“Fussy.” Mickey shot for the joke. His timing was good, but it still fell a little flat. She’d had been on the verge of saying something similar, but her timing would have probably been worse, so she appreciated Mickey beating her to the punch.
Then Robin figured out that was exactly why he’d done it, to save her from…herself. Should she be thankful and angry? Or should she be creeped out that any man could read her so well? But if he could do that, then how come he didn’t know that she was not the marrying, one-man-forever kind of woman? And her unmarried mother had raised her just fine, thank you very much.
“That”—Mark did not sound amused—“is a lot of South Korean tourist dollars that dried up. However, the North continues their attempts to reopen the region in the hopes that the South will come back. However, if that region burns badly, then there will be no draw at all. UN sources fear that it could destabilize the Korean situation even further. The North Koreans need that tourist income desperately and have made several offers to the South Koreans to reopen it. They’re staunchly refusing ever since the shooting. But again, if it’s burned, then any chance for that extra bit of connection will be erased. That’s why the UN is bringing us in to stop it.”
“Still seems like a weird call, going to so much trouble to get us there.” Robin shrugged. “But if they want someone to kick this fire’s ass, I’d say that we’re the ones to do it.”
* * *
We are, Mickey acknowledged. But it still didn’t make any sense, so why was everyone else buying into it? They were dispersing back to their seats. He leaned up against the small counter over the refrigerator and trash bin, staring out one of the round windows.
A haze of green far to the west would be Northern Japan. They’d be descending soon onto the central island of Honshu.
The problem with MHA going to protect a North Korean economic zone as a favor for the UN was…the instructions hadn’t come from the UN. They’d come from the President himself. The President didn’t order firefighters into foreign countries. He especially didn’t order former Night Stalkers to…
Mark and Emily weren’t Night Stalkers anymore. Or were they? Undercover as firefighters, they could go almost anywhere…even North Korea.
What had sounded like a lark on an Alaskan riverbank suddenly sounded less so. There were strange things that happened when people were on the “other missions” separate from the bulk of the MHA’s forces. Things they didn’t talk about or even hint at.
Vern—no. Vern and Denise in…Honduras?
If those other teams had only flown to fire, it wouldn’t have been an issue. They’d have talked about the fires.
Mickey scanned the forward compartment. Last winter he’d gone to Australia to fight bushfires, but everyone else in this aircraft cabin had been in Honduras. The year before that, Jeannie and Cal, Carly and Steve, and Mark and Emily had been sent off somewhere else for a month. And Jeannie and Cal had come back a month later than the others.
That meant that she and…
Robin was standing right in front of him and eyeing him in curiosity.
“Looking pretty thoughtful there, Mickey ‘Blue Eyes’ Hamilton.”
“Looking pretty enough to be thinking about, Ms. Robin Harrow.” His mind had clearly decided that backing down wasn’t an option.
Her smile was soft, acknowledging the challenge, but he wasn’t up for a battle at the moment.
“Mickey?” That wasn’t her battle voice.
“Yeah.”
“It’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“That I love you?”
“Yes, that.”
Mickey nodded. It was there between them now. He wished it was as easy as trying to crash the gate at the White House like Mark had, but this was Robin Harrow. He longed for some action to take, but for the moment, there was nothing he could do but wait.
“I don’t know what to say to it.”
“There’s nothing you have to say.” Though he ached to hear it back. Wasn’t it supposed to be the woman who said such things? Yeah it had been, in the past, and he’d never believed a one of them. Even still he didn’t. The women in his past had said it too easily. Saying it to Robin had torn out his soul to flop like a dying fish on that riverbank. “It’s simply there.”
She studied him for a long moment, then nodded, as much to herself as to him.
“You ready for this, Robin?” Mickey wasn’t sure if he was asking about his being in love with her or the upcoming wildfire.
“You know what they say?”
“Born ready.” They spoke in unison, but there wasn’t much joy in it.
“There’s something odd going on here, you know,” he said.
“You mean other than you saying…what you said?” Robin narrowed her eyes. “There’s a fire, surprising locale, we’re going to fight it. What am I missing?”
Mickey looked up over her shoulder. Henderson was shaking his head in a clear, Don’t!
Crap! “Never mind.”
Robin glanced over her shoulder at Henderson’s retreating back. Then back at Mickey.
What? she mouthed.
He shook his head. Henderson didn’t even bother to turn to double-check, that’s how much trust he was giving Mickey. If he had turned to double-check, Mickey might have found the nerve to tell Robin what he was thinking. But facing the trust that Mark had shown him by the river, he couldn’t betray that.
Unable to help himself, he reached out and took Robin by the upper arms and pulled her in. She didn’t resist. She even leaned into the kiss he placed on her forehead.
With his nose buried happily in her bangs, he mumbled just a tiny bit louder than the engine noise, “Just because it’s a Tea Cup doesn’t mean it isn’t also an MFDD.”
Then he headed for his seat by Vern before he could do something neither of them was ready for. How was it possible to want a woman so badly?
* * *
When is a Tea Cup also a Mighty Furrow of Death and Destruction? Robin wobbled a little bit before turning back for her seat.
Jeannie had saved a place beside her and Robin slid in.
“That looked like progress.” Jeannie kept her voice soft.
“Huh? Oh, Mickey.” She’d almost forgotten that tentative bridge reborn between them, her mind now filled by the back blast of what he’d just said. There was some secret that Mark was holding on to that Mickey was in on, and he’d just done his best to warn her about it. Or at least he thought he had, but she wasn’t getting it.
Then she tuned back to what was behind Jeannie’s well-meant question. Being held by him for a moment and that kiss upon her forehead. She wanted to curl up against him and just hide there to wash away all the pain this day had brought—actually yesterday because dawn was breaking outside the windows and she’d barely slept on the flight. Pain that they had caused each other, so how was it possible that her chosen sanctuary would be curling up against him of all people?
“Yes,” she answered Jeannie. “Yes, I think it was progress. I still don’t know what to do about it or what I want to happen, but at least we spoke to each other.”
Jeannie rubbed her upper arm as it if was paining her. “Just wait until he saves your life. It puts a whole different spin on things.”
Robin looked at her, but Jeannie was off in memory somewhere.
Cal had saved Jeannie’s life; that was something Robin hadn’t known.
Mickey had just warned her that sometimes something that looked as smooth as a Class III Tea Cup could actually be a Mighty Furrow of Death and Destruction.
“Shit!”
“What?” Jeannie turned to her.
“I just figured out that we’re not going to Korea just to fight a wildfire.”
Jeannie smiled and patted her arm. “Welcome aboard, Robin. I’m glad you’re wit
h us.”
“Right. But by the end of this, will I be glad?”
“By the end, sure.” Jeannie spoke with the supreme confidence of a survivor as the captain announced they were beginning their descent.
Jeannie dropped her hands back into her lap to check her seat belt and Robin managed a good look at the spot Jeannie had just been rubbing on her upper arm.
“Great.” Robin offered all the sarcasm she could muster.
“During,” Jeannie continued as she settled back in her chair and folded her hands tightly in her lap, “maybe not so much.”
Maybe not so much, Robin reiterated to herself but found little comfort as she looked away from the distinctive scar on Jeannie’s arm.
Robin knew what a bullet wound looked like.
Chapter 16
“Only the pilots,” the officious North Korean representative insisted. “No others may have permissions to fly into the great Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
Mickey was nearing his limits. The last time he’d slept had been along a small river upstream of Larch Creek, Alaska. He’d just flown seven hours to Japan and—once the helos were unloaded and Denise had certified them for flight—three more hours across the Sea of Japan to reach Korea.
It was now lunchtime the next day and Mickey’s patience with Emily, Mark, and everyone else was hitting its absolute limit. Or maybe it had already passed it.
They’d clearly been relegated to the Korean equivalent of Podunk and it was named Yangyang International Airport. The one-runway field had a beautiful three-story, glass-fronted terminal building with three Jetways, a small plane parking area, and a soaring air control tower sufficient for a decent international hub. The four MHA helos were parked out on the unmowed grass beside the narrow, paved taxiway between the concrete runway and the terminal.
The airport’s lone fuel truck had raced up at their arrival, its driver thrilled at having something to break the tedium of his days.
“You are the first flight in two months.” He bounded joyously to and fro, hooking up grounding lines and running out the hose from his truck. “Yangyang not have commercial flight for three years. High-speed train very bad for new airport. No planes. No people.”
The terminal looked only a few years old. The fuel truck driver appeared to be the sole employee.
“Only pilots,” the little North Korean man in his brown Army uniform insisted again, clearly displeased with the interruption to the sound of his own voice ringing across the empty airfield.
Mickey wondered if the five-person South Korean “honor guard” dressed in green uniforms was there to make sure that the North Korean was fully escorted, or to make sure that he wasn’t beaten to a pulp by an irritated American pilot.
The inspector started with Mickey. Spent a long time on his pilot’s license as if it wasn’t about the easiest thing on the planet to forge. Then he inspected the helicopter, apparently shocked at not finding dual-mounted nuclear missiles and a half-dozen miniguns. That lack got Mickey off the hook fairly easily.
Vern also passed muster, though the official didn’t know quite what to make of Denise, who was even shorter than he was.
“I am not letting my husband fly into North Korea without me,” she’d told Mark and Vern earlier in no uncertain terms.
“You are a woman.” The official inspected her license.
Duh! Mickey wanted to say. He knew he was overreacting to what was occurring around him, but he couldn’t seem to stop his urge to do so. It had started with shouting at Emily and it had yet to settle.
“Many proud women fly our fighter jets in the great Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
If the inspector said that whole phrase one more time, Mickey just might do a little destruction of foreign relations himself when he throttled the man.
But the official kept looking at Denise’s long, blond hair as if it might attack him at any moment. Between Robin’s white-blond chop, Carly’s elegant, straight fall of gold to her jawline, and Denise’s bountiful waves down to the middle of her back, he’d probably never seen so much blond hair in his entire life, and Mickey did what he could to keep his smile down.
“You.” He’d moved on to Cal at Firehawk Two. “No cameras. You may not go to our country.”
He started to move by, but Cal stopped him. “Don’t you want pictures of the great battle of the Kumgang wildfire? Our helicopters in the air and your people on the ground, fighting together.”
The official scoffed.
“I often take pictures for the cover of Time magazine, National Geographic, and many others.”
“National Geographic?” His dark, piggy eyes that had spent entirely too much time dwelling on Robin’s bosom lit with sudden interest. “Prove it to me.”
Cal pulled out his tablet computer and pulled up a copy of his latest cover for the magazine. The two of them were soon negotiating over what he could and couldn’t take pictures of.
“I promise to be most careful,” Cal assured him.
“You may go.” The official granted royal dispensation, so Cal was in. The official moved on to Firehawk One.
That’s when the explosion occurred.
“What is this? And this? And this?”
It was Steve’s computers for controlling the drone—though they didn’t mention that—and Carly’s special screens in the copilot’s position to receive those feeds and perform her fire behavior analysis.
At Mark’s suggestion, they had left the launcher and drones under lock and key at a nearby safe house. Mark had declined to mention why it was safe or who it was safe from—though that was now apparent.
They tried calling all of the gear “fire monitoring equipment,” but that didn’t help.
“No! No! No!” He wasn’t satisfied until everything had been removed. He walked back and forth between Firehawk Two and Firehawk One to make sure there was no extra equipment he didn’t recognize.
When Carly held up her license, the little man repeated, “No! No! No!”
“But I have to see the fire to fight it,” Carly protested as Steve stepped up to rest a hand of restraint on her arm. She was far taller than the inspector and was looming over him enough to have him stepping back with nerves.
“You try to bring spy equipment into our country. If this were the native soil of the Great DPRK”—he barely dodged the bullet of repeating his country’s full name again, but the name stiffened his resolve—“I have you both arrested as CIA spies. No! No! No! You!” The little man went toe-to-toe with Mark though he was a foot shorter. “What do you do? I can smell spy from across the border in my own country of the great—”
“I’m the fire boss,” Mark interrupted him, but kept his temper in check. “I fly overhead in a small plane and tell these pilots what to do.”
“You no fly firefighting helicopter, you no fly!” And the man walked away.
Mickey sidled up to Mark. “You know, it’s almost worth the trouble that’s going to cause us just to see your jaw hanging loose in surprise.”
Mark recovered his jaw and replaced it with a grim expression. “I am this far”—he pinched a finger and thumb close together—“from pulling the goddamn plug.” He practically shouted the last of it at the inspector’s back.
Mickey looked at him. Then up at the sky graying with the high, thin clouds of the storm passing far to the south, at the plume of fire smoke to the north, and then back to Mark.
“But you can’t, can you?”
Mark bit his lower lip, then shook his head sharply no. But it looked as if he was trying to hide a smile, which didn’t make any sense at all.
“You need to fill the others in.”
“I was going to—”
“No, now.” Mickey had never confronted Mark in the three years they’d flown together. But what the hell. After yelling at Emily y
esterday, maybe he was getting good at it. Or developing a death wish.
“Not just yet.”
“I won’t let them go aloft.” Mickey braced to take him on. “All I have to do is tell Robin to say no and none of them will—”
Mark raised one finger and then pointed it south toward the far end of the terminal building.
The high whine of a racing car engine caught on the wind and blew toward them. Moments later Mickey spotted a white SUV hauling ass around the corner of the building, shooting under an extended Jetway with only inches to spare and racing in their direction.
Aircraft by aircraft the other pilots had followed in the official’s wake until they were all gathered around Firehawk One. Even the official had stopped being officious over his individualized authorization forms to see who was coming at such a speed.
A rental-white Kia SUV slammed on the brakes at the last second and skidded in sharp chirps of rubber on dry concrete, leaving long, black marks on the pristine sun-bleached surface. It drifted sideways toward the North Korean official for a long moment before twisting to a halt close behind Firehawk One. A wave of burned-rubber stench rolled over them.
Mickey, at first, thought it must be a lunatic, but then he saw the driver’s grin flash through the windshield and decided that he was a very skilled lunatic and had known exactly what he was doing.
A couple piled out of the car. The driver would be a small man if he weren’t so broad and muscular—he looked like one of those guys who could bench-press the car he’d just been driving. His black Foo Fighters T-shirt was stretched tight over his chest and clung around his massive biceps. His eyes were hidden behind wraparound shades that might be appropriate on a Florida beach during spring break. He wore his dark hair short and his smile broad.
Flash of Fire Page 20
