An Honorable Woman

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?”