Night Flight (29 page)

Idly, he’d been drawing on a white pad of paper in front of him on the table. Unconsciously, he’d drawn the nose and canopy section of the F-15. Holt frowned and looked more closely at his doodles. A light flashed in his brain, and he grabbed the pad. His heart started a slow pound, excitement thrumming through him as he studied it.

“Port…” he called hesitantly.

“Yes?” Her voice was brittle.

Sam slid the pad down in her direction. “What if we put movable canards on the nose of the F-15? You know, we use them on the B-l bomber to slow it down enough to keep it out of a stall position for short takeoffs and landings.” He leaned forward, hands clasped on the table. “Hell, yes! Our whole problem has been trying not to stall the F-15 by raising its nose too high to create that condition. Those canards might prevent the normal stall angle in the bird. It might give us a few degrees upward, automatically slowing it down so we could consistently hit the mark.”

“You’re full of it,” Stang ranted, and stood up. “Holt, you’re really reaching! Most fighters don’t have canards. Just the bombers.”

“Sit down, Jack,” Lauren snapped. She looked at Holt’s drawing, and then glanced over at her civilian counterpart across the table. “Roy?”

The gray-haired engineer shrugged his rounded shoulders. “It’s provocative, Lauren.”

“Feasible?” she asked.

With a grimace, Roy rubbed his jaw, thinking. Design grew silent. The kind of silence that was fragile, at a breaking point.

Stang squirmed in his chair. He glowered at Holt in disbelief. “Canards! It won’t work,” he muttered defiantly. “You might get the F-15 on the mark, but what will it do to the fighter’s performance? Are you going to trade air combat superiority for a short landing? Holt, your idea isn’t going to make it.”

Sam let Stang’s acid comments slough off him. “You got any better ideas?”

“Dammit,” Jack growled, slamming his fist down on the table, getting everyone’s attention, “I know that bird can hit the mark at fifteen hundred feet right now! It’s winter, and the winds are choppy and multidirectional. We’ve been testing under difficult circumstances at best. All we need is more testing, more—”

“Captain, you’re way out of line,” Lauren growled. “The testing is finished on the redesigned engine. It was a good idea, but not a complete one. Now, I suggest you either join us in investigating the canard idea, or take a walk and cool down.”

Frustration exploded through Jack. He sat there, looking at everyone. Shoving the chair away, he snarled, “I’m going for a cup of coffee.”

Holt watched the test pilot stalk out of the room. The tension dissolved after he shut the door more loudly than necessary. With the promotion list due out sometime in the first week in February, Stang was increasingly jumpy. He wanted his major’s leaves so bad he could taste them. So did Sam, But would he, or any of them, get early promotion?

“Hey!” an airman called from the door of Design, “the promotion list was just posted out on the bulletin board down the hall.”

Holt froze at his desk. It was late Friday afternoon, and he was getting ready to pick Megan up after school. Stang reacted first, striding toward the door. Merrill slowly got up, as if not wanting to see the results. Hands growing damp, Sam forced himself to finish putting the reports he’d read over the weekend into his briefcase.

“Aren’t you going to look, Sam?” Lauren inquired from her desk.

He grinned carelessly. “Sooner or later.”

“My, what confidence,” she teased.

“No…not really. More like unadulterated fear I didn’t make it.”

Porter smiled. “You’re something else, Holt.”

Sam approached Curt. “Come on, we’ll go down together,” Sam told him with a smile.

Managing a pained grimace, Merrill picked up his bulging briefcase and put on his garrison cap. “Misery loves company. Yeah, I’m ready to call it a day.”

Holt walked out into the hall. There weren’t many captains going up for early promotion, so the list was going to be a short one. Up ahead, on the left, he saw six officers craning forward, looking around one another, to see if they’d made it. Sam had been too busy working with Lauren and the civilian design engineers on the canard idea to think about possible promotion.

Holt’s walk was slow because he dreaded looking at the list. Without a doubt, Stang had made it. He didn’t think Curt would. Himself? It was a real toss-up. The crash one month after arriving at Edwards probably signed his death warrant insofar as getting an early promotion. There were two cries of jubilation. Three more officers, turned away, sour looks on their faces.

Just as Sam approached, he saw Stang whirl toward them. His face was livid, eyes burning with anger.

“You’re the only one that made it of the three of us,” he rasped, and deliberately brushed Holt’s shoulder as he passed him.

Stunned, Holt jerked to a halt, assimilating Stang’s angry statement. Merrill moved around him and checked the list closely.

“Dammit,” Curt cursed, clenching his fist. “Dammit to hell.” And then, he caught himself, flushed and offered his hand to Holt. “Congratulations, Sam. You made it first time around.”

In shock, Holt gripped Merrill’s proffered hand. “Thanks…”

“Well, I’ve got to get home. See you Monday.”

Blinking, Sam nodded. “Yeah, Monday.” Had he really made early major? Everyone else had left, and he was alone in the hall to look at the paper. Only three names appeared. His was the last one. Shaking his head, Sam stood there a good five minutes, hardly able to believe his good fortune. It meant a real shot at the B-2 project coming up.

“Congratulations, Sam.”

He glanced to his left. Lauren walked up, a set of huge, rolled-up blueprints under one arm and a huge briefcase in the other. She had her work cut out for her this weekend. “You knew?”

“For a long time. I wanted to tell you, but it wouldn’t have been fair to the others.”

Nodding, Sam understood. “I can’t believe it. At least, not yet.”

Laughing softly, Lauren murmured, “You will soon enough. All it really means is more responsibility heaped on your shoulders. A chance to screw up sooner, quicker and better than everyone else if something goes wrong. And your head’s the first on the chopping block sooner and on longer than anyone else’s, too. Some reward, huh?”

That was the reality of the situation. “I’ll take my chances with it,” Holt said, joining her laughter.

Looking significantly both ways, Lauren said in a low voice, “I wish I could have been out here when Stang found out he crashed and burned.”

“Jack wasn’t very happy.”

Lauren pursed her lips. “That’s the last time that bastard manipulates my people, and my project. He’s like a lethal, subtle poison infecting everyone. He and his wife. I can’t demote her, but I can sure as hell tie his hands and contain him. Maybe he’ll learn a lesson from this.”

Holt said nothing. He knew Lauren had a great deal to do with their fitness report ratings because she was their boss. “Maybe he’ll get the message and start squaring his act away.”

With a snort, Lauren moved past him. “Don’t count on it. I’m sure for the next month he’ll pout like a little boy who thinks he’s had his favorite toy taken away from him. See you on Monday.”

“Right.” Sam glanced at the paper one more time, as if to convince himself his promotion was real. Elation leaked through him, and then it became a flood of dizzying joy. He’d really made it! The door to his career as a test pilot had nowhere to go but up—unless he had a crash or some other major screwup.

Turning, he went back down the hall and headed for the side parking lot. Mind spinning with possibilities, dreams and happiness, Sam floated down the concrete stairs to the black asphalt. Around him, the air was chilly, in the fifties, and the sky cloudy. Still, the sun shone strongly, but not warmly. Placing his briefcase behind the seat of his Corvette, he climbed in. Some of his elation was tempered by Megan’s reaction to his news. He started up the car, the engine growling contentedly. What would she think? As he guided the car out of the parking lot, his happiness waned, deluged by cold, harsh reality.

Trying to wrestle with his emotions over the promotion, the joy and the terror, Sam drove more slowly than usual over to the elementary school at the end of the base. Since Christmas, his relationship with Megan had been steadier, more hopeful. They did take it one day at a time. Since his nightmare at her apartment, Sam avoided staying overnight with her, unconsciously wanting to avoid a talk about Russ, or the crash. When they were together, it was great. But every time he left late at night, he saw the confusion and question in Megan’s eyes. He was giving her mixed signals, and he knew it. Afraid to tell her about his fear of dying because it might impact the fragile trust he’d established with Megan, Sam felt trapped.

Much of his joy was left behind in a backwash. Megan had been brutally honest with him about everything. He hadn’t been. With a grimace, Holt pulled into the school and spotted Megan waiting for him at the front doors. The wind was blowing, her red hair tousled. The tan raincoat hid most of her, but the orange blouse and khaki-colored slacks beneath it did nothing but emphasize how beautiful she was in his eyes.

Holt got out, opening the door for her. They had made a promise not to show their feelings in public for many reasons. Once in the car, driving toward the front gate, Megan leaned and kissed his cheek.

“It’s all over base. Did you make early promotion to major?” Megan saw his mouth purse slightly. A part of her prayed he hadn’t, but another part did.

“Three of us made it,” he said, squeezing her hand gently. “Curt and Stang didn’t.” Glancing over at her, he worried about her reaction.

“Congratulations.”

Sam studied her. Megan’s face was clear, her eyes flecked with gold. “You mean that?”

A slight smiled pulled at her mouth. “Why are you concerned about what I think or feel regarding the promotion?”

“Because you’re important to me.”

She laid her head on the black leather rest. “My father never asked my mother or I if we cared. But then, I’m finding you do care. So, what was your reaction when you first saw the list?”

“When I saw my name on it, I got excited, and then I felt like somebody gut-punched me,” Sam admitted slowly. At the gate, the air police sentry snapped to attention, saluting and waving them through. Once past the gate, he devoted his attention to Megan, his stomach tight with tension.

“Fear?” she prodded.

“I thought the promotion might scare you, or make you run from me.”

His brutal honesty affected her deeply. Megan sighed. “The part of me that remembers my past is scared to death, Sam.” She leaned over, resting her head on his broad shoulder. “The other part of me is so proud of you. I know what this means—the B-2 assignment, and ongoing testing as soon as the Agile Eagle is completed.”

Mouth dry, words came hard to Sam. “What are your feelings about that?”

“On some nights, after you’ve left, I can’t sleep.”

“Seems to be a part of our lifestyle, doesn’t it?”

She heard the anguish in his tone. “There’s a lot of things that make up for that, though,” Megan added softly, sliding her hand across the olive-green fabric covering his taut thigh. “I like your thoughtfulness toward me, your sensitivity. There aren’t many men who can express what they feel and think, and I like sharing that with you.”

Some of the tension began to drain from Sam. “Like the nights we make popcorn in the fireplace while I squeeze the bellows to make the flames nice and high?”

Megan laughed. “Yes, all those things, too, darling.”

“You’re such a kid,” Sam teased, genuinely beginning to feel the elation of the promotion because Megan was cautiously optimistic about it.

“Look who’s talking.”

With a hearty laugh, Sam nodded. “Shot down again.” Megan was an incredibly sensitive woman, the passion they shared made from a rich texture woven with love, even if neither of them would admit it to one another. Sam knew she must love him, but he didn’t know how much or how little. He loved her unequivocally.

Gently, Megan pushed her fears and her apprehension aside. Sam had made major, and he deserved to celebrate his good fortune. “Tonight, I’m taking you out to dinner, Major Holt, to celebrate your promotion.”

Pleased, Sam slid his arm around her shoulders and crushed her momentarily against him. “You can take me to dinner, but we’ll have dessert at my home.”

Heat flowed through Megan, sweet and beckoning as she rested against him. Sam’s confidence in himself, in their future together, always awed her. At first, there were more days where Megan feared that their relationship would never work or even survive. Now, nearly three months later, Megan had swung to the opposite opinion. There were more days where she felt sure that what they shared was love, and that it could work if they continued to tend and cultivate it with care. Closing her eyes, she murmured, “I know it’s not right, but I’d sure like to have dessert before dinner. What do you think?”

Pleasure sang through Sam. “Anytime I can have you in my arms, in or out of bed, is all I want.”

“I love the idea, Major.” The thrill of being in Sam’s arms, making hungry, passionate love with him, was always wonderful. It wouldn’t be a happy night at the Merrill or Stang homes, however. Megan wondered what it was going to be like at the Stang residence tonight. It could hardly be a celebration.

Jack held on to his anguish as he entered his home. Melody met him at the door, obviously hearing that the promotion list had come out. There was anticipation in her eyes, and he felt shamed that he’d failed her—and himself. Dressed in a long-sleeved white silk blouse, gold scarf and black wool pants, she looked stunning. Melody slid her hand around his arm as he closed the door. He was shaking inside, and clenched his fists to stop from screaming, crying, or both.

“The list,” Melody said breathlessly, “did you make it?” Melody looked up, her smile disappearing.

“Where’s Scotty?” Jack growled, halting in the middle of the living room to search for his son. What he had to say wasn’t meant for his young ears. Further, he didn’t want Scotty to see him like this, almost out of control.