Morgan's Mercenaries: Heart of Stone

“Black Jaguar One, this is Two. Over.”

Flicking down the button on the collective, Maya answered, “This is Black Jaguar One. Over.”

“See the horizon?”

Mouth quirking, Maya glared at the crimson ribbon. “Yeah, I see it.”

“Not a good sign. Over.”

“No. Keep your eyes peeled, ladies. I’m betting on more company than was originally invited.”

“Roger. Out.”

Jess chuckled. “Wouldn’t those good ole boys from Fort Rucker die laughing if they heard us looking at a red horizon as a sign of a coming Kamov attack?”

Maya knew that there would be radio silence maintained between them and the new Apaches and Blackhawk coming in to meet them. Only once they met would they all switch to another radio frequency to speak for the first time. Ruthlessly grinning, she said, “Yeah, they’re gonna pee in their pants when they start flying with us in those new D models. It will shake up their well-ordered little male world.”

Laughing, Jess said, “Speaking of which…here they come. Got three blips on radar and…” she peered closely at her HUD “…yep, it’s them. It’s showing two Apaches, and a Blackhawk bringing up the rear. What do you know? They can navigate.”

Maya laughed. It broke the tension in her cockpit. “Well, we’ll give them an A for meeting us at the right time and place. Let’s just loiter here until they arrive.”

Placing the Apache in a hover at nine thousand feet, Maya watched her HUD with interest. The radar clearly showed the three aircraft speeding toward them. The lead one was flown by Dane York, no doubt. Her mouth compressed. Maya held on to the anger that she still had toward him. Every woman pilot at her base had had the misfortune of being under his training command. That was why, when the idea for this base came about, they had all left with Maya. They wanted no part of the continuing prejudice they knew would be thrown at them. At least down here they were graded on their abilities, not their sex.

The crimson ribbon on the horizon was expanding minute by minute, staining the retreating blackness of the starlit sky and chasing it away like a gaping, bleeding wound. Maya kept looking around. She could feel the Kamovs lurking somewhere near…but where? All she needed was to have three unarmed gunships jumped by fully loaded Kamov Black Sharks, with only two Apaches standing between them. Her mind raced. If the Kamovs were near, just waiting for the right moment to jump them, she wondered how they had found out the meeting location in the first place? Was there a leak in intelligence? How could Faro Valentino have gotten hold of this information? Maya frowned. Her gaze moved ceaselessly now. Her gut was tightening. She smelled Kamovs. Where? Dammit, where?

“Black Jaguar One, this is Rocky One. Do you read? Over?”

Maya instantly flinched. It was Dane York’s deep, controlling voice rolling in over the headset inside her helmet. Her heart leaped at that moment, beating hard. With fear. Old fear that she had felt at the school so many years ago. Anger quickly snuffed out her reaction. Thumbing the cyclic, she answered, “Rocky One, this is Black Jaguar One. Welcome to our turf.” She grinned recklessly because she wanted to let him know from the get-go that he was on her turf, her base and under her command.

There was a brief silence. Then he answered, “Roger, Black Jaguar One. What are your instructions? Over.”

Her eyes slitted as she saw the three aircraft coming out of the fleeing darkness. They were all painted the mandatory black, with absolutely no insignias on them. Her lips lifted away from her teeth and she said, “We’re worried about Kamovs jumping us. No sign of them yet, but we feel them out there. You know the routine if we’re jumped? Over.”

“Roger, Black Jaguar One. How do you know there’re Kamovs around?”

It was just like York to question her. Maya rolled her eyes. “Major, just accept it as a reality. Over.”

“Roger, Black Jaguar One. We know the routine in case we are attacked. Over.”

“Roger.” At that point Maya, gave them the heading for the base. “Stay above the cloud cover. We’ll be flying about a mile on either side of you. Over.”

“Roger.”

“He hasn’t changed one bit,” Dallas said over their private frequency. “Maybe you oughta tell him you looked into your crystal ball this morning before you got into the Apache, Maya. Tell him you saw Kamovs in your future.” And she giggled.

Maya didn’t think it was funny at all. Already York was trying to assert control over her by questioning her authority and ability. “No, I’d rather tell him the truth—that we’ve got a red sunrise and that means Kamovs are hunting us. Think he’d buy that instead?” Maya heard the other three women laughing hysterically in her headset. The laughter broke the tension among them. They knew from three years of experience that red sunrises were an ominous sign.

The light of day shone dully across the sky. Off to Maya’s left, she saw the three new aircraft flying in a loose formation, staying far enough apart that they couldn’t be hit as a unit by a missile and destroyed. At least York was smart enough not to fly in a tight formation—she’d give him that. Maya could barely make out Dallas’s aircraft, positioned a mile on the other side of the group. They had an hour to go before they reached the base. And an hour would feel like a lifetime when she knew the Kamovs were up and hunting them.

“Break, break!” Dallas called. “We’ve got a visual on a Kamov at eleven o’clock!”

Instantly, Maya thumbed the radio. “Rocky One, hightail it out of here. We’ve got company. Over.”

“Roger. Over and out.”

Maya sucked in a breath and cursed as she saw the long shape of the Black Shark with its coaxial rotors coming down out of the sky toward the fleeing aircraft.

“Damn! Come on, Jess, let’s get with it!” She punched fuel into the Apache engines. The aircraft instantly responded, the motors deepening in sound as they flew toward the attacking Kamov, which was trying to get a bead on one of the escaping U.S. aircraft. Right now, Maya thought, York was probably pissing in his pants over this. He was a combat pilot in a combat aircraft with no ammunition. Nada. And he was probably hotter than a two-dollar pistol about it. She didn’t blame him.

“Whoa!” Jess yelled. “Another Kamov at nine o’clock, starboard!”

That was two of them. Maya thumbed the radio. “Dallas, I’ll take the one at nine. You take the one at eleven. Over.”

“Roger, you got it. Out.” Dallas’s voice was tight with tension.

Maya banked the screaming Apache to the right. She spotted the sleek Russian machine trying to go after the escaping Blackhawk below it. The U.S. aircraft had scattered in three different directions like birds that had been shot at. The Blackhawk had dropped quickly in altitude and was making for the cloud cover. The only problem was that once the Blackhawk entered the clouds, the pilot would have to go on instrumentation in an area he didn’t know, while being pursued by a Kamov pilot who knew this territory like the back of his hand.

“Damn,” Maya whispered. She sent the Apache into a steep dive. The machine screamed and cranked out, the beating pulsations of the rotors thumping through her tense body. Gripping the controls, Maya grimaced, her lips lifting away from her clenched teeth.

“Put a rocket on ’em, Jess.”

“Roger. I got a fix!”

“Fire when ready.”

They were arcing at a steep, banking dive toward the Kamov, which was closing in on the slower Blackhawk. Maya knew the shot would be wide. She hoped it would be close enough to scare off the Kamov. Or at least make him turn and pick on them instead of an unarmed helicopter.

“Fire!” Jess cried.

There was a flash of light from the starboard wing where the rocket launched. Maya followed the trail of the speeding weapon as it careened toward the Kamov.

“Fire two more!”

“Roger. One sec…firing now!”

Two more rockets left the pod on the right wing of the Apache.

Maya watched as all three streaked toward the Kamov. Satisfaction rose in her as the first one dived in front of its nose. The pilot had seemed so intent on pursuing the Blackhawk that he wasn’t aware of them—until now. The problem with the Kamov was that it was a single seater, and the pilot not only had to fly the damn thing, but work all the instruments, as well. That led to attention overload, and Maya was betting the pilot had been so engaged in downing the Blackhawk that he hadn’t had time to check who else might be around.

The Kamov suddenly banked sharply to the left. The other two rockets flew harmlessly past it.

Good. Maya sucked air between her teeth as she pushed the diving Apache to the left now, to follow the fleeing Kamov. In her headset, she could hear Dallas and her copilot talking excitedly back and forth to one another as they engaged the other Kamov. It sounded like they had everything under control.

“We’re going after this son of a bitch,” Maya muttered to Jess. “Hang on.”

The Kamov pilot knew it. In a split second, the gunship suddenly moved skyward in an awesome display of power and agility. It was trying to do an inside loop over Maya’s Apache so that it would come down behind her “six” or the rear of her machine and put a rocket into her. The Kamov turned a bloodred color as it arced high into the dawn sky, the twin blades a blur as it rose swiftly and then turned over. Maya knew that few helicopter pilots in the world could accomplish an inside loop. But she was one of them. Gripping the controls, she pushed the power on the Apache to the redline. The engines howled. The machine shuddered like a frothing monster, chasing after its quarry. It shot up well above where the Kamov was making its own maneuver. With a deft twist of her hands and feet, Maya brought the Apache into a tight inside loop. All the while she kept her eyes pinned on the Kamov below her.

Within seconds, the Apache was shrieking into a somersault, the pressure pounding against her body. Breathing hard, Maya felt the sweat coursing down the sides of her face beneath her helmet. The Apache was handling well, the gravity rising as she kept the loop tight.