Authors: M. L. Buchman
He read it again. Then he spotted Big John looking for him.
He deleted the last line and replaced it.
Mark
More personal. His personal guarantee.
It looked good. He clicked “Send” and “Okay” quickly. Only as he cleared the screen did he realize that he’d actually clicked “Delete” and “Okay” in his hurry.
Figured. He never did anything right around Emily Beale.
Even though the message was gone, he understood why he’d made the last change from his title to his name. Because he could almost hear her whispering it in his ear after they’d kissed.
Even if she hadn’t.
Penetrating the security at Anacostia Naval Support Facility had been a pleasure. Much quieter than Andrews, this was the home of the nation’s VIP choppers. Getting in was like old home week. Emily moved slowly inward through increasing levels of security. Faster with each stage. Every layer culled away another portion of the crowds. Visitors peeled off here, then office staff, then grounds and security teams, finally only hangar-authorized personnel.
She stepped through the door and was home. The rising sun rammed into the hangar through the wide-open main doors, catching a thousand dust motes dancing over nearly two dozen choppers. A stiff breeze pushed against her as the open hangar doors funneled every bit of dew-fresh air at this small rear entrance. Along the way, the breeze picked up the smells of her life. The JP-5 kerosene, a sharp tang over the sweet slap of fresh hydraulic fluid, even the bleach of the sparkling clean concrete was an old friend.
Only standing here, in this moment, did she know what had been missing. The White House was sterile. Purged, vacuumed, polished, every night. Efficient ventilation clearing away cooking smells before they even had a chance to waft out of the kitchen.
It felt safe here, well protected. Home.
A Marine sergeant posted in the shadows just inside the door saluted, with his other hand on his weapon. She returned the salute. Not until this moment had she understood the emptiness inside her. She’d been homesick. In two lousy days.
“I’m here for a flight check with Eddie,” Emily informed him.
“Please stay here, sir.” The military still hadn’t adopted “Ma’am” or “Miss.” He pointed at the ground.
A wide, red line boxed in the six-by-six-foot area she was allowed to occupy. She dropped her flight gear bag by her feet and settled into parade rest. Once she nodded her assent, he trotted over to a group of five men conferring over a disassembled rotor shaft. Ten feet of gleaming hardware, looked like a Cobra. Sure enough, a gutted AH-1W SuperCobra squatted against the back wall. Carts and carts of pieces all carefully racked for an overhaul inspection. She’d never flown the Super. It was the greyhound of gunships. Not well suited to covert operations, all weapon and no transport. Too inflexible a tool for SOAR, but so quick and fast that it made a welcome guest whenever the going got ugly.
The Marine snapped to attention and saluted smartly to one of them. “Air Captain Beale for a ‘flight check with Eddie,’ sir.”
The man separated himself from the group and approached. Stiff, graying, stony faced, erect as one would expect from… his insignia came into view, from a brigadier general.
She shifted back to full attention.
“Captain!”
“General!” If a general offered snap in his or her salute, you returned snap. It felt good to be back in her dress blues. Back in a world she understood. The smell of JP-5 fuel and axle grease swirled around her in a particularly strong gust that didn’t even cause the man to shift his weight. There were no overtones of cordite from spent ammo or dust from the desert, but aviation was definitely going on here. The hangar echoed from being clean and tidy. Even the grunts were in spotless coveralls. The jets, the little one that had run her across the ocean and the monster 747s and 757s used for Air Force One and Two, were over at Andrews. Only rotorcraft lived here. Gave it a nice, cozy feel.
“I’m looking for Eddie. I’m due for a flight test, sir.”
“Brigadier General Edward Arnson to you, Captain.” The man ground it out with a voice that could drive nails.
“Sir! Yes, Sir!” She saluted again because she didn’t know what else to do. Eddie. Only the First Lady could call a Marine Corps one-star “Eddie” and get away with it. That was a hole she’d not be digging out of anytime soon. And he’d be giving the flight test? That took the wind right out of her. She’d just failed, and she hadn’t even been near a helicopter yet.
“Prep the bird over there for flight.”
“Sir! Yes, Sir!” Salute again. Not a glimmer of anything.
Move off at a fast trot. You’re in it now, Beale, up to your neck.
Preflight in full service uniform. A bad morning just dying to get worse… and succeeding.
Once she looked over the three thousand kilos of flying death, Emily felt less grumpy. It was the cleanest bird she’d ever seen, parked on a concrete floor so polished she could see the Bell Huey’s wavy reflection off the sealant. They didn’t come out of the factory this clean, and this had to be twenty-five years old, based on its equipment.
There were patches over a couple of bullet holes. They were almost always left visible rather than being touched up. A badge of honor for the bird that had been wounded but dragged its crew to safety. That placed it as a bird that had seen action in its day. Make that over thirty-five years ago to have flown in ’Nam.
This was no carriage for the First Lady’s joy ride. This was a weapon of war, one she knew better than she knew the bedroom she’d grown up in. Her first military machine, the Green Hornet. It was also a museum piece. It was perfect; it shone.
She started her circle at the pilot’s door. Wheel pressure okay, no fluid seeping around the brake. The plastic tube of the fuel tester she’d taken from inside the pilot’s door without even noticing rested in her hand. She poked its metal probe into the bottom of the right-hand tank. A little water always accumulated in the tanks from condensation. That could be a real problem in the sudden temperature changes from hot desert sun to the chill nights. Here in D.C., there shouldn’t be enough water in this immaculate bird to even show in the tester.
Half a cup with no line of gas floating on water. Clear as could be rather than the straw color she’d expected. She sniffed it cautiously. Pure water, not even a hint of the kerosene that made up most of jet-propulsion fuel and could make your nose feel as if it had swallowed a porcupine.
She fetched a handy, fire-red safety bucket and poured her water in.
Half a gallon later, decanted a half-cup at a time, she finally struck fuel.
So, it was going to be that sort of a test. A joker had poured water into the starboard fuel tank just for her sake. Beginner stuff.
She continued her inspection as if nothing was amiss. Fourteen problems cataloged by the time she finished her preflight inspection.
“Fourteen failures, sir,” she reported at the general’s sudden appearance.
“You didn’t use the preflight checklist.” It was a bark, not a question.
“Memorized it, sir. Hazardous to show a flashlight against a white checklist during nighttime preflight inside a zone. I keep a running count of steps to make sure I don’t miss anything. One hundred and thirty-two primary points of inspection.” It came out all in one breath. She did her best to hide her gasp for air at the end.
He harrumphed. Not happily.
“Fourteen failures, you say? There were only twelve.”
She listed them, from water in the tank to the pebble jammed in the rear rotor.
“Johnson!” He snapped out and a young airman came running.
“List those again, miss.” On this side of the line she was captain, not miss, but she wasn’t about to correct a general, especially not after calling him Eddie.
She repeated them in the same order she’d seen them, noting the three she hadn’t fixed for lack of tools and the one she’d been too disgusted by.
“Spare ammo case for the M60 loaded backward?” The airman stopped her halfway through. “There’s only one way to load it.”
She’d heard of gunners who’d died for that mistake. Whose ships had died for that mistake. She led him to the right-hand side door and climbed into the gunner’s sling chair so that she sat behind the gun and looking down at the two men. She grabbed both handles of the machine gun, a necessity when the craft was tipped over sixty degrees and turning for bear. She didn’t don the harness that let the gunner stay put even when going vertical; they were parked on the perfect hangar floor after all.
A slap with her right hand popped open the weapon’s breech. Simultaneously, with her left foot, she kicked open the spare ammo case bolted behind the pilot’s seat. Switching hands, Emily grabbed the belt of 7.62 mm cartridges and laid it across the breech. She left it dangling there. The cartridges were facing the gunner, not the outside world. The case was in its hold-down properly, but no one had checked that the ammo rested right way around in the box.
“Give it a half twist.”
She saw the General flinch. Good.
“Half a twist in the belt and you increase the jam rate by a factor of ten. And a jam at the wrong moment is lethal.” The tech’s eyes went wide. What were they teaching these kids?
“Proceed.” General Arnson was watching her carefully, with an odd look on his face. Did he not like having one of his technicians shown up? Or was he like Henderson, yet another male who thought women only had one use? Well, she faced down fiercer men on the front line.
Still sitting behind the machine gun, she continued her list—
“A nick on the main-rotor hydraulic line? Are you sure?” The airman glared at her as if she were a fool going out of her way to be insulting.
She climbed down and indicated the engine cowling she’d left folded back. It was a serious cut. Probably a tool slip rather than a bullet, considering the distance to the nearest war zone, but she’d rather not be airborne when that let loose.
“Well, I’ll be dam—”
“Marine!”
“Sir!” The man saluted the General and bolted away for his tools.
The General returned his attention to study her face and Emily suddenly wished she’d used more antiperspirant this morning.
His fierce glare held for a long moment, then he nodded.
“Well done, Captain. Shall we have a flight test in a more airworthy craft?”
It was beautiful. A Bell 430 VIP Executive model. The Rolls Royce of helicopters. Not a piece of history like the Green Hornet, not heavy or dangerous like her combat Hawk, nor massive and solid like either of the Marine One aircraft, the VH-60N Black Hawk, or the VH-53 Sea Stallion monster sitting in the center of the hangar.
The Bell was a pretty craft. She wasn’t painted Marine One blah, but the cheerful blue and white of the White House seal. And luxurious. Two pilot seats forward designed for comfort, not for fourteen hours behind the lines. They were more like Barcaloungers for pilots.
The cabin sported just three seats facing each other in a space that would fit eight. Between the forward pair hunkered a mini-fridge and an entertainment center. The aft seat was actually a small leather couch with two seat belts. Very cozy.
“I’m not checked out in this craft, sir.” Emily eyed it carefully. Of course she could fly the pretty thing, but that wasn’t the point.
“You will be today if you intend to fly with the First Lady aboard. The bird’s already preflighted.” He waved a hand toward the three airmen who were just finishing with her.
Now a test of her arrogance?
“I wouldn’t fly a bird I hadn’t checked out myself, sir. Or personally knew the crew chief.”
“Good girl. Have at it.”
For the next ten minutes, one of the airmen led her through the preflight checklist and the basic emergency procedures. For the forty after that, the three men led her through everything that wasn’t on the list.
“Watch for airframe corrosion, especially along this joint.”
“In the first two years’ models you can’t really see the control-cable routing bracket and you need to run your fingers along like this to check that it’s tight.”
“She’s a light craft, a little jumpier than you’d expect when hovering in a tailwind.”
When they started talking about how different engine modifications behaved over ten thousand feet altitude, the General broke them up. Too bad. Once they’d accepted her, they’d been a font of information. Manly handshakes all around replaced any wasted words. Told them she knew they were good. Their solid grips returned the compliment.
Powering up the Bell was preschool compared to her Hawk’s graduate course. Everything labeled in plain English. Switches large enough to toggle with two fingers. And three switches where she was used to having thirty. Such a simple toy, but at least it was a helicopter. Each stage of the startup sequence made her smile bigger until her cheeks were positively aching.
The momentary flash of the red warning lights when she turned the key. The thing had a key just like a car. So cute. The throttle slick and smooth beneath her hand. Then the whine and thrum. Almost sexual. The high turbine whine struggling to get the rotor through its first dozen rotations. Then, the turbine overshadowed by the beat of the blades finally slicing the air, a warm buzz transmitted through her hands and the seat of her pants as the bird came to life. The hiss in the headset as she powered-on the radios, then the abrupt click to silence as the squelch circuit kicked in.