Happy Birthday

By Kat Fenn

Chapter 4

"Michael? This is Airwolf. This is an emergency, come in!" screamed String into the radio, as soon as he managed to jam his helmet onto his head.

"Hawke, is that you? This is Archangel. What's wrong?"

Choking back his emotions, String felt himself growing numb. "Michael, I've got your operative here, with me in Airwolf, but I had to leave Dom behind. Where can you meet me to pick this guy up – I gotta go back for Dom as soon as I can."

"Hawke, I read you, I'm sure you need fuel as well. I'm not even going to try to talk you out of going back for Dom. I'm going to send Zebra Squad out, if you give me the location, and I'll send Marella out to you to collect our guy. Let me also make arrangements for refuelling the lady, and I'll come back to you."

Feeling a little better now he had a plan, String turned to ask Dom to check on where the nearest open airfield was. Only to realise that Dom wasn't there. "Errr…Michael, I can't get to the Engineer's Console from here. Can you…"

"I can help!"piped up a voice from the co-pilot seat. String took one swift glance to his left. Realising that he had little choice, he motioned to Michael's operative – to take up Dom's seat at the Engineering Console, and put Dom's helmet on his head so that they could communicate.

"Did you say you wanted to find an open airfield that you can refuel at?"

"Yeah," growled String, "As quickly as possible."

Within a matter of seconds, String heard Michael's operative's voice in his helmet. "Sir? OK, I have an airfield within 10 miles of here, I've transmitted the coordinates to your console. Anything else I can do?"

"Gimme turbos – that's the big lever on the top left hand corner of your console. At 100%."

"Turbos engaged!"

String depressed the turbo control button on the cyclic with his right thumb, and jabbed at the radio communications button with his left index finger to open communications. Trying hard to concentrate through the sudden haze that suddenly enveloped him, String heard himself give the coordinates of the airfield to Marella and Michael, and the coordinates of the last known location of Dom. He heard Michael responding, and telling him that Marella would be at the airfield to pick up their operative, and that Zebra Squad was already enroute to Chicago in a plane. So as soon as String had refuelled, he could take off again and go after Dom. Looking down at his controls, he realised that his flight suit was not the pristine grey it was when he got into Airwolf earlier on that day. It was slowly turning blood red.

"Hey…whatever your name is. Grab a first aid kit from the compartment underneath the left side of your console. I do need some other help."

AWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAW AWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAW

Karen lay awake in bed. Cait had turned the lights off and wished her goodnight, and she had tried to go to sleep, but her mind was still ticking over. Shutting her eyes, she tried to relax her mind so that she could go to sleep, but…sleep seemed to elude her.

Turning on her side, her thoughts turned to String. More specifically, about her and String. About the relationship they had. They hadn't exactly discussed their relationship, but she really did miss him when she wasn't with him. And she was sure that he felt the same. He had said, more than once, that when she wasn't with him he found himself turning to share something with her, or to say something to her, only to find that she wasn't there. She wasn't sure how busy his normal workday was, as the last time she came and spent two months with him, Dom had given him a 'semi-vacation' as he put it, when String only went into the hangar two or three days a week. And was usually done by 3 in the afternoon, so they could still fit in a walk around town, a movie or dinner, before it got too dark. However she did tend to leave him alone while he was working, preferring to help Dom out with paperwork and fielding phone calls. She wondered if he was truly happy living the life he was, as he seemed to be the sort of person who enjoyed his own company; but could that be why he had melancholic, brooding moods sometimes? Karen knew that she was the sort of person that enjoyed the company of others, and, although she did not mind her own company, it was often not her first choice. "Would String like having me around all the time?" she thought to herself. "I suppose that's the next logical question." She knew how she felt about him – there were definite sparks and sizzles between them, and there was nothing amiss with the physical aspect of their love life, but she worried about how she would fit into his life, and him into hers. After all, he was 40 – had been a bachelor all his life, used to living by himself with little consideration for someone else – and she, at 34, had also been used to living her own life. And what about her career? Well, she supposed she could always open a ballet school in town, or offer to go into a partnership with any teachers or studios in the area. And she could always find secretarial work at any of the other hangars at the Van Nuys airport, she supposed. From what Dom had told her his friends were always looking for someone who knew their way around paperwork.

The cabin bothered her a little. She wasn't sure how she could live out in the middle of nowhere, with no one about and dependent on a helicopter or boat to get to town. "Well, I suppose I'll either have to learn to fly a helicopter….or get my own speedboat!" Karen suddenly caught herself. "Hang on, that sounds like I CAN live at the cabin. And why? Because I want to be around String. I think I love him." Karen grinned to herself. So she had found a way to keep her independence and still be with String. If he wanted to be with her, that was. Although his evasiveness still bothered her, she thought that she would come straight out and ask him when they were alone together. And his response would tell her exactly how he thought of her and their future together, if there was one. Relieved that she had settled that in her mind, she gave in to sleep.

AWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAW AWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAW

Somerton (as it turned out the operative's name was) knelt as close as he could to String. It was virtually impossible to move around while turbos were engaged, but now that String had landed it was just difficult, not impossible. He passed String a thick gauze pad, and told him to keep pressure on the wound on his right thigh, until he could get out of Airwolf and come around to look more closely. He fumbled with the co-pilot's door release until String, rather wearily, told him to where to find the release lever. With a satisfying hiss, the door slid open and Somerton took off at a run around the Lady's nose and popped String's door open.

Somerton proved to be quite handy with a first aid kit. Taking a quick look at the wound, he realised that the bleeding, while copious, was not life-threatening as the blood was not pumping out, as it would if an artery had been torn by a bullet, rather it was a slow seep. Pulling a syringe and a vial of morphine out of the first aid kit, he quickly explained to String that he would have to kill some of the pain so that he could probe around and really assess the damage that the bullet had done to his thigh. Nodding quickly, String laid his head on his headrest and tried to relax. He found his thoughts drifting to Karen – he wondered if she was alright, and if she was still upset with him, and how attractive she was.

"Sir? Sir?!" said a voice in his right ear. String jerked upright, barely suppressing an "Ow!" as he jogged the wound in his leg. "Call me Hawke," he said.

"OK, Hawke, I've managed to get the bullet out, and cauterised the wound – luckily it wasn't too deep – with peroxide. It'll still seep for a while, but you're not losing large amounts of blood. I've bandaged it tightly, to try and slow blood loss, but the wound is seeping. I'm not sure how long you'll have before you black out from shock. How do you feel?"

"I'm OK. Just a little tired, that's all." String flexed his thigh experimentally. It didn't feel too bad, and the pressure bandage that Somerton put on felt reasonably tight. "Can you see if they've finished refuelling me – I got to go back for my partner." Somerton went off in search of the refuelling technician to confirm that Airwolf was, in fact, ready to go. He trotted back to String as soon as he received confirmation. Before closing the pilot door, he left String with another pressure bandage which he tucked into the tiny overhead compartment, for just in case.

String pressed the engine start buttons, and heard the familiar whine of rotors. As soon as his instruments told him that he had enough speed for liftoff, he pulled back on the collective and lifted Airwolf into the air.

AWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAW AWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAW