. “Three Little Birds will take twelve of his men to the back side of the ridge. It will take Delta a few hours to penetrate the site, so I’m having Bronson set up a FARP twenty miles out where we can top off fuel.” Bronson could handle a forward arming and refueling point, so that worked for her.

But twelve Delta Force operators? If you had a crisis on your hands, you sent four of them, a disaster, six or seven. A full squadron of twelve told her exactly how important this target had been deemed by Command.

twelve“Where am I?”

“You and I…” Both DAP Hawks. It had been weeks since a mission called for both of their heavy weapons platforms in the same place. “And Clay’s pair of MH-60K transport birds. We run a noisy search-and-destroy here,” Henderson put a finger on the map at the far end of the valley, “and here.”

Mark watched her carefully as he laid out the mission, indicating key features of the terrain on the map and the tactical requirements.

Captain Emily Beale showed no surprise, no hesitation. She captured the entire scope in a single gulp and looked ready to go.

Colonel Michael Gibson, commander of the Delta Force group on the base, had expressed concern about assigning Beale to a key role.

Every bit of Mark’s training agreed. Except for one minor point: the way she flew. Sure, he’d heard the reports from her trainers at Fort Campbell. Even talked to her CO back in the Screaming Eagles, the 101st Airborne Assault. Hearing about the first woman who had SOAR-qualified was one thing; flying with her was quite another.

For two weeks, he’d flown her into hell as his copilot and she hadn’t flinched. For the six weeks since he’d assigned her to her own bird, he’d feed her increasingly nasty missions. Her success ratio was astonishing. And when paired with Lieutenant Stevenson, who she’d insisted on having as her copilot, they were already the sharpest team he had. They’d flown together since West Point and it showed.

As far as Mark could tell, Emily and Archibald Stevenson weren’t an item. That was good because of the fraternization rules in the Army Code of Conduct. Maybe there truly was no spark between them, only incredible flying.

Michael had acquiesced to Mark’s judgment, but Mark could see him still observing Beale carefully.

Mark looked at the trim blonde and did his best not to think about what else he was feeling. He almost hadn’t assigned her to this mission for a quite different reason than the military stakes.

Mark didn’t want to risk her on a dangerous mission. Could hardly stand to assign her where the personal stakes were so high.

To be fair to her, that was the factor that finally tipped the assignment in her favor rather than against. His mother had raised him better than that. In his command, there never had been and never would be any bias other than skill. A general’s kid or a rabid fundamentalist didn’t matter. He was known for that, which had probably factored into Captain Beale being assigned to his unit.

He’d live by that, even though it would risk Emily Beale instead of protecting her.

And he’d not think about why his instinct to protect her ran so strong.

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