CHAPTER 10
"She promised me dammit. She promised me."
Dom placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, but didn't have any great words of encouragement this time. What was he supposed to say? Come on, kid, I know you think you're cursed and everyone your love your loosed - your parents, your girlfriend, your brother, now Gabrielle - but everything will turn out ok? No, that wasn't going to work at all.
Setting the dehydrated, abused, lifeless body reverently back down on the scorching Libyan desert sand, a look of hatred, determination, and revenge crowded out the love and grief in his eye. Now it was all about getting even. Moffet had simply gone too far.
Before he knew it, they were soaring over the sandy dunes, finally coming to a mid-air hover not far away from a dusty jeep and the man, the monster, that had created this amazing, beautiful, deadly, destructive machine in the first place.
Knowing the Lady's one weakness and his only chance, Moffet lined up and shot for the mid-air refueling intake, tightening his grip on the trigger and…
Missile after missile impacted the ground, fire and flames engulfing the jeep and everything, and everyone, around it, another couple followed, obliterating the ground. Long after the evil genius creator was gone, he empty the entire remaining arsenal on Moffet.
'Click, click, click.' No more armament, everything was used up, more than plenty.
"String, it's done."
He almost physically had to pull his fingers of the trigger and it was only then that the urge to get total revenge diminished and everything else started to come back - the pain, the grief, the sorrow, regret, guilt…
"No matter how many times I see her, she just takes my breath away."
"Yeah."
"How fast is that bird?"
"We don't know yet. So far it has only slightly exceeded the speed of sound."
"No helicopter can fly faster than sound."
"Airwolf can. Basically, Airwolf is an aerodynamic lifting body with a twin turbine driven rotor system that can propel it to three hundred knots.
"In other words, Airwolf is a fast, twin engine, jet chopper."
"One can express it in those terms, except this jet chopper can disengage its rotor system and ignite these two additional turbine. Nine point six seconds after ignition Airwolf can exceed mach one from sea level to sixty five thousand feet.
The crew consists of an in-flight weapons specialists in the electronic data command center to monitor turbine temperatures, fuel and lubricant pressure, rotor synchronization and all onboard flight systems. The second crewman is a countermeasure specialist who's primary MOS is to suppress, neutralize, or destroy any weapons threatening the integrity of Airwolf. He also has duplicate flight system controls in case the aircraft commander becomes incapacitated. And finally, the aircraft commander who is responsible for flight control, target acquisition, and weapon system selection, the latter offering him fourteen firepower options ranging from 30mm canons to nuclear tipped Shrike missiles. In other words, Airwolf if a mach one plus chopper that can kick butt.
The Lady - beautiful and deadly, majestic and yet so destructive. She could be used to defeat and defend, or, in the wrong hands, to destruct, destroy, to obliterate and annihilate.
\A/
"Hawke?"
Michael's voice broke threw Hawke's silence and memories.
"Tell me where and when, I'll be there."
"Hawke, you can't go off on some half cocked idea that everything will work out and you'll suddenly remember how to fly Airwolf. Airwolf is a highly sensitive, one of a kind, piece of military hardware, Just getting it out of the Lair takes a good amount of skill and combat flying isn't something you can hope goes well and let fate take care of the rest, you seem to have forgotten that."
"I haven't forgotten," he rebutted. "Innocent people will die if I don't do something about it though. What if Caitlin were one of them?"
"It's a Beechcraft 1900 heading for the Mexican border, somewhere near Baja," Michael imparted reluctantly.
"Thanks, Michael."
'Hawke, wait. At least let me be your engineer or something, take some one else with you."
"Don't have the time to pick you up," he replied abruptly. "Got to go."
\A/
"There she is, even more beautiful than I remember."
The sleek black helicopter basked in the late afternoon sun, the warm rays being absorbed by the dark metallic fuselage.
So far, memory served, at least long enough to get here. Now all he had to do was remember how to fly her.
Rising up from the chimney slowly, he looked about the controls making sure he remembered how everything worked before starting off.
"Ok, you're going to have to be a true angel today because I want all the extra help I can get."
Shooting off over the valley, above mesa and canyon, they began their trip to Baja.
Airwolf, stunning as she may be, could be and was intimidating to many people, and with good reason. Chance was the anomaly, String thought to himself as he sent a quick glance in the direction of his son. Maybe it was because he had always been around helicopters of some sort all short three years of his life; if he'd been born any earlier, Cait probably would have had him right here in the Lady's cockpit. Maybe it was inherited, but that still didn't quite explain everything. He seemed perfectly at home on either Jet Ranger, and that was a good thing considering it was a daily occurrence, but something was different with the Lady. The array of buttons, knobs, and sensors - it was almost like it wasn't just a panel of lights and switches just waiting to be pushed and to see what happened. Without being told, he knew he wasn't to touch any of them, and seemed to have a good idea what each would do. He looked almost as if given the chance he could fly her himself. Now that was a scary prospect - a three year old at the controls of something like Airwolf. What was even more frightening was that he would be more willing to let Chance have a go at it than some people he knew who had a lot more flying time.
Approaching the area, he scanned for any other aircrafts in the vicinity. Nothing yet, but they'd be here, and he would be waiting.
\A/
Fluttering open eyelids to reveal hazel eyes, Caitlin squinted in the dark as her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting.
"Ah, Mrs. Hawke, I see you finally decided to rejoin us. I truly am sorry about that, but we just couldn't have you making a big ruckus and drawing lots of attention, could we?"
"What do you want from me?" she demanded.
"Nothing much," the younger man replied, "just safe passage."
"Safe passage?"
"Evidently, your husband has quite a hero complex, enough to die to save many others."
"What does he have to do with you?" Caitlin questioned as she tried to wriggle free.
"We didn't want him coming after us, trying to shoot us down or something. And he wouldn't do it with you aboard."
"What makes you so sure?" Caitlin spat. "Ever heard of sacrifice for the greater good?"
"I have, as you say, friends in high places, and have gotten a good look at Mr. Hawke's medical records - all of them - from the local hospitals, VA hospitals, FIRM clinic, the one in Annapolis, and more recently the trauma center in Van Nuys. The psychiatrists can't figure what makes him tick, after all the trauma he's gone through, what give him the drive to keep going; he refuses most the help the doctors offer, says he prefers to heal on his own. Sorry to say it, Mrs. Hawke, but it looks like you married a time bomb. It's just a matter of time until he goes off and does something rash."
"What does that have to do with anything? Why would you care if I married a 'time bomb' or not? It doesn't affect you; it's my problem, not yours."
"on the contrary, it does. If that bomb goes off while we're fleeing the country, we - all of us - could end up dead. I'm depending on your theory of 'sacrifice for the greater good' being wrong. You see, some bombs never go off. Some are disarmed and some are disposed of before they get the chance to reek their havoc. I'm counting on being able to disarm him and dispose of him, watch him slowly melt away until he isn't good for anything anymore, and then he will suffer for the rest of his life."
\A/
Again, Hawke tried to keep his focus on the plane they were waiting for, to keep his thoughts off his son and on task.
Slowly everything faded away and he saw Airwolf only yards away. The ominous whomp, whomp of a Sikorsky invading their territory. A missile rocketed through the sky, but not towards Airwolf, towards him. Then nothing, nothing until he woke up gasping for air, trying to draw in a breath but unable, being suffocated by an unbearable pain raging throughout his entire body.
"Get him back on the oxygen," a muddled, far away voice ordered.
"Anesthesia," another said.
"He's under too much pain. Put him back under…"
"I've given it a lot of thought, but I'm not where I want to be."
"String, you're making good progress-twice as far as the doctors had estimated," she interrupted.
"Maybe, but it's not good enough. You deserve better."
"I said I would stick with you," Caitlin argued.
"I know what you said, but listen to what I'm saying. You can do better. I can't take care of you or a kid right now and you know it, maybe it would be better if you found someone else."
"Find someone else?" she didn't know whether she was more upset about the stupid idea or hurt. "I don't need to find someone else."
"I can make sure you're both well provided for," he continued, "it's not that I don't love you, both of you, I just want what's best for you and that's not me."
"Well maybe I don't want what's best for us then. I want you."
"Caitlin, it won't work. You don't need me, and our kid deserves better." She sat stunned in her chair as he started to walk out. "I'm sorry, Cait."
"I wasn't really quite ready for the baby yet," he admitted, "and you're sure everything is alright?"
She could sense the tension in his voice. "I'm positive. The baby's a little early, but nothing to worry about from what the doctors say." Suddenly she grinned, "Speaking of which, don't you think it's about time your son got a name?"
"A son," Hawke remarked in wonder. He whispered in an awestruck voice, "I have a son?" He raised incredibly blue eyes to meet hers. "I haven't really thought about it much, Cait. I mean I've had plenty of time to… but he's already here and …"
Taking in the stricken tone in Hawke's voice Cait shook her head. "Would you like to hold your son, String?"
He shook his head, but his eyes told her he did. And with that, she leaned across the covers and placed their son gently in his arms. Staring at him in wonder, Hawke shifted his awkward grip on the baby even as he worked a tiny hand free and grabbed hold of his finger.
Watching them, she smiled. "Well," she said after a long minute, "what about that name?"
Tearing his gaze away from his son for a moment, Hawke grinned at her. "Chance," he whispered, "because we got our second chance, and you took one on me."
It was all starting to settle back in it's proper place. He still didn't remember what exactly had put him in the hospital and caused him to loose all these precious memories, but it didn't really matter. There were hostage in that plane and he had to get them to land without hurting them. Not 'if possible' he would have to make it possible. What if Cait were on that plane? Most likely she wasn't, but if she were, there wouldn't be any way he could shoot it down and it should be any different for someone else's wife either.
"Plane," Chance said even as the aircraft identification program automatically started in the back.
"Huh?" focus, he told himself, you have to focus, for your own sake, and Chance's.
"Plane," Chance repeated, pointing towards the north as a plane came into view.