Peter, on the other hand, she knew like a favorite book. By the time she reached twelve years old, she knew every detail of Peter’s prom dates and how naive he was about his own charm and how nice he was to the girls. He’d spoiled her rotten for other men. There were three genders out in the world: women, men, and Peter.
And that too had been partly her doing. While he’d taught her why boys her age were such jerks, she’d taught him how girls really thought, airheads and nerds alike. They’d traded guy-speak and girl-speak secrets. They’d been each other’s closest advisers.
He’d even held her while she moaned and griped after her first heartbreak, the boy who’d asked her to the class roller-blade party and then been a complete jerk to her in front of his friends. Odd, she couldn’t remember Mr. Jerk’s name, but she remembered exactly how it had felt when Peter held her while she sniffled. She’d gotten his shirt all wet and snotty, and he hadn’t complained once. Definitely a low point. She could feel the heat rising to her face at the memory.
Peter Matthews had taken his empathy into corporate America. The ultimate negotiator. Bringing lots of brains and very little ego to the table. He brokered the restructuring of NASA and the U.S. aerospace industry that had salvaged both from a plunge toward bankruptcy. But he’d claimed none of the glory for himself, and hence gotten an immense amount of it. As a Senator, he’d gone on to salvage a couple hundred thousand or something jobs in the failing auto industry.
And she’d chiseled out a life among the most testosterone-laden men in existence, the fliers and ops teams of the U.S. Special Forces. And Mark Henderson was the kingpin of them all. Why had he kissed her? And why had she smashed him into a table the moment he had?
“Funny.”
“What is?”
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud and concentrated on the configuration of the empty seats across from them.
“What’s funny?”
Not Mark. What else?
“The different paths we took.” She and Peter a decade ago. She and Mark two days ago.
She concentrated on the seat across from her for something to focus on. Room for three across. The two on the sides had little fold-down tables, perhaps for work desks. Sure enough, little pinpoint lights were buried in the ceiling above.
“It is funny, isn’t it?”
She glanced over, but he wasn’t laughing, or even smiling. She glanced back at the three empty seats. Flying forward. With only three empty seats and a dark-tinted bulletproof shield ahead. No pilot’s view. No sense of direction or terrain. No night vision. Not even RNAV beacons guiding your next move ahead. Or back.
“I’d do a couple things differently, if I had the chance again.” His voice was so soft that he might not have intended for her to hear.
“Sir?”
He looked at her, and for a brief instant, her closest friend from childhood sat beside her. Looking out at her from a scared place she’d only glimpsed once or twice before. He studied her face with the same intensity she brought to air combat. Complete focus and concentration. Then the searchlight switched off and he looked forward once again.
They rode in silence for a number of blocks.
“At least one thing I’d do differently.” But it was President Peter Matthews talking to himself, and she didn’t dare interrupt or interpret.
“It’s hard to believe how young we were, isn’t it, Squirt?”
It was easy to share a laugh over her nickname.
“Remember the time I dunked you in the Reflecting Pool for calling me that?”
“Remember that the park police tried to arrest you?”
“You told them I was a street urchin who’d picked your pocket and shoved you in the water to make my getaway.” She smacked his arm. Then, realizing what she’d done, felt herself go bright red again.
He chuckled and continued as if he hadn’t noticed anything out of place. “And I almost let them cart you off. Would’ve served you right. I’d had those sneakers less than a day.”
“Sneaker Boy.” Then her cheeks really burned. That’s what she’d called him ever since that day. That was twice in two days he’d made her embarrassed enough to blush.
Nothing embarrassed her. It couldn’t. Not with where she worked. If the fly boys knew you had a limit, they’d run it over a thousand times until you wanted to curl up and die. She didn’t curse or swear the way some did, most did, but she also didn’t flinch at even the raunchiest jokes. And they got bad.
Never show a weakness.
Ever.
But she’d just punched the President in the arm like he was an old friend. He didn’t react. If he didn’t, she certainly wouldn’t. It was probably a court-martial offense, punching the Commander-in-Chief. But he was an old friend. And that was a very rare commodity in this day and age.
“Simmons or one of the boys will run you back. Thanks for riding along. Good to see you, Em.” He really met her eyes, even better than she’d taught him so long ago.
Then he climbed out of the car and was gone. She hadn’t even noticed the car had stopped until his personal squad of blacksuits whisked him away.
As she climbed from the massive hulk, an agent indicated a black Ford four-door idling at the curb. One among dozens of vehicles they’d had in tow. She’d been right about the armor. Several serious Humvees were back in the train along with, she shuddered, an ambulance. She was inside the bubble now and wanted out. She could feel the target circle between her shoulder blades.
She climbed in copilot in the Ford and without a word, was taken back the way she’d come.
Chapter 22
Major Mark Henderson entered the mess tent. Tonight’s flight looked to be a long one and he needed to stoke up. He hadn’t slept last night and he’d already flown to the carrier and back this morning. He’d have to dig deep to stay on the ball tonight.
The chow line stood empty, but a crowd packed around one of the tables. He grabbed a glass of juice and headed over to see what was up.
“She’s on!” “Shh!” “Shut up, you mutton heads!”
A bunch of the guys had a crush on Zoe Saldana, again. They’d screened Star Trek and Avatar back to back the previous week. The guys had become absolute hounds for any interview, sneak peek, or even paparazzi photo. Happened every time. Last month it had been Michelle Yeoh, and the one before that, Marilyn Monroe. He’d always been a Sophia Loren man himself, though he hadn’t complained about having to watch the others for a second.
“Raise it up!” “Can’t see, damn it!”
In seconds, a bench landed on the table and a laptop was perched carefully atop it.
He felt a little off balance when he noticed that the front line of guys closest to the computer were Beale’s flight crew: Archie Stevenson, John Wallace, and Tim Maloney. They’d given him the full-on silent treatment both directions this morning. He started shuffling crews in his mind to figure out how to get them back on the line. Maybe put Stevenson in the right seat. He was ready despite only two months in SOAR. Would have had his own ship if he flew with anyone less skilled than Beale. But then who to drop in his left seat? Not Bronson. Maybe—
“Captain Emily Beale,” Brion Carlson blared out before offering his enigmatic smile, sending Mark’s stomach through an uncomfortable flip. “The flying chef of the fighting SOAR 160th Airwing—”
“Air Regiment, you ass,” Big John hissed at the screen.
“—has landed on both feet. But where this stunning blonde has landed may startle you.”
The shot cut away to Emily in form-fitting slacks, a tank top, and an apron. A couple of the guys made sighing noises but were shushed. A kitchen. Big stove, sparkling pots. A cooking show?
Mark could feel his jaw clenching. What idiot would take a pilot of that skill and put her on a food show?
She poured brandy into a pan. A moment later, a burst of flame roared forth. She tossed the ingredients for a few seconds and then turned to a massive cutting block. In seconds she’
d made three plates of something that looked incredible. Chicken something with flames, baby asparagus, roasted new potatoes, with a drizzle of something dark in artistic swirls. Pomegranate reduction sauce, the narrator filled in. She pushed one plate toward the camera, which zoomed in for a close-up.
“Oh, man!” “Will you look at that?” “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Mark had, but only in the finest restaurants. He swallowed and knew it was unfair to the base’s chefs, but tonight’s meal was going to suck by comparison. He took a slug of juice into a mouth gone almost too dry to swallow.
The camera pulled back as Emily slipped the other two plates across the butcher block. And then lifted to show the two diners.
Mark spit his mouthful of apple juice onto the backs of the guys in front of him who didn’t notice only because they were as surprised as he was.
Two of the three most recognizable faces on the planet filled the screen. Vice President Zack Thomas and First Lady Katherine Matthews. They raised large glasses of a dusky red wine toward the chef as Carlson cut back in.
“Captain Emily Beale, First Chef of the East Wing.”
Mark would have to kill someone. He started a mental list. Admiral Parker might be a good place to start. Rather than pumping him for information, as he’d have done if Jim hadn’t stopped him, he could offer to pump the man full of lead. The best pilot he’d ever flown with cooking for that… that woman?
Katherine Matthews had two reputations: the public one as the poster girl for every good charity the quiet rumor-mill one of a coiled snake even a Black Adder wouldn’t mess with.
He’d start with Admiral Parker, raise holy hell, and if that didn’t work, he’d raise unholy hell. Something wasn’t right in D.C., and if he had to he’d—
Carlson continued, “And this is a chef who can fly to wherever she wants to land.”
Emily in dress blues lifting off the White House lawn in a pretty little Bell 430. The First Lady waving from a rear window.
“On a recent trip to New York—”
Then, the third of the world’s most recognizable faces. President Peter Matthews holding open the door of a long, black limousine. Emily Beale flashing him one of her sparkling smiles as she climbed in.
Mark didn’t hear the rest of the broadcast. Couldn’t face that smile. While it had never been for him, he’d seen it on rare occasion. Knew it. Only those closest to her ever received it, and Mark would bet they never forgot it. It made Jim’s dazzler look like a flashlight left on the shelf for two years too long.
He left the mess tent and slammed into some crewman or other. He mumbled an apology and kept moving.
No one to complain to. Emily Beale happy at the White House. Aiming that smile at the Commander-in-Chief. He’d never have thought she’d do that. Act some part just to climb the ladder. But what ladder? She’d refused promotions, mouthed off enough to earn a couple of demotions over the years, according to her file, but he’d thought it was so she could keep flying. Bottom line, he’d never know. She was so far gone, there was no coming back.
There was an empty spot in his gut, so empty it cramped. He pulled an energy bar out of a thigh pocket. Not a chance it would get near that spot, but he could pretend.
Chapter 23
Clearly the First Lady liked having her own airborne chauffeur.
Barely twenty-four hours after the New York trip, Emily once again settled the Bell 430 onto the South Lawn of the White House. It was late evening, the sunset had sparkled over the western hills as she’d flown up from Anacostia. Katherine hadn’t even said where they were going; she’d simply sent Emily to fetch. Like a good lapdog, not like a captain of the U.S. Army. Already any attempt to like the woman on the President’s behalf was wearing thin.
The First Lady and Daniel appeared in moments, and a Marine locked them into the back.
Emily turned and looked back between the seats. “Where to, ma’am? And you’ll need to buckle up.” Daniel already had.
Katherine made a quick pout but reached for the seat belt. “We’re going to Jenny Williams’s house out on Cape Charles.”
Emily knew that was to the southeast, across the Bay. A long drive, but a short flight. Traffic control could route her there, though she hated taking up air-traffic time for directions. But she also knew the First Family had their own controller on their own frequency any time they were aloft who would be glad of something useful to do.
“Okay.” She spun the turbines back up, and after checking in with the controller, she pulled up on the cyclic and got them aloft.
They hadn’t cleared five hundred feet when Emily caught the sparkle of red out of the corner of her eye, off to the right and low. An instant later, even as she was wracking the Bell 430 to the east, a trail of light rocketed from the origin point of the aiming laser that had drawn her attention.
An RPG or something else nasty.
Finally the threat warning buzzed loudly.
She punched it silent. Stupid device. Too little and way too late. The chopper didn’t have a tactical display to track the threat. The radar sweep was far too slow, designed for other air traffic, not missiles in transit.
With the chopper over forty-five degrees and the collective full up, they were already two hundred yards farther from the launcher than they had been when it was fired. She twisted both throttles to the stops, and the dual turbine engines gave her all they had.
She caught a glimpse of the weapon as it crossed over the brightly lit White House lawn. It continued straight at her. Not good news. She dropped the collective, rammed it down like a posthole digger, twisting the rotor blades past flat into negative lift, and the helicopter fell like a brick.
She ignored the curses and scream from the passenger cabin. Katherine and Daniel would just have to deal.
Her seat belts let her twist against the null gravity of the chopper’s fall to see. The damn missile arced to follow her, its motor burning bright against the dark sky, rather than continuing on a simple trajectory path. Really bad news. Tracking warhead.
“Marine Two, Mayday! Mayday!” Not a SAM. Too slow a track. Surface-to-air missiles rarely gave you time to think. They just fried your ass. RPGs burned all their fuel in the first second or so. This one still drove ahead.
The ground was coming up fast.
She jerked the collective back up.
Climb, damn you! The Bell didn’t have the raw guts of a Black Hawk, but she was also much trimmer around the waist, a third or a quarter the weight. Some bizarre part of Emily’s brain puzzled over the math. Either way it roughly balanced out, though she’d bet the Hawk would have a better chance of surviving a hit. The Bell had one fifth the max takeoff weight of the Hawk, her brain finally offered up, as if she cared. Max climb rate was normally fifty-five percent of the Hawk. This souped-up bird was still thirty percent lower than the Hawk’s maximum climb rate. She needed more lift. And ached for her Hawk. Might be the last emotion she felt if she didn’t solve this and fast.
“Tracking RPG fired from area of F Street behind OEOB.” She’d never heard of a rocket-propelled grenade with built-in tracking ability, they were already past any small-device, wire-controlled range yet the thing kept coming. She wasn’t in the mood to brood over technicalities at the moment.
The turbines shrieking past the red line, she slewed back to the left until the chopper was literally flying sideways. Standard RPGs had a range of about a thousand yards. If she could just get a half mile away before it caught up with her…
“Roger. Status?”
Stupid question. Running for her life. Toward the Capitol Building and falling sideways as she went.
She glanced back at the thing’s track. Still gaining.
And then it blew.
Fifty feet out. At most. Proximity fuse rather than impact trigger.
Searing white. Scorching brilliance. Her eyes hurt worse than during a runaway thermite fire in the middle of the night. And the pain kept coming, waves
of it. Building layer upon layer. For a moment she might have blacked out.
The first thing she knew coming out of it was she’d been hit.
But only her eyes hurt.
She tried a breath.
Either she was numb, or she hadn’t cracked any ribs. Her limbs still responded. Her hands still rested on the controls.
Her body felt normal. Except for the two pincers of fire burrowing into her brain.
And she opened her eyes. To nothing. Not even big, bright spots. She blinked again to no effect. The pain poured through her.
The turbines still roared wide open. She eased back on the throttles before something blew out.
She keyed the mic as she fought a sudden slew of the chopper. Please let the bird be intact.
“Not an RPG. Repeat, not a rocket-propelled grenade. They launched a flashbang. A big one.”
The turbines were running clean. No fatal wowing sound from the rotors either. The control felt solid, no shudder or shimmy. The craft had survived even if her sight hadn’t.
Even if her sight hadn’t? There was no such thing as a blind pilot. A roaring filled her ears far louder than any mere helicopter turbine. If she couldn’t fly, she’d—
Emily forced the thought aside. Keeping her passengers and her bird alive were the first priorities.
“Ma’am. Katherine!” she called over her shoulder.
No response. Damn, she didn’t know if she was right side up or power diving toward the White House.
“Daniel!” He better be conscious; he was her only other option.
“Uh, yea? What?”
“What’s my angle of attack?”
“Your what?” His voice sounded a little strangled.
“Which way is up? I can’t see.”
“Not the way you’re going.”
“Which way!”
“Left. Left is straight up.” Which meant the earth was to the right and they were falling directly toward it.
Night Is Mine Page 12
