A CSAR pilot’s job was to deliver the medics within that quarter hour if possible, and get the casualty to the hospital inside the hour no matter what hell was breaking loose.
Her father had hung on for two-and-a-half hours in the Kuwaiti Desert, but there hadn’t been the assets in place to get to him sooner. Medical help other than his squad mates’ first-aid had arrived too late. That her mother had been an unmarried and, she’d soon discovered, pregnant supply sergeant, had denied her both her own military benefits and her sworn fiancé’s death benefits.
“If I can save one person who is somebody’s father, I want to be the one doing it,” Diana’s voice had gone harsh. She closed her eyes for a moment and when she swallowed hard, it hurt.
A comforting hand rested on her shoulder. To her surprise, when she opened her eyes it belonged to the laughing jerk—except now his expression was sober and sympathetic. Maybe there was a person inside there…though she wasn’t willing to bet on it.
3
Jack was pointed to the copilot’s seat. Well, he supposed that he’d earned that, though it rankled.
Diana the Wonder Woman had been sent to their simulator’s right-side pilot-in-command seat.
The Major sat in a jump seat close behind them. Master Sergeant Hamlin had settled in the chair that would control the simulator experience.
Jack settled himself in for a couple hours of boredom. Start-up, take-off, basic flight… After five years with the 10th Mountain’s Combat Aviation Brigade and two more years of Night Stalker training, you’d think he could skip all this basic crap. But nooo.
Shit.
However, knowing he had ground to make up with the Major, he settled in to do what he did best, fly.
Captain Diana Price started out with an attitude of sharp competence. She adjusted the seat and safety harness with the motions of long familiarity. He’d never flown with a woman, but she showed the signs of a skilled pilot, so he’d give her the benefit of the doubt until she had a chance to prove herself.
And there was no doubt about her commitment—not by how her voice and face had shifted. No matter how much of a showpiece she might look on the outside, she cared deeply about CSAR on the inside, and with good reason. He wished his reasons were so clear. They were just as strong, somehow, but he’d never been able to sort them out into words. Another point in Wonder Woman’s favor.
“Ready?” Major Lang-Clark asked over the simulator’s intercom.
Jack made one last visual inspection. The side-by-side pilots seats were separated by a wide bank of radio and navigation gear. That swept up into a broad, sideways dashboard that crossed in front of them and ended about chest high. On the console were six large glass screens, each the size of a tablet computer. The simulator was rigged just like the latest glass-cockpit standard which was nice—once he’d gotten used to the digital cockpit, going back to the old analog dials and gauges was always frustrating.
A couple arm’s lengths beyond the outside of the windshield was the blank screen on which would be projected their “view” during the simulated flight. Additional viewports to the Earth below were down under the console beside where his feet rested on the rudder pedals.
Collective under his left hand to control lift, and cyclic joystick rising between his legs for his right hand to control direction and speed of flight. Both controls were studded with a dozen buttons and switches. He brushed his fingers over them, now so familiar with practice that he knew them as well as he did where his nose was on his face.
He saw Diana doing the same, confirming that the unfamiliar simulator was indeed familiar. Their matching sets of controls meant that between them, they’d always have control of the aircraft, even if one or the other had to reach out to adjust something on the dash or radios.
He pulled down his helmet’s semi-transparent visor and double-checked that the head’s up display calibration was properly projected across the inside surface.
“Ready,” he and Diane spoke in almost perfect unison.
“Good. Let’s go.”
The goddamn simulator exploded.
4
Diana’s instincts took over before she could make sense of the transition.
One moment she’d been preparing to show the Major that she did indeed have the basics down solid—she’d had to prove herself so many times over the last decade that the rote routines were almost comforting with their familiarity.
The next moment, she was diving left as the audio warning system squealed in her right ear identifying an incoming attack of small caliber rifle fire from that side.
Before she could call out to Jack the Jerk, he’d nudged the cyclic just enough to shift the aim of the weapons mounted on the outside of the helo. He launched a pair of Hydra 70 rockets; their simulated streaks raced right down onto the origin point of the ground fire.
He was back off the cyclic an instant later.
Jack had integrated into the simulation so fast that he must have known what was coming. Maybe he was another trainer, had to be with the way he’d been sparring with the Major. “Mrs. Superman” indeed; as if Superwoman didn’t deserve her own name.
A battle raged overhead…and they weren’t really a part of it. Three Black Hawks and a pair of Little Birds were dodging and diving over a convoy at the far end of the narrow valley.
“CSAR 01. Two wounded, grid thirty-nine,” the Major’s voice informed her with the dispassion of a mission commander sitting in some distant command bunker.
A blink to shift her focus from inside her visor to glance down at the electronic map on the console. Grid thirty-nine was right at the heart of the battle.
“Do it!” Captain Jack Slater snarled.
“Roger that!” Diana yanked up the collective and shoved the cyclic forward. She dove hard and fast down into the throat of the valley. A dozen targets presented themselves.
She started to turn for one, when the Major shouted, “Someone else’s problem. Get the wounded. That’s always your priority.”
Gritting her teeth, Diana flew through a rain of small fire, bullets too light to penetrate the Black Hawk’s armor…hopefully.
She swooped and settled into Grid 39.
“Medics away,” the Master Sergeant reported.
She sat interminably—the mission clock counted ten, twenty, thirty seconds—wincing every time a round pinged off her windshield with a bright Thwack!
“Ten,” Sergeant Hamlin called out.
Instinct had her looking to the side port to watch for the medics only ten seconds out. All she could see was the swirling brownout that would have been caused by her own helo’s rotors stirring up the dust and dirt…if this was real.
“Raising to hover,” Jack eased up on the copilot controls and hers moved with him.
Damn it. She should have thought of that. It would save them several seconds in getting the hell out of here if they were at a ground-hugging hover by the time the medics boarded.
“Four aboard,” Sergeant Hamlin announced.
And just as she was about to lift he called out again.
“Still missing a medic.”
“We’re what?”
In answer, a wounded soldier hobbled out of the brownout, moving slowly toward her. Assisting him was a young woman dressed like a CSAR medic.
And a dozen meters to their left a battered pickup swung into view through the dust cloud. The “technical” had an out-sized machine gun mounted on the truck bed.
Its first salvo star-cracked her windscreen.
This wasn’t the small rifle fire of before; this was .50 cal machine gun fire that would chew them apart in seconds.
Time to go. Now!
She couldn’t leave the two injured.
Her helo wouldn’t survive if she hesitated.
But she did.
The last sound s
he was aware of was a soft but heart-felt, “Holy shit!” from Jack Slater.
5
Then the simulation ended like a switch thrown and Jack slammed forward against his safety harness into the sudden void left by the end of the projection. He eased back into his seat and flexed his fingers trying to get his hands to stop shaking. He blinked out the helo’s windows, now the bland light gray of an empty projection screen wrapped around the simulator’s cabin.
No sign of the shattered windscreen.
Or the bad guys.
Or the wounded.
The silence was deafening.
With fumbling fingers he managed to find the chin strap of his helmet and pull it free.
He looked over at Diana, but she looked little better off. Sweat streamed down her face and her eyes were wide with shock.
“We were in the simulation for…” he couldn’t even finish the question his throat was so dry.
“Sixty seconds. Maybe.”
He rubbed at his face, “Felt like a goddamn week.”
“It did,” she sighed and slumped in her seat.
There was a strange, asymmetrical clumping that sounded like someone with two different...
Major Lang-Clark stepped into view outside the window, between the simulator’s cabin and the projection screen. Right, the woman had one real foot and one artificial one. Clearly not a factor. She was a pure hard-ass about Combat Search and Rescue and nothing else mattered. He was sure he’d have no trouble remembering that detail in the future.
“CSAR Training,” she said as she looked in at the two of them. “Begins tomorrow at 0700. Get some sleep.”
She began walking back out of view, but stopped and looked at them over her shoulder.
If he didn’t know better, he’d say her smile was almost kindly.
“The decisions,” her voice was soft, without the hard edge she’d used since the moment of his less-than-respectful arrival, “get harder from here.” Then she was gone.
Jack’s groan was cut off when a strong hand clapped down hard on his shoulder from behind.
He looked up at the Master Sergeant.
“She’s a pistol, ain’t she?” Then he shook Jack like a ragdoll, before heading toward the ladder while whistling The Army Goes Rolling Along happily to himself.
“You okay?” he asked Diana.
Diana nodded once, uncertainly. Then again with a little more surety.
“Don’t beat on yourself. Even Wonder Woman couldn’t have gotten out of that.”
“But in real world, what would you do?”
He thought about the situation again: escape, make that possible escape, but only at the price of committing others to death including their own medic.
“You don’t know, do you?” she wasn’t being nasty. It sounded as if she really hoped he did.
“Damned if I do,” he hated letting her down. “Maybe Major Mrs. Superman will let us know, if we behave.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it. Lesson for the student and all that crap.”
He like her attitude and her easy confidence. “How about if I buy you breakfast at the Mess Hall and we can discuss it a bit?” It wasn’t that he wanted to share a meal with such a fine-looking woman…well, he did, but it wasn’t just that. For perhaps the first time in his career, he was well and truly stumped. Flying always just came easy to him, but this was hard.
She nodded, shook her head, then nodded again.
He couldn’t tell if she’d heard or even understood him.
She covered her face with her hands for a moment and gave a small scream of frustration that almost made him feel like smiling again. Then she pulled her hands away and turned to face him.
“It depends,” between one moment and the next she’d gotten her act back together. Just that fast. Which was pretty damned amazing.
He wasn’t even close to having his own act back together after that simulation. “Depends on what?”
“Are you always a jerk?”
Jack grinned at her, “Depends on who you ask. A couple commanders, several ex-girlfriends, Mom…more like a pain in the ass.”
“A pain in the ass is better than a jerk?” She shrugged. “Well, I always preferred forming my own opinions.”
6
Breakfast almost lapsed into lunch.
Not jerk, Diana assessed. Too sure of himself perhaps, though he sounded as if he had some reason to be.
Well, if he did, so did she. They’d both made it through the notoriously difficult selection process of the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and nobody in any military had more skilled helicopter pilots than the Night Stalkers of SOAR.
And they’d both volunteered to go CSAR, which took a special kind of masochism—flying into hot battle zones to extract the wounded rather than fighting from far above until the battle was done and won.
While Jack Slater didn’t tell her why he’d gone CSAR, she was finding it easier and easier to like the man. He always found the lighter side—he was funny. Not like one of those guys who only thought he was funny, but one that actually was.
The emblem on the side of his helmet was an impossibly elaborate sword. When she finally asked if he was King Arthur, he’d told her she was really close, but kept her guessing for a while. She finally gave up.
“Jack. Jack Slater,” he said it like “Bond. James Bond.”
“Your name,” she’d replied still not getting it.
He’d practically chortled with delight. “Jack Slater. Jack Slaughter. Jack the Killer. Jack the Giant Killer. They had me pegged by the end of first formation at West Point. King Arthur was the original of the Giant Killer myths; Jack came along a handful of centuries later. You see, you might be a fictional heroine, but I’m mythic! And I’ll put my magic sword up against your golden lasso anytime.”
Mythic or not, he was sharp. They dissected that morning’s mission at length and finally decided they should have gone for the escape. Once clear, there were more options: to return, to send in others. But to sit still was to kill them all.
They pounded out possible counter tactics for the future. Drop off the medics and automatically return to the sky to await their return? Too much risk of having to abandon the team.
Stay just inches aloft? Tricky to sustain and it would continue to stir dust badly, perhaps making it harder for the medics to recover the injured, but offering far more flexibility in an attack scenario.
Jack made a couple of forays at finding out more about her past, but she just couldn’t go there. It was too deep and she was still shocked that she had blurted it out, even that one little part.
And refusing to go there, she couldn’t ask about his past.
But he’d been kind enough to stay backed away rather than pushing or wheedling as any other guy would have.
By the time they tracked down their apartments in the on-site barracks they were both weaving with exhaustion. They were on the same floor of the same unit. There were definite advantages to being an officer in an elite outfit—no open barracks. They stood close in the dimly lit common hall. It was barely big enough to hold a stairwell, the doors to four tiny one-bedroom apartments, and both of them with their duffle bags.
They stood in that little hall, too close together, but she found herself reluctant to move away. She’d only flown in from Hunter Army Airfield this morning, so it’s not as if she knew this place. The only thing she did know was Captain Jack “the Giant Killer” Slater.
“Are you sure you’re not a jerk?”
“You mean despite my demonstration with Major Mrs. Superman this morning?”
“Despite that,” she didn’t even know what she was asking.
“Well,” he aimed that powerful smile of his at her again, “will it make me more of a jerk if I do what I want, or what I should?”
; “Hard to know because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about soldier.” Unless, maybe she did.
“Am I more of a jerk if I kiss you like I’ve been wanting to since the moment you showed me that screwy Wonder Woman helmet of yours?”
She definitely knew what he was talking about.
“Or is it worse if I don’t kiss you and walk away as if you aren’t beautiful, desirable, great company, and a hell of a pilot?”
It had to be lack of sleep talking, but what the hell. “I think the latter would make you much, much more of a jerk.” No other man had ever thought to include how she flew in a string of compliments. That last was the scale tipper.
He looked at her with some surprise.
“Well?” Now that she’d said it, she did want him to kiss her, preferably before she decided just how stupid an idea that might be.
Jack shrugged his duffle bag off his shoulder and it thudded onto the floor. With an easy strength, he lifted the strap of hers off her shoulder and lowered it as well.
Then, with a gentleness she hadn’t expected, he pulled her into his arms, offering her a dozen opportunities to escape or evade.
When she failed to vary the course of his approach, he completed the gesture. It wasn’t just some kiss, some hand around her neck and a fiery meeting of the lips and tongue.
Kissing Jack Slater included a full body hug as if they’d been lovers for years. His arms wrapped naturally around her, as hers slid up his chest and around his neck.
He tasted of the ice cream dessert they’d just split, the strawberries that he’d chosen and the chocolate sauce that she had. And he felt soldier hard and magnificent.
This wasn’t her mother’s war. She didn’t want a child from a dead man that would ruin her career. For that reason, she’d sworn off military men.
Until this moment.
For tonight, at least, this wasn’t her mother’s Army either.
The Ides of Matt 2015 Page 14
