Disclaimer: I do not own The Last of the Mohicans, or any of the music or lyrics represented in this story in the text or as headers. There are some real places mentioned, but only as part of the story to make locations feel authentic. I in no way claim that the events of this story actually occurred in any of these places or times, and any resemblance to real people or situations is purely coincidental. This story is a work of fiction and as such, all events occurring within are made up. I own nothing and I make no profit from anything in this story, this is for entertainment purposes only.
Prologue
WARNING: This chapter portrays a modern military combat situation that involves trauma and death. I have tried to be sensitive and it does not give extreme details. If you feel that this may be a problem for you, proceed with caution.
Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, five years ago
"Let's go, let's go, we've got a nine line! Move your nasty fucking bodies, people! Andrews, Davis, Frejo, Gaston, Martinez, Munro, move your asses, let's GO!" yelled Gunnery Sergeant Duncan Heyward as he ran through the berthing, followed by the combat MedEvac crew he oversaw. He gave them a rundown of the nine-line call for assistance as they headed out to the pad where the Bell Boeing MV-22 Osprey helicopter waited for them. "Major Ambrose, Captain Beams, sirs, are you ready?" he hollered to the pilot and copilot over the whining roar and wash of the starting propellers as he climbed up into the hold behind them. Ambrose gave a thumbs-up from the pilot seat, and the crew settled in for takeoff.
Ensign Cora Munro took a deep breath, gripping the barrel of her M4 carbine, and met Heyward's brown eyes. His face was perpetually sunburned out here in the unforgiving desert heat, almost matching the strawberry-blond hair beneath his helmet. He flashed her a brief smile and a wink. She smiled back and looked down at the expanse of desert below as the helicopter headed toward their destination – an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team had multiple casualties after an Improvised Explosive Device had exploded under their Humvee. It never seemed to end out here - these men, and sometimes women, getting blown up. She was glad to be on Duncan's crew. He was a great crew chief - an excellent commander who everyone loved and respected. It a had been a major stroke of luck that they had ended up together here, and while she got on well with the other crew members and loved them all, Duncan's familiar face was a godsend when she missed her father and sister so much. They had been friends since they were kids living on base at Camp Pendleton, California. Both their fathers had been Marine Corps Drill Instructors, and they had met in sixth grade when Cora had punched Billy Masterson in the face for picking on Duncan not long after his family moved there. They had been best friends ever since, and her younger sister Alice loved him like a big brother, too. In high school Cora's family had moved away, but they had kept in close contact and remained best friends, writing and calling regularly and even visiting a couple of times. Duncan had always joked that he would marry Cora someday if neither of them ever met the right person, though she knew he was at least half serious.
They had continued to stay in touch when Duncan joined the Marine Corps right after high school, and Cora had opted to join the Navy to become a Corpsman. She had completed the initial medical training, and had then gone on to earn a nursing degree and a commissioned officer rank. After months of rigorous training, passing a Marine Corps physical fitness test, studying, testing, and oral boards aptly named "murder boards", she had earned her status as a Fleet Marine Force Warfare Officer, attached to a forward-deployed combat Marine unit as a MedEvac crew member. Duncan, now a Marine Corps flight crew chief, had also been assigned to that unit. They had deployed together seven months ago, and each had been equally glad to see the face of the other. They spent a lot of time together here, more than they had in years, and Duncan had recently confessed that he was still in love with her. She loved him because he was her best friend, but she didn't feel the way he did, even though he was a wonderful, good man. She'd tried, back in high school and even now she had allowed him to kiss her once, just to see, but her feelings didn't go beyond friendship. Duncan understood, he always had, but she still felt so badly about disappointing him and wished it was different. She had always known he felt more, and had hoped she would come to love him that way too. "You're still my best friend, Cora," he'd said, "and I would never trade that for anything. I hope one day you meet a guy who's everything you deserve." She sighed. Out here it could be hard to sort out feelings anyway, because things could get so intense and so scary in a matter of seconds, and as MedEvac, they saw the worst of the worst combat injuries – and often deaths. This was Duncan's third deployment, and Cora's second, her first as FMF. It never got easier, and for her, the faces never left her memory.
She was jarred out of her reverie when a colossal impact rocked the low-flying Osprey, throwing her sideways into Gaston and Frejo as the giant helicopter started to spin out of control.
"Fuckin' A, we're hit! The starboard motor's gone, we're going down!" Captain Beams' distraught voice carried over the din. Everything was mayhem for what seemed like ages before they hit the ground and everything went black.
"Cora! Come on, Jesus Christ, we gotta get out of here! Frejo, help me get her up!" Cora came to, seeing Duncan's face above her, a searing pain in her left shoulder and arm. Her head hurt too, and she could feel wetness trickling down one side of her face.
"What…the fuck…happened…?" she asked, smelling acrid smoke and fighting to wake up enough to make sense of things and get moving as Heyward and Frejo dragged her out of the wrecked body of the burning MV-22, still clinging to the strap of her M4. She could hear some of the other guys yelling nearby over the crackle of the flames starting to engulf the aircraft, too quiet compared to the sound of the massive turboprop engines when they had been in the air.
"We got hit with a fuckin' surface-to-air missile and crashed, that's what," Duncan grunted frantically, moving faster. "We gotta get away from this thing before it blows up, come on, Cora, you have to move!" Cora began to try to run with the two men holding her up, gaining a little strength with each step, but dizzy and unsteady. Finally far enough away, Frejo let go of her and Duncan held onto her for a moment.
"Gunny, Ambrose and Beams are still in the cockpit!" Gaston yelled, blood smeared across one side of his face, the leg of his pants torn and showing badly damaged skin. Davis had dragged a supply bag out with her and was tending to an unconscious and badly burned Martinez a few feet away, and Andrews was sitting beside them, stunned but conscious and stable. Cora could tell she had a steadily bleeding head wound and maybe a concussion, with a possibly dislocated left shoulder and ugly burn blisters rapidly rising on the same arm beneath where her BDU blouse sleeve was rolled above her elbow.
Duncan looked down at Cora desperately. "I have to go back with Gaston, we can't leave Ambrose and Beams. Remember…you're my best friend, and I love you." He let go of her and started to leave.
"No! You're my best friend too, goddammit, and I'm coming with you!" she hollered, starting to run after him, swallowing her nausea.
"For God's sake, Frejo, take her and get her out of here!" Duncan roared back. Frejo grabbed her around the waist and dragged her back from the flaming wreckage. She screamed in frustration and pain as the movement jarred her left arm.
"Munro, you're fuckin' hurt, come on! Let them go!" Frejo growled.
She kept fighting him, ignoring the blinding pain in her injured shoulder as Heyward and Gaston climbed into the fiery wreckage to get the pilot and copilot out. In an instant, the Osprey's fuel tank exploded. The percussive force of it knocked Cora and Frejo to the ground.
"DUNCAN, NO!" she screamed, scrambling to her feet. Frejo grabbed her again before she could run toward the wall of flame and plume of black smoke that now consumed the aircraft.
"Jesus Christ!" he choked out. "Munro, they're gone, come on, they're gone."
Ears ringing and still reeling from the force of the explosion, Cora stopped struggling and looked back at Frejo as his muffled voice registered, tears streaking through the dust and black soot marring the brown skin of his face. She sagged in his arms and fell to her knees on the hot, dusty earth.
"Oh, God, No, Duncan…NOOOOOO!"
Chapter 1: Different Shades of Blue
"The sun's been shinin' down on me day and night
Gettin' away with murder, livin' a lucky life
All good things finally come to an end
Hit you like a train if you try to pretend
Everybody knows that she broke your heart
Everybody knows that it's tearing you apart
The row you've been sailin' on sprung a leak
You won't admit, but it's startin' to make you weep
When you got nothing left to lose
Might sound good, but I'm not sure that's true
You carry the pain around and that's what sees you through
The different shades of blue
I can tell by the way you hang your head
The way you cast your eyes and the things you haven't said
You've got the past ten years written on your face
Your whole damn life's been one big race
Everybody goes there whether they want to or not
Everybody's got to hold on to what they got
And start to settle in for the long haul
Real life baby, oh, you can't have it all
When you got nothing left to lose
Might sound good, but I'm not sure that's true
You carry the pain around and that's what sees you through
The different shades of blue"
-Joe Bonamassa/James House-
Albany, New York, present day
"Dispatch to Unit 208, respond to possible B and E, Oak Grove and Cherry."
"Dispatch, this is 208, can I get an exact location?"
"406 Oak Grove Drive."
"208 responding."
"Copy."
Uncas Greatsnake sighed and leaned back in his chair, turning up the volume on the scanner as he propped his feet up on the desk, adjusting the leg of his black uniform cargo pants.
"Damn, I could listen to her talk every day for the rest of my life," he said wistfully.
"Dude. Are you pining over Dispatcher Girl again?" his older brother Nathaniel teased, knocking his feet off the desk as he walked by with a cup of coffee.
"I can't help it. Do you hear her? She has the sexiest voice I've ever heard. Throaty yet feminine and delicate…I want her to read to me."
"You've got problems, you know? She's probably hideous in real life, did you ever think of that?"
"No way, bro. Nobody with a voice like that is hideous. Someday…someday I'll find her and marry her."
"You're nuts, but you're my little brother, so I have to love you," Nathaniel said with a grin, taking a sip of his coffee. "At least you're entertaining me on a boring shift."
"Shut up, you're not my real brother," Uncas teased back, both of them laughing. This had been their go-to joke for most of their lives, since Nathaniel had been adopted by their parents before Uncas was born. They were currently trying to amuse themselves through an uneventful 24-hour shift at AirMedic, the air ambulance facility they both worked for – Uncas as a flight paramedic, and Nathaniel a helicopter pilot.
"Hey guys, anything good yet?" Brian Hunter asked as he sauntered in from outside. They usually flew with a nurse as their second medical crew member, but they had recently lost two nurses, so other paramedics like Brian were having to fill the gaps until they hired new ones.
"Nah, nothing so far. The only thing you've missed is another episode of 'The Voice'." Nathaniel snickered into his coffee cup, then dodged as Uncas kicked a Hi-Tec booted foot at him, nearly spilling the hot liquid down the front of his black flight uniform. Both men sobered as the next call came over the scanner, a domestic violence call requesting police support.
Nathaniel held his coffee cup tighter, his jaw ticking as he tried to force away the memories that kind of call brought back. After seven years, being left by his former fiancée, and a career change, it had mellowed some, but he wasn't fool enough to think he could ever forget. He had started working toward his helicopter pilot license at sixteen, using part of the life insurance trust from his parents to pay for flight school. His adoptive father, Sidney Greatsnake, was a career deputy with the Albany County Sheriff's Office, and Nathaniel had dreamt of being an air support pilot with the Albany Police Department from boyhood. To qualify for a pilot slot, the department had required him to serve as a patrol officer for a few years first, so he'd gone through the academy as soon as he'd turned twenty-one. In his last year of patrol, he and his partner and close friend John Cameron had responded to a domestic violence call. Dispatch had not known the aggressor had a gun, and he had fired on them when they came to the door, hitting John in the neck and Nathaniel in the leg. Nathaniel had managed to take out the shooter, but John had bled out on the front porch in his arms before EMS could get there, leaving behind a wife and two young children.
Once he'd finally healed up, Nathaniel had gotten his air support slot. After a couple of years on APD air support, disenchanted and tired of chasing criminals and seeing one bad situation after another, he had decided to switch gears and apply as a pilot at AirMedic, hoping that the work would be rewarding enough to pull him out of the funk he'd been in since John had died and Judith had taken off. Uncas had eventually decided to join him, looking for a new challenge after working on ground ambulances since graduating paramedic school. Both were enjoying it. It was a slower pace for Uncas, and for Nathaniel too, but he was happier than he'd been in a long time, and his schedule allowed him to volunteer time to fly as a search and rescue pilot for the program their father worked with via the Sheriff's Office.
Another call came over the scanner, a motor vehicle crash at a remote highway location with serious injuries. Nathaniel and Uncas exchanged a look with Brian, knowing this one would likely be calling for MedEvac, and they'd be headed to Albany Medical Center since it was a level 1 trauma center. Sure enough, the call came through to their dispatch coordinator Dave a couple of minutes later, and they were up and running to the helicopter pad, where everything had been inspected, stocked, and readied for immediate takeoff at the beginning of the shift. Within ten minutes, Uncas and Brian were secure, Nathaniel got the go from air traffic control, and the Bell 206L Long-Ranger took off into the night.
"Hey Cora Munro, is that you?" A deep, rich male voice asked from behind her as she left the 24-hour coffee shop in the lobby of Albany Medical Center.
"Uncas! Hey! I haven't seen you in forever!" she said with a wide smile. "What are you doing here?"
"We just brought an MVC patient into the Emergency Room. I'm just making a coffee run here before we take off back to home base. I forgot you worked here, how are you? Geez, I haven't seen you since our last ACLS class."
"I'm good, just on my rare break and doing the ER/Trauma deal as usual," she replied, giving her friend a hug. She had known Uncas for several years now, having met him not long after she'd been discharged from the Navy. She had moved to New York to be near her father and Alice, taking a job as a nurse at AMC. She maintained a paramedic certification in addition to her RN license, since she worked in the hospital's ER and was a valuable member of the trauma team, and occasionally needed to be able to perform skills like intubation during a code. That didn't normally fall under the RN scope of practice, but it did for a paramedic, so she held both. Uncas had been a co-instructor in her initial certification course, and they had also been classmates several times when renewing their various Life Support certifications. Cora liked him a lot. About her age or a little younger, he was tall and exceptionally good-looking, funny but not a jackass, and he was damn smart and good at his job. He reminded her a little of her Corpsman crewmate Frejo, with the same sense of humor, near-black eyes and smooth dark skin – though Frejo was Seminole while Uncas was Mohican and Delaware, and Uncas had a long, raven-black ponytail where Frejo had sported a military high-and-tight. "So, what's new with you, Greatsnake?" she asked as she sipped her coffee. "You still riding an ambulance?"
"Nope. My older brother finally convinced me to join the prestigious world of MedEvac, so I've been on a flight crew with AirMedic for about a year now." He flashed her the AirMedic logo patch on the sleeve of his utilitarian black uniform.
"Your brother? I didn't know you had a brother. Paramedic? Nurse?"
"No, pilot actually. He used to be a cop, then he went to APD air support. He kind of switched things up a few years ago and started flying MedEvac, and I was ready for a change so I joined up after a while."
"That's awesome! You know, I was on a MedEvac crew in the Navy, with a Marine combat unit."
"Seriously?! Holy shit, I knew you were a combat Corpsman, but you never told me you were MedEvac! Hey, any chance you'd be interested in moonlighting a shift or two a week with AirMedic? We just lost two nurses who couldn't hang, so we could really use somebody like you who has experience and knows what the hell they're doing."
Cora glanced away. "I don't know… It's been a while."
Uncas frowned slightly at her sudden change in demeanor. She looked like Nathaniel whenever they heard DV calls on the radio, and he wondered briefly about what exactly had happened to her in her pre-civilian life. His phone buzzed with a text message and he checked the screen. Nathaniel. "Where the hell are you? Did they have to grow the damn coffee beans first?" He chuckled.
"Hey, listen, I gotta jet before Officer McSpeedy up there has a coronary, but think about the job, will you? We've had other paramedics subbing in and we're getting desperate." He pulled a pen out of his pocket and jotted something on a business card. "Here's my number, and this is the card for AirMedic. Just in case."
"Okay, I'll give it some thought. It was great to see you. Have a good night."
"You too!" He watched Cora head back toward the ER, absently stuffing the card into the cargo pocket of her navy-blue scrub pants, then rushed to get his coffee so he could get back to the helipad.
Two days later, Cora was still thinking about Uncas' offer as her feet hit the paved road at a strong, steady pace, keeping time with her sister Alice on one side of her, and her father on the other.
"Keep it up, girls! One more mile to go, and the last one to finish buys breakfast!" Master Sergeant Ed Munro called out. He was retired from the Marine Corps now, but once a Marine always a Marine, and his Drill Instructor mentality would never die. He still wore his graying hair in the high-and-tight cut of a Marine, and his bright blue eyes could still line you out without a single word, having spent more than twenty years striking fear into the hearts of recruits for thirteen weeks at a time - and potential boyfriends when the girls were old enough. He had been a tough but fair and loving father, and his daughters were his one soft spot. Cora and Alice had been running with their dad since high school. The long runs gave them time to talk and sometimes to work things out, and later, when the girls' mother had died after a long battle with metastatic breast cancer, it had been an escape and salvation for all three of them. After Cora had left the Navy and moved here, they had picked it right back up, running together once a week and having breakfast at their favorite diner after. Cora was now thirty, and Alice twenty-six, but to their father they were still his little girls and they all enjoyed keeping tradition.
Ed lived in a suburban area right outside of Albany, in the same house he had bought when they had moved out here. When Maureen Munro had been diagnosed with cancer and Ed had come up for reenlistment again, he had decided to slow things down. Instead of staying at Pendleton as an active duty Drill Instructor, he had opted to go inactive reserve and had taken an assignment attached to a Marine reserve unit in New York, since his wife had always wanted to live in upstate New York. Alice shared her Albany apartment with her cat, a guinea pig, and several fish, working as a 911 dispatcher and teaching aerial yoga part time at a downtown studio. When she'd moved home, Cora had bought and partially renovated a little farm in West Sand Lake about ten miles away, where she lived with an Irish Wolfhound, a ferret, and two horses, one hers and one Alice's. She drove into Albany for work, and for the family run day, which she looked forward to every week.
"And that's five miles, kids! Cora's buying today!" Ed chuckled, leaning over with his hands on his knees.
"That's right, soak it up, old man, because next week I'm gonna kick your ass!" Cora laughed, tucking a stray strand of her dark brown hair behind her ear. She had been distracted by her thoughts and had fallen behind, coming in last.
"That's what you get for slowing down!" Alice teased, her hazel eyes twinkling. "I think you're getting a little soft living the civilian life, Cora."
"Hey now, watch it, Al, you might be the loser next time!" Cora tugged her sister's honey-blonde ponytail playfully and Ed threw an arm around each of them as they walked the rest of the way to his house to go to breakfast.
"So how much insanity did you have at the ER this week?" Alice asked Cora when they were seated at their regular table at Jack's Diner on Central, heaping breakfast plates before them.
"Don't get me started," Cora replied, rolling her eyes. "You know how it is during a full moon just as much as I do."
"God, do I ever. I'm so glad it's over, that shit was exceptionally harrowing this week, I felt even sorrier for the first responders. I just dispatch the calls and hear the crazy, they're the ones who have to go right into the crazy. But still, there are always the good calls mixed in there. And…you know, the not-so-good ones." Her smile faltered a little as she brought her coffee cup to her lips. "Did you get anything good this week?"
"Yeah, I did. We had some pretty bad stuff come in on trauma, but that stuff is never easy, and the typical ones in the ER who think their cold is a bigger emergency than a heart attack. But I had this one ER patient who was the sweetest, funniest man, and he kept us all entertained for a few hours until he was admitted. There was a little girl too, she's a frequent flyer with a heart issue, and we all just love her. Oh, and I ran into a friend of mine who's a paramedic the other night, and he had an interesting proposition for me."
"Oh, really? What kind of proposition? Is he a cute paramedic?" Alice waggled her eyebrows suggestively and Cora snorted.
"No, pervert. I mean yeah, he's pretty cute, but I don't think of him like that, he's just a colleague." She twisted her napkin in her fingers. "No, he used to be a street paramedic but now he works for an air ambulance company, and he… um, asked if I wanted to moonlight with them because they need experienced flight nurses."
"Seriously? Wow. What did you tell him?"
Cora shrugged. "I said I'd think about it."
Ed set his fork down, swallowing a mouthful of hash browns. "Cora… well… are you considering applying?"
"I don't know yet, Pop. I might. I was going to see what you guys thought and take the weekend on it, maybe more if I need to."
"You know you're the only one who can ultimately decide if that's the right thing for you, and I'm going to stand behind you no matter what you decide. My only worry is that you haven't been on a MedEvac team since your last deployment, and I wouldn't want it to stir up bad memories for you."
"I know, and that's part of my consideration. I just… I don't know, it's been five years, and sometimes I really miss being on a flight crew. I love ER and Trauma team, but it's not the same. I'm never going to know if I can handle it if I don't get back in the saddle, right? Besides, civilian MedEvac won't… it won't be like it was out there." Her eyes lowered to the mottled burn scars on her left forearm. Skin grafts had helped keep it from developing much contracture, but it was a permanent and not very pretty reminder of what had happened in Afghanistan, and the devastating loss of Duncan and the other three men from the crew. So were the scars higher up, the one on her scalp and the ones from two different surgeries to repair the extensive soft tissue damage to her shoulder.
Ed's eyes softened and he placed a hand over hers. "Cora. I would to anything I could to keep you from being hurt. I loved Duncan like a son, and I'm thinking as your father because I love you, but this needs to be your decision. If you feel like this is something you want to do, then do it. I know what it is to miss that life, just not in the same way as you." Cora squeezed his hand and smiled in thanks.
"I think you should try it, Cora," Alice said softly. "You're right, you'll never know if you can do it again unless you try. And I think… I think that Duncan would want you to do what makes you happy, too."
Cora met Alice's gaze, her brown eyes misty. Alice had been her rock through all the ugly aftermath and recovery from her injuries, and she had loved Duncan just as much. "Thanks, Al. I think he would, too. I'll think about it some more."
The conversation shifted to Alice's aerial yoga classes, and Alice was delighted when Cora told her she would be able to come and help her with her kids' class that coming Wednesday because she had the night off. When they were done with breakfast and Ed's eyes were beginning to glaze over from listening to what he called affectionately called "girly-speak", Cora took the check and paid it, and the three of them headed to Ed's truck and piled in for the ride home. Later as she drove home along 43 East and cranked up Joe Bonamassa on the radio, she thought more about the prospect of working for AirMedic. She had to admit she really did miss flying sometimes. Combat service had a way of wearing you down, but at the same time you'd miss the insanity of it for the rest of your life once you were done. It was complicated for her to sort out herself, and people who hadn't been in those shoes didn't get it. But she wasn't sure if it was that, or just missing the whole military package – and her crew. She had a chance to get the flying back, but she'd never get back the four crewmates they'd lost. Maybe it was time to try again. Work with a new crew. Not better, just different. Maybe it would be ok. Maybe one day she could tamp down that fear that always reared its head, and kept her from loving anything outside her family too much – the fear that always reminded her that she could still lose more.
Author's Note:
I hope you enjoyed this first chapter of Flying Into the Fire. I am so excited to be writing this new story, for so many reasons. Especially because Uncas and Alice are ALIVE, and are secondary MC's! I just enjoyed the hell out of writing that first scene between Nathaniel and Uncas – I've been waiting and waiting to give them humorous brotherly interaction, and I just love them already, and Cora and Alice are equally fun. This is still a Nathaniel/Cora focused story, but Uncas and Alice are very likely going to get almost as much focus, because they have a story of their own in this plot.
This is obviously very different from Where We Start Again. I wanted to do a modern setting, and the wheels started turning not very long after I began writing WWSA. I was thinking, in 1757 Cora was a battlefield nurse, so of course she might be a nurse in a modern setting, but the true modern day equivalent of what Cora was doing back then lies in the badassery of a Fleet Marine Force Corpsman. These people do amazing work, y'all, and they not only have to be rigorously trained in trauma and emergency medicine, they also must be fully combat trained to deploy with a USMC combat unit. I have some personal love tied up here, because my husband is a former Marine who was seriously injured in Iraq, and Fleet Corpsmen helped save his life. So what better role for Cora than this? Let me just say how much I appreciate being able to pick my husband's brain while simultaneously reading all kinds of stuff about MedEvac (civilian and military), how one earns status as an FMF Corpsman, what types of helicopters are used by what branches of the military and civilian flight companies, etcetera… and hubby has also been looking stuff up for me because he's fucking amazing. It also really helps that both of us are nurses in real life (but not MedEvac ones, though I've thought about it before). Poor Duncan and Gaston, and Major Ambrose and Captain Beams. Writing a combat-themed scene made me really nervous, for obvious reasons. It's a VERY sensitive issue that a fair number of people have some connection to, myself included. It was very important to me that it be realistic and not be overly dramatic or bullshitty. I made my husband beta-read it because he would tell me if it was, having been there himself, and having direct experience with the loss of two commanding NCOs on his team. This scene made me very sad to write, but was a way to kind of get some original film plot elements into this story (there are more of those in the future too), and to be the basis for some of Cora's major issues that will play out. The loss of a close friend in a traumatic situation is something I have directly experienced, so I can't say I enjoy doing this to characters, but it does lend some authenticity and real emotion to it.
As for the rest, I've obviously tweaked the ages of the characters a bit because in a modern setting Alice can't be eighteen, and Cora and Nathaniel and Uncas wouldn't have gotten where they are without putting in some significant training and service time. I couldn't make Duncan a Major or Munro a Colonel either, because those ranks don't fit their modern military jobs, so to be correct and authentic, I re-ranked them as Marines. In general, being correct about military anything is something I'm going to be very uptight about, being married to a Marine, and being raised by a Vietnam Army veteran (and son of a 26-year Navy NCO) and the daughter of a WWII Army Captain. I HAD to make Munro a DI (Drill Instructor) – these are the guys who scream at all the recruits all the way through boot camp. I just have this amazing picture of him in this modern role, a cross between Maurice Roëves and R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket, but with a sense of humor and a soft spot for his daughters. He's awesome. I've had months to plan this all out, and it's come together nicely. Nathaniel has a past that, while not quite as badass as Cora's, mirrors it emotionally, so you obviously don't need a crystal ball to tell what will happen there.
When you think about Nathaniel and Uncas and their dad (who is Sidney Greatsnake in this story because Chingachgook means 'great snake' or 'great serpent'), you always think of them in a helper role because they're badass heroes, so I tried to put them in modern 'helper' roles that fit all the characters together, including Alice, who is a dispatcher. I have a couple of family members who are law enforcement as well as friends who are, and several friends who are firefighters and paramedics, and dispatchers are just as important. They have a big job, and don't often get the recognition they deserve for what they do. We'll get to know a little more about that perspective from Alice, and because Uncas has the job he does, he gets her. It will be fabulous. I wanted to give Nathaniel more of a past than just "he's a MedEvac Pilot", because doing that job takes a lot of training and specific experience – not just any pilot can do it. Police air support pilots are one of the ones who would have the right kind of experience. To fly air support, a lot of police departments require going through the police academy and serving some time on the streets first, so that the pilot knows exactly what and who they're supporting on the ground. I don't know if Albany PD is one of those departments, I just used that detail because it worked in the story to give Nathaniel the past I wanted in losing his partner (John Cameron!) and having some familiarity with what Cora has gone through, and then ending up in a place where they will cross paths professionally. Plus, the thought of Nathaniel in a flight suit and Uncas in EMT utilities is like... way sexy. WAY. You know you're thinking about it. You are. Enjoy that. You're welcome.
The dispatch codes and unit numbers I use in this story are real ones used by Albany Police and Fire, but I have no idea who actually drives unit 208, it's just a story with an authentic detail. I will use some Marine Corps and medical lingo, but I promise I'll try to explain everything so you can follow (speaking of which, the 'ACLS' class Uncas mentions stands for Advanced Cardiac Life Support, a necessary certification for emergency and critical care-level nurses, paramedics and the like). Jack's Diner on Central in Albany is a real place too, though I've never been anywhere near there. It gets great reviews on Yelp! There are some other places that are real that the characters will visit too, and it's fun to add that authenticity to the story. MohawkWoman grew up in upstate New York and has been a HUGE help with that kind of thing, and especially with finding a good location for Cora's little farm that isn't too far from Albany. She rocks, as usual.
This story has a soundtrack. Some chapters have a song, there are playlists of songs for many characters and for certain scenes, and for each couple too. This is what happens when you have a story living in your head for six months while you make yourself finish the historical one first, heehe. The theme song for the Prologue is "Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil. The one for Chapter 1 is "Different Shades of Blue" by Joe Bonamassa – I felt it applied well to both Nathaniel and Cora, both past and present. Sometimes I'll use a song as a chapter header, and if there are others in the "soundtrack", I'll list them in the author note along with who or what they belong to. This part is a lot of fun, too.
Thank you for reading, I hope you'll stay tuned! I'm so happy to be writing about the whole family being together!