Читать книгу Sign, Seal, Deliver - Rogenna Brewer - Страница 8

LEAVE HER ALONE? Zach stood in the wake of Michelle’s words and his own total disbelief. Like hell he would!

He was just about to start after her when the elevator began to fill up around him, bringing him back to his senses. She needed space. And he needed…damn, he couldn’t think of anything he needed except her.

He changed direction midstep. Jostling a senior officer on the way out, Zach mumbled a hasty apology. The commander growled something in return. Great, that probably cost him a grade on his next landing. The guy had a reputation for being a hard-ass LSO. But Zach didn’t feel like sucking up today.

He turned aft down the amidships passageway toward the nearest officers’ mess. He’d long since chewed the sugar out of his gum, but he punctuated his thoughts by snapping bubbles in rapid-fire succession.

Michelle had brought him as close as he’d ever come to losing his cool. As a rule, he had the easygoing nature of a middle child. With an over-achiever for an older sister, he’d naturally learned to keep up or get left behind. And because his kid brother worshiped the ground he walked on, he’d made sure the squirt came along for the ride. They were a competitive family.

But with Michelle, it was just that much easier to let her be the boss. He didn’t mind taking the back seat in their as-yet-undefined relationship. What he did mind was being dumped out on the highway at ninety miles an hour, mowed down and left as roadkill.

I don’t love you! I’ve never loved you. Why can’t you just leave me alone?

He didn’t believe her, but something was definitely wrong. She’d grown distant these past few months. He could feel her slipping away with each passing day. And he didn’t know how to hold on. So he’d taken the action of a man desperate and damned.

He’d bought an engagement ring.

Duty free. Right out of the Navy Exchange Catalog. Zach almost groaned out loud thinking about his lack of sensibility. He considered himself a pretty smart guy. He knew better than to purchase a diamond sight unseen.

For one thing it didn’t have any romantic appeal. The parcel had arrived yesterday at mail call—dripping wet after the helicopter had dropped a couple of mailbags into the ocean during transfer. The bundles had been retrieved by divers. Postal clerks had somehow managed to sort through illegible ink smears and soaked care packages to find their disgruntled recipients.

When he’d taken the ring from the soggy box, the plain gold band with its substandard crystallized carbon looked just about perfect nestled in the palm of his hand. From that moment on he couldn’t wait to slip the logical, if somewhat flawed, token of his esteem onto Michelle’s finger.

Hell, he could always buy her a bigger rock. And he’d have a lifetime to get used to the idea of being married.

Marriage. A big step. Maybe the biggest he’d take in his lifetime. Making the decision to leap felt kind of like an emergency ejection during an aborted takeoff. Damned if you did, and damned if you didn’t. Odds were you’d survive a crash in front of the ship only to be dragged under and drowned.

And that was what he felt like right now. A drowning man. But Michelle was his life preserver.

As he neared the mess, the deceptive smells of sizzling bacon and frying eggs—any-way-you-like-’em as long as you liked them runny and scrambled—ambushed his senses. There hadn’t been eggs on board since the last port of call.

Above the cacophony of sounds from the busy kitchen and several simultaneous conversations from the dining area, he zeroed in on his RIO’s street-smart, New York accent.

“Yo, Zach! Over here.” Steve waved from a corner cloth-covered table where he sat eating breakfast with Skeeter. The white linen was supposed to remind them they were officers. And somehow make them forget they were eating the same chow as the enlisted personnel.

Zach nodded as he entered and picked up a tray. Moving quickly through the breakfast buffet line, he chose his favorite preflight carbo load—a short stack of pancakes drowned in imitation maple syrup with a tall glass of powdered milk on the side.

God, he missed whole milk, fresh eggs and a long grocery list of other favorite foods. But this far into deployment just about everything came reconstituted.

Welcome to shipboard life, haze gray and under way.

Plastering a smile on his face, Zach pulled out a chair next to Skeeter and sat down.

“The old man rip you a new one?” Steve asked.

“You could say that,” Zach admitted “Where’s Michelle?”

“I’ve already had this conversation once today and it’s not even 0600. He’s all yours, Marietta.” Skeeter got up, leaving the rest of her breakfast untouched.

Plucking the dusty plastic rose from the bud vase, Zach held it out to her. “Are you sure you have to go?”

Skeeter rejected the faux flower and his insincerity by turning away.

“I don’t think she likes me,” Zach confided in his RIO once the other navigator was out of ear-shot. Not that he cared. Sticking his gum on the side of his plate, he picked up his glass.

“Aren’t you barking up the wrong skirt?”

Zach almost choked on a swallow of chalky milk headed down his windpipe. He coughed to clear his throat.

Steve offered a sheepish grin. “So Skeeter doesn’t like you and Michelle is pissed at you—what else is new?” Steve sopped up the gravy on his plate with his last bite of biscuit, a Navy specialty called SOS.

“‘Pissed’ is an understatement.” Zach dug into his pancakes. “Michelle acts as if I’m out to destroy her career,” he managed to say between bites.

“And you probably will. Admit it, Prince, you’re a nonconformist. You don’t give a damn about your career. But you’re a helluva F-14 pilot, which is why the Navy puts up with you. Your call sign isn’t Renegade for nothing, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” Even before this latest ass-chewing, he’d been thinking about what he had to offer the Navy and what he wanted in return. But despite what anyone thought, it bothered him that Michelle thought he was out to destroy her life when all he wanted to do was be a part of it. Maybe he’d have been better off following in his father’s footsteps to the SEAL teams, instead of pursuing Michelle into aviation.

He loved to fly, but his laid-back approach in a world that moved at Mach II sometimes made him look indolent. Maybe he’d be better off out of the service altogether. “If I start submitting my résumé now—”

“Whoa. Back up.” Steve pushed aside his plate. “You want to fly for a commercial airline?”

“Why not? I’m at the end of my obligated service. I could have a civilian job by the end of the cruise.”

It was no secret the airlines recruited military pilots right out of flight school. He and Michelle could both easily get real jobs. Was that what he wanted to do with the rest of his life? A commuter run between Sioux Falls and Cedar Rapids? Two point five kids? A white picket fence?

He wasn’t sure.

But sometime during the past four months the idea had taken hold and wouldn’t let go. Now all he had to do was convince Michelle.

“Wipe those thoughts right out of your head. Talk about conforming—” Steve reached for Skeeter’s bowl of unfinished cereal and started shoveling soggy shredded wheat into his mouth “—that is not what’s going to make you happy, my friend.” Steve let his less-than-objective opinion be known between swallows of slop. Zach was used to his friend’s garbage gut and his convictions.

Steve’s eyesight had kept him from becoming a pilot and fulfilling his own dream of becoming a Blue Angel, the Navy’s elite exhibition fliers. Even after laser surgery corrected his vision, the Navy rejected his request to retrain from a designated NFO—naval flight officer—to a pilot. Retreads, as the Navy liked to call them, had a higher percentage of crashes. But that didn’t stop Steve from trying to cut through the red tape, however.

“Don’t take it personally, Magic Man. You’re the best radar I’ve ever had in my back seat. And you’d make one helluva pilot. Even Greene is pulling for you on this one.”

Beyond that, Zach didn’t offer any encouragement. Whether or not Steve would ever find himself behind the controls of a jet all depended on the needs of the Navy.

“You can’t be serious about giving up jets, Prince.”

Do you have any idea how serious this is? We were lucky to get off with just a warning.

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.” Or anyone. His deepest personal thought caught the tail end of his sentence and went along for the ride.

It didn’t matter what he did as long as they were together.

If he and Michelle married while in the service, they’d see less of each other than they did now. There’d be long separations. Restrictions when they were together. And he didn’t have a clue how they’d ever manage a family. But if he could convince her they had other options…

The ensign leaned forward in his seat. “Take my advice, Prince. Forget about it. You’re a naval aviator, there’s JP-5 running through your veins. If the Navy wanted guys like us to have families, they’d have issued a wife and kids along with the seabag.”

Steve spoke the truth. Not too very long ago the Navy hadn’t even allowed married men to train as pilots. Single guys were discouraged from tying the knot. Firstborn sons from two-parent families with stay-at-home mothers and domineering fathers were considered ideal candidates, according to one Navy study, because of their natural arrogance.

Opportunities for women, once nonexistent, were just now opening up. Michelle’s pride was all wrapped up in being among the first female fighters. And he was going to ask her to give that up?

She’d never go for it. Even he had to admit how much she loved flying.

What had he done?

“I appreciate the warning, Magic Man. But it’s too late.” He’d already popped the question, so to speak. But he was no longer sure about her answer.

A CORNER OF the squadron changing room was sectioned off by a hanging bedsheet. The easy locker-room banter subsided as Michelle entered, then picked up again as she crossed to the other side of the jerry-rigged drape.

Since her introduction to the Fighting Aardvarks of VF-114, she’d seen as much of these men as their wives and proctologists. Yet the barriers remained.

The partition only served as a reminder.

It certainly wasn’t there to protect her already compromised modesty.

Michelle grabbed her G suit from its hook and put it on over her flight suit. In the post-Tailhook era male fliers acted with caution around their female counterparts. When asked, they dutifully acknowledged women as their equals, but resentment brewed beneath the surface.

Michelle shut out thoughts of equality as she shrugged into her survival vest. She had a job to do. The same as the men. For better or worse, for now at least, she was a Vark.

Hearing Zach’s familiar voice from the other side of the curtain, she realized he’d come into the room and wasn’t attempting to sweet-talk her out of her bad mood. In fact, he ignored her altogether as he carried on a conversation about weather conditions with the rest of the guys.

Michelle paused in putting on her gear.

What did she expect? She’d made it clear she wanted him to leave her alone. Even if deep down that wasn’t what she wanted at all. She’d made her choice, the right choice, and now she had to live with it. Still, it would be tough going on without him. He’d always been a part of her world.

He’d smoothed over the rough waters of squadron life. And she credited him with the fact that the men even tolerated her at all. His easy acceptance of her as his wingman made them all more comfortable.

It was her job to ride his wing. Follow his orders. But she’d always felt as if he didn’t mind being the one watching out for her, something she didn’t always appreciate, but remained grateful for nonetheless.

There were pilots who considered it bad luck to have a woman walk the wings of their parked planes, let alone ride in them.

Michelle’s gaze involuntarily darted to an eye-level rip in the sheet, searching for Zach on the other side. Some smart-ass had printed the words peep show in Magic Marker on the guy side. Skeeter had retaliated by drawing the male symbol around the hole, the arrow pointing to the words no show on the gal side.

Even though Skeeter was only on her first carrier cruise, she could hold her own with this bunch of bandits.

When she realized what she was doing, Michelle forced herself to look away. If they caught her peeking, she’d never hear the end of it.

Well, that would be one way to lose her icy reputation. Though she’d hate to think of what they’d call her then. Behind her back the Varks referred to her as the Ice Princess. Which was fine. Because the one thing they’d never call her was Quota Queen.

She’d earned her gold wings. And the price she’d paid may very well have been her only chance at happiness. Certainly it was higher than the price paid by a man.

Bending over in an exaggerated bow, she cinched her parachute harness tight, reminding herself of at least one advantage to being a woman. She didn’t have to worry about crushing her balls during an emergency ejection.

Sweeping aside the curtain, she strode past the men with all the regal bearing of a condemned royal, pausing only long enough to pick up her oxygen mask and helmet with the call sign Rapunzel emblazoned across the front.

A flight instructor had given her the tag after her first solo. In the aftermath of excitement, she’d taken off her helmet and let down her hair.

A mistake she’d never make again.

ON THE FLIGHT DECK, winds buffeted Michelle’s face. Jet engines roared in her ears and rattled her teeth, while the familiar heady scent of jet fumes filled her nostrils.

The sun put in its first appearance of the day, highlighting the light cloud cover with streaks of bright orange and pink.

A fine Navy day, as her father would say.

God, she loved this life. Nothing compared with a dawn launch off an aircraft carrier. She’d take that adrenaline rush over a man any day.

Pausing to check the safety of her 9-mm pistol, she placed the gun back in the holster pocket of her survival vest. Then ran a confident hand across the sleek underbelly of her assigned F-14 Tomcat. This was the point when she pushed aside all self-doubt and donned the persona of Xena Warrior Princess.

“I read the maintenance log,” Skeeter shouted above the din as she joined in the preflight walk-through. “The last pilot reported a problem with the left rudder, but the ground crew didn’t find anything.”

“Thanks, I’ll check it out.” Even though she trusted the “Vark fixers,” Michelle didn’t believe in leaving anything to chance. As a Navy pilot, she knew her plane inside and out.

Circling the aircraft, Michelle scanned the overall structural integrity of the jet. After she inspected the hydraulic gauges, she moved on to check the tires. And more importantly, she made sure the tailhook was pointed down. If the hook couldn’t catch the arresting wire and the jet couldn’t be diverted to a land base, the pilot had to fly into a steel-mesh-and-canvas-net barricade strung across the deck. A terrifying experience she could do without.

“You okay? You seem distracted,” Skeeter observed.

“Well, you know Captain Greene.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

“I thought maybe you and Zach had a fight.”

Michelle didn’t respond at first, needing the few moments it took to round the plane and come up on the nose again. But finally she had to satisfy her curiosity. “What makes you think Zach and I are fighting?”

“For one thing,” Skeeter answered, “he keeps looking over here with those soulful blue eyes of his.”

Michelle feigned indifference, but from the look on her RIO’s face, Skeeter wasn’t buying it. She pushed on the nose of the Tomcat to make sure the cone wouldn’t flip up during the catapult launch and crack the windshield.

Her gaze darted toward Zach’s plane a few feet away. They made eye contact from where he crouched on the wing checking an access panel. But he didn’t offer a jaunty salute or wave as he normally would have.

The corner of her mouth turned up in a sad smile. “He always looks like that.”

“Maybe when he looks at you. Personally, I don’t know what you see in him,” Skeeter said.

“Nothing,” Michelle denied automatically. Skeeter was probably the only person she knew who wasn’t taken in by Zach’s charisma. “In fact, I’m putting in for a transfer when we get to Turkey. I’m thinking about joining the Nintendo generation and retraining to fly the F/A-18 Hornet,” Michelle confided. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her until she shaded her eyes to watch as one of the newer, more maneuverable jets landed on deck.

The pilots were younger, from a generation where working mothers were the norm, and less likely to see a female flier as a threat. Hell, as sobering as the thought was, they’d probably think of her as mom.

Motherhood. With thirty approaching at Mach speed, she couldn’t deny thinking about it a time or two lately. Mostly with regret for what would never be.

A son with dark hair and blue eyes, toddling after his daddy…or a daughter, slipping her tiny hand into a much larger one…

“What about an F-14 squadron on the East Coast?” Skeeter asked.

A tidal wave of homesickness washed over Michelle for her home state of Virginia. For her mom and dad.

For forfeit fantasies.

“You don’t really want to fly with Bitchin’ Betty, instead of me, do you?” Skeeter persisted.

Michelle forced her attention back to her RIO, who was referring to the soft feminine voice of the computer system in the newer aircraft. The Hornet and the Super Hornet didn’t need a navigator. The pilot viewed operating systems from a four-inch screen with a touch pad, instead of having to scan countless dials and gauges.

The jet was equipped to do the job of two planes—the fighter and the attack bomber—while utilizing only one-quarter of the personnel. In a few short years fighters like the F-14 Tomcat would be as obsolete as bombers like the A-6 Intruder. And so would she. Why hadn’t she seen the writing on the wall sooner?

“If you stayed with the F-14, I could ship out with you.” Skeeter sounded a little desperate. And no wonder. As a pilot, Michelle had more options than her flight officer did. An NFO qualified to ride in, but not drive, a plane.

In Skeeter’s case, she was too short. Skeeter had received a waiver for the back seat only after proving she could reach the farthest control, the handle that jettisoned the canopy during an emergency ejection.

The Navy had built its planes decades earlier to accommodate males from five-six to six-three. Michelle’s height and build worked in her favor. “You’d want to do that?” she asked, weighing Skeeter’s feelings against her own motives. She didn’t want to hurt her dear friend with careless words or deeds. It wasn’t necessary to make up her mind right now.

“We’re a team, right?”

“Teammates,” Michelle agreed, but wondered in the end if she wouldn’t be moving on. She stole another glance at Zach, gabbing with a grape, a person wearing the purple vest of aviation fuels. The young enlisted woman appeared to hang on his every word. The knot in Michelle’s stomach tightened.

She knew what that girl and others saw when they looked at Zach, his movie-star looks for one thing. The charm that radiated from every pore for another.

But what did she see in him? Nothing…

Except that he was everything she wasn’t. A better pilot. A better person. And she resented him for it. And some resentments took a lifetime to overcome.

Michelle climbed onto the left wing to check the rudder. Was it possible to be jealous of and in love with your best friend?

WITH ONE LAST LOOK in Michelle’s direction, Zach put on his helmet and pulled down the visor, then climbed into the cockpit of his Tomcat.

It was already too late for his heart. And as soon as she got around to that piece of bubble gum in her pocket, it’d be too late for his pride.

He had nothing left to lose. Except her friendship.

Why hadn’t he left well enough alone?

Why did this restlessness he felt have him acting on impulse? He should have waited. Until her birthday, at least. By then maybe he’d have come to his senses. He’d waited four months already, since the ship left port, and that wasn’t exactly impulsive. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d had this particular itch for more than twelve years. He’d just been too spineless to scratch it before now. So why then, when he’d finally worked up the courage, was he breaking out in hives?

Steve climbed into the back seat and closed them off inside the Plexiglas canopy. Zach hooked up his G suit, oxygen mask and fastened the torso harness of his ejection seat. With a map strapped to the top of one knee and a scratch pad with notes secured to the other, he cinched the straps that held his legs in position. Flailing appendages could get chopped off in an emergency ejection.

Some pilots liked the snug feeling, but it made him feel claustrophobic, at least until he was airborne and could forget about the harness altogether.

He fired up the jet engines.

“You sure you want to give all this up?” Steve asked from behind him as they slowly taxied to the launch, following the taxi director’s signal. Hands above the waist were for the pilot, below were for the ground crew.

Zach smiled to himself. “I’m sure.” It wouldn’t be easy. But either way his life would never be the same.

That was why he’d stopped by Greene’s office and submitted a request for SEAL training. If Michelle didn’t want to marry him, there’d be no use hanging around the Air Wing.

They were launching from one of two forward positions today. Rapunzel and Skeeter from the other. The trip to Turkey wasn’t all fun and games. They’d meet up with allied forces for a week of training exercises before earning their forty-eight hours of liberty.

That gave him between takeoff and landing to convince Michelle to come along for the ride of her life. He pulled his lucky charm from his pocket, a photo of them together at Top Gun graduation. Removing the wad of gum from his mouth, he stuck it to the back of the picture and fixed it to the dashboard.

As he taxied into the catapult position, a square of deck angled up to deflect exhaust. A yellow vest—a catapult launch officer with Mickey Mouse ears to protect his hearing—signaled for him to extend the launch bar. Zach obliged and crewmen scurried underneath to hook the bar to the track. Zach pushed the throttle forward to full power.

The jet shuddered as the engines roared.

He ran an automatic check of his control stick and rudder pedals as he eyeballed the panels and gauges.

So far, so good.

Zach switched the launch bar to the retract setting, then grabbed the catapult hand grip in his left hand and locked his elbow. Releasing the wheel brakes, he braced his heels against the floor so he wouldn’t accidentally tap a rudder pedal.

The launch bar tightened. The nose dipped. And the launch officer took over.

Zach’s blood pumped with anticipation. He gripped the joystick with his right hand, but wouldn’t have control of the Tomcat until they were clear of the bow.

“Ready to rock and roll.” Zach gave the launch officer a sharp salute.

Like a projectile propelled from a slingshot, the Tomcat took to the horizon. Zach’s eyes remained glued to the gauges, when they weren’t rolling back into his head. His helmet stayed pinned to the headrest and his stomach was up somewhere near his throat. But his adrenaline hummed, then sang as the F-14 shot from the boat.

He had exactly two seconds for the jet to reach 120 knots; if it didn’t, he’d pull the yellow cord between his legs. Ejecting in front of the ship could be as dangerous as failing to eject. Being keel-hauled, dragged under a 130-foot-long beam held little appeal. And little chance for survival.

God, he was going to miss this.

“We’re clear!” Steve whooped from the back seat, knowing the microphones to the tower weren’t keyed up yet.

As Zach took control of the stick, the dawn promised a clear azure sky and miles of visibility. Pink cotton-candy clouds overhead and bottomless blue ocean below gave him a sense of freedom that was hard to define. Since that very first day he’d taken to the sky, he knew it was where he belonged. Just as he knew he and Michelle belonged together.

As a fighter pilot he had to possess the right combination of nerves and daring to take off and land a thirty-eight-million-dollar jet on a moving airstrip about the size of a football field.

Not to mention a little bit of attitude.

Zach had all three in abundance.

The one thing he didn’t have was the girl. And he intended to rectify that very soon.

“Tomcat Leader, this is Two. I’ve got your ‘six’ covered,” Michelle reported in on the tower frequency, having launched right behind him.

“‘Anytime, baby,’” Zach quoted the Tomcat motto. “Angels nineteen, recommend two-twenty,” he called back.

“Copy, Tomcat Leader. Cruising altitude nineteen thousand feet. Airspeed 220 knots,” she rattled off the nautical miles in her soft alto static. “Two, on the way to heaven.”

“Roger, Two, I’ll meet you there.”

Zach eased back on the stick, taking the Tomcat up to their designated rendezvous as he wondered what the view was like from a jumbo jet. “This is your captain speaking,” he said into his mouthpiece. “The temperature in Istanbul is a balmy seventy-two degrees…. In a few minutes you’ll see Saudi Arabia coming up on your left, and to the right, Iraq.

“Your stewardess, Steve, will be around with peanuts and all the booze your kidneys can hold. Thank you for flying Renegade Air.”

“Practicing?” Steve asked.

“Thought it might be a good idea.” Maybe he’d be able to convince Michelle there were friendlier skies where they could be together.

“There’s something I gotta ask you, Rapunzel.”

“Not today, Renegade. I’m not in the mood.”

“PMS with wings,” Steve shared on the back mike.

“I was just wondering how you felt about United.”

“United? The airline?” Michelle asked.

“Renegade!” Captain Greene’s bellow vibrated through his helmet. “I’ll bust your butt all the way down to seaman recruit if you keep talking like that.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Smart-ass,” Greene shot back.

“That’s an affirmative, Captain.” Zach chuckled. The captain liked a good verbal spar as much as he did—only, the senior officer had the rank to back up his bluster.

“Right now I’ve got a bigger problem than your mouth, hotshot. I’ve got a broken catapult and a plane in the drink. Next launch in ten…” The captain paused to listen for the report, then let out a string of expletives. “Make that twenty.”

“Roger, twenty. One and Two going on alone.” Zach hoped the poor bastards whose jet had taken a nosedive into the water lived to tell about it.

Their flight path would take them over the Persian Gulf into the coalition-enforced no-fly zone over southern Iraq, where they’d do a little policing for Kuwait. Then over Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria until they reached their destination, Turkey.

“Copy.” Michelle acknowledged the message.

Zach switched to the prearranged frequency that would keep their cockpit conversations private just in time to hear Michelle chewing him out.

“Must you provoke him like that?” she demanded.

Michelle took Captain Greene a lot more seriously than he did. She took life a lot more seriously. So how did he prove he was serious enough about her to take on more responsibility? She’d be good for him. And he’d be good for her. Why couldn’t she see that?

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

“Are you calling me uptight?”

“If the shoe fits.”

“Now you’re mixing up your fairy tales. That’s ‘Cinderella.’”

Zach chuckled. “United. Think about it. Lead’s breaking for a G warm-up.” He banked the jet right ninety degrees, diving one thousand feet in a 4G maneuver to test his reaction times.

Four times the force of gravity meant he now weighed eight hundred pounds and his movements were harder to control. When the aircraft’s weight sensor detected the increase, air from the engine rushed in, inflating his anti-G suit and squeezing the lower half of his body to keep blood pumping to his brain and to keep him from passing out. No one could ever accuse a jet pilot of thinking with his lower extremities.

At least not while flying.

“Renegade, checks out okay,” Zach reported.

“Magician, okay.”

“Two breaking.” Michelle followed his lead.

Zach gave her enough time to pull off the stunt, but she didn’t report back right away. “Two?”

“Roger. Skeeter, okay.”

“Rapunzel, okay.”

She’d hesitated a moment too long. “Two?” he asked again.

“Let’s put the pedal to the metal,” she responded.

“Negative, Two.” A body reacted differently to the G force from one day to the next. And as far as he knew, she’d skipped breakfast. As squad leader, if he suspected a serious physical impairment to her flying, he could order her back to the carrier. She wouldn’t like it. But he’d do it. “Run through that G warm-up again.”

“What—”

“Humor me. That’s an order, Two.”

“Two breaking for another G warm-up,” she answered back with a little too much sass.

Just the way he liked it.

Zach craned his neck to watch her jet bank, then dive against the backdrop of blue sky.

“Rapunzel, checks out okay,” she reported back, right away this time.

“Skeeter, okay.”

“Copy, Two. Recommend Mach I.” The speed of sound.

“Roger, Tomcat leader. I concur.”

Zach maintained a somber mood for the rest of the flight. It went against his nature, but playtime was over. They were without backup. And it wasn’t that long ago he’d been a raw ensign flying sorties over Iraq. That thought was enough to sober him up fast.

F-14 Tomcats were fighters. So he hadn’t participated in bombing runs. Though he’d thrilled to the experience of hair-raising dives and recoveries in trainers, he wouldn’t trade his fighter for a bomber or the new fighter/attack bomber like the F/A-18 Hornet for the world.

It would be even worse than a jumbo jet.

Give him a good dogfight any day, the last arena of gentleman warfare. There were rules of engagement, and both pilots had chosen to be there.

“Tomcat Leader, this is Tower. We have a bogey 800 knots and closing.”

“Single?” Zach queried the tower and his RIO at the same time. “Magic Man?”

“Got him on the screen,” Steve answered first. “Looks like a single.”

“I see him, too,” Skeeter reported.

“Eyes open,” Zach ordered.

“One o’clock, MiG-28. Headed straight for us,” Steve supplied as the more maneuverable Russian-made aircraft bearing the red, white and black colors of Iraq broke through the clouds and into their line of vision.

Nothing to lose his breakfast over, Zach surmised. Since the Gulf War, Iraqi and American fighters did everything they could to avoid confrontation with one another. Zach didn’t expect today to be any different.

“He’s not supposed to be in the no-fly zone. Let’s chase him home,” he ordered, maneuvering his jet into a split S, a quick U-turn that would bring him in low on the bogey. He craned his head to the left as he turned right.

“Copy. Got you covered, Tomcat Leader.” Michelle followed his lead.

Dogfighting had changed little since WWI, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked on the big screen. First you had to get in the control zone, the cone behind the other jet. And you could only attack from the same angle of plane. A dogfight lasted all of sixty seconds or less. After that first minute survival rates dropped dramatically.

At any given moment a pilot handled a dozen or more calculations in his head. In training they practiced juggling tennis balls and solving mathematical equations at the same time. A well-trained fighter pilot’s instincts were so honed he could fly without thinking and concentrate on making split-second decisions.

The MiG pilot had enough maneuvers to keep them on the edge of their seats as they raced through the skies at speeds that exceeded the sound barrier.

“This guy’s pissin’ me off. Why isn’t he leaving the zone?” Zach questioned the Iraqi pilot’s motives. “Let’s see if we can get him to panic and run.” He zeroed in on the target. “I’ve got a lock!” The beep of the HUD—heads-up display—confirmed it. “He’s bugging out.” The MiG sped ahead just as alarms blared in the cockpit. “Shit! Surface-to-air missiles.” They were about to cross over into Iraqi airspace.

“Radar’s trying to get a lock,” Steve confirmed.

“We’ve got bells going off here,” Michelle warned.

“Bug out!” Zach ordered as he switched to evasive tactics.

“Affirmative.” Michelle took the lead in the turn.

“Renegade, MiG’s in pursuit,” Steve informed him.

“What does this guy think he’s doing?” They were back in the coalition controlled airspace, the no-fly zone over southern Iraq and Kuwait.

Something wasn’t right. Zach felt it in his gut.

If this was all for shits and giggles, the MiG pilot would have bugged out by now. This guy was playing cat-and-mouse as if he wanted to get caught. Which could mean only one thing—this MiG was the cheese. So they’d better keep their eyes open for more enemy fighters.

“Tower, this is Tomcat Leader—”

“Keep your cool, hotshot,” Captain Greene broke in with instructions. “See if you can lead him out over the gulf.”

“How much fuel do we have, Magic Man?”

“Not enough for this shit,” Steve answered even before calculating the amount of fuel in exact pounds. Dogfighting was the difference between a Sunday drive and drag racing when it came to fuel consumption.

“Keep an eye on it for me. Copy, Tower. Two, whaddya say we make a MiG sandwich. Can you get behind this guy?”

“Affirmative. I’m pulling around behind.”

“Renegade, two more bogeys closing in,” Steve warned.

“Copy. What’d Iraq do—send up their whole damn air farce today?” The Iraqi fighters wouldn’t be led out to sea, and keeping the three jets out of southern Iraq and away from Kuwait forced them all deeper into the Republic of Iraq. But every time the Tomcats gave up chase the Iraqi fighters came back around. “Tower, recommend radio Saudi for some backup from the Air Force.”

“Negative. We’ve launched four of our own. ETA, ten minutes. By the time the Air Force gets off the ground, we’d already be there.”

“We’ve got two bogeys on our tail,” Skeeter reported.

“Gotcha covered.” Zach slammed on the air brakes. Pulling back hard on the stick, he maneuvered the jet in an over-the-top back flip known as an Immelmann—named after the WWI German flying ace who’d invented it.

Then he rolled in behind the lag MiG.

Lag pursuit required a patience Zach didn’t possess right now. He opted for lead pursuit. Taking a high yo-yo shortcut through the other pilot’s circle, he cut off bogey number three from Michelle.

Meanwhile, she lured the MiG directly behind her into a rolling scissors, a dizzying Ferris-wheel form of pure pursuit that pulled as much as eight G’s. But with a little luck and a lot of skill she would eventually put her Tomcat behind the MiG.

That took care of bogey number two.

And left number one, the lead MiG open to come in behind either him or Michelle. Zach was the easier target. He made sure he kept it that way.

Everything happened fast and furious with three MiGs and two Tomcats vying to lock on to enemy craft. Zach’s head moved on a swivel, trying to keep up with his jet. Steve rattled in his ears, tracking both friend and foe.

Michelle dropped below two thousand feet before she managed to get into the cone zone of MiG Two. As soon as she did, MiG One lined up behind her.

“He’s trying to get a lock.” She sounded composed and in control, pulling from her bag of tricks a countermaneuver for every maneuver the MiG tried.

God, she was good.

The way she kept her cool made him hot all over. “Shake your tail feathers, baby,” Zach ordered. He wanted her safe. And he wasn’t about to play games with her life. “Tower, where’s that backup?”

“ETA, eight minutes.”

“We’re over Iraqi-controlled airspace,” Steve warned.

G’s slammed Zach’s body. Winds buffeted the plane. Alarms rang in the cockpit and throughout his head.

“He’s got a lock.” Michelle put her Tomcat into a barrel roll, launching chaff and flares to confuse any heat-seeking missiles. “I can’t shake him.”

“I’m lining up right behind him.” Zach had two MiGs on his tail now. The one directly behind him locked on. He launched a confusing barrage of chaff and stuck like glue to the MiG riding Rapunzel’s six.

The bogey kept on her.

Sweat gushed from every pore of his body, soaking through his flight suit as he sucked down oxygen from his face mask.

Hold him off, sweetheart.

Lock on, lock on, he demanded of himself.

The HUD showed the bogey in the “pickle” and beeped. “Yes! Enough of this shit. Tower, I’ve got a lock.” Zach’s thumb hovered over the trigger of the Sidewinder, a close-range air-to-air combat missile. “Permission to fire.”

“Do not engage,” Captain Greene spouted policy. They were not to fire unless fired upon.

“He’s all over Rapunzel’s ass!”

Then it happened. His worst nightmare.

The MiG fired, scoring a direct hit.

The tail of Michelle’s Tomcat burst into flames. Her plane spiraled toward the ground.

“Eject! Eject, dammit!” Zach shouted.