Читать книгу An Honorable Woman - Lindsay McKenna - Страница 11

Gus could hardly wait to get his turn in the Apache with Chief Anderson. The rest of the day was spent studying special manuals of flight interdiction operations back in their tiny H.Q. office while she took each of them for an introductory flight. Gus was still champing at the bit when he saw Luis Dominguez come back from his hour-long stint. The Mexican was looking disgusted. His brow was beaded with sweat and the underarms of his flight uniform were dark with perspiration. Chief Anderson escorted him to the office and ordered Zaragoza to come with her next.

The moment Dominguez was alone with Gus, he started bitching. “That woman is loco! Crazy!”

“Why?” Gus asked, placing his hand across his manual to keep his place. Luis’s face was dark with frustration. He started to reach for the pack of cigarettes he kept in the left thigh pocket of his flight suit and then thought better of it, remembering the orders that this area was now off-limits to smoking. Cursing, he glared around the simple but clean facility.

“She put me through a flight test of maneuvers I’ve never done before!” he fumed, crossing his arms and glaring down at his unopened flight manual.

“Isn’t that what the introductory flight’s about? To find out what areas we’re weak or strong in?” Gus asked Luis mildly.

“Bah! The witch had me trying to do things I wasn’t taught in school. I failed miserably. She sat in the back seat with that clipboard across her knees, rating me on every damn movement I made in the Apache.”

“Did she say you failed?”

Luis blew out a long breath. “She let me know every time I did something wrong! I heard her voice in my helmet every minute of that damned flight!”

Gus shrugged. “School doesn’t fully prepare us for what we have to do out here, Luis. No matter what squadron we got sent to, we’d have a lot to learn. It’s called advance training, amigo.”

“Oh,” Luis sneered, lifting his upper lip, his canine teeth showing, “and I suppose you’re looking forward to getting graded on every flight maneuver out there?”

“It’s inevitable. It’s part of our learning curve. How can Chief Anderson develop a proper training program for us if she’s not familiar with our abilities and skills?”

Getting up, Luis shoved the chair away in disgust. Pacing the room, he growled, “I can hardly wait until she flies with all three of us. It will be like the Spanish Inquisition. She’ll peel off our hides, one at a time. It’s shaming. It’s cruel. At least the inspector pilots back at Fort Rucker did it on a one-to-one basis. She’ll enjoy shaming us.”

Grinning, Gus said, “Luis, you never had this reaction to any of your instructors at Fort Rucker.”

“None of them were women, that’s why!” Standing, he glared out the window and tapped his boot on the floor.

Gus smiled to himself. He knew Chief Anderson was going to put him through his paces and then some. However, he wasn’t worried, because he felt intuitively that she would be fair.

“This wasn’t a flight test to see if you get to stay or not,” Gus reminded him. “If you screwed up out there, look at it this way—you have only one way to go. Up.”

“Bah! I need a smoke.” With a snort, Luis headed out the door and down the hall to the back door.

Sitting there, Gus closed his eyes and pictured Anderson in his mind. She was tall and womanly, curved deliciously in all the right places even though she wore that drab and loose-fitting flight uniform. He liked her face, liked the sprinkling of freckles that made her look younger than she probably was. Her face was oval, with huge green eyes that he could easily read, although Gus wasn’t sure she realized how much her emotions were revealed in them. Oh, Anderson tried to keep a poker face, but Gus felt he had an edge because he could see her feelings clearly in those evergreen eyes of hers.

He liked the fact that although she worked in a man’s world, she kept her reddish-colored hair long, wearing it parted in the middle. He liked the way it curled slightly around her attractive face. He longed to ask her personal questions. Maybe he’d get the chance on the flight, but he didn’t think so. She was all-business.

Gently closing the manual, after marking his place with a piece of paper, Gus got to his feet. Glancing at his watch, he realized it would be another forty minutes before Chief Anderson came back and asked him to sit in that cockpit and fly the Apache. A thrill raced through him. He loved flying that helicopter. And he sensed that Anderson was one helluva pilot at the controls of that combat machine. Gus could barely rein in his eagerness to learn the finer techniques of flying from her.

After pouring himself another cup of coffee, he stood at the window and pondered another reaction he was having to Anderson. She was a woman. Not just any woman, but a very unique one in the highly skilled role of combat helicopter pilot. That excited him. Enthralled him. Made him very curious about her. Who was she really? Where had she been born? What had happened to her as she was growing up to push her into this line of work? Was flying a passion with her or just a job?

So many questions and no answers. At least, not yet, he thought, grinning a little as he lifted the cup to his lips.

As he stood there eyeing the small, sun-baked military airfield and the many red roofs in the distance that showed where the sprawling city of Tijuana began, Gus felt a twinge in his heart. Frowning, he wondered where it had come from. Unsure, he turned and went back to his manual. The more he read, the more he would be prepared for what Chief Anderson would put him through. He didn’t want to fail her. He wanted to at least scrape by with a shred of her respect for him intact. After all, she’d chosen him as X.O., and he didn’t want to start off by having her questioning her choice.

Cam’s heart wouldn’t settle down as Chief Morales flawlessly took the Apache off the ground and rose to an altitude of five thousand feet, heading in the direction of San Diego.

The shaking and shuddering of the Apache always soothed her fractiousness when she felt uptight or nervous. Now, as she sat in the piggyback seat above and behind the pilot’s cockpit, with the late afternoon sun shining through the Plexiglas and the cooling air-conditioning sweeping around her, Cam smiled for the first time. She settled the clipboard on her lap, the pen in her gloved hand shaking with the vibration of the aircraft.

“Memorize this route, Chief,” she told him over the cabin intercom, moving the mike a little closer to her lips. Pulling down the dark green visor that shielded the upper half of her face from the invasive sunlight, Cam kept her attention on the two HUDS—heads-up displays—in front of her.

“The U.S. and Mexico have authorized us to use one specific air corridor along the border for takeoffs and landings during our training phase. Because the president of Mexico doesn’t want the civilian population to get overly concerned about military gunships in the vicinity, we have to fly in restricted airspace.”

“I understand, Ms. Anderson,” he replied.

“It was in your new flight manual.”

“Yes, ma’am, it was, and I’d already read that part of it.”

Cam chuckled. “You’re probably the only one who’s cracked the manual.”

Gus grinned. He liked the feel of the Apache around him. She was a deadly machine—board ugly, but dangerous and efficient. His right hand on the cyclic between his legs, his left hand around the collective, he said, “I’ll bet they’re both looking at it in detail now.”

How badly Cam wanted to break down the all-business facade with Morales. She liked his easygoing nature. Earlier, when he’d walked around the gunship as part of the ground check, she’d seen his eye for detail. He missed nothing. How friendly a C.O. could be with her X.O. was something Cam hadn’t a clue about. Was an executive officer like a best friend? Someone she could confide in? Or should she trust her X.O. only up to a certain point and try to keep an emotional distance from him? Cam wished she could talk to Maya about this. And she would, tonight, after she went to her barracks room. In the meantime, she would simply enjoy Gus’s warm, low laugh, which sent tingles through her for no explainable reason.

“Once you hit the San Diego vector at Imperial Beach, make a ninety degree left turn and head out to sea for fifteen miles, Chief Morales.”

Below her, Cam saw the sagebrush-covered hills of Mexico disappear as they moved into U.S. airspace. She pressed a button in the cockpit, which sent out an automatic signal to the radar scanners that swept the border area, showing who they were. Cam had no wish to be intercepted as a possible unfriendly aircraft.

Below them the dry hills were covered with twelve-lane freeways and housing estates. San Diego was a beautiful large city on the Pacific Coast. Ahead she could see the graceful sweep of the Coronado Bridge, connecting the island of the same name, with its naval air station, to the city.

Morales, so far, had a light, silken touch with the Apache. When he made the requested turn out toward the deep blue, sparkling ocean, Cam smiled.

“Your hours are showing, Chief,” she murmured, marking down a grade on her sheet regarding his flight skills.

“Oh?” Gus watched the light green of the ocean turn to a marine blue, indicating deeper water, as they flew quickly away from the coast. The western sun was shining straight into his eyes and he was glad for his visor.

“You have a nice touch with her.”

“I love this woman.”

Chuckling, Cam said, “You see the Apache as a ‘she’?”

“Always did. Always will.”

Luis and Antonio didn’t. To them, it was merely a machine to be wrestled around in the air. “That’s good,” she stated.

“Every helicopter has its own personality. I’m sure you’ve noticed that?”

Pleased that he’d speak with her as an equal, Cam said, “Oh, yes. We have names for each of our ladies down at the squadron.”

“Any hangar queens?” These were helicopters that broke down frequently and spent more time in the hangar than flying on missions.

Laughing, Cam said, “No. The Apache has a pretty low breakdown record. No hangar queens, thank goodness. The way we push them, they’ve stood up when they shouldn’t have over the years even in high humidity. An Apache’s a tough machine.”

“I’d like to know more about your squadron, any time you have a free moment to fill me in.”

Hearing the excitement in his voice, Cam said dryly, “Chief, it’s a black ops, so I can’t say much about it.”

“That’s what I thought. Well, you can’t blame me for asking, can you?”

“No. Nice try. Okay, once you hit the five-mile mark, I want you to turn ninety degrees south.”

“Yes, ma’am.” On the mark, he brought the Apache over in a quick, banking turn. From this elevation, he could still see the rim of land to his left and the mighty Pacific spreading out to the south and west.

“Good. You’re going to fly southward exactly twenty miles. We’re going to parallel the Baja Peninsula, as you well know. At the twenty-mile mark, you will execute another ninety degree left turn, moving due east. That will take us into our authorized military flight test area.”

“That’s all mountains and hills, with very little population,” Gus said.

“That’s right, Chief. Our playground for the next eight weeks.”

“I used to hike in those mountains,” Gus said.

“Really?” Cam was hungry to know something about Morales on a personal level. “How old were you?”

“I told you my mom is Yaqui Indian?”

“Right, you did.” With his golden skin and the hint of a tilt at the corners of his large eyes, Morales reminded her of a lean, golden jaguar. There was a strength to him as well—quiet, powerful and yet steady. Cam could feel it. There was something so solid and grounded about him that it made her want to trust him. The man was terribly good-looking, in her opinion. One moment he’d appear serious and mature, and the next he’d give her that unexpected, little-boy grin of delight. She liked him more than she should, Cam realized.

“My father was an attaché to the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico when I was a kid, and he used to take me over here to go hiking. My dad is a great outdoorsman to this day.”

“A hunter?”

“No, a hiker.”

“Did your mom go along?”

“No. My dad has a great love of the land, and he would show me animal tracks and interesting plants. We’d take a camera along and shoot the birds and animals we saw. I have scrapbooks at home filled with pictures we took.”

“Better to shoot them with a camera than a gun,” Cam said.

“Right on.”

“And yet you’re an Apache pilot. A combat pilot who will have to pull the trigger someday, and possibly kill someone. How does that set with you, Chief Morales?”

Making the turn at the twenty-mile mark, Gus pushed the Apache toward the brown-and-green looming mountains in the distance. “I don’t know. All my targets have been wooden, with no human involvement.”

It was a good answer.

Cam got down to business. “All right, Chief, I’m going to give you a series of flight maneuvers. When I give the orders, I want them executed immediately. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gus felt his heart speed up a little. Below, the ocean was an aquamarine color, indicating it was becoming shallow. Up ahead rose mountains that were anywhere from two to six thousand feet in height. The bumpy foothills in front of them were lined with green valleys filled with brush and short trees; the sloping sides were dotted with sagebrush and cactus. Beyond them the tops of the mountains were bare and brown.

Gus tightened his hands around the controls as he anticipated the series of flight commands Chief Anderson would put him through.

“Climb to twenty thousand.”

Instantly, Gus followed her orders. The engines howled. The Apache strained. Nose up, the helicopter clawed for the blue sky, which was dotted with white cottony clouds. The gravity pushed Gus back in the pilot’s seat. It was always a good feeling to him. This was what he loved best—flying this powerful, responsive machine.

The moment he hit the targeted altitude, he heard Anderson snap, “I want an inside loop.”

Gus was surprised, but didn’t hesitate. Immediately he sent the aircraft nose down in a sharp descent toward the green-and-brown earth. The Apache was the only helicopter in the world that could do an inside loop. Because gravity would drain the fuel from the lines on other machines, none but the Apache could attempt this maneuver. Boeing engineers had figured out how to keep the fuel pumping to an Apache’s engines to keep it from dropping out of the sky.

Cam was pinned back in her seat as gravity built during the loop maneuver. She felt the sureness and confidence in Morales’s handling of the Apache as he executed the required moves. They had eaten up ten thousand feet of airspace in the process, and now, as he brought the shrieking Apache into the lower part of the loop, gravity tried to pull them to the earth.

Cam had had to take the controls from the two other pilots at this point because they were awkward and lacked the confidence to get the screaming helicopter up and out of the dive. Morales, she knew, would finish the loop without her intervention.

As Gus brought the Apache back to its original altitude, he felt a thrill of joy arc through him, and he laughed. It was a sound of triumph. When he heard Chief Anderson laugh with him, his heart opened with an incredible sense of happiness. She understood his joy. Knew how he loved riding this fearless machine, which could do nearly anything that was asked of it.

“That’s incredible!” he said, emotion in his voice.

“Vertical dive to ten thousand.”

“Yes, ma’am!” And he plunged the Apache straight downward, the rotors thumping hard and sending battering waves of vibration through his body.

Pleasure surged through Cam as, for the next twenty minutes, she put Morales through his paces. He was nearly flawless in his command of the Apache. It was a relief to her. At least one of the three pilots on her team had the goods to do interdiction work. Concerned about the other two, Cam wasn’t sure what to do. Putting that worry aside, she ordered Morales back out to sea to follow their designated corridor back to the air base.

Over the Pacific, Gus began to relax. He knew he’d done well on the flight test. “Are you sorry yet that you asked me to be your X.O.?”

Cam lifted her head and stared down out of her cockpit. Below, she could see the green helmet Morales wore, but not his face. “Not at all.”

“Then,” he suggested, “when we’re alone, could we be on a more friendly footing with one another? Could you call me Gus?”

Cam smiled slightly. “So long as the other pilots don’t overhear us, that’s fine. You can call me Cam.”

“Cam? Now, that’s an interesting name.”

“Short for Camelia. My mother had three daughters, and she named us after her favorite flowers—camelias, iris and dahlias.”

“Very nice,” Gus murmured. “I’m an only child—an army brat. My mother had me and said that’s it. One kid born in a helo and no more dramatics.” He chuckled indulgently. Below, the dark blue of the Pacific blazed with gold highlights as the sun sank closer to the western horizon.

“So, you were a handful, eh?”

Shrugging, Gus swept his gaze from the instruments to the ocean below, then to the sky above. It was a habit and a necessary part of flying. “I was a good kid.”

“You seem like you would have been.”

“Oh?” He was very curious about how Cam saw him.

Laughing a little, she said, “You strike me as someone who is very serious about work, but also knows how to play and be a big kid at times, too.”

“Very perceptive,” he murmured. “But that’s why you’re the C.O. You have this radar vision to see straight through your personnel and know what and who they are.”

“Oh, don’t give me that kind of credit,” Cam protested, frowning. “This is my first time at it. I’m learning as I go. The hunt and peck method, with a lot of mistakes along the way.”

“I’d say you’re doing real good so far.”

Mouth flexing, Cam looked up, enjoying the view of the sparkling ocean beneath them. With Gus, she could relax. He made it easy for her to banter with him. “Well,” she muttered, “I’m not so sure of that. At least not yet.”

“I’d say you’ve done a credible job of handling those two jay birds.”

Smiling, Cam said, “Thanks.”

“They threw the kitchen sink at you. I was shocked. I watched you deal with their insubordination and turn it against them. I know a lot of C.O.’s who would have strung them up on court-martial charges. You did it differently than a man would, but I think your way may give them a chance to grow instead of being canned. You were patient and firm with them. You let them know what their choices were, and then left them to hang themselves if that’s what they wanted to do. I found your method very instructive.”

Savoring his praise, Cam felt more relief flow through her. Folding her gloved hands on the board in her lap, she muttered, “I wasn’t expecting that kind of reception, to tell you the truth.”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “I wasn’t, either. Those two do a lot of bluffing, but this time they were serious.” He smiled and sheepishly admitted, “I wanted to speak up and defend you.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. It would have eroded my authority.”

Gus chuckled. “I still have some old officer-and-gentleman habits ingrained in me from my dad. Women are still goddesses to be worshipped on a pedestal, not hung out to dry.”

Unable to help herself, Cam laughed with him. “You’re good for my soul, Gus. Thanks for being here.”

“Believe me, it’s my pleasure.”

The sincerity in his baritone voice moved through Cam like a lover’s caress. She sat there assimilating the sensation. She’d heard the huskiness, the emotion, behind his words. Knowing that Gus meant them, Cam felt a little more confident in how she’d handled the two rebellious pilots.

“What, exactly, am I to do to help you as X.O.?” Gus asked. He saw they had five miles to go before he initiated the turn to fly over San Diego. He wished he could slow time down, but knew he couldn’t. The only thing missing in this private and personal conversation was being able to see Cam’s facial expressions, her reactions to what he said. Some of it he could hear in her soft, low voice.

“Not protect me when I’m toe-to-toe with either of those pilots in future, that’s for sure.”

He heard the derisive tone in her voice. Frowning, Gus murmured, “They shouldn’t have gone after you like that. They did it because they don’t respect women in general, not just you.”

“They’re not used to working around military women,” Cam agreed quietly.

“Part of it is the Mexican culture,” Gus said.

“I know. I was warned of it before I took this mission.”

Brightening, Gus made the turn. San Diego spread out for miles along the coastline, and the windows of the tall skyscrapers in the downtown area glimmered golden, reflecting the setting sun. “Well,” he drawled “at least one of your team isn’t prejudiced against women.”

“You. I think it’s because you’re part Indian. My C.O. comes from Indian and Brazilian heritage, and she’s from a matriarchal culture like yourself. That’s probably why.”

Nodding, Gus paid strict attention to flight protocol at this point. “My mother drilled into me at an early age that women are just as strong, smart and capable as men. She was right.” He really didn’t want this flight to end, because he was enjoying talking to Cam so much. Making the next turn, they began heading over the border toward Tijuana.

Moistening her lips, which were dry due to the desert environment, Cam gazed down at the landscape. Tijuana was a major border city, a city of haves and have-nots. The poor lived up on the hillsides, sometimes in shacks made of cardboard, with pieces of corrugated tin for roofs. It was a heart-wrenching sight to her. No one should live in that kind of poverty.

As Gus brought the Apache in for a perfect three-wheel landing, Cam felt sad. He had been the only positive part of her day. She gritted her teeth, girding herself for her next duty, which was to talk individually to each pilot about what she saw as his weaknesses and strengths. The task was not going to be fun at all.

Cam missed the camaraderie of her sisters, as well as her fellow pilots at the BJS base in Peru. Akiva had been right; when one assumed a leadership role, the fun of being a pilot went out the window—pronto. Having no one to talk to on a personal level weighed heavily on Cam.

She gazed out the windshield as the rotors stopped turning. Below, a U.S. Army crew tethered the rotors and the chief of the ground crew gave the signal that it was safe to open their individual cockpit covers. Until Mexican Army crews could be trained to take over these jobs, the U.S. Army would supply ground crews to Mexico.

Pushing up the canopy, Cam unharnessed herself, trying to tuck all her fears away. Somehow she had to look confident and authoritative, as if she knew what she was doing when she talked to Antonio and Luis. It wasn’t going to be pleasant.

On the ground, she saw Gus take off his helmet. He quickly ran his long fingers through his short, thick black hair, taming it back into place. When she looked at him, he grinned at her like an excited little boy. In that moment, all her consternation dissolved beneath the warmth and joy in his eyes as he held her gaze. Taking off her own helmet, Cam set it on the fuselage of the Apache as the ground crew rapidly worked around them. She had her hair in a ponytail, and reaching up, she loosened it so that it flowed down around her face and shoulders once again.

Unexpected hunger sizzled through Gus as Cam’s hair flowed like a chestnut cape around her proud shoulders. The sunlight caressed her as she picked up her helmet and tucked it beneath her left elbow, then picked up her clipboard. The breeze lifted some strands, highlighting the gold-red tones. She was incredibly beautiful to him in that moment. The world seemed to stop turning for Gus as Cam looked up at him from only a few feet away. The voices of the ground crew, the calls of the seagulls wheeling above them, the noise of a diesel fuel truck coming toward them, all dissolved. He was aware only of her. That oval face dotted with girlish freckles, those thoughtful but worried green eyes of hers and her very soft, parted lips all conspired against him.

As their gazes locked and held for an instant, Gus felt the armor he’d placed around his heart crack. He literally felt and heard it, and the sensation was startling. Frightening. Euphoric. He stood there staring at her, and really looked at Cam for the first time, man to woman.

Swallowing hard, he forced himself to tear his gaze from hers a second later. But not before he saw her cheeks turn a distinct rose color. Had he seen her eyes change? Had they really become a velvet green with flecks of sunlight in them as she’d stared back at him? Trying to shake off the sensation, because it wasn’t appropriate under the circumstances, Gus turned away. But he remembered her eyes. They were like dark, placid green pools he’d seen in the jungles of the Yucatan peninsula that he’d visited with his parents as they taught him about his ancient Mayan heritage. If she met her, his mother would whisper that Cam had “jaguar eyes.” Eyes that now held Gus frozen, a captive—but what an eager one he was! To his consternation and shock, he realized that he could have fallen helplessly into Cam’s gaze, a willing prisoner.

Turning, he fell into step with her as they headed back to the barracks. Cam kept a casual distance between them, and glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, Gus wondered if she’d felt anything toward him in that crazy moment out of time. Her cheeks were still a high pink color, and she was looking down at the ground, her brows drawn downward. Realizing abruptly that she probably hadn’t, Gus found himself in an unexpected quandary.

He liked Cam. Liked everything about her, probably more than he should, given their professional relationship. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he took off his flight gloves and jammed them into the left pocket of his flight suit. Within moments they would be at the two-story barracks, climbing the outside wooden stairs to the second floor, where their H.Q. was located. Time. He needed some quiet time to think about what had just occurred. Tonight, when he went to his assigned cubical on the first floor, and the lights were out, he’d feel his way through it all. Maybe then he’d get some answers.