Way of the Warrior (Troubleshooters #17.5)(95)

She tried to track him down to tell him to go to hell, but obviously he’d guessed that’s what she’d do. His cell phone went straight to voice mail, and if he was anywhere on post, she sure wasn’t finding him.

But the damned training schedule wasn’t a request; it was an order. You didn’t refuse an order, no matter how much it pissed you off. That would get her out of the service far faster than the slow-moving Physical Eval Board process. She’d be out on her ass with a dishonorable discharge mere minutes after her court-martial was done and over.

Fine!

At 1659 hours, U.S. Army Captain Lois Lang was sitting in the “up next” chair in the simulator building wearing her ACU fatigues and carrying her scuffed and scratched helmet with the big red “S” on a field of yellow in an irregular pentagon on the side.

Jake climbed down along with some other trainee he’d just put through the wringer. He sauntered over to her, started to smile, and then thought better of it.

For maybe the first time in her life, he straightened up into rigid attention and gave her a parade ground salute. “We’re ready when you are, Captain.”

She rose and returned the salute as formally as it had been given. “I’m so not, Jake. And I want to apologize beforehand for the civilian blood I’m going to be spilling all over the inside of your nice simulator when I get up there. Clark is toast.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am. Be glad to clean it up. But I would note one thing before you commit murder.”

“Fire away.” She pulled on her helmet and began cinching it down.

“Listen to him first. He’s as good at what he does as you are at what you do.”

“Did. Past tense, Jake.”

This time he smiled down at her.

“And?”

“Go get him, Superwoman.”

And she would. She climbed the stairs, Jake again riding safety behind her—though she felt far less need for it this time—and settled in just as she would for any training flight.

“What’s the scenario?” She snapped out as a greeting. Nothing said she had to be polite to a civilian, even if he was sharing her bed and made her feel like Venus despite her missing limb.

“You have a choice of two, Captain.” Kendall kept it formal, too. He was never stupid and would know full well just how pissed she was. “We have a standard Jake torture test.”

Jake’s Tortures, as they were known far and wide, were notorious. Not many pilots survived those. The simulator had six major categories of weather and eighteen of failures; some of which had dozens of options. There were technical and moral challenges. Engine fires and very hot targets, copilot bleeding out versus terrorist getting away with it. You never knew what was coming, and there was always something new.

“The second one?”

“It’s one that I designed, Lois. Just for you. Based on a real flight tape.” The tone of his voice got to her. He knew her so well, had gotten past every shield she’d ever had, ever thrown up. Over the last month, he’d convinced her that maybe, just maybe, she could find a way to live in the “new life” without hating it so much. Without having to work every day to find the positive, the upside.

Designed it just for me. In the soft, personal tone that he didn’t use when they had exhausted each other by pushing the bounds of sex to new limits. No, it was that quiet, gentle tone each time she awoke from the nightmare, and he held her and told her everything would be all right.

Damn him!

She took a deep breath, dropped her hands on the controls, and let the breath out slowly. Then a nod to, “Bring it on.” She didn’t trust herself to speak.

NSDQ. NSDQ. Night Stalkers Don’t Quit. NSD—

Unholy hell was breaking out all around her. Her helmet’s tactical display reported a dozen sources of gunfire. The covering fire from the DAP Hawk circling above them wouldn’t be enough for much longer.

A technical came around the far side of the crashed Little Bird, clearing a boulder in a four-wheel slide that was the only reason the gunner couldn’t get a bead on her fast enough. She could see in her night vision the big twin barrels of a Russian ZU-23 anti-aircraft gun mounted on the truck’s bed slowly swinging to aim at her cockpit. It fired one-inch shells that would punch through the Hawk’s armor as if it wasn’t even there.

Even as she cried out his name and the direction, Hi-Gear took it out, gunner, gun, and then the vehicle. The fireball was blinding through the windscreen, the night-vision gear temporarily overloaded.

“Ten,” one of the medics called out from the Little Bird.

Still blinking hard, she couldn’t see anything yet, she began counting down the seconds. At five, she pulled the collective up to get a low hover. It would also raise the blade tips almost two feet, making the medic’s passage beneath the spinning disk that much safer.

At zero, everyone was aboard and at plus-three-seconds she got the signal and she was gone.

Punching out through her own dust cloud, her adrenaline pumping high and hot, she slammed into the first turn.

Then she saw it.

This time, before the warning systems, before she had in reality, Lois spotted the spark of heat from the RPG’s firing. Even if she’d seen it that early in reality, the only way to save her Black Hawk would have been to roll right and up.

If she did, the RPG would have blown into the rear cargo bay, killing her entire crew. Next, they’d have rammed head-on into the canyon wall. Had she seen it in time, her answer would have been the same: to hold the turn.