Читать книгу An Honorable Woman - Lindsay McKenna - Страница 9

“I can’t believe they’re sending a woman to teach us,” Lieutenant Antonio Zaragoza muttered, his long legs stretched out in front of the door to the barracks room where they waited for their C.O. to arrive.

Gus Morales, who stood at the window, peering through the venetian blinds, glanced over his shoulder at his schoolmate, who sulked like a petulant child. Zaragoza was five foot nine inches tall, only average height for a helo pilot. He made up for his lack of stature by being arrogant and brazen. Lifting his mouth in the ghost of a smile, Gus said, “I think it’s ironic.”

Lieutenant Luis Dominguez, who sat at the table smoking a cigarette, twisted to look in Morales’s direction. “I think it stinks.” He flipped ashes into the ashtray in front of him.

Chuckling, Gus looked at the two Mexican Air Force pilots, who, like him, were dressed in dark green, single-piece flight uniforms. Each of them had the Mexican flag sewn onto his right shoulder. On his own uniform, Gus had the American flag, reflecting the fact that he was in the U.S. Army.

“They want us to fail,” Zaragoza said flatly, his black brows dipping, his arms wrapped across his chest in defiance. Staring down at his highly polished black flight boots, which blocked the entranceway, he glowered. “Women have nothing to teach men!”

“Sí,” Luis agreed. “Their place is in bed, with us.”

“Yes, they are good for pleasure,” Antonio stated darkly. “But not as Apache instructor pilots, teaching us the finer points of drug flight interdiction.”

“Where I come from,” Gus told them lightly, a cockeyed grin on his face, “women are not only teachers, but equals. I guess you two need to square away your attitudes on that one. Otherwise, you won’t learn a thing from Chief Anderson.”

Snorting vehemently, Luis took a deep drag of his cigarette, then blew the smoke out—an eloquent, if silent, reply.

Gus turned and looked out the window again. He and the others were on the second floor of the barracks, waiting for their new commanding officer, C.R. Anderson. They’d been informed she was an Apache gunship pilot who had been on duty in Peru for three years, flying drug interdiction on a black ops combat mission. That’s all they knew. He was curious. And anxious to learn what she knew. At Fort Rucker, they were given basic Apache training, but time did not allow for them to learn the finer points of certain types of missions, such as drug interdiction.

Outside, the air base was quiet. It was small in comparison to other Mexican military bases. Gus saw two dark green Boeing Apache Longbow helicopters, their blades tethered, sitting in the revetment area, waiting like they were. Hungry to get in the air again, to feel the power and surge of the world’s most lethal and deadly gunship, Gus shifted position. He was eager to get this show on the road.

“I don’t see why our presidente would allow us to be taught by a mere woman,” Antonio drawled in frustration. “This is mano a mano—hand to hand fighting in the air. No woman can fly a combat helicopter.”

“Women in the U.S. Navy and Air Force fly fighter jets all the time,” Gus reminded him. “And they’re just as good, some of them better, than their male counterparts. I don’t see the difference.”

Luis glared at him. “You wouldn’t. You’re still tied to your mamacita’s apron strings, amigo.” He chuckled indulgently.

Gus allowed the insult to slide off his broad shoulders. He knew both pilots well enough from their time at Fort Rucker. Both used to bluster and fluff their feathers like bantam roosters when the flight instructors at Fort Rucker challenged them on their lazy attitudes toward flying. In Gus’s opinion, neither one really had the competitiveness needed, that primal urge, to hunt down sky predators. Both pilots came from rich families. Zaragoza came from new money, his father being quite a phenomenon in the computer world. Dominguez’s father, from old money, was mayor of Placido, a suburb of Mexico City.

His colleagues’ condescending attitude throughout flight school had been amazing to Gus. And instead of making them buckle down and do the work, the U.S. Army instructors had let these two pilots slide, not pushing them to work to their potential. Morales figured it had to do with politics and the fact that they were “foreign exchange” pilots that they didn’t get their chops busted like the rest of the class did.

Looking down at his watch, he saw that it was nearly 1400, or 2:00 p.m. Chief Anderson was due to arrive at their newly designated H.Q.—this small room on the second floor of the only barracks at the base—momentarily. None of them knew how she would arrive. Smiling to himself, Gus wondered obliquely if she’d ride in on an Apache in a thunderous display of her power and skill. Probably not. The president of Mexico didn’t want the Apaches seen by the local people, for fear it would frighten them. The helos were lethal looking monsters, for sure, decked out with an awesome array of weapons that included rockets, a cannon and missiles.

His mind wandered back to C.R. Anderson. What did she look like? How old was she? If she’d been flying drug interdiction in an Apache for three years, and was a CWO2, she was most likely around twenty-five or twenty-six, like himself. Was she married? Did she have children? What was her husband like? What events in her life had shaped her, to make her what she was today?

Gus laughed at himself, and at his curiosity, which often got him into trouble. He enjoyed people, enjoyed figuring out how and why they worked the way they did. He glanced at his cohorts, who thought they were the best Apache pilots in the world—despite the fact that they’d just graduated from school, at the bottom of their class with barely passing grades. Gus thought the instructors must have padded their grades to pass them, so as not to embarrass the Mexican military. It would have been better if two far more hungry, less rich applicants had been selected. Hunger made a person want to prove himself in the eyes of his peers. These two had everything money could buy and wore their considerable egos like royal coats to make up for what they didn’t have internally.

Sooner or later, Gus felt, they would be exposed. During training, neither had had that competitive zeal that characterized the other Apache gunship students. When he sat in the seat of an Apache, he felt like a hungry jaguar on the prowl looking for his quarry. That was the way it should be. Gus found himself wondering if Chief Anderson was the same.

The door to the rear of the barracks, just down the hall, opened and closed.

Gus looked at his watch. He gazed at the other two pilots, who lifted their heads to listen. “Fourteen hundred hours, guys. That’s her. Our new C.O., Chief Anderson.”

“Humph,” Luis snorted, “no woman is ever on time.”

“Not the ones you know,” Gus said, barely able to hold back a smile. He pinned his gaze on the olive-green-painted door. Any second now she would come through it.

“It’s just a soldier entering the barracks,” Antonio said in a bored tone, waving his hand languidly.

The door opened.

Gus immediately came to attention, his arms at his side—standard procedure when a C.O. entered. He saw with shock that neither of his fellow pilots moved.

Cam Anderson stood in the doorway. The first thing she saw was a thick, choking cloud of cigarette smoke. The second thing that struck her was the malevolent stares of the two pilots sitting before her. Heart pounding, she kept her face carefully arranged. Determined to learn how to be a good leader, Cam had decided to let Maya Stevenson, her C.O., be her role model. Maya never looked harried, pressed or anxious. She walked with a confident, quiet and commanding presence that automatically demanded respect. She never raised her voice, but no one mistook that as a sign that she didn’t mean exactly what she said. At all costs, Cam was going to try to be like Maya and not melt into her usual warm, motherly self.

Her gaze snapped from the pilot whose legs barred her way to the one smoking at the table, his dark brown eyes alive with distaste—for her. Lastly, Cam looked across the room. The man standing at attention at the window wore an American flag on the right sleeve of his flight uniform. That was Chief Morales. He knew that when a C.O. entered, one came to attention until told otherwise.

Realizing with a sinking heart that her career as a leader could be over right now depending on how she handled this insubordination by the Mexican pilots, Cam allowed the anger she felt to flow through her.

“Lieutenant—” she peered down at the pilot whose feet barred her path “—Zaragoza. I know the Mexican military has different protocols, but I do believe one of them requires that you stand at attention when your commanding officer enters the room. Get off your butt and on your feet, mister. Right now.”

Gus choked back a laugh as Zaragoza’s head snapped toward the woman. Gus saw the firm, quiet look on her oval face. Even though her thick, shoulder-length chestnut red hair gave her the look of an angel, he saw the devil in her narrowed green eyes which were now focused like a laser on the hapless pilot.

“Get up, Lieutenant. And if you can’t make it to your feet, then crawl out of here and get out of my sight forever. Because that tells me you really aren’t serious about training for drug interdiction.”

Cam swallowed hard. She’d never been so brazen before, but her career depended upon it. Would Maya have said the same thing? Would she have handled this situation differently? Cam wavered inwardly, but refused to show her fear and indecision.

Zaragoza slowly retracted his legs and stood up in a semblance of attention, his eyes ahead, staring at the light green wall opposite.

Cam fixed her gaze on the second pilot, who was grinning down at the table, cigarette in hand. He had a lean, narrow face, short black hair, thick brows and a smirk across his full lips.

“And you…Lieutenant—” she peered at the leather patch sewn above the left pocket of his flight suit “—Dominguez. This is a nonsmoking zone. It will always be a nonsmoking zone, from here on out. Put out the butt, mister, and come to attention.”

Lazily, Luis smashed out his cigarette in the glass ashtray. The smirk never left his features as he pushed back the chair and got to his feet.

They thought this was a game, Cam realized with a sinking feeling. The only pilot here who had shown respect was the U.S. Army chief.

“With your permission, ma’am,” Gus said, “I’ll open the window to let in fresh air?”

“Good idea, Chief Morales. At ease.” Cam looked at the two Mexican pilots. “Sit down at the table, gentlemen. We have business to take care of.”

Turning, Gus drew up the venetian blind and forced open the heavily painted window sash. He saw that Chief Anderson had left the door open on purpose, to create enough of a draft to get the heavy smoke out of the room. Walking to the green metal table, he sat at her right elbow.

Cam forced herself not to appear nervous. She told herself to slow down, to take her time. Never mind that she had jet lag, or that she hadn’t slept in the last twenty-four hours because she was so anxious about this assignment. Never mind that two of the pilots obviously resented her and were barely giving her the respect the situation demanded. Opening her briefcase, she set several folders and a notepad on the table.

She noticed that Chief Morales took a pad from the right pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a pen from his left breast pocket. The other two pilots sat back, arms crossed, watching her with obvious distaste. Cam swallowed hard. Her throat felt dry, as if it was going to close up. She had to continue this charade and make them think she was in charge.

Taking a pen from her own flight suit pocket, Cam opened the top file. “First order of business is to ask each of you about your flight experience,” she told them.

“You’ve got our personnel jacket,” Luis drawled, his voice condescending. “Haven’t you read it?”

Antonio snickered.

Cam glared at them. “Lieutenant Dominguez, tell me the extent of your flight experience with helicopters.”

Shrugging nonchalantly, he said in a bored tone, “I joined the Mexican Air Force because it is a tradition in my family. I went through flight school and was assigned to helicopters.”

“How many hours have you flown?”

“Two hundred.”

Cam turned to the other pilot. “And you, mister?”

Chuckling, Zaragoza said, “Only two hundred hours, Luis?” He shook his head mockingly.

“Forget him,” Cam ordered tightly. “I’m interested in your hours, mister.”

“Four hundred.” Antonio nearly spat the words.

“And how did you earn them?” Cam asked, jotting down the information on her yellow legal pad.

“I started flying helos when I was seventeen years old.”

“And why did you join the Mexican Air Force?”

Glowering at her, Antonio said, “Not that it’s any of your business, Señorita or Señora, but I like to fly.”

“Mister, you will address me as either Chief Anderson or ma’am. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

Antonio’s jaw clenched. He held Cam’s narrowed gaze.

“If you can’t say it, mister, get out of this room and don’t bother coming back.”

His eyes flared with surprise. “You cannot threaten me—”

Cam leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “It’s not a threat, mister. It’s a promise. Now, you make up your mind here and now. Either go by strict military protocol from this moment forward or get up and get out of here. Comprende?”

Anger surged through Luis. How dare this slut of a woman make such a threat to him? “This—this is an insult! Do you know who I am?”

Cam gave him an icy smile. “Yeah, a pilot in a helluva lotta trouble with me and his superiors if he doesn’t square away right now.”

Silence fell in the room. Luis slanted a glance toward Gus, who was sitting there relaxed, hands on the table. He had a poker face, but Luis could see the laughter in his cinnamon-colored eyes. He knew Morales was laughing at him. That stung even more. Nostrils flaring, he jerked his gaze back to the woman who sat across from him.

“Your call,” Cam told him quietly. “Do it right or get the hell out of my sight, Mr. Dominguez. I don’t think your father will be very proud to learn that you can’t carry out simple military protocol, do you?”

Cam’s heart was thundering in her chest. She knew this was high-stakes poker. And she knew she held the cards to Luis’s career. If, indeed, he was in the Mexican Air Force to fulfill a family obligation, the last thing he would want was a dark blot on the family record by being thrown out of the U.S. Army’s Apache program—by a woman, no less. That would be an insult he would never live down, and she knew it. Cam was prepared to do just that, however. She’d get rid of any pilot who didn’t want to play by strict military rules.

Grinding his teeth, Luis looked for help from his friend, Antonio. The unhappy grimace on his friend’s face, the anger banked in his dark eyes, indicated he felt similarly. Yet he obviously didn’t want to be kicked out of the program, either.

“You do not have that authority over me!” Luis snarled.

Cam reached down into her briefcase, located another file and opened it before her. Lifting out some papers, she turned them around so that Luis could read the top.

“I’m sure you recognize this, Mr. Dominguez. It’s a set of orders. All I have to do to reassign you is fill in this blank—” she pointed to the page “—and sign my name down here, at the bottom. Now, I’ll be more than happy to do that for you. There’s a lot of good pilots who didn’t get this mission, and who want it a lot more than you do, apparently. So which is it? You want me to fill you out a new set of orders, sending you back to your superior? Or do you want to stay with us? Your call, mister. Just make it in a hurry, because I don’t have time to play games here.”

“You cannot do this!” Luis shouted, balling his hands into fists beneath the table.

“Try me. I’d love to sign you off, mister. I don’t need sulky little boys on my team. I need mature men who are ready to be responsible, who are hungry to fly and who want to go after the real bad guys. You want to target someone in your gun sights, you aim at them, not me. Is that understood?”

Wiping his wrinkled brow, Luis cast a desperate glance toward Antonio. His friend stared straight ahead and refused to look at him. Jerking a look at Morales, Luis saw the same hint of laughter in the warrant’s eyes. He thought this was funny! Angrily, Luis swung his gaze back to the C.O.

“I’m staying.”

“No, mister, you will say ‘Chief Anderson, I’d like to stay with the team. Please?’”

Breathing hard, Luis repeated the words through gritted teeth. He watched with relief as Anderson put the order back in the file and the file back in the briefcase.

“Very good, Mr. Dominguez. Thank you for the information on your flight background.”

Cam turned to the last pilot. Her heart speeded up, but not out of fear. It was something else—some other feeling that emerged so quickly under the tense circumstances that Cam couldn’t name it. As she looked into his warm, cinnamon-colored eyes and saw the slightest hint of a smile on his full, well-shaped mouth, she struggled to keep her voice low and firm. “Chief Morales?”

“Ma’am, I was born in a helicopter.”

She looked at him and blinked once. “Excuse me?”

Gus grinned and opened his hands. “My mother was in labor with me. She’s Yaqui Indian, from northern Mexico. She was visiting her family when she went into labor with me. My father, who is a U.S. Army helicopter pilot, had flown her to the desolate area where her parents lived, and flew her out again when her water broke. He was hoping to get to Nogales, and then across the border into Texas, to get her to the hospital on time.”

Cam smiled. “Don’t tell me! You were actually born in the helo?”

He liked her smile. There wasn’t anything not to like about their new C.O., Gus decided. That pale sprinkling of freckles across her broad cheekbones, the way her hair glinted with red-gold highlights beneath the washed-out fluorescent light above them…Chief Anderson suddenly looked a lot less threatening than she had earlier.

“Yes, ma’am. By the time my father landed the helo on the hospital roof, she’d given birth to me.” Gus’s smile widened. “The attendants who came out were kinda surprised.”

“That’s a great story, Chief Morales. So, did the helicopter ride stay in your blood?” Cam liked the way his eyes crinkled and dimples flashed as he smiled fully.

“Yes, ma’am, it did. My father flew civilian helicopters for the Civil Air Patrol in his free time. I got my helo license when I was thirteen years old, when my legs were long enough to reach the pedals.”

“I see,” Cam said, trying not to sound impressed. But she was. The natural warmth and openness of Morales compared to the other two pilots was like night and day. Cam realized instantly that he didn’t have a problem with his C.O. being a woman, as the other two did. Jotting down the info, she asked lightly, “And I suppose you have over a thousand hours built up in helos?”

“Yes, ma’am. I got fifteen hundred in civilian types. When I joined the army air program, I acquired six hundred more hours.”

“And in the Apache?”

He shrugged. “Not enough.”

Cam grinned. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be getting plenty of hours shortly. We’ll make up for it.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Hours in the Apache?”

“A hundred and fifty.”

Cam knew that the school gave each student seventy hours of flight time. She frowned and looked at Morales’s personnel jacket. “Where did you get eighty more?”

“Oh…” Gus opened his hands and had the good grace to flush beneath her sharp gaze. “Well, I volunteered for a special class on drug interdiction tactics before I went through Apache school.”

Frowning, Cam studied him. “How is that possible, Chief?”

Slightly embarrassed, Gus said, “My father’s influence, if you want the truth, ma’am. He’s head of an Apache squadron. He wanted me to learn the drill. At the time, I was flying another type of helo. Within his squadron, he had set up a unique program of flight interdiction tactics, so he wrote orders for me to attend it.”

“I see family nepotism at work,” Cam murmured. “Well…that’s good.”

“Yes, ma’am. I loved it.”

“And that’s what got you into Apache school, officially?” Cam knew there were hundreds of applicants for each seat in the training program, and it was the most highly prized aviation school in the army. Morales had the good grace to look humble when he owned up to the nepotism that had gotten him that far.

“I got in because I passed all the tests and qualifications,” he told her seriously. “Not because of my father.”

“I understand, Chief.” Cam brightened and sat back. She looked at all three pilots. “We’re officially a squadron, according to the U.S. Army, as well as a black ops branch of the Mexican Air Force. We’re Black Jaguar Squadron 2, a spinoff, as it were, of my squadron down in Peru.” Cam pulled three patches from her briefcase and carefully laid them out on the table.

“This is our squadron patch, gentlemen. As you can see, it is square, with a red and blue border around it. In the center is a black jaguar with gold eyes on a white background, and our squadron name is embroidered at the bottom in gold.” Cam pointed to the patches. “You’re going to earn them the hard way—through a lot of work and elbow grease, consistent one hundred and ten percent effort on your part. I have it in my power as C.O. to release you from the obligation to learn drug flight interdiction at any time, if you fail to jump over the bar I hold up for you. Where I come from, you earn every hour you spend in the seat of an Apache. It’s not a given that you deserve to sit there.”

Gus saw Anderson’s expression grow even more serious as she perused the three of them, her hands folded on the table. On the right shoulder of her uniform he saw the identical patch, on the other shoulder an American flag.

“If you thought Apache school was tough, just wait. This is where we separate the women from the girls…” Cam smiled slightly “…or in this case, the men from the boys. If you’ve got what it takes, at the end of an eight-week period you’ll be awarded this patch. If not, I’ll be calling you in, writing you up a new set of orders and you’re out of here. Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” the men murmured in a subdued chorus.

“Good,” Cam said, relief flowing through her. She gathered up the patches and placed them back in her briefcase. “Now, I need an X.O.—executive officer.” She looked at Morales. “You’re it, Chief Morales.”

“Me?” Gus hooked a thumb toward his chest, surprised. He saw a hint of approval in Chief Anderson’s green eyes.

“Why not you? You’ve got more hours in helos. You’ve had advanced drug flight interdiction training. From this moment on, you’re my X.O., which means you get a lot more duty and a lot less free time to party in Tijuana. Are you up for it, Chief Morales?”

Straightening in his chair, Gus took a deep breath. If he carried out his duties well, he just might go from a CWO2 to another pay grade. He could barely conceal his excitement. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll take it. Thank you. I hope I won’t let you down.”

Cam smiled thinly. “The only way you fail, Chief, is by not trying.” She looked at the other two pilots, whose sulky expressions indicated their current mood.

“Okay, let’s roll,” she told them. “Get on your feet, gentlemen, and let’s go out and meet our ladies.”