CHAPTER 1

Trying to brush the grease off the jumpsuit and only succeeding in smearing it, Stringfellow Hawke reappeared from underneath the Jet Ranger's belly where he had spent the majority of the day. He continued wiping, glaring disapprovingly as he tried to find out where his other shirt had mysteriously vanished to. "I'm already ten minutes late as it is," he grumbled, "and I'd get grease all over the place if I went like this. And now my shirt if just gone. Where could the-"

"String."

"Whatever it is it's going to have to wait. I have to pick Le up from school and-"

"String," Saint John interrupted again. "Don't worry about it."

"What do you mean don't…. I said that I-"

"Lexa is taking care of it."

"Lexa? As in Lexa that carries C-4 in her purse Lexa?"

"I haven't made it a habit of searching her purse, but yeah, I would be willing to venture as far as to say we're probably talking about the same person."

"You're trusting her with Le? The same person who goes to the Middle East and Communist Russia for vacation?"

"I don't know exactly what your problem with her is, but she's come through every time I can recall. I have no reason not to trust her."

" She almost got me killed. Doesn't that qualify? She's got no conscience. She didn't offer me as much as a sincere apology and you let her pick up Le. He's supposed to be my responsibility, it's my job to make sure he's not with people like her."

"She has also saved your life. Not too you from being strangled to death, and only a week ago she took out the drug dealer that was trying to take out the family. Some people do change you know."

"Not her. I used to think she was a decent person, a bit unorthodox, but I don't have a lot of room to critique there. If you spend any time with her you realize how she works though. Lexa is an adrenaline junkie; she enjoys the thrill of defying death whether it's weaving through traffic fifty over the speed limit, hi-jacking an enemy plane, or seeing how many people she can take down from five hundred yards with am M25, she's in it for the excitement. To her it's a game; she has no remorse for those she kills or hurts along the way, even if they're on her side."

"Unorthodox I would believe, but she's just doing her job. If she stopped to cry after every person she killed she wouldn't be so good as what she does," his brother disagreed. "You were in Vietnam, you know how it is. It's not all fun and games, but sometimes you have to joke about it or you'd do nothing but dwell on the mistakes and tragedies. You can't honestly say every time you've pulled the trigger, Airwolf included, justice and duty were the only things running through your mind, that it's never been about doing better than someone else or revenge, can you?"

"No, but I try to avoid that as much as possible."

"There are truly bad people, I believe that much, but I don't want to write her off as one of them until she has proved that she is. Sometimes I don't think there is a clear-cut right and wrong. In her job she just happens to deal in that gray area a lot. For example, stealing Airwolf might not have been the 'right' thing to do, but without it you knew there was a good possibility the FIRM wouldn't hold up their end of the deal. Since then you've helped a lot of people with a weapon that wasn't legitimately yours. Does that make helping them wrong? I don't know. I just think sometimes we feel we have no choice but to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. She does kill people for a living, but it's for national security and to keep the majority of people safe. Does that make what she does much different than what you do in Airwolf?"

"Hawke," Caitlin called as she wandered back out into the other end of the hangar. "I have a situation I need to discuss with you regarding clothing."

"You do?"

"Yes. Your locker is the one on the end, not the one next to it, and I don't much appreciate you taking up all the space in mine."

"Sorry," he apologized, restfully taking his lost shirt from her.

"Beyond that, you might want to make sure there aren't already greasy clothes in there. You don't know how long it took to get that shirt clean, and next time I might just return it with the grease."

"Thanks, Cait." He took the shirt, disappearing from the room to change.

"Was I interrupting something?"

Saint John shook his head. "A stalemate."

"Alright then." She started to leave, stopping when she got the doorway. "Do you have a ride home? I'm about to leave for the day, and I thought I could drop you off on the way if you wanted."

"That would be great." He pushed up from the chair, still moving none too quickly, and followed her out.

Once they were in her car and driving off he realized her true motives for offering the ride however.

"I need your advice on something."

"I can offer it, but there's no assurance it's going to be good advice."

"Well you probably know String better than I do, what sets him off and what bothers him."

"Okay, what is it?"

"Michael has a new mission for Airwolf; I'm just not so sure it's something he should do. I don't want to exclude him if he wants to be part of the action, especially since he's currently in the best physical shape, no offense."

"None taken."

"I'm just afraid it will hit a little too close to home, and I don't want him to do something stupid."

"Understandable. What's the mission?"

"A grudge holding Vietnamese ex-warlord, the same one that held your brother captive for two months, is trying to create trouble. His son who was evidently in the North Vietnamese Army was killed by Americans over there recently. I don't know who or why they were over there, but they were. Since then he has been trying to stir up trouble, telling them that the Americans are coming back over to start another war. A couple teams have already been sent over there to take care of the situation, but none have succeeded."

"Have any of them survived?"

"All but four people sent over there have been tortured to death, their bodies used as example of the war he's trying to make them believe we're starting."

"What happened to the four?" Saint John queried.

"One is still being held prisoner over there. The other man has been missing for about a week without a trace."

"You said there were four."

"This has actually been going on for quite some time; he just hadn't been going many followers until recently. The other two were Lexa Cole and your brother."