Primed for Action

Chapter 11

The Hawk still rock ‘n’ rolled on her shocks. Emily had never seen Major Henderson miss a landing. She’d seen him land as hard when there was reason, imminent engine failure from being shot too many times perhaps, but this one he’d just buggered. That was new. The silence on the intercom from the two crew chiefs and the copilot in the rear was deafening. Apparently they’d never seen The Viper make a flat-out bad landing before either.

What was his problem anyway? She was the one being shipped out with no notice. Without her crew. Being sent away for who knew how long. Being away from Mark Henderson would be a relief.

She’d grown used to the way he was always hounding her to be better. As if she’d never measure up to a male flyer. That wasn’t the problem.

The first-ever verbal compliment wasn’t the problem either. He’d only ever praised her with guy-speak. Silence. Nothing to correct, so nothing to say. There was no way she’d tell him how proud that single “nice flight” made her feel.

The real problem was how his smile had weaseled its way into her brain, making sleep impossible. And when she’d finally passed out, she’d dreamed of those soft, gray eyes.

A little distance would be a good thing. But not reassigned.

A fully kitted swabbie arrived out of the heat haze in full, flame-retardant flight-deck suit, including helmet and orange vest, and yanked open her door.

She peeled her helmet, dumped her SARVSO survival-and-gear vest on her seat as a declaration that she wasn’t going anywhere (or at least hoping she could talk command out of removing her), and cracked her flight suit down the front to her gym shorts. It was impossibly hotter on the carrier deck than inside the Hawk. Couldn’t fry an egg on the deck: it’d burn too fast. The heat pounded through her boot soles the instant they touched. She’d best get moving before the rubber melted and glued her to the spot. How could there be an ocean of water and so much heat in the same place? The carrier and its battle group lurked a hundred miles off the coast, and the desert base was over twice that in the other direction.

The swabbie waited without mincing from one searing foot to the other. Did the Navy give special training so he didn’t simply melt on the spot? Could he teach her? She was dying in shorts, t-shirt, and the wide-open flight suit.

He led her away from her helicopter across the searing deck.

During the flight, she’d tried to ask Major Henderson what was going on. She’d seen him on the radio. All he’d done was growl. Repeating that she hadn’t requested any transfer or reassignment had elicited a true snarl. The trip proved tortuous, worse than trying to sneak past an antiaircraft battery, and she was glad to be out of the tiny cockpit packed solid with Henderson’s anger.

Well, to hell with him. She hadn’t done anything, whether or not he believed her.

As the swabbie led her up the first ladder of the carrier’s six-story command and control tower, she started thinking about what lay ahead of her instead of behind. Going to see the carrier’s captain would be bad enough, but the admiral in charge of the carrier group would be right by his elbow.

Rear Admiral James Parker had shared her father’s dinner table often enough that she’d have counted him a friend, if she wasn’t a mere Army captain busy screwing up her career on national television. That had to be what got her sent down.

SOAR had been born in secrecy. They’d entered the public eye when they’d shown their strength in Grenada and their weaknesses in Mogadishu. But they still tried to remain as low profile as possible. Of the eight helos on the take-down of Bin Laden, the news had only mentioned three. And not a word about SOAR. In thirty years they’d run thousands of missions that no one heard about or ever would. SOAR helicopters provided Special Operations Forces operators with the world’s best nighttime transport and protection.

The Night Stalkers shunned news as much as the Navy SEALs, and she’d hit front and center on CNN. Was that the problem? What i***t in command had authorized the interview?

She hadn’t considered that.

The moment she did, she knew the answer. Her mother would see it as a step up the social ladder. If she couldn’t be in the same room as her daughter for five minutes in a row without them fighting, at least she could garner a nice social-circle boost out of Emily’s unique position. And her mother had the ears of senators, newsmen, and who knew who else. A CNN piece that had nothing to do with flying or secret operations would be an easy sell for her.

“Damn!”

“Sir?”

“Nothing.” She waved the swabbie on and trudged behind, the doomed woman being led to the gallows.

Her mother hadn’t been trying to raise her own social status. Helen Cartwright Magnuson Beale had her sights set on a different primary mission: how to best prepare her daughter for Operation Marriage. Easy. Get her a near-enough-naked spot on CNN prime-time news. She’d probably…no, she’d certainly been in the editing room.

certainlyThat’s why there was nothing about flying, not one shot in her uniform or flight gear, though they’d taken enough footage of that too. That would hurt her daughter’s marriage prospects.

She’d surely sold it as a “good PR piece” but, as was typical for Helen Beale, every statement had two meanings, except when it had three. Good PR for the Army and the news station, and good PR for getting her difficult daughter a husband of sufficient stature. One who would force her to stop “that foolish flying” and taking “those unnecessary risks.”

The swabbie guided her toward the Captain’s office on the fifth floor of the carrier’s tower as if Emily didn’t know the way. She could trip him down a ladder or two and go hide in the bilge until the whole mess blew over. A lot of places to hide on a boat a quarter-mile long, near enough a football field wide, and eighteen decks deep.

But if she hid the rest of her life, she’d never have a chance to strangle her mother. And she’d thought that poor laptop had shown the worst of the problem.

When she’d gotten back to the tent after the meeting with Henderson and Michael, she’d found that her crew had dug a pit in the sand directly where it had landed and were waiting for her arrival to bury the machine’s remains, with full honors. Most of the guys had put on their dress uniforms.

She’d cast the first handful of dirt, Big Bad John, in a big deep voice that would have sounded good on a Southern Baptist hellfire preacher, had offered comforting words to a soldier who had served its country well but fallen while honorably performing its duty. Archie had found a tiny American flag and presented it to her in proper triangle-folded form smaller than a silver dollar. She’d have to tell the boys they’d done good. If she saw them again.

But the problem hadn’t stopped there. It had taken on a life of its own. And now she had to face the backlash.

She and the swabbie climbed the twenty-jillionth ladder-steep stair, entered a steel corridor that looked no different than the last one, and stood before a wooden door like any other except for the nameplate. “Captain.” Not “Captain Rick Tully.” Only his rank.

Getting a firm grip on her mother’s throat wasn’t going to happen any time soon, so she’d better shuffle the thought aside and concentrate. There was music to face right here, and she’d bet it was closer to gangster rap than string quartet.