Page 24 of Confessions of an Apache Pilot

“Fuck off,” Ross said, standing up and walking away.

“That’s it, found it!” Artie yelled.

Ross gave them the finger as he walked out. “Fucking pricks,” he mumbled, as he walked past us out the door.

I watched Mark dial the phone. He put it on speaker, then moved back so that Brady and Artie could get in closer. When the voice that answered on the other side came through you could see the two of them melt. Mark just grinned as he watched them.

“Good morning, this is the Bagram weather officer.” The voice was husky yet sultry. It poured out of the phone like honey and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. If I was being honest with myself, even I found her voice sexy. Hard to blame the guys for liking it. It was instantly clear why the men fought to make this phone call.

“Will that be all gentleman?” she asked, having finished the brief.

“That’s all we need, thank you,” Brady said with a stupid smile.

I’m sure that’s all you need. I may not blame them for finding the woman’s voice hot, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to slap the silly grin off Mark’s face. Now irritation flooded me, both at myself and him since I had zero claims on this man. That fact didn’t alleviate my sudden jealousy. How the man had managed to wrap me up in knots like this was a mystery.

“Weather void time is ten-thirty, my initials are Echo Charlie.”

Laura whispered to me “A weather briefing isn’t valid unless it has the weather officer’s and pilot’s initials, they give them phonetically.”

Sheppard peered over to me and gave a “watch this” nod. Artie pointed to Brady and mouthed, “It’s your turn.”

Brady nodded and said “Your initials Echo Charlie, mine are ‘Big….Cake’.”

A sexy laugh came over the speaker. “Big Cake. Good one. Be safe boys.” The weather officer giggled on the other end. I rolled my eyes and backed out of the room. Even her giggles were alluring. As I turned back to the hallway, Laura caught my annoyance.

She slapped my shoulder lightly. “Lighten up, will ya? They get bored. It’s a fun game. It's not like they get to talk to women out here.”

I smiled, “Um…what are we exactly? I know you work with men, but don’t tell me you’ve started peeing standing up. Don’t we count for anything?”

“Oh Honey, that’s so cute. You still think that you’re a girl. We’ve been over this already. As far as they are concerned Ross is the only woman on this base. Although, if you ask them they might say he’s the only bitch on this base.”

I snorted out a laugh, but couldn’t manage a real response. I was a little ashamed of myself, but their constant mocking of him was amusing.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” was all I could manage.

“That Ross is the only bitch? That’s a good thing. Who needs two of him around?”

“No, not Ross. The not being a girl bit.” Now that I knew the story with Ross, I kinda understood why the others thought he was a bitch. I didn’t feel sorry for him at all.

“Works pretty well for me. I don’t hear complaints from anyone else. I mean, really what do you expect? You want them to hold doors for you and carry your bags to the aircraft?”

The image of Mark carrying my flight gear in his combat shirt flashed through my mind. I quickly chased it out before my knees buckled. “No. I don’t expect to be treated any differently, I just…” She cut me off.

That damn evil smile appeared again and her finger started waving at me menacingly, “You don’t want to be treated differently, you just want brownie points for being treated the same.” She folded her arms and tilted her head at me. When I didn’t respond she smiled. “Gotcha.”

Damn her for being right. I didn’t care about being noticed until stupid Mark in his stupid sexy combat shirt flirted with some…girl…on the phone. He didn’t even flirt with her, he just watched someone else do it. What the fuck was wrong with me? “Come on, let's get to the aircraft so that we can get this orientation flight underway.” I shoved past her and headed into the equipment room.

We grabbed our helmet bags and armor and started out to the flightline. “It would be nice to have someone carry this shit, though,” I joked to her. It was easily over fifty pounds of equipment.

CHAPTER 15

Jen

We fired up the aircraft and started to taxi out. Mark and Laura were ahead of us lining up near the runway. My muscles tensed, causing a slight ache in my shoulders. I tried to relax in spite of being nervous. I had no reason to be. I’d already done missions out here, and done them with Mark. It was the way he had offered to do it; I was suddenly feeling like I was on a first date. A date with a bunch of witnesses. If that wasn’t enough to set a girl on edge, I wasn’t sure what was.

Mark made the radio call for both of our aircraft and we took off, with him in the lead. He called over the radio, “Our first stop is the Friendship Bridge, it's not far from here. Captain, we don’t need you that close to us.” I had pulled along side him, about two or three rotor disks away, which was around one hundred fifty feet.

“This is standard formation flight,” I responded.

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