Collateral Damage
Collateral Damage
Kaylea Cross
Copyright © 2015
by Kaylea Cross
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Cover Art by
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
ISBN: 978-1-928044-09-3
Dedication
This one is for my readers. You guys are incredible and I appreciate you all so much. Thank you for your support of this series, and for falling in love with my Bagram characters as much as I have. I’m going to be sad to say goodbye to these guys!
Also to Kim, to whom I’m eternally grateful to for checking my military details. Your courtship with D helped inspire part of Honor and Liam’s story, so I hope I did it justice.
With love,
Kaylea
As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and so too must my Bagram series. This final installment is a real emotional rollercoaster ride, so better buckle up before you start reading. Some things are not easily forgiven. It’s not easy to get over past hurts and still be willing to open your heart to the very person who broke it before, but that’s exactly what Honor and Liam have to do. I hope you enjoy this last book of the series, where you’ll catch up with the entire Bagram crew.
*Important Note
*: This story picks up at the end of Danger Close,
just
prior to the epilogue
. The last part of the book takes place after Lt. Erin Kelly returns stateside once her tour at Bagram is done.
Lastly, as always I’ve tried my best to get all the military details right, but any mistakes I may have made are my fault and no one else’s.
Happy reading!
Kaylea Cross
SOAR: 160
th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Also known as the Night Stalkers. Special U.S. Army regiment that provides helicopter support for special operations forces.
FE: flight engineer. Part of a military aviation crew, and responsible for monitors and operates the aircraft systems.
OPSEC: operations security.
60: refers to Black Hawk helicopters.
WOCS: Warrant Officer Candidate School.
ST6: SEAL Team Six, or DEVGRU. The most badass of the SEAL Teams and the guys who took out Bin Laden.
LZ: landing zone, area where a helicopter sets down
DAP: Direct Action Penetrator, a heavily armed Black Hawk helicopter used to escort more vulnerable aircraft on a mission
Triple-A (AAA): anti-aircraft artillery gun, usually mounted on a vehicle
AFSOC: Air Force Special Operations Command
CCT: Combat Control Team. Members of AFSOC tasked with calling in and directing fire from aircraft during battle, such as air strikes, close air support and fire support.
JBLM: Joint base Lewis-McChord, located outside of Tacoma, Washington
PJs: Pararescue Jumpers. Members of AFSOC. Advanced combat medics tasked with the recovery and medical treatment of personnel in both combat and non-combat/humanitarian missions.
CSAR: combat search and rescue
TLZ: tactical landing zone. Areas on the battlefield designated for insertion of troops and/or supplies
FLIR: Forward Looking Infrared camera, usually mounted on aircraft, uses thermal imaging to create a “picture” on a video monitor to allow pilots to fly at night.
47: nomenclature designating a Chinook helicopter
NVGs: night vision goggles
64: nomenclature designating an Apache attack helicopter
JoP: justice of the peace
CCTV: closed circuit television, usually used for security purposes
DHS: Department of Homeland Security
OPTEMPO: Operational Tempo, or the frequency at which operations are happening
AHA: ammunition holding area, where ammo is kept on base
RPG: rocket propelled grenade
Honor felt like she’d barely fallen asleep before a series of high-pitched beeps made her eyes fly open in the near darkness. She rolled to her side on the bunk and reached for the pager on the floor beside her boots as a groan and the creak of bedsprings sounded from the next cot over.
“’s that you or me?” Erin mumbled sleepily from beside her.
“Me,” Honor murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
“”kay.” More creaking springs as Erin turned back over and pulled the covers over her head.
Of all the roommates Honor had had over the past two deployments here at Bagram, she was closest to Erin. And now her friend’s tour was almost up. In ten short days she’d be going home and Honor would be lonely as hell.
Running a hand over her face, Honor sat up and peered at her pager, recognizing the code calling her in to manage something. The dial on her watch read oh-three-twenty-one hours. She’d only hit her rack at just before midnight.
Withholding a groan, she threw back the covers, ran her fingers through her hair and slipped the elastic band on her right wrist up to gather it into a short ponytail at the nape of her neck. She got to her feet, her aching muscles protesting the movement and lack of sleep, and grabbed a bottle of water for the walk over to the hangar.
Slipping on her utilities and tucking her sidearm into its holster on her right thigh, she eased the door of the B-hut open and glanced over her shoulder. Erin was securely burrowed beneath the covers and well on her way back to sleep, maybe to dream about her man. Wade Sandberg had saved Erin last spring when she’d been caught in a terrorist attack while on leave back stateside. The dirty bomb had detonated at CIA headquarters in Virginia, killing scores of innocent people and contaminating the area with radiation. If not for Wade, Erin would likely have died that day.
The bunk next to Erin’s was empty. Ace would be flying a night mission, hunting down tangos with the rest of her Spectre 130 gunship crew, using their FLIR and other cool gadgets and advanced avionics. Once they engaged a target, the incredible firepower on that machine made short work of enemy forces on the ground.
Man, Honor freaking loved that aircraft. Sometimes she wished she’d become a pilot, rather than an aviation maintenance technician. But she’d always had a knack for all things mechanical and most times she loved her job.
Just not as much lately, though her reasons were mostly non-work related.
Outside in the pre-dawn darkness, the air was surprisingly brisk for May and scented with the usual smells that inhabited Bagram: a mixture of earthy dust, the faint scent of aviation fuel, and the occasional whiff of sewage from the porta-potties that would only intensify as the day wore on and the temperature climbed into the nineties once more.
As she headed for the hangar, her pager went off again. She snatched it from her belt.
47 damaged by small arms fire. Crew wounded. ETA 15 minutes.
Honor stopped walking, her heart doing a sickening roll in her chest. Then she chided herself and kept going.
It’s not him. Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.
Except, considering the nature of his job and the constant danger involved in every mission he flew, she knew it very well
could
.
With renewed urgency she hurried across base to the hangars and found three of her soldiers standing around drinking coffee, waiting for the damaged bird to arrive.
“Hi, ma’am,” Smithers, her master sergeant, said.
“Hey,” she said, accepting a coffee from him with a smile of thanks. Corporal Feinstein was beside him, and Private Ipman on the other. “Where’s Andrews?”
Smithers rolled his eyes. “Taking his sweet time getting his ass in gear, as usual.”
She made a mental note to talk to him about that. Again. “Any more word on what happened with the bird? What unit they’re with?” Anything to prepare them for what they could expect upon arrival.
He shook his head. “Command told us a few of the crew were wounded, that medics and fire are on the way, and that’s it. Not sure who they’re with, or if the damage is small arms fire or an RPG.”
“Well the good news is, they’re still able to fly her,” Honor said, taking a sip of blessedly hot coffee. She felt more awake already. “You guys ready to go to work?”
“We were born ready,” Ipman piped up from where he was readying equipment near the far wall.
Together the four of them walked out onto the tarmac and stood near the flight line, waiting for the wounded Chinook to arrive. Emergency vehicles began showing up on scene, base paramedics and firemen standing by to greet the incoming bird and her crew. The entire time Honor’s heart beat an erratic rhythm, unable to shake that deep-seated fear that it was Liam’s bird. It wasn’t a rational fear, since logically she knew SOAR had its own maintenance section and the chances of her crew being called in for one of their aircraft was almost zero.
That didn’t diminish the lingering unease, made even worse because of the extra helping of guilt on top of it. Being that they were no longer on speaking terms, she hadn’t even had the guts to contact him after the incident last March to see how he was doing.
He hadn’t contacted her either, of course, but she hadn’t expected him to after the way they’d left things. Nope. He’d made his feelings about her actions crystal clear on that terrible night over a year and a half ago. The crux of it was, he didn’t understand what it was like to be forced to make the impossible choice between the person you love and your family. He saw her as weak for her decision, thought she didn’t love him.
Even nineteen months later that still stung. If he thought those things, then he didn’t really know her at all.
Ipman had been over talking to some guys from another crew and returned with news. “It’s a forty-seven Foxtrot.”
An older, utility Chinook. Couldn’t be Liam then, she told herself. SOAR pretty much only flew Echo and Golf models now. She let out a breath of relief.
Glancing back, she noticed Andrews had shown up at last and was standing with Feinstein, looking half-asleep with his sandy-brown hair sticking up and his eyes bleary. Finally the unmistakable sound of approaching rotor blades carried over the noise of other aircraft readying for takeoff, shaking her out of her thoughts.
In the distance, backlit against the eastern horizon getting lighter by the minute, two UH-60 Black Hawks appeared like giant black insects in the sky. Behind them, the huge, hulking silhouette of a 47 came into view. A small plume of smoke trailed behind it.
The 60s landed farther north down the tarmac, leaving the area closest to the emergency crews for the 47F. The pilots settled her down on the tarmac and in the lights from the fire trucks and ambulances Honor got her first look at the damage it had sustained. Her soldiers stood next to her, all of them taking in the multiple large-caliber holes in the right side of the fuselage, streaking from the rear of the cockpit and continuing all the way up to the engine housing. The pilots began engine shutdown and the twin rotors began to slow.
Fire crews moved in immediately. The medical personnel waited at the end of the loading ramp as the FE lowered it. A minute later five figures appeared in the opening, one man suspended between two others, his arms draped across his crewmembers’ shoulders as they helped him out. From where Honor stood she could see the blood streaking his right side, from hip to knee. Another of the crewmembers walked out cradling his left arm, already wrapped in a bloody bandage.
Heart thudding in her ears over the sound of the engines in their cool-down cycle, Honor watched as the wounded pilot removed his helmet and felt an additional surge of relief when the light caught on his hair. Blond, not dark.
Definitely not Liam, even though she’d known it wouldn’t be. And both injured men were walking out, so that was a good sign.
She expelled the breath she’d been holding, waited while the fire crews rushed in to check the situation inside and others drained the fuel to avoid a possible fire if any of the lines had been damaged. When they reappeared a few minutes later and gave the all clear, she and her soldiers climbed inside to look around.
Smithers let out a low whistle as he swept the beam of his flashlight around the interior. Light from outside streamed through the many holes in the fuselage and there must have been a fire at some point because the crew had sprayed retardant all over the place. The smell of jet fuel hung thick in the air, from the crews draining the tank, but perhaps from damaged fuel lines as well.