AN: Dialogue is taken directly from the episode, Echoes from the Past.
The airfield at Crofton had been abandoned a decade before, and the runway was now little more than a weed-choked strip of asphalt at the edge of a run-down hangar. The grassy area around the strip was relatively flat, and many of the bush pilots preferred it to the crumbling runway. As he followed the old approach and crested the last ridge near the airfield, Hawke easily spotted the aircraft.
A second glance told Hawke that the gaudy red-and-white plane was a Stearman, much like the one that Dom kept at the airfield in Van Nuys. Unlike Dom's bird, this one had been fully restored and well-maintained. Dom was always bemoaning the fact that he never had enough time or money to invest in the Stearman's upkeep, but whoever this bird belonged to had money to burn. When Hawke saw the lanky figure clad in leather fedora and bomber jacket leaning against the wing of the plane, he knew exactly where the money had come from.
"Halloa, old stick!" The man shouted over the noise of the Hughes spinning down. "Remember me?"
If the plane had not already given the man's identity away, the English accent would have. "Peter MacGregor Moore," Hawke shot back, his hackles already rising. "How could I ever forget?"
Moore grinned. "Short notice," he admitted, "but I thought you'd make it."
"Is my brother alive?" Hawke had tangled with Moore enough to know that the man had a devil-may-care approach to flying and even less concern about where his money came from. In short, the man was a sleaze, and Hawke saw no reason to spend any more time with him than was absolutely necessary.
The curt question didn't faze the Englishman. "Ah! I said talk costs money."
"How much money?"
If there was one thing Moore was good at, it was the fine art of negotiation. Hawke knew that the first few sets of offers and counter-offers would be tests, leading gradually to what Moore truly wanted.
Unaware of Hawke's impatient musings, the other pilot pursed his lips in thought. "I'd take a trade—say, that chopper over there." He nodded to the matte-black Hughes 500 behind Hawke.
"It's not mine." Dom would probably have given his whole hangar if it would bring Saint John home, but Hawke wasn't going to second-guess his mentor.
"Too bad," said Moore, only mildly regretful. "What about your cabin? Or maybe this wonderful art collection I've heard so much about?"
From the way his sly smile didn't reach his eyes, it was clear that he'd hoped the insider information would get to Hawke. However, when Hawke didn't rise to his bait, Moore's smile returned in earnest as Hawke removed his own sunglasses to reveal a steely gaze. "The years haven't done much to improve your sense of humor," the Englishman observed.
"Don't you play with me, Moore." Hawke's words were almost a snarl. "Not about this."
Moore met his gaze squarely, a tactic that usually said 'honesty' but made Hawke all the more suspicious. "I'll take a thousand dollars for my expenses," said the Englishman, in a tone backed by a good deal of emotion.
Hawke weighed the situation for a moment. Moore was up to something—he was always up to something—but there was another dimension to this conversation that Hawke couldn't quite pin down. He decided to play the negotiation out and see where it led. "Agreed."
Moore reached one gloved hand into the inside pocket of his bomber, brought out a folded piece of heavy paper, and offered it to Hawke. The chopper pilot took the paper and unfolded it to reveal an aerial photograph. A rough cluster of buildings huddled in a patchwork of farmland, and Hawke could see several blurs that looked like military helicopters parked near some of the buildings.
"Your brother's being held in this compound," said Moore. "Weighs about a hundred pounds, but he's basically healthy. His mind's still in good nick."
With an effort long made automatic during the years of his search, Hawke forced down the hope that welled in his chest. "Where?"
"Quon Ling province, North Vietnam. Off-course weather satellite picked him up purely by chance." Moore waited for a moment as Hawke let the information sink in. "Saint John's being held with eleven other Caucasians by an ex-NVA colonel named Nuyen Min Giap—apparently a man who holds a grudge. Two of his prisoners are ex-Frog Legionnaires dating back to Dien Bien Phu in '54. Poor sods are in their 60's."
The information seemed plausible, but Moore was a leopard who hadn't changed his spots in the time Hawke had known him. "Where'd you find out about this?"
"Another mercenary," said Moore, apparently unconcerned at tarring himself with the same brush. "He occasionally freelances for the Firm. After we picked up the shot, we sent him in to take a closer look."
Hawke felt his blood pressure rise a notch. Withholding information was par for the course for the Firm, but this was dirty pool even for Michael. "So the Firm knows all about this?"
Moore gave Hawke a look that bordered on sympathy. "Wondering why your friend Archangel didn't tell you?"
Hawke didn't think he needed to dignify that with a response. Moore had also freelanced for the Firm, and he knew as well as Hawke did how tight-lipped Michael could be.
"Don't be too hard on old Michael," Moore said breezily, wielding his easy charm as effectively as a sniper rifle. "He had a task force put together, trained them personally at Langley so they wouldn't screw up like they did in Iran—and at the last minute, the State Department pulled the rug from under him."
It could have been the glare from the setting sun, or the desire to throttle the Deputy Director of the Firm, but Hawke felt a migraine coming on. Moore seemed to be winding up his tale, so Hawke made himself focus on the Englishman's words.
"Last I heard, they were negotiating for a release. Now you know as much as I know."
I'll just bet, Hawke scowled to himself through the pounding in his head.
"I suggest you don't tip your hand to dear Michael." After this pronouncement, Moore hesitated a brief moment. He nodded to himself, as if having come to an internal decision, and then moved to swing himself up into the Stearman's cockpit.
"Don't you want your money?" Even through the blinding pain, Hawke knew this was a radical departure from the norm. A dyed-in-the-wool merc just didn't up and leave before getting paid, especially one as clever and greedy as Moore.
To Hawke's surprise, Moore's lean face softened a bit at the edges. "I had a brother once. Lost him in Rhodesia a couple of years ago. It's on the house." He cracked a self-deprecating smile. "Even an old whore like me has a heart buried somewhere."
When the Stearman's red-and-white checkerboard rudder was nothing but a dot in a field of blue, Hawke fired up the Hughes and took off down the valley back toward the lake. The headache had subsided a fraction, but now he wished he'd thought to remove his jacket. The sunlight streaming through the canopy made the cockpit unbearably warm, and the air was stuffy and stagnant.
A wave of nausea swept over him, and the instrument panel blurred for a moment. Hawke raised a hand to his forehead and found it blazing hot; was he coming down with something? Vertigo seized him as the Hughes dipped alarmingly, and he tried to regain control of the aircraft long enough to set it down.
With every heartbeat, the vertigo and nausea grew worse, and a cold panic began to seep into Hawke's veins. He hadn't told anyone where he was going; he hadn't filed a flight plan. If he went down among the trees, no one would know. The thought kept him fighting, kept him hanging on through the shakes that threatened to jerk his hands from the collective, kept him trying to make his eyes focus and his lungs draw slow, calming breaths.
Suddenly, everything went black. Tumbling over onto the passenger's seat, Hawke felt the Hughes nose over into a dive, G-forces pushing and pulling at him as the small craft spiraled toward the earth.
The helicopter slammed against the wall of the canyon, shattering into pieces like a toy discarded by an angry child. Flames fueled by Jet-A ripped through what was left, incinerating everything not destroyed by the impact.
The last thing Hawke saw was the image of Dom, his gap-toothed grin flashing against the darkness.
Impossibly, a gabble of voices broke over the crackle of flames. People shouted, their voices raised in alarm. A woman screamed; another sobbed.
"Someone go call an ambulance!" More shouts. Light flickered; shapes moved.
He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. Hot, sticky fluid rose in his throat, in his mouth.
"Oh, God—" Someone nearby succumbed to a fit of retching. The world grew lighter. Faces loomed above him, worried, frightened, panicked.
A blonde woman ran toward him, only to clap one hand over her mouth and turn away in horror. He almost smiled; she looked so much like Ellie, his brother's girlfriend in 'Nam.
Pain pierced his chest, his legs, his head. He had smelled death before, but now it smelled like burning jet fuel.
Oblivion swooped down upon him, like Airwolf closing in on a target. She came for him, and then bore him away from pain and fear on gentle wings of purest black.