Author's Notes:
I realized as I was writing this that I was using some military terms that may not be familiar, such as acronyms. To explain it in the story feels like I'm dumbing it down, and I don't want to do that. I have always felt it is good to learn at least one new thing a day. So, if you don't know what it is, look it up. You'll be smarter for it.
Also, if you're looking for a super quick story, this isn't it. I try to fill out arcs when I write, so please be patient. I'll keep writing if you keep reading.
And thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you're enjoying this story. I hope you continue to read!
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Chapter 3
Flint heard his name being called somewhere in the distance. He did not want to open his eyes. The lids felt so heavy and he had found a true comfort zone. It was difficult to open them, but he forced himself to waken. It took a moment for him to focus, to identify his surroundings. He saw Doctor Suarez standing there, heard her calling his name.
He sat bolt upright, reality catching up to him at lightning speed when he realized exactly where he was and how he got there.
"Easy," she soothed, laying her hand on his shoulder.
"Allison . . ." he breathed, rubbing his eyes.
Suarez urged him back on the gurney. "Doc just finished with her. They're getting her settled in the ICU."
Flint managed to get the burning in his eyes under control for a few seconds, enough to look up at Suarez. He saw her concern.
"She's okay, then?" he asked, knowing better but holding out hope.
"She's strong," Suarez offered, picking careful words. "We're going to do everything we can. Doc got the bullet and repaired the holes, but she's not out of the woods yet."
His hands went back to his eyes as the burning began again. "Can I see her?"
"Bill went to get a wheelchair for you."
"I can walk," Flint insisted.
"Not until I say so," Suarez replied strongly. "I don't need you undoing what rest you've gotten."
He could not help but smile at her victory. "You're persistent for a newbie."
"My father was military. I'm used to big strong fellas like you thinking you're indestructible. And for what it's worth, I've been around the block once or twice in my medical career. You're definitely not my first patient."
Flint gave a quiet chuckle. She was certainly no back number.
"Sorry," he said. "You just don't strike me as the typical military doctor, that's all."
"Youth is my curse," she said, giving him a genuine smile.
Bill entered the treatment room pushing a wheelchair. "You call for a transport?"
"This is twice you've given me a ride, cowboy," Flint said, the fog in his brain beginning to lift.
Bill smiled. "Don't worry – I'm keeping track of the IOU's. You're going to owe me a lot of beers when this is all over."
Suarez helped Flint sit up in bed, holding on to his arm as his feet touched the floor. His legs felt like rubber, buckling under him when he tried to put his full weight on them. The world suddenly tilted. She was stronger than he had expected, keeping him from crashing to the floor and getting him steadied against the edge of the gurney. Bill abandoned the wheelchair and was on the other side of Flint, taking hold of an arm, as well.
"Whoa," Flint breathed. The room was spinning wildly.
"Get your bearings," she said, still holding on to him in support. "It'll pass in a second."
He waited a second, then gave it another for good measure. "It's not passing," he said, closing his eyes and feeling a slight panic well in the pit of his stomach.
Suarez turned to Bill. "Help me get him back on the bed."
Together, they helped Flint sit back on the gurney. He lay back of his own accord, for once not having to have been told to do so by any medical personnel. A tiny wave of nausea poked at his insides as the swirl continued.
Suarez removed a scope from the wall and turned on its light. She moved Flint's head to the side and looked first in his right ear, then his left.
"You have fluid in your right ear. Probably river water," she reported, ejecting the cone from the scope and putting the instrument back in its holder on the wall. "I can give you something for the dizziness until it drains, but it may make you groggy."
The whirl increased. Flint instinctively grabbed on to whatever was in reach of his hands for support. His fingers clutched the sheets of the gurney tightly.
"Whatever you say, Doc. Just stop the world so I can get off."
A few moments later, he felt the sting of a needle in his arm as Suarez injected him with medication.
"Give it a minute or two," she admonished. "It'll stop the dizziness."
Her hand was warm on his as she waited for him to calm. It took a bit longer than she had estimated, but the dizziness and nausea eventually passed. He gathered the courage to open his eyes, finding the room was steady and still. Suarez looked down at him.
"Better?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, feeling the beginning of sedation settling in on his brain.
She sat him up, but it was not as traumatic this time. Bill took hold of him and put him in the wheelchair, Suarez following with a blanket. Doctor Suarez gave Flint a once-over before telling Bill it was okay to proceed. They entered the hall. The cool air sent a chill through Flint again. He pulled the blanket up high to cover his arms where the feeling was the worst. They took the elevator to the ICU floor.
It was even quieter there. They passed two of those who had been wounded that day, with Suarez quickly explaining that they had been admitted to the unit as a precaution. Then, they were at Lady Jaye's room.
The door was closed, blocking Flint's view of the room. She knelt down next to him.
"I want to prepare you for what you're going to see, Flint. She's on life support, which means she's hooked up to a lot of machines."
He had seen it before with others. He hated the whole idea, but he realized it was necessary. At that point, anything that was keeping Allison alive was all right with him.
"I'm ready," he told her quietly.
She stood and opened the door. Bill wheeled Flint forward. For as much as he thought he was prepared for what it would look like, Flint was still taken off-guard with what he saw. Air vanished from his lungs at the scene before him.
She lay there, in a darkened room, pale and unmoving. Bill pushed him closer to her bedside. Flint was overwhelmed with what he was seeing, but Suarez was at his side to explain it. She knelt down next to him again. He reached out and took Allison's hand in his, feeling how cold it still was. IV bags hung on the other side of the bed, the lines snaking down like jungle vines. One of them was starkly crimson, a transfusion that was an effort to replace the blood she had lost.
"She's sedated, so don't be upset that you don't get a response from her," Suarez said. "We do that because we don't want her fighting us."
"She looks horrible," Flint breathed, seeing Allison's pallor.
"I know," the young doctor said, "but that will get better with time."
The ventilator pushed air into Allison's lungs at regular intervals, the swish of the pump occupying most of the sound in the room. The monitors silently reported her beating heart, the readings certainly steadier and stronger than they had been onboard the rescue helo.
"She has a chest tube on the other side," Suarez continued. "That's to keep the fluid from building up where Doc operated. So, just be careful not to disturb it when you're here."
"This is insane," he said so quietly.
"I know it seems that way, but she has a good chance at a full recovery," Suarez said.
The word hit him with a force so full he had to look away. "'Chance'…"
"Flint," Suarez said more firmly, making no attempt to hide her annoyance, "she needs positive thinking and reinforcement. If you're going to be in here, then that is your responsibility. You got her this far. Don't give up now."
He studied Allison's hand in his, realizing how delicate it was. "You're right," he said, nodding. He forced himself to find a sense of resolve. "You're right."
Suarez stood up again. "I'll give you some time with her, but then you're back to bed."
Then he was alone in the room. Bill had quietly closed the door behind him as he left. Flint looked at her fully for the first time, drinking in the details. The staff had cleaned her up since they received her. The dirt had been wiped from her face and arms. He could still see a rim of black under her fingernails from where she had clawed to get out of the line of fire after being hit. He smiled inwardly, knowing she would have been cringing, scraping her nails clean if she were awake. She had the cleanest fingernails of anyone he had ever seen, except maybe when she was cleaning weapons. Even then, the dirt and grime never had a chance to take root.
He cradled her hand between his palms. He said nothing, afraid that he could not utter the right words that would bring her back sooner. Maybe he would say the wrong thing at the wrong time that would change fate. It was safer to say nothing at all, hoping that her feeling his hands on her was enough.
Flint's eyes felt heavy. The effect of whatever Suarez had given him enveloping his senses in a cloud of thick operation. He put his arm on the bed, resting his head and curling her fingers around his hand as he watched her breathe in a rhythmic motion. Then his eyes closed, and he drifted off to sleep.
He leaned against the jeep, chewing on a piece of hay from the field, watching the communications engineers do whatever it was that communications engineers did on missions like this. No matter, the view of the mountains beat the stiffness of a political detail any day.
Flint looked around at the operation. It was going smoothly. Dornan, an engineering sergeant, had assured him they would complete the surveillance project on time, if not early. That was a good thing, Flint thought. It would get them back to base early, in time for dinner. He would ask Allison out that night, time permitting. He knew where they could go if she would only agree.
He looked for her and found her walking toward him, clipboard in hand as she scribbled notes. He made it a point to not make eye contact with her. When she neared him, she stopped and looked up at him.
"What are you up to, tough guy?" she asked.
"Just contemplating what you wear under your regulation issues," he answered, keeping his eyes trained on the engineers.
"Stop torturing yourself, Dash," she warned. "It's not going to happen . . . again."
"That's a shame," he said. "What about dinner? Can we at least try that?"
She looked up at him with her eyes, keeping pen to paper. "Say the word with me – 'fraternization'. If they find out, believe me, it's the enlisted one who's going to get busted in the chops, not the semi-officer-type. Sorry, but I'll pass."
He let out a laugh at her self-control. Unfortunately, it was one of the things that attracted him so much to her. He finally looked at her and saw her cheeks were tinted with a red glow.
"You're blushing," he accused, very sure of himself.
She lowered the clipboard. "I am not," Jaye said defensively.
"Sure you are. Look in the mirror," he said, pointing to the large side mirrors on the jeep.
She took him up on the challenge, peering around to the glass. She studied her reflection, her hand eventually going to her face in an effort to rub away the color.
"Told you," he mocked.
He saw her smile reflected in mirror. Their eyes locked as she looked at his inverted image. Flint felt his heart hammer in his chest as it did at certain moments like that.
They saw it at the same time in the mirror. The streaking missile with its plume of exhaust rocketed toward them from the sky in a swooping downward arc in the late afternoon sky. Flint turned quickly to see the real thing coming toward his location, heading right for the jeep.
There was no time for a warning. Lady Jaye was already on the run away from the vehicle. Flint dug it out as fast as he could before the weapon struck near the jeep. The jeep bounced up into the air and came down hard on its side. He was knocked off his feet, rolling a good ten yards before he came to a stop.
The Rattlers swept down toward the surveillance complex, firing their nose guns at anything they could hit. The dish on the top of the station was the first to go, followed by a storage shed that was obliterated in a spray of shrapnel by the power of the guns.
Flint grabbed for his radio. "Echo One to Eagle Watch! We're under attack!"
Eagle Watch, the Sky Striker team assigned to fly cover, responded. "Eagle Watch lead to Echo One, we see it. Diverting to your location."
Flint looked skyward for the three Strikers. He found them east, turning in formation in the distance against the backdrop of snowcapped mountains. It was almost picture perfect the way they turned with complete precision. They were going after the Rattlers who were coming around for a second pass.
"Go get 'em, boys!" Flint shouted as he watched them approach.
The left Striker suddenly veered off, black smoke trailing from its tail. A Night Raven followed it, continuing to fire. Something caught Flint's eye from the right. A black dot appeared on the horizon. Then, a missile streaked laterally toward the lead Striker. The lead banked right in time for the missile to impact the left wing and send the aircraft careening out of control.
The right Striker pulled up hard, going vertical and arcing backward, trying to get tone in the ambush. Flint watched as a Night Raven appeared out of nowhere and tightened the pursuit, following the Striker all the way. When they neared the top of the maneuver, the Raven let go with a shot, hitting the Striker in the tail. It slid like a sidewinder in the air until the pilot could no longer control it, ejecting from the cockpit before the jet exploded into flaming debris.
Flint awoke with a start, his vision skewed by what he saw in his dream. He looked around the room, finding Jaye as he had left her when he fell asleep. Her hand was still curled into his. His heart was pounding in his chest from the memory of the attack, but his experience and discipline told him to replay the dream in his mind. He had seen the missing factor.
"I'll be back," he said standing out of the wheelchair. He kissed her gently on the forehead.
He tore out of the room and headed for the command center. Suarez and Bill were at the ICU desk when he blew by them with a quick trot.
"Flint!" Bill called after him, beginning pursuit.
Flint did not stop. He had to get to the command center. He heard Bill trailing after him, calling his name. The elevator was at the end of the hall. He slammed his hand on the button several times, willing it to arrive faster. The silver doors remained closed, moving too slow for Flint's liking.
Bill finally caught up to him. "Flint! What in the hell is the matter with you?"
"I know why we didn't see those planes," Flint said, looking up at the line of numbers above the elevator doors, watching as they counted down to his floor.
"Let's hear it."
"Not here. We need to get back to the command center."
Bill respected Flint's wishes and Hawk's standing order. He did not probe for any more answers as they rode the elevator to the ground floor. Flint took off toward the command center at a clip. He rushed toward the briefing room, looking for Mainframe. He found Scarlett with the tech, poring over data from the day's events.
"Good, you're both here," he said, closing the door once Bill was inside the room.
Scarlett looked up from her workstation. "Aren't you supposed to be horizontal in the infirmary?"
"Later," he said. "I need to see the playback of the radar from today. I need to see just before they were engaged."
Scarlett raised her eyebrows, surrendering. "Okay, but we've looked at it a hundred times already. There's nothing there."
He maintained his patience. "Just play it."
She called up the record, displaying it on the large screens. He watched the icons that represented the Strikers on patrol. They flew a standard formation, a standard overwatch protection pattern.
"Can we hear a communications playback with this?" Flint asked, watching the screen.
"Sure," Mainframe said, turning back to his terminal. Within a few seconds, the dialogue from the Strikers was synchronized to the patterns on the screen.
Flint heard his own voice, just as it had been in the dream.
"Echo One to Eagle Watch! We're under attack!"
"Eagle Watch lead to Echo One, we see it. Diverting to your location."
Flint watched the radar playback, correlating their movements on the screen with the real-life images in his mind. Four red icons appeared at Flint's location on the screen, coinciding with the moment the ops team was attacked.
The audio switched to the Striker cockpit conversations.
"Eagles Two and Three, look lively. There's fish in the barrel."
"Eagle Two, I hear you, Dauby!"
"Eagle Three, let me at 'em, Dauby!"
Flint remembered meeting with the pilots of the squadron before the mission. Dauby, the flight's lead, was confident. His two wingmen, Flusher and Cat, were typical jet jockeys that lived for the engagement. It took a commander like Dauby to keep them in line in the air. Flint liked confident pilots, even if their arrogance sometimes got the better of those in the infantry.
He listened to Dauby directing his squadron.
"Contact, bearing one-eight-zero. Looks like some little Rattlers are picking on our friends. Let's do it."
The formation swept forward at Dauby's command, the icons on the playback moving in a delta toward the Rattlers, with Dauby in the lead. Cat was port side, Flusher starboard with their wing leader.
There was a pause of silence as they began to engage the Rattlers. Then he heard the moment when it all changed.
"Eagle Three, I'm hit! I'm hit!"
"Break off! Break off!"
Flusher tried pulling out of the formation to get out of the line of fire. His icon suddenly blanked off the screen. A red icon, indicating an aircraft without IFF showed up on the screen. It was on Flusher's tail until the pilot's plane was lost.
"Dauby! Break right!"
Another red icon suddenly appeared to the south further out of the engagement area.
There was a slight shift of Dauby's icon with Cat's warning before it, too, disappeared.
Cat seemed to stay on course, but the altimeter reading for it increased as she pulled the plane into a hard vertical climb. One last red icon appeared, practically on top of the green icon of Cat's plane. She grunted against the high G's she was pulling in the climb, trying to evade the Ravens.
"Oh shi . . ."
As the last plane disappeared from the screen, so did the red icons. They were gone as soon as they had appeared.
Flint was scarcely breathing. It was intense to listen to pilots losing their planes and nearly their lives. The whole transaction had taken less than a minute.
Mainframe stopped the playback. "That's why we couldn't warn you. It happened so fast."
Flint ran his hand through his hair, staring at the screen. "Show the playback of Bill's evac," he said softly, grappling with the emotions that churned in his head.
"Flint," Mainframe said, hedging, "there's nothing there. We went back and looked at it. The Ravens showed up, but the Strikers you said you saw don't show up at all. No IFF and no signatures were picked up on the sensors."
Scarlett sat down next to Flint. "If we had seen the Rattlers and Ravens earlier, we would have warned you, but the systems just didn't see them," she said, apologetic.
Snippets of his dream clicked in his brain, firing off in rapid sequence until he knew the answer. Black dots appearing on the horizon, Ravens popping up behind their targets, in perfect kill positions – he saw it again and again in his head.
"That's because they were never there," he said finally.
He saw Scarlett sneak a surreptitious glance at Bill. "They were never there?"
He realized how it must have sounded and corrected himself, trying to piece it all together. "They were there," he said, "but they weren't there until just when they showed up on radar. It looks to you like they came out of nowhere because that's exactly what they did. They appeared out of thin air."
"Are you sure?" Scarlett asked, as if he did not believe him.
"I was there!" he snapped at her. "I know what I saw!"
Scarlett bristled at his outburst but then softened. "I believe you, Flint, but I just don't see how it's possible. Stealth technology would explain why we didn't see them on sensors, but that wouldn't explain what you saw."
"I'm not saying I have the answers, but there has to be something in the readings that can tell us what happened. The bombs were real, the bullets were real, and everything in the air was real."
Bill leaned against the conference table, hooking his thumbs in his belt. "Well, at least the door swings both ways. We had bad guys and good guys doing Houdinis up there."
Scarlett looked at Mainframe. "Any suggestions?"
Mainframe shrugged. "We could run a level three diagnostic and see if there's anything out of the ordinary or cached, but it's a long shot. We have sensors to detect the sensors. If something was haywire, we'd have seen it by now."
"Run the diagnostic," Scarlett said to Mainframe.
Flint felt the order was more an effort to pacify him, but he was satisfied that more digging would be done into the incident. He wanted answers, and he was willing to use whatever means necessary to get to them. Scarlett was good at her job, thorough even when not necessary. He trusted she would see to it that Mainframe ran the diagnostics.
He looked at her, saw the stress in her eyes. Allison was her friend, a comrade beyond the terror war. They had bonded with one another in the face of a male-dominated organization, expected to pull their own weight and be productive in combat situations. Scarlett had even gone so far as to cover for Allison and Flint's relationship to some degree, downplaying the entire issue with various commanders, with almost as much risk to her career as it had been to theirs. He had no right to snap at her and felt remorse.
"It's going to take a while," Scarlett said to Flint. She looked down at a pile of folders on the table. "I could use some help in the personnel files. Since you're at the infirmary, why don't you take the medical personnel and go through those files?"
He looked at the stack of twenty or so folders. It would at least be helping the cause, he figured. He reached out for them, but Bill was there to get them for him.
"Let me get those for you, partner," he said, scooping the pile off the table. He moved toward the door.
"Bill, bring those here," Flint demanded.
Bill shook his head. "You get them when you're back in the infirmary. I've already gotten my butt in a sling once today. I don't need more parts of me in trouble. Hawk says you're supposed to be in the infirmary, and that's where you're going." He began inching out the door, waiting for Flint to follow.
"Now, there's true friendship," Scarlett said, "butt-slinging and all."
Flint was outnumbered by those he called friends. He knew he had been harsh with them, the kind of atypical team member he had always hated. They were trying to help him, he knew, but it was just so damned frustrating sometimes.
For the second time that day, Bill followed him out of the command center and back to the infirmary. This time, though, they returned to the ICU where Flint found a reclining chair in Allison's room, next to her bed. He sat back in it, feeling impossibly exhausted again. With one hand, Bill put a blanket on him once more. Then he placed the stack of folders on Flint's lap and said nothing. He only nodded at Flint, reaching out to touch Lady Jaye's hand for an extended moment.
For the first time, Flint saw Bill at a loss for words. He watched Bill study the scene, seeing the machines, taking in the sounds of Lady Jaye's state for the first time. He and Flint had been out one night, having a few beers when Bill had spoken of how being a pilot made him a part of the glory without the fuss. He never had to worry about blood on his hands or about cleaning up the aftermath of a battle, he said. All he had to do was fly in and fly out, delivering a load or doing a pickup when necessary. For a long time, Flint felt that Bill was one of the coolest cucumbers in the flying forces of the Joes. It was only at that moment that he realized even cowboys had feelings.
Bill broke contact and looked down at Flint. "Do me a favor and stay put, will you? I need to be able to trust you're not going to do something stupid. Read those files and keep your kiester planted in that chair for a while so I can get some rack time."
Flint smiled at Bill's way with words. "Scout's honor."
He watched as Bill walked down the hall. Flint opened the first file folder, not really having a clue what he was looking for in terms of deciphering what constituted a mole. He began at the top of the page, reading each line of information. The words seemed to cross over one another as he neared the middle of the page. He put his head back, determined to rest his eyes as he felt the tiny onset of the swirling sensation in his head. All he needed was to rest his eyes.
For just a moment.