Full Throttle

“So what’s the skinny?” he asked. “Is Pegasus ready to fly?”

Instantly, Kate’s thoughts shifted from the man beside her to the machine housed in a special hangar constructed of materials designed to resist penetration by even the most sophisticated spy satellites.

“Almost,” she replied. “Bill Thompson had his heart attack just as we were finishing ground tests.”

“I never met Thompson, but I’ve heard of him. The AF lost a damned good pilot.”

“Yes, it did. So did Pegasus. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” she warned him, “and not much time to do it.”

“No problem.”

The careless reply set Kate’s jaw. She and the rest of the cadre had been hard at it for weeks now. If Scott thought he was going to waltz in and get up to speed on the top secret project in a few hours, he had one heck of a surprise waiting for him.

Unaware that he’d just scratched her exactly the wrong way, the captain seemed more interested in Kate than the project that would soon consume him.

“I saw your career brief in the package headquarters sent as part of my orientation package. Over a thousand hours in the P-3. That’s pretty impressive.”

It was, by Kate’s standards as well as Scott’s. Only the best of the best got to fly aboard NOAA’s specially configured fleet of aircraft, including the P–3 Orion. Flying into the eye of a howling hurricane took guts, determination and a cast-iron stomach. Honesty forced Kate to add a qualifier, though.

“Not all those hours were hurricane time. Occasionally we saw blue sky.”

“I went up once with the air force’s Hurricane Hunters based at Keesler.”

Kate stiffened. Her ex-husband was assigned to the Air Force Reserve unit at Keesler Air Force Base, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. That’s where she’d met John, during a conference that included all agencies involved in tracking and predicting the fury unleashed all too often on the Gulf by Ma Nature.

That’s also where she’d found the jerk with his tongue down the mouth of a nineteen-year-old bimbette. Kate had few fond memories of Keesler.

“So how was your flight?” she asked, shoving aside the reminder of her most serious lapse in judgment.

“Let’s just say once was enough.”

“Flying into a maelstrom of wind and rain isn’t for the faint of heart,” she agreed solemnly.

He cracked a grin at that. When he pulled his gaze from the road ahead, laughter shimmered in his blue eyes.

“No, ma’am. It surely isn’t.”

Kate didn’t reply, but she knew darn well Scott was anything but faint of heart. When the air force had identified him as Bill Thompson’s replacement, she’d activated her extensive network of friends and information sources to find out everything she could about the man. Her sources confirmed he’d packed a whole bunch of flying time into his ten years in the military.

Flying that included several hundred combat hours in both the Blackhawk helicopter and the AC–130H gunship. A highly modified version of the air force’s four-engine turboprop workhorse, the gunship provided surgically accurate firepower in support of both conventional and unconventional forces, day or night.

Kate didn’t doubt Scott had provided just that surgically accurate support during recent tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. After Iraq, he’d been sent to the 919th Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida, to fly the latest addition to the air force inventory—the tilt-wing CV–22 Osprey.

Since the Osprey combined the lift characteristics of a helicopter and the long-distance flight capability of a fixed-wing aircraft, Scott’s background made him a natural choice as short-notice replacement for Bill Thompson. If—when!—Pegasus completed its operational tests, it might well replace both the C–130 and the CV–122 as the workhorse of the battlefield.

Thinking of the tense weeks ahead, Kate chewed on her lower lip and said little until they’d passed through the second checkpoint and entered the compound housing the Pegasus test complex.

The entire complex had been sited and constructed in less than two months. Unfortunately, the builders had sacrificed aesthetics to exigency. The site had all the appeal of a prison camp. Rolls of concertina wire surrounded the clump of prefabricated modular buildings and trailers, all painted a uniformly dull tan to blend in with the desert landscape. White-painted rocks marked the roads and walkways between the buildings. Aside from a few picnic tables scattered among the trailers, everything was starkly functional.

Separate modular units housed test operations, the computer-communications center and a dispensary. The security center, nicknamed Rattlesnake Ops after the leather-tough, take-no-prisoners military police guarding the site, occupied another unit. A larger unit contained a fitness center and the dining hall, which also served as movie theater and briefing room when the site’s commanding officer wanted to address the entire cadre. The hangar that housed Pegasus loomed over the rest of the structures like a big, brooding mammoth.

Personnel were assigned to the trailers, two or three to a unit. Kate and the other two women officers on-site shared one unit. Scott would bunk down with Major Russ McIver, the senior Marine Corps rep. Kate directed him to the line of modular units unofficially dubbed Officers Row.

“You probably want to change into your uniform before checking in with Captain Westfall. Your trailer is the second one on the left. Westfall’s is the unit standing by itself at the end of the row.”

“First things first,” Scott countered, pulling up at the small dispensary. “Let’s get your ankle looked at.”

“I’ll take care of that. You’d best get changed and report in.”

“Special Ops would drum me out of the brotherhood if I left a lady to hobble around on a sore ankle.”

He meant it as a joke, but his careless attitude toward his new assignment was starting to seriously annoy Kate. Her mouth thinned as he came around the front of the pickup. Sliding out of the passenger seat, she stood firmly on both feet to address him.

“I don’t think you’ve grasped the urgency of our mission. I’ll manage here, Captain. You report in to the C.O.”

Her tone left no doubt. It was an order from a superior officer to a subordinate.

Scott cocked an eyebrow. For a moment, his eyes held something altogether different from the teasing laughter he’d treated her to up to this point.

The dangerous glint was gone almost as quickly as it had come. Tipping her a two-fingered salute, he replied in an easy, if somewhat exaggerated, drawl.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Dave took care not to spin out and leave Lieutenant Commander Hargrave in a swirl of dust. His eyes on the rearview mirror, he followed her careful progress up the clinic steps.

The woman was stubborn as well as gorgeous. And not above pulling rank on him. Well, that pretty well fit with what he’d heard about her.

The sexy Hurricane Hunter couldn’t know it but her ex-husband had piloted the mission Dave had flown with the reserve unit out of Keesler. The man had had a few things to say about the wife who’d just dumped him, none of them particularly flattering. She was, according to the still-bitter aviator, ambitious as hell, fearless in the air, a tiger in bed and a real ball-breaker out of it.

Dave figured three out of four was good enough for him.

Yes, sir, he thought as he caught a last glimpse of turquoise spandex in the mirror. This assignment was looking better and better by the minute.

Two

Showered, shaved and wrapped in the familiar comfort of his green Nomex flight suit, Dave tracked down the officer in command of the Pegasus project. He found Captain Westfall at the Test Operations Building.

“Captain Scott reporting for duty, sir.”

The tall, lean naval officer in khakis creased to blade-edged precision returned Dave’s salute, then offered his hand.

“Welcome aboard, Captain Scott.”

The man’s gravelly voice and iron grip matched his salt-and-pepper buzz cut. His skin was tanned to near leather, no doubt the result of years spent pacing a deck in sun, wind and salt spray. His piercing gray eyes took deliberate measure of the latest addition to his team. Dave didn’t exactly square his shoulders, but he found himself standing a little taller under Westfall’s intense scrutiny.

“Did you take care of that bit of personal business you mentioned when you called last night?”

“Yes, sir.”