Battle Born (17 page)

“Dammit, Seaver, don’t you understand?” she said hotly. “No one wants you to trade your life for anyone
on your dead crew. No one wants to see you dead—that’s the
last
thing anyone wants. Especially me. We want you to be one of us again. It’s
you
that has this chip on his shoulder. What you don’t seem to get is that we’re all hurting . . . dammit,
I’m
hurting. I want you back. I want you with me, the way it was before.”

“The way it was before?” Rinc interjected. “What was so great about that? Sneaking around? Not allowed even to come near each other in public for fear someone might see us? Nothing but a series of one-nighters . . .”

“Look, Rinc,” she answered. “You know this was the way it had to be. We talked it out when we first fell in love—that we’d rather have each other part-time than not at all. I am your squadron commander and your superior officer. If anyone in this unit learned we were sleeping together, I’d lose my job and you’d lose all credibility. There wasn’t any possibility of a normal relationship. There still isn’t—not until and unless we both decide, together, that we’re willing to make a serious career change—either you leave the Guard, or I do. But you know all this—my God, we’ve hashed it out over and over. What’s the point of bringing it up again? We’re stuck with the decision we’ve made—to stay in, and to see each other whenever and however we could.”

He started to speak but she cut him off, the pain evident in her voice. “Listen, Rinc,” she told him, “however difficult it is, this still doesn’t give you the right to ignore me, to cut me out when I needed to know that you were all right. It killed me to think that you were in pain or needed my help. And after you came out of the hospital it hurt even worse to be worrying that maybe you didn’t want me anymore.”

“You know that’s not true,” Rinc said. He took her hand, and she raised it to her lips. “Oh, Beck, I’ve been
so lonely. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed your body tight up against mine, making love to you under the stars . . .”

“I’m here, Rodeo,” she said. “I’ve missed you too, and I want you more than I can ever tell you.” She paused, waiting. God yes, she wanted him, wanted him inside her
now.
But he needed to invite her. She wanted him to ask for her. When she was younger, she’d had plenty of men who just wanted sex, release. But no more. She was too old to simply provide a warm place to put it. She needed to love and be loved, and being loved meant being asked.

Still, she was not above doing a little prompting, especially for this man. She smiled at Rinc, took his hand, and ran it down the front of her body, letting it graze her breast and his fingers just barely tug at the waistline of her blue jeans. “Rinc?”

“I’d . . . I’d better get a little more studying done,” she heard him say. He was watching her, watching for the hurt that he knew would spread across her face. “Hey, Beck, I’m sorry. It’s just the check ride coming up, you know . . . it brings back some memories. The crash, the accident . . . I don’t think I’d be much company.”

“I understand—although I’m horny enough to do you right here on this rooftop, big guy.” She smiled at him mischievously. “I’d be just as happy to talk with you and be with you if you’d like. Well, not
just
as happy, but it would be fine.”

“I’m not sure if I want to talk about it, Beck. Ever.”

“I know,” Rebecca said sympathetically. But then she let her voice and her body harden. “People die in airplanes, Rinc,” she told him. “It’s a dangerous business. I know you, and I know—knew—Chappie and Mad Dog. We’re all alike. We push the envelope hard.
That’s how we survive—and sometimes don’t. That’s why we’re the best.”

“Then why does everyone blame me for the crash?” Rinc asked angrily. “Because I survived it? Why doesn’t anyone believe me when I tell them that I’m not responsible for the crash?”

Rebecca reached out her hand to stroke his face. “I believe you, Rinc,” she said.

“Like hell you do
!” he shouted. “You’re like everyone else—I punched out, so I must’ve either chickened out or caused the crash. That’s bullshit. You and all the rest of this damned squadron can kiss my ass!” He pushed her hand away. “Leave me the hell alone, Colonel ma’am. I’m off the clock.”

Furness choked down the sudden, gut-wrenching pain and found she was furious. “Fine with me,” she said. “Whatever’s eating on you, I hope you enjoy it—alone. Good-bye, Major, and I hope you go straight to hell.”

He sat alone on the bench, steaming, looking down at his clenched fists. Minutes later there was the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. It was a guy he’d never seen before. “Who the hell are you?” he barked.

“Sorry,” the guy said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was looking for Lieutenant Colonel Furness. Thought she might be up here.”

“You thought wrong.”

The guy didn’t move. Rinc was deciding whether to ignore him or chase him off the deck when he was surprised by a question: “You’re Rinc Seaver, aren’t you?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name’s McLanahan. Patrick McLanahan.”

“So what?” The name registered somewhere in the back of Rinc’s mind, vaguely connected to when he was just starting out in the active-duty Air Force, but he was
too angry and too dejected to pursue it. “You can see Furness’s not here, and I don’t feel like company.”

“It’s tough, losing a crew. The guilt will stay with you the rest of your life.”

Alarms went off in Rinc’s head. Who was this guy? He knew way too much. All thoughts of losing Rebecca Furness as a friend and lover vanished, replaced by an intense wariness.

He got to his feet and sized up the stranger. This McLanahan was not too tall, not too short. He looked solidly built, like he worked out—most crewdogs these days were thin, so Rinc doubted he was a flier. His hair was blond with graying temples, cut shorter than Air Force reg 35-10 required. He wore an Air Force issue—brown leather flying jacket, with no rank or insignia on it, over his civvies. Rinc stepped closer and noticed that McLanahan didn’t react—didn’t back off, but didn’t go on guard either.

“What’d you say your name was?” Rinc asked.

“McLanahan.”

“Military?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t say his rank, which meant he was probably a very low-or very high-ranking commissioned or noncommissioned officer. But by the way he acted, Rinc thought, the man most likely outranked him. What was going on here? “What unit?”

“Air Force headquarters. Office of the chief of staff.”

Definitely outranked, Rinc decided—he was probably a light colonel or colonel, maybe even a one-star. That explained a lot. He’d heard that the place was crawling with inspectors, investigators, and evaluators for weeks after the crash; in fact, he had been visited by a few of them while he was in the hospital recovering. But by the time he was out of the hospital, the investigation was just about wrapped up. It was one of the
main reasons he felt such an urgency to get back on his feet and explore some alternate theories of the crash on his own in the simulator—he hadn’t had a real opportunity to present his side of the story and time was short. And now that he was trying to get back in the cockpit, the investigators and evaluators were back—gunning directly for
him
this time.

“Don’t tell me; let me guess. You’re flying with me day after tomorrow,” Rinc said. The guy was probably an ex-crewdog, tapped by someone in the chief of staff’s office or some other Pentagon staffer to decide his fate. The only bright spot was that it meant the brass probably hadn’t already made their decision. “You’re going to do my evaluation for the squadron. You’re also here to see what kind of shape my unit’s in, whether we’re ready to do the job or ready to be disbanded.”

McLanahan nodded. Seaver’s insight and honesty impressed him. “Exactly.”

“We get just one day of mission prep before you decide my future? I don’t get a Guard evaluator from my own unit? No sim ride with you first? That sucks.”

“Major Seaver, if you think the process is unfair, you know you have only one recourse—you can vote with your feet,” McLanahan said coldly.

“Everyone would like that, wouldn’t they?” Rinc snorted. “You ever fly the Bone before, sir?”

“Yes.” But before Rinc could ask the obvious question—when and where—McLanahan asked, “Are you in or out, Major?”

Rinc looked at McLanahan quizzically. A little evasive perhaps? Did this guy have a past, one he didn’t want to talk about? Curiouser and curiouser. He shrugged. “I’ll play it any way Air Force wants to play it. Sir,” he replied.

“There you go,” McLanahan said. “Proper attitude
adjustment achieved. I’ll meet you at the squadron at six
A.M.
tomorrow, and we’ll talk about your ride. If I think we’ll need one, I’ll schedule the simulator.” Rinc knew the simulator was booked up for the next three weeks, but he had no doubt this guy could rearrange the schedule. “I’ll tag along when you mission-plan with your crew at oh eight hundred.”

“Fine by me.”

“See you tomorrow, then.” McLanahan headed for the stairs, then stopped and turned around. “There’s a lot more healing to be accomplished beyond the hospital and the check ride,” he said, looking down the stairs toward the parking lot where Seaver’s dead partner’s wife used to run. “You left the team when you punched out of that Bone. You’ve got to prove that you can be a part of it again.”

“So I’m a putz because I survived, huh?”

“I guess you will be, if you believe you are,” Patrick said.

“You think I caused that crash?”

“That’s for the accident board to determine, not me,” McLanahan replied. “I’m not here to pass judgment on what happened in the accident, Seaver—I’m here to judge if you’re still able to be a combat-ready Air Guard B-1B aviator. But you can ace this check ride and still be on your way out. There are a hundred ways to do it.”

“I know, sir,” Rinc said. This was a very smart guy. It was tough to realize that his skills, knowledge, dedication, and experience suddenly meant nothing—that his fate was in the hands of someone else, plain and simple.

“I think you’ve got the picture. Get some rest—you’ll need it. Tomorrow, oh six hundred.” And he left without looking back.

The big woman behind the bar gave Patrick an evil look as he stepped back inside. Both the place and the bartender had the same tough, hard-shelled atmosphere of the biker bars in his hometown of Sacramento that he had reluctantly tangled with in recent months, but the feel was completely different. Like the biker bars, this place sought to exclude strangers—but he sensed it also seemed to welcome future friends, especially military types.

Patrick walked over to the woman, about to ask where he could find the commander of the Air National Guard squadron, when she wordlessly jerked her head to the right, indicating a hallway. Well, she was consistent—she hadn’t said anything earlier when he said he was looking for Seaver. But the nod had a kind of implicit warning to it—she’s that way, but watch your step.

He followed the hallway. The two doors on the left were the rest rooms. One of the doors on the right looked as if it led to the storeroom or kitchen; the other door had a sign reading “Private.” Patrick had had enough of going into strange rooms in the back of redneck locals-only taverns, but duty called. He took a deep breath and entered.

Patrick always hoped to find a place like this when he was in the military—maybe he hadn’t looked hard enough, or maybe he really didn’t want to find it or believe one even existed. In any case, it was a crewdog’s idea of paradise.

Along with pictures of jets and models all over the walls and ceiling, the room had its own bar stocked even better than the one out front, slot machines, video games, old-fashioned pinball machines, a PC with flight simulator hardware installed, and card tables. It was a
bigger room than he’d expected, and he saw half a dozen guys in flight suits, two of them sitting at the bar playing liar’s dice, the other four playing cards.

“Who the hell are you?” asked one of the guys at the table.

“I’m looking for Lieutenant Colonel Furness.”

The guy looked Patrick up and down, noting the flier’s jacket. Didn’t mean a damn—anyone can get one of those by mail order, lots of wannabes had them. “You didn’t answer my question, ace. Who are you?”

“I’m Colonel Furness’s two o’clock appointment,” Patrick said.

The guy put his cards down and got up off his chair. He apparently knew nothing of the appointment and was clearly perplexed, even angry. “You should meet up with her in the squadron . . . sir,” he said. He had suddenly turned much more polite—apparently realizing it was a good idea to be a bit more sociable until he learned exactly who the newcomer was. He noticed the guy wasn’t surprised when he said Furness was a “her.” “We can show you where the squadron is—it’s on the other side of the airport. I’ll page Colonel Furness immediately and tell her you’ve arrived. May I tell her your name and organization, please?”

“No,” Patrick replied. “We can talk just as well here.” He maneuvered around the guy and began to survey more of the room. The other squadron members stared at him in surprise.