Authors: M. L. Buchman
Emily’s Hornet, a couple hundred feet up deck, locked into the catapult. A half-dozen greenshirts scurried around the plane while the yellow-vested shooters secured the front wheel to the catapult. A white-and-black checked safety officer gave his clearance, a flurry of hand signals Mark couldn’t follow traveled around the flight deck.
The plane’s engine roared to life. Its dragon’s maw of heat and fire diverted upward by the tilted jet-blast shield that had popped out of the deck on cue.
Suddenly, all was still and everyone danced clear.
A single shooter in yellow saluted the pilot, then lunging forward, pointed along the deck, and the controller fired the catapult. With a roar that made his body ache, she was gone. Zero to 150 in two seconds flat. Six g’s. The best roller-coaster ride ever devised by man, other than a DAP Hawk helicopter in combat.
The plane pulled up its gear as it swung ten degrees to the right and climbed like only an American fighter plane could. The next one was already rolling into position as the catapult returned down the deck and the dance of color-coded deck crews started all over. When rushed, they could repeat this in under a minute all day long.
He already couldn’t spot her. Gone from his life faster than could be possible. Than should be possible.
He shouldn’t have done it. He was her commanding officer, for crying out loud. He’d just risked his career for that kiss. And hers, which was truly unforgivable. He hadn’t even realized how badly he wanted her. Until he received the call to give her up.
And when she’d closed her eyes on so much pain, he’d given in. If he’d known how much her kiss would rock him back on his heels…
With a smile he’d do best to keep to himself, Mark Henderson decided it was worth all the risk for a kiss like that one.
He flexed his abused hand and wondered how much it was going to hurt to work the chopper’s collective on the flight back. A twinge shot all the way into his shoulder where she’d torqued it around. It was going to sting like mad to fly back to base.
She really knew how to handle herself. Damn that was a turn-on. His brain tried to imagine what it would be like to tussle with a woman like that, and his body responded strongly. It made a very nice image.
He pulled the tab on the soda he’d picked up along with his sunglasses. It exploded in a cloudy spray of sugar water covering his face and chest.
At Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Emily had one hour to sleep, shower, and change into her dress blues. The tiny government Gulfstream jet that flew her to D.C. came equipped with two pilots, a flight attendant way too good at her job to be a soldier, a very well-supplied galley, and a relentless, three-man Secret Service briefing team. And brief they did, for five hours nonstop—from “Affairs of State” the moment she sat down through “Food Security,” not Food Safety, to threat-recognition protocols during the First Lady’s travel, with her recent trip to Zimbabwe as an example.
“The operation manual for my Black Hawk is smaller than your briefing manuals.”
The protest gained her seven seconds of blank stares from all three. Absolutely blank. The three men weren’t amused, didn’t care to comment, and certainly didn’t care about her emotional or mental state. She’d always heard that the Secret Service required that their agents had never had or ever considered having a sense of humor. But it was incredibly daunting in real life to experience that they’d checked their laugh track at the door. Permanently.
D.C. couldn’t come soon enough, until the moment the door flipped open, the stairs unfolded, and there stood Daddy on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base. The cold air sent a shiver up her spine. She didn’t remember D.C. being this cold in midwinter, never mind the third week of September. No way this had any chance of turning out well.
Somehow it was all her dad’s fault; she just didn’t know how yet. She definitely didn’t look forward to their fight over his part in grounding her. Maybe if she asked nicely, the three agents would take her back and brief her some more. That would certainly be less painful. But they were all bundling past her, their massive binders locked into even larger briefcases. One paused long enough to stamp her passport, but he too departed in moments.
All that remained were herself, her father, a black SUV, and the pair of agents in black who kept a twenty-four-hour eye on the Director of the FBI.
“Hi, Emily.”
“Hi, Daddy.” He looked good, as he always did. A little thinner, a little grayer—running the FBI could do that—but his back was straight and the daily hour at the gym still showed in how he filled out a suit jacket. The same blue eyes that stared out from her mirror every morning. She’d received her slender build and her height from her mother. From her father, the brilliant blue eyes that dragged men in and the raw determination that scared them all away.
Except Major Mark Henderson. But eight hours in transit had shed no more sense on the situation than when it had occurred. “It.” Nice way to think of a kiss that had set a new standard several flight levels above any operational ceiling she’d ever imagined, never mind experienced.
The impossible gentleness from a man so strong, the immense power she’d felt held so barely in check, had made a contrast that had set her pulse sizzling. And what she was supposed to do with that lay hidden somewhere beyond her horizon.
So, like any good pilot, she compartmentalized and shoved it aside. “Don’t waste mental energy on what you can’t solve, or what you were supposed to be paying attention to could jump up and kill you.” So, she shoved it aside… for about the hundredth time in the last hour.
She crossed the tarmac, cool as night despite the midmorning sun. Her father’s hug was as firm as it was brief.
“I’m supposed to deliver you immediately. Tried to get you a day off at home…” He shrugged, indicating that had not been a battle worth fighting.
Her father waited for her to climb into the car, and the two agents closed their doors.
Emily had hoped for an iced tea while lounging alongside the unmitigated luxury of clean water on a pool-sized scale, even if it was far too cold to swim. Not to be. She dug around in the SUV’s cooler. Ice-cold bottled water. Heaven enough for her.
“I’ll bet Mom will be disappointed. Who was she going to invite?”
Her father grimaced. Some lineup of overly eligible men in overly sharp business suits, no doubt.
“Well, I’m probably just going through orientation today. Tell her I’ll try and be there tonight.” Emily regretted it the moment she said it, but familial peace had a price you sometimes had to pay.
The SUV rolled out through the layers of security with little interference. Far too little, when compared to their hardened camp in the desert. Home soil. The U.S. didn’t feel like a combat zone, despite the lessons of 9/11. The contrast creeped her out every time she took stateside leave. She knew she’d shake it off in a few days. But right now, coming from the confined world of a forward camp where you were always armed, surrounded by a “friendly” town you never entered in less than squad size, it made her twitchy. Slapping to check for her sidearm, and not finding it, didn’t help. The Beretta was shoved into the top of her duffel, which an agent had dropped in the trunk.
She had to relax. Even a little would be a start.
Her father shifted in his seat to turn toward her. His secret-agent face, as she’d always teased him, abruptly, fully in place.
Or perhaps she shouldn’t relax at all.
***
The FBI Director’s briefing lasted barely as long as the twenty-minute ride to the White House. And it added surprisingly little to the briefing Emily had suffered through on the plane, other than the fact that her father hadn’t originated the orders to get her grounded stateside. That saved them a fight and even earned him a few points. First that he hadn’t and second when he adamantly insisted he’d never do such a thing. Third, that she actually believed him.
So, she’d go back to thinking he was an okay dad, in a totally committed to his work, rarely home kind of way. Though she understood that commitment now, it had been hard as a kid. It had made her rebellious, mostly against the only parent available, her mother.
How much of her flying had been her idea, and how much because her mother hated it so vocally was a question she’d stopped asking a thousand missions ago. Every protest made by Helen Cartwright Magnuson Beale had driven her daughter deeper in.
Not flying! When it had been recreational.
Not helicopters! When she’d discovered rotorcraft.
Not the military! When she’d understood they flew the very best machines.
Not West Point! When it could have been Bard or Brown or Smith.
By the time she went SOAR, her mother didn’t even understand the distinctions, but it didn’t matter. By then Emily’s motivations had become completely her own. She loved what she did and why she did it in the present tense, even if the past tense had been a bit murkier.
For a while, this understanding, at least on Emily’s part, had brought a truce into the relationship. Right until the moment her mother realized that Emily’s career decision included helicopters first and men a distant second. That blew the whole mess up again. A battle, Emily knew, far from having fought its final round.
The main consideration her father mentioned that the briefing team hadn’t touched on was a little freakish. Freakish even to someone inured to life on an overseas military base.
Emily was about to enter a security bubble the likes of which existed nowhere else on Earth. Inside the circle of the United States Secret Service constituted the most guarded and secure place in the world. Ironically, placing it atop the target list for every crazy on the entire planet.
Her father could shed no further light on why the First Lady wanted a combat pilot for her chef. That Emily would have to find out for herself.
Mark had started with the carrier’s communications shack. No joy. They wouldn’t even let him near the door without the day’s password.
His next stop, after he’d washed off the worst of the soda, was Pri-Fly. He managed to sweet talk his way into the tower, since the Mini Boss on duty owed him. Jim wore a bright blue turtleneck with “Mini Boss” in six-inch letters across his back, and his attention was focused on the aircraft landing over the stern.
The Air Boss, in bright yellow with his own title stamped large, offered Mark only the briefest nod and then turned back to watch the deck. Between them, they juggled the flight operations from Primary Flight. When they dropped from launching off two catapults to one, everybody eased down and Mark judged that was his moment.
“Hey, Jim.” He’d managed to find a spot to lean not far from the Mini Boss. “How’s the wife?”
Jim glanced over and swore, but softened it with a good smile and a punch on the arm. “What the hell happened to you? Go swimming?” He rubbed his hand against his pants. “Why are you sticky?”
Mark raised his mostly empty Coke can and wiggled it. “Someone shook it.”
“And you fell for it? Typical Army. You aboard tonight? Let the Navy teach you how to drink.”
No alcohol aboard, but that didn’t spare him the flak.
“What do you need?”
“Can’t I come by and ask about my cousin? Old pals, cousin-in-law, and all that?” Mark did his best to sound innocent, but could tell Jim wasn’t buying in.
“Your cousin’s fine. More than.” He offered a wolfish grin, the kind that Christy had always elicited from men, especially her husband. “Even if you did introduce us, that’s not why you’re bothering me during active operations. So give. What do you need?”
Jim turned to scan the skies with his binoculars. For the moment the sky was as clear as the radar, but once a Mini Boss, always a Mini Boss.
“You shipped out one of mine about half an hour back. Can you tell me where and why?”
Jim glanced at him, then over at the Air Boss.
Commander Richards shrugged. “We should be clear for five. Be back in six.”
Jim nodded toward the glass door and led them out onto vulture’s row, the narrow walkway that wrapped around the tower. Mainly used for washing Pri-Fly’s windows.
As soon as the door was shut, Jim turned to face him. “You don’t know?”
Mark could only shake his head. He didn’t like it. On a couple levels. One, that his best pilot had just been pulled and he didn’t have a clue why. Two, that he cared so much about the fact that it was Emily Beale.
“Ramstein is all I know.” Jim looked down as an F-18 fired off the catapult.
“Shit, Jim. I saw the orders. I already know that. What about past that point? The orders said stateside, but where?”
Jim shook his head and leaned on the steel rail facing out toward the stern of the ship. His eyes automatically scanning the sky for incoming.
“Well, thanks for nothing, pal.” Mark regretted it as soon as the words were out.
They earned him a sidelong look from Jim.
He shouldn’t have even been allowed into Pri-Fly, and now he was heaping his own frustration on his friend.
Mark leaned his forearms on the rail so that they both stared aft at the glittering sea.