Flash of Fire (22 page)

Yet he wasn't judging her as weak or unimportant. She'd heard his whisper to Mark, “All I have to do is tell Robin to say no and none of them will—”

Mickey believed in her. The only other people in her life to ever do that were the Harrow women and Emily.

Robin knew that wasn't love, but she knew it was something special.

As Lola and Tim continued their play at the North Korean's expense, Robin took the half step forward to stand close beside Mickey.

She took his hand. That was something that Robin had never been big on, holding hands. But Mickey's palm felt good and right against hers.

He looked over at her in surprise, those brilliant blue eyes filled with such hope.

“No promises, Mickey.”

He watched her for a long moment, squeezed her hand in acknowledgment, and turned back as the official finally gave in and began issuing certificates to fly over the soil of the great Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but
not
to land there unless it was a true emergency…and maybe not even then.

Robin took her clearance in one hand but continued to hold on to Mickey's with the other.

Something else I just learned, Emily. I could get to like this.

* * *

Once the inspector was done with them, he pointed at the terminal.

“I will be right there, sitting in your empty, decadent South Korean terminal, yet another sign of the failure of the capitalist state. I will be watching everything you do, every day. I keep records, I keep track, so no underhanded American strategies.”

Then his five-person South Korean “honor guard” escorted him away to the building.

Mark led the team well out in front of the helos so that they could see anyone coming their way.

“Okay, that went better than expected.” He winked at Mickey.

“That's what your smile meant.” Mickey smacked his forehead.

Of course Henderson had anticipated not being allowed aloft. One of these days he'd get a step ahead of the man. Though a man quick on his feet enough to be happily married to an elemental force like Emily… Yeah, it would take some serious footwork to catch up to Mark.

“
That
was better than expected?” Carly nearly screamed and Steve shushed her. She continued only a little more softly, “How am I supposed to analyze a fire I can't see?”

“Once they're aloft, you, Steve, and I will return to that safe house and launch Steve's drone. You'll have to run remote. Sorry, Carly, best I could do.”

“What's Steve got?” Lola asked.

“A little ScanEagle with visual and infrared cameras and a high-end communications package.”

“Shit, Mark. The North Koreans will spot that in a second. They have the most paranoid radar coverage of any country, and an awful lot of that is wired directly into the largest antiaircraft emplacements anywhere.”

“He knows that, honey,” Tim said softly. “We've been there, done that.”

Lola looked at her husband in surprise.

Mickey knew the Night Stalkers were Special Forces helicopter pilots. And if Mark had flown into North Korea, that meant he was probably one of the best ones, because it would be risky as hell; one false move could have started a war. No longer a real surprise that Mark was the best when Mickey considered that Mark was the one the President had called when he needed help.

“We have been there.” Mark looked around the circle and especially stopped at Mickey and Robin.

“Top secret,” Robin huffed out in frustration. “We got that already. Signed the confidentiality documents and shit. Get on with it.”

Mark offered her one of his half smiles.

Mickey finally understood that was one of his signs of approval.

“Steve has a special drone that's full stealth. Composite frame and hull. Quieted engine. It has the radar signature of a peanut. Vision is good enough that it won't need to cross the border, though comms will be spotty in the deeper canyons and the view of the fire's leading edge will be nonexistent.”

“Oh, like I don't need that,” Carly complained, but was mostly mollified.

Mickey had never heard of or seen such a drone, but it was no surprise to the other MHA pilots, so he simply accepted it.

“Robin, you're lead flight. I know Alaska wasn't much prep—I tried to give you as much as I could—”

“Another reason you wouldn't fly with me,” Robin stated.

Mark nodded. “Em and I wanted you to get as much
in command
time as possible. Mickey and Jeannie, you have the most hours on fire, so you're Carly's eyes on the front line. Keep high, keep safe.”

Everyone was nodding.

Mickey waited. He stared at Mark's silvered shades until the man turned to him.

Then Mark laughed.

Mickey had had enough shit. He'd taken it from Robin, from Emily, and now he'd found exactly where to unleash his frustration. There was no way in hell that Mark was going to send the team aloft without everyone knowing what they were up against. If he had to goddamn beat it out of Henderson, that's exactly what he'd do. He—

“Whoa!” Mark raised his hands in a placating gesture.

Mickey stayed up on the edge of his toes, only marginally aware of Robin and Vern holding on to him from either side.

“Easy, Mickey. Easy.” Mark stayed in place, in easy striking range.

Mickey yanked, but Robin had a powerful grip. He tried to remember the last time he'd wanted a go at someone and couldn't. But that didn't stop him from wanting a shot at Henderson.

“I don't know either,” Mark lied. No half smile; no knowing wink. A bald-faced lie.

“Don't know what?” Robin's voice cut through the buzzing in Mickey's ears.

“Why the President sent us here,” Mickey ground out.

“The President? Like our President?” Robin's eyes had gone wide, probably as wide as his had been when it happened.

Mickey nodded. “I was there when he took the goddamn call. Received the orders that brought us here. He knows exactly—”

“He didn't tell me.” Mark's flat statement stopped Mickey cold.

“What do you mean he didn't tell you? The President just said, ‘Mark, buddy, why don't you go fight a fire in North Korea for me. I'll send along a couple of Night Stalkers to keep you company'?”

“Pretty much.”

Mickey blinked. First man to blink loses, even if the other one is wearing mirrored shades. Mickey settled back on his heels, still feeling the strength of Robin's hands clamped on his arm and shoulder, though Vern let go. She was no longer holding him back; now she was holding on to him. Well, he wasn't going to let her down.

“What the hell, Mark?” But Mickey wasn't able to find much heat to put in back of it.

“It's how these things sometimes work. Some missions are heavily planned, right down to full-scale models and practice raids. Bin Laden's compound was built four times, you know. The original in Pakistan, a full replica in North Carolina, a partial in Nevada, and the one they used in the movie in India.”

Mickey had sometimes wondered if Mark had been on that mission but knew there was no way to ask.

“In a dynamic zone,” Mark continued, “like the two wars in Southwest Asia, we were making it up minute to minute. Today's scenario is far more typical.”

“And what's that?”

“Get our asses in place,” Lola answered for him.

“Put our thumbs
up
our asses,” Tim continued.

“And sit on them until someone tells us if anything is even gonna happen,” the tall brunette finished with a snort of disgust.

“Sorry for laughing at you, Mickey.” Mark was still smiling. “But they're exactly right. I've been forward deployed hundreds—”

“Thousands,” Lola declared.

“Millions,” Tim moaned.

“—of times,” Mark continued, “and nothing has come of it. And then one time it does. That one time is why we set up for all the other ones.”

“We”—Denise pointed at Vern—“had to get kidnapped to find out anything was happening.”

Jeannie merely shuddered and rubbed her upper arm where she had an odd scar that Mickey had never given much thought. Cal pulled her in close and kissed her hair.

“Seriously,” Mark continued, “almost always in these situations the answer is, nothing happens. Then we stand down none the wiser for why we were called out in the first place. I will not be disappointed if all that happens here is we do our job—fight this fire and go home.”

“At least we have something to do while waiting.” Tim clapped his hands together. “Never fought a fire before.”

“Can't wait,” Lola agreed.

Mickey couldn't think of anything to say.

“So, at the risk of repeating myself…” Mark offered Mickey a smile that he could now see was understanding rather than condescending. “Keep high. Keep safe.”

Once they'd decided on a basic attack plan, safety protocols, and done their Preflight Inspections, Robin got Firehawk One aloft and watched as the others climbed into the air beside her. All that remained at Yangyang field was Mark, Carly, Steve, and a white rental SUV. The North Korean and his South Korean escort were long gone into the terminal building, probably for a
non-decadent
nap.

“Wow!” Lola said from beside her. “I haven't flown left seat since the last time I lofted as Emily's copilot.”

“You flew with her? In the Night Stalkers?”

“Emily's the best goddamn pilot on the planet.” Lola rode the controls lightly.

Even from a low hover, Robin could see the golf course tucked up tight against the airfield. It had a lot of water hazards and few trees, which made it ideal. She lead the flight over to pick up their first load of water for the day.

“More people here than the whole airport.” The four helos descended over the various ponds, lowered their snorkels, and fired up the pumps. All over the golf course, people were holding on to hats and more than one golf umbrella went skittering across the fairway.

Robin explained how the simple snorkel and pump controls worked as she completed taking on the load, then eased forward and up. A group came out onto the first tee just as she approached it—a very distinctive group. One man in a brown uniform surrounded by five in green.

“Oh, this is too good.” Robin could feel herself sideslipping the Firehawk even as she told herself she really shouldn't.

Lola's laugh was low, evil, and matched her own.

“Don't even,” Mickey transmitted, though she could hear the laughter in his voice as well.

“Bad idea, huh?” And it was if they wanted to continue to have permission to fly into North Korea.

The North Korean cowered suddenly as he figured out what was about to happen. Robin peeled aside at the last moment and didn't hit the dump switch.

By Lola's groan, it was a good thing that Robin was presently pilot in command rather than the Night Stalker.

“Been done,” Jeannie commented drily as the entire flight peeled away, which took all the fun out of it. Though she looked forward to hearing the story. That Jeannie had thought of it and followed through made her like the Aussie pilot even more.

Robin turned north and led the way up the beach. Mickey fell in close behind her. Jeannie and Vern veered off to the west to approach the other side of the fire so that they could get a feel for it. The closest point was twenty miles and ten minutes away and the drone wouldn't be in the air for a while yet.

Robin could feel her through the joined cyclic and collective. Lola's feet on the rudders mirrored her own, not correcting as Emily had, but rather adapting to Robin's own style.

“Wow! That's different, but I like it. Where did you learn to fly like that?” Lola didn't slow down long enough for Robin to squeeze in an answer, never mind think of one past her surprise. “Even Mark says Emily's the best and he's bloody amazing. I try, Lordy knows, but those two fly on some whole other plane of reality.”

“What craft is your specialty?”

“Oh, we're sitting in it. Actually, just like Emily and Mark did, I've flown the DAP ever since I hit the Night Stalkers, but this Firehawk is the same airframe, just with less power and fewer weapons.”

“And fewer people shooting at you.”

“Can always hope,” Lola agreed cheerfully over the intercom.

Away from the empty airport, Robin cut east to the coastline. The midday sun lit the high clouds so bright that it hurt to look upward. They, in turn, were reflected off the Sea of Japan, blurring the line of water and sky. She turned and followed the sandy beach north.

Robin had never seen a Direct Action Penetrator version of the Black Hawk, but she'd heard about them. The Army National Guard pilots would sit around the barracks between exercises and tell stories they'd heard, mostly spreading rumors, but it was as close as they ever got to one.

The list got pretty wild at times.

One: The DAP was one-hundred-percent pure weapon, redesigned from the ground up—exclusively by the Night Stalkers and for the Night Stalkers—to be the most lethal rotorcraft in history (they were pretty sure that one was true).

Two: The people who flew them were cyborgs wired directly into their ships (a bit less likely).

Three: They (no one was quite clear on whether “they” referred to the rotorcraft or the pilots) were built out of Area 51 composites scraped molecule by molecule off all of the alien spaceships stored there.

Four—a little closer to reality: There were maybe twenty DAPs in existence.

And five: No one doubted that they were all flown by the Night Stalkers' very best pilots.

That made Emily and Lola…

She'd known Emily was good. But “The Best” by a DAP pilot's standards? That was a little spooky.

“Did you fly into bin Laden's compound? Oh, never mind, you can't tell me even if you did.”

“No, I didn't. I was still flying Army Combat Search and Rescue back then, fresh out of the Louisiana Army National Guard.”

Robin looked over, startled. If Robin had chosen a different path, from Guard to Army, might this be who she'd become?

“But I think Mark may have been on the bin Laden run. I'm guessing, but I think so.”

Robin was feeling hopelessly outclassed as they continued up the coast.

Yangyang International lay south of Sokcho—at eighty thousand people, it was far and away the largest city in the area—but they passed by it in just a few minutes. Soon they were running along a wide, sandy beach, only occasionally interrupted by small towns and low, depressing resort hotels. It could have been a stretch of Lola's Louisiana Gulf Coast except for the occasional standout building with the classic red-tile roof and upward curving corners. For the most part, it was anywhere, USA.

In just a week, Robin had grown used to having the data from Steve's drone and Carly's analysis ready to hand, Carly often muttering audibly over the data as she strained to outsmart every last finger of flame. Robin missed them.

“Jeannie,” Robin called the other team, “how is it looking?” Vern had bowed back to let Jeannie lead their separate flight. Vern had no ego at all about his skills, just as happy in the back of the flight as in front. Like Mickey, he was just solid and he clearly loved Denise. Like Mickey said he…
Crap!

“Not much yet,” Jeannie answered. “A lot of smoke in the distance. I'll know more in a few minutes.”

“Cloud plume on this side is indicating a lot of heat,” Mickey radioed in.

“What makes him say that?” Lola asked over the intercom.

Robin felt a little better. She could see it, now that Mickey had pointed it out.

“Look at how the smoke is changing colors as it climbs. The black at the bottom is still thick with ash. At the top, where it's white, most of the ash load has been dropped. The silvery top is as much cooling water vapor as it is smoke. We know that it's hot by the fact that the line where the black shifts to gray is well up the smoke column. Takes a lot of heat to push the ash that high.”

Lola leaned forward to squint out the windscreen and upward. “Tall sucker too.” Even five minutes and a dozen miles out, it was still enormous.

“That tells you the fire's size. It's not just a leading edge that's burning; it's the entire area because the whole column is reaching right up into the jet stream. See how it's getting flat-topped to the north?”

“Uh-huh.”

Robin did have skills—hard-won ones—she just needed to remember that.

“I thought we were going to come at this fire from its tail. Guess we missed it. Mickey?” She keyed the radio.

“Here, Robin.”

“Swing south, survey only. Find out what happened to the tail. I'm going to follow the smoke line north and see if I can find the head of this beast.”

“Roger. Don't go too far alone.”

A nice way to remind her that the North Korean border didn't lie far away. “Roger that.”

“We'll trace a circuit around it,” she told Lola, “in the direction of building flame to find out just what it's doing before we set up a plan of attack.”

Reports began flowing in from Jeannie and Vern. She had Lola start recording GPS coordinates of the fire so that she could get some idea of what was happening when one of her data radios began flashing red. It was a radio she hadn't used before. It was encryption capable, military grade.

“What's the password?” Lola asked.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” She'd always meant to ask what it was doing on a civilian helicopter…and now she knew. It was blinking at her. Real damn useful.

“Typical,” Lola muttered.

“Hey!”

“Not you. Henderson. He always thinks he's being so smart. If he was right a little less often, it would be a source of some comfort to this Southern gal.”

Robin considered. She'd used encrypted radios in Afghanistan, everything was encrypted there. Cipher codes varied, basic ones were four characters.

“He said, ‘Keep high. Keep safe.' Try
high
.”

“No letters on these models.”

“Think cell phone, hit four 4s. H-I-G-H.”

Lola laughed, keyed it in, and the radio flashed to green.

The copilot's screens were immediately filled with Carly's typical array of information.

“What the hell?” Lola leaned so far forward that she bumped the cyclic as she tried to understand the information on the displays.

Robin had to pull back on her control to nudge Lola in the solar plexus as a reminder to stay off the controls. She was feeling better by the moment. Of course Robin also wouldn't put it past Lola to do it as a tease.

Another radio flashed red.

“Try
safe
,” they said in unison and shared a laugh.

Moments later Mark's voice came over her headset. “How do you read, over?”

“Five by five,” she and Lola said in unison.

“Sorry.” Lola made a show of taking her finger off the mic switch on the back of the cyclic control. “Old habits.”

“Tell me I'm not going to be dealing with a Greek chorus for this entire fire,” Mark whined.

Robin glanced over at Lola and mouthed
Two, One
, and keyed the mic. “Nope,” they managed in unison. “Not gonna happen,” collided with “Not a chance,” and gave them both the giggles.

Mark groaned over the air. “Okay. I'll keep this short to avoid detection of our encrypted signal. Robin, I'm only connecting to your Firehawk One. I'm bouncing a signal off the drone and don't want the North Korean air controllers getting worried when our aircraft all stop talking to each other. I don't even want them reacting to an order that they can't hear. So I'll hit you and you'll be calling the Incident Commander—Air instructions that I feed your way. You're going to be busy as hell, so get the Stripper up to speed as fast as you can to help you with the firefighting. I don't want you ramming any cliff walls. That would completely ruin my day.” And Henderson was gone.

“
His
day?” Robin asked the radio without keying her microphone.

“Sure. He'd have to give the news to my husband, who would beat the shit of Mark for killing me. What would your SO do?”

“My what?”

“Your significant other. Get a clue, girl.”

Robin knew what an SO was. “He wasn't…isn't, uh, won't be my…” But what was he?

“Get a clue. Couples don't stand the way you two were unless they're way past the ‘mere heat' stage.”

Robin couldn't think of what to say.
How had they been standing together?

Lola began toggling through various modes on the screen displays, ultimately scrambling all of Carly's careful settings.

Mickey was what? She didn't even know what to call him. It certainly wasn't significant other, but Lola was right; they were way past fuck buddy. Had been past that since the first time that they'd…what…shaken hands?

“I'm going to have to kill him.” It was the only obvious way to deal with the situation.

“Works for me.” Lola kept working the displays. “Neat, simple. Glad to help if you need it, but can we do it after we beat the fire? I came close enough to offing Tim a couple of times along the way too. Almost took him out with his mom's favorite kitchen knife one night. But what with the head of the President's Protection Detail breathing over my shoulder, I thought better of it. Frank gets antsy when you're wielding an eight-inch chef's knife anywhere near
the Main Man
.”

Robin focused on the fire. She could deal with the fire. Sitting next to a chatty DAP Hawk pilot who had eaten with the Commander in Chief…Nope! Couldn't deal with that.

“After the fire is fine,” she managed around a throat gone drier than fire smoke. Significant other? Mickey sure as hell wasn't that. But then what in the wide, wide world of helitack firefighting was he?

Subject change!

“Why did Mark call you the Stripper?” Robin found the leading edge of the fire and moved to circle ahead of it.

“My maiden name was Lola LaRue. I used to have this line about how Daddy must have wanted me to be a stripper. Mark still teases me about it sometimes.”

“You two close?” Robin looked again. The only way to survey the leading edge was to fly right into the ash cloud streaming off the fire. She'd stay low and duck under the worst of it.

“To Daddy? Not very. He's doing forty to life of hard time in a Louisiana pen, not real happy about it.”

“I can only imagine.” Robin considered shooting far enough ahead of the fire to get the lay of the land, but her grid map display showed her fast approaching the North Korean border. She eased back on the cyclic, not quite willing to cross the DMZ on her own.