Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(51)

CJ spoke up. The oldest active member, he had a long club memory. “Sounds like you’re thinking this is gonna be like ’87 again.”

Isaac had been fourteen in 1987. He knew it mainly from stories, but he knew that what was about to happen was nothing like it. “No, man. ’87 was nothin’ but a turf war. Horde took the Dusty Riders down.

Bloody, but brief. What’s coming is big money, connected money, on a bulldozer. Ellis is looking to turn Signal Bend into his company town, cooking meth on a mass scale. And he’s looking to flatten the Horde to do it. This won’t be a turf war. It’ll be a f*cking extermination.”

The room was thick with quiet as the Horde contemplated the weight of Isaac’s words. He’d sounded hopeless. He was feeling hopeless. But he had to give them hope. “Let’s focus on what we know, what we can do. If we stand strong, we can fight this back. We just need the town behind us. Everything as normal, but we up our presence. You’re in town, you’re in your kutte. And you’re carrying. No exceptions. We protect our people.”

Havoc shook his head. “Can’t while we’re workin’, boss.” A club with day jobs outside had its complications, definitely.

“Keep ‘em close, then. And I’ll talk to Don. Any other concerns?” The table was quiet. “Okay, I’ll know more after the sit down with Kenyon tomorrow.” Isaac gaveled the meeting to a close and stood.

Show asked, “You want to talk about tomorrow’s meet?”

“Later. I have something I need to deal with first.” Isaac slapped Show on the arm and left the clubhouse. He needed to see Lilli now.

oOo

When he got to her place, she was walking toward the garage, apparently on her way somewhere. She looked surprised to see him pulling up, and not what one might call thrilled. She pulled her phone out and looked at it; no, he hadn’t called first.

She stayed where she stood as he parked the bike and dismounted. “Baby, we have to talk.”

“You didn’t call.”

“No. Lilli, are you after Ray Hobson?”

INTERLUDE: 2010



“Alright boys, don’t make me pull over.”

Goldman snorted. “Hey, he started it, Major.”

Lilli shook her head and amped the tunes. She liked some Rancid when she flew a mission. This was a big one, bringing her squad into a firefight, already engaged. Lilli was flying in a backup squad, called in when the estimates for enemy combatants on the scene had turned out to be grossly miscalculated. The mission was serious and deadly, but the atmosphere in the cabin was not. Everybody knew they were headed into fire and might not come back. The adrenaline in the cabin was so thick it had smell and taste.

The troops were giddy with it and acting goofy. That was just how things worked. When danger was looming, soldiers often got rowdy. They’d be plenty serious when they were in the thick of it. Now, though, the gunners, pilots, and crew chief were the only ones fully down to business.

It wasn’t her squad, not entirely—or at least not completely, not the way she thought of it; injuries on another squad and a couple of troops rotating out recently had shuffled the squad rosters. Three of the men she thought of as hers were on the ground now, engaged in the firefight already: Miller, Okada, and Scarpone.

Actually, she thought of them all as hers, her family, almost everyone on base. But she had become very close with the men who flew with her consistently, and things felt fractured since the roster shift.

She had a brand new co-pilot, too. Captain Mendez, with whom she’d flown for two rotations, had taken his out and gone home. Now she had a shiny new Chief Warrant Officer at her right, Bill Newell, fresh out of training and looking terrified. Everything felt slightly off for Lilli, but she shoved her unsettled feeling aside and focused.

“Your music SUCKS, sir!” Lopez yelled over the lyrics to “Time Bomb” and the roar of the rotors. Her guys knew she hated “ma’am”; they all called her “sir.” It had at first raised some eyebrows with Command, but it was an approved term of address.

She laughed. “Fuck you, Lopez. Fine—you wanna pick, be my guest.”

His eyes went wide; she never turned over control of the tunage. “I need me some Angus!”

“Christ, you’re such a cliché.” She rolled her eyes and put “Highway to Hell” up instead. The men all reacted favorably, hooting and shouting. No class, no taste.

Just then, the cyclic got gummy, and Donna shimmied hard, rolling slightly to the left. What the f*ck?

The men shouted their surprise, and in her periphery, she saw Lopez give her a look of sharp concern.

Newell looked shocked. Great. Fucking noob.

“We’re cool, boys. Donna just got some gum on her shoe.” But it happened again, and this time the copter tipped more violently. A copter wasn’t a plane. Off its axis, it didn’t roll and resettle. It crashed.

Period.

Lilli was calm. She was not someone who panicked. “Mr. Newell, take your cyclic. You clear?”

The kid swallowed hard and put his hands around the stick. What skin Lilli could see on him was running sweat, and Lilli was fair certain it was flop sweat, not heat sweat. God DAMMIT. The kid was going to choke. She turned off the tunes.

“Hey, be cool, Newell. Just need to know if you’re feeling a fight in the cyclic, too. If you’re not, you’re going to take over, but we’re all right here with you.”