Page 2 of Mending Fences

“Of what? How I’m going to do fly my first mission with the company shy a copilot?” She’d studied the listing of folks invited to the flight briefing. It didn’t list any backup crew.

Justin glanced over at Kara Moretti. Kara stood four inches short of the cowboy, still towering over her. Where he was light, she was Italian dark in eye, skin, and thick brown hair. She was also his wife. Caught herself a pretty one. Fin had no interest in slowing down, not yet anyway, not even for one that looked like the major.

Kara asked the question. “Assessment of Lieutenant Stokman? You’re both new to the company.”

“Meaning we’re unknowns. He’s a weird mix, good enough to qualify in the air. On the ground…” she waggled a hand. Not so much. “Command deemed him good enough to meet SOAR standards though.” She didn’t want to down-talk a fellow pilot, especially not her own copilot.

But that was the bottom line. The helo pilots of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment were the best in the world. However, inside that elite crowd, the companies of the 5th Battalion were a cut above. She’d been bucking for this seat since, maybe not junior high as she’d been too busy discovering boys, but not long after that. She’d gone Army straight out of college and focused her sights on the Night Stalkers as soon as she’d heard they were the best. Once there, the 5D became the next obvious target.

“Good enough doesn’t cut it in this company.” AMC Moretti’s tone made it clear that she was the hard-ass of the outfit. Not what Finella had expected from the lovely brunette—though perhaps she should have after hearing the Brooklyn accent.

“I won’t be the one to take him down.” A girl didn’t rat out her own copilot. “Long transit to get here. I slept. Don’t know if he did.” Special Operations taught you to sleep whenever / wherever you could because who knew when the next chance would be.

“Where’d he get his callsign?”

“Gave it to him myself.”

“Stick? Why?”

Fin really didn’t want to answer that.

Moretti rose to her toes, an Italian as ready to leap into battle as an Irishwoman. Fin liked that and braced herself, but it didn’t seem like a good move on her first day in the company and managed to ease back. “Do you speak German, ma’am?”

Moretti and Roberts both shook their heads.

“Frank Stokman, literally Frank-Stubborn-man. Change S-t-o-k to S-t-o-c-k and you get the German for Stickman. Stick.” She wouldn’t mention that in medieval Middle High German it had meant Dunghill-man. She’d always kept that part of the joke to herself.

“As in dumb as a stick,” Moretti sighed. “Sometimes I hate the guys back at command.”

Command had kicked Fin halfway around the world to fly with the 5D. She had no complaints to file.

Roberts delivered a passel of that smooth Texas before this conversation got any worse for Stick.

“Let’s table that discussion until medics clear him for flight, which definitely won’t be in…” he glanced at his watch, “the next two minutes. We need a replacement.”

Roberts and Moretti had welcomed them aboard, made sure they found their cabins, and left them to sack out after the long haul from Stateside. They’d insisted on an orientation flight before the night’s mission, so at the moment the briefing included just her and two majors. The replacement better show up soon.

Finella had forgotten that much and arrived early to the briefing to meet her new teammates. But they’d only be getting up and eating breakfast now, which had explained why the chow line had been one person long when she’d passed through an hour too early.

“Kara, find out if we can borrow Digger,” Major Roberts waved toward the door to the Peleliu’s Flight Deck.

Kara yanked out her radio and headed through the heavy door into the deep twilight that shrouded the ship.

Arriving at dawn, Finella had only had a moment to see the big helicopter carrier. A smaller version of an aircraft carrier—without the catapults and wires for launching and catching jets—she still stretched over eight hundred feet long and a hundred wide. She could also launch hovercraft from her Well Deck down at sea level. In the old days, she could deliver a reinforced battalion of Marines complete with tanks and armored vehicles, along with twenty-odd helos and a handful of Harrier jump jets which could launch from the deck.

When they’d been ferried out from USAFRICOM’s big base at Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, there’d been a lone Navy Seahawk parked on the deck. As they’d stumbled down past the Hangar Deck headed for the living quarters, it had been less than half full of helos tucked back in the shadows. The rest of the space had been echoingly empty. The ship had a skeleton Navy crew and not a single Marine that she’d spotted. Roberts filled her in while they waited for Kara and this Digger to arrive.

“The USS Peleliu is technically decommissioned,” Roberts explained. “Makes for a fine Spec Ops platform though. Elements of the 5D have been stationed aboard for the last decade.”

Keeping an entire ship running to deliver this team to the world’s trouble spots told her exactly what the Department of Defense thought of this company, and she wanted in. No, she was in. Now she’d stick fast.

2

Lieutenant Tom Digger Schaw leaned back again his search-and-rescue Seahawk parked just forward of the ship’s command island. The evening breeze generated by the Peleliu’s lazy headway over the smooth sea finally felt more standing-over-a-roaring-BBQ-grill hot than tossed-into-a-blast-furnace hot, a definite relief.

“I’ve heard better ideas before.” The Army’s Night Stalkers were suddenly short a flyer for a high-priority mission. After a decade in the Navy, he knew that for these guys that meant high-risk. “I’m a US Navy SAR pilot. I do search-and-rescue. I chase submarines. And fly defense for the Peleliu. You folks are…” He didn’t even know what to say to Major Kara Moretti. “…scary?”

She looked at him with a feral smile that only proved his point. “A squid not up to Army standards, Digger?”

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