Chapter 39 #2
Captain Lawson stepped forward again. “Johnson, your first eval flight is at oh-six-hundred. Simulated extraction. Then live orbit drills at ten hundred.”
Shannon nodded. “Copy that, ma’am.” She swallowed once. She was really back. And she felt ready. As ready as you could be in a place where mountains hid men with guns and the sky could turn hostile in minutes.
But as she stepped out of the tent, something prickled at the back of her neck. She was in the same desert as the man who tried to kill her.
She dismissed it. He was under supervision.
Her flight wasn’t supposed to be dangerous. It was a simple pick-up of a downed drone tech on the far training range. It was supposed to be low-risk and low-threat. It was to show the captain and crew she could fly. But in the Sahel, nothing stayed low-risk for long.
Shannon lifted the newly cleared helo, freshly inspected, into the harsh afternoon sun. Touré manned the door gun. Umeh monitored instruments. Keating reviewed the med kit.
“Pave Hawk Three-One, you are green,” Tower confirmed. “Bring our technician home.”
“Copy, Tower.”
They soared across dunes and jagged ridgelines, the horizon shimmering like molten glass. At first, everything was smooth.
“Movement, two o’clock!” Touré barked.
Shannon snapped her eyes to the ridge. She saw three motorbikes. Actually, their dust trails—and they were closing fast.
“Are those ours?” Keating asked.
“No,” Umeh said. “Those are bandits, and they’re coming hard.”
Shannon keyed her mic. “Tower, Three-One. We’ve got hostiles on approach. Adjusting route.”
Static answered, then nothing.
Touré cursed. “Comms interference!”
Shannon’s heart lurched. It was a familiar interference signature. It was Alabama all over again. The same type of jamming Krueger did to her and Mara’s flight.
She was on her own. She tapped her left wrist. When it gets loud out there, when the sand kicks up and the world narrows to the sound of your rotors, touch your left wrist. That’s where I’ll be.
“New plan.” She forced her breathing to steady. “We get eyes on the tech, extract fast, avoid engagement.” She dropped altitude, hugging the valley floor. Dust blasted up around the skids. They saw a lone figure waving frantically near an overturned ATV.
“Keating, prep!”
“Ready!”
Shannon came in low, wheels skimming sand.
Touré leaned out, covering the ridge. “Bandits closing in twenty seconds!”
Keating and Umeh hauled the tech in.
Shannon throttled up. And that was when she saw it. A glint. It was faint, wrong, and not on the ridge. It was coming from the sand. A thin silver wire was stretched across the valley floor. It was a makeshift trip line linked to something half-buried. An IED.
Shannon didn’t think. She reacted. “NOSE UP NOW!” she shouted.
Umeh jolted. “What…?”
“WIRE! IED! HOLD TIGHT!”
She slammed the collective forward, yanking them into a brutal, soaring climb. The trip line snapped beneath them. The IED detonated behind the tail with a violent roar, heat washing over the cabin like a furnace blast.
Touré screamed into the mic, “HOLY HELL, LT!”
Shannon held the climb, jaw locked, hands absolutely steady, refusing to let adrenaline steal her control. The helo stabilized.
Keating panted. “We alive?”
“We are,” Shannon said, voice tight but steady. “Everybody confirm.”
Umeh stared at her like he’d just seen a ghost. Or a miracle. “Johnson,” he breathed, “how the hell did you see that?”
Before she could answer, the tower finally cut through the static. “Three-One, we lost you for two minutes. Status?”
Touré grinned like a wolf. “Tower, Three-One just dodged an IED with reflexes not born of this Earth.”
Shannon swallowed. “Three-One returning with package intact,” she said. “We’re fine.”
Umeh whispered, “Not fine. Freaking Falcon over here.”
Touré barked a laugh. “Falcon? Oh hell yes. Look at those eyes. She saw a goddamn hair-thin glint from a moving bird. That’s not normal.”
Keating nodded vigorously. “Falcon for sure.”
Shannon blinked. “Falcon?” Dante called her Falcon after she told him her mom called her Millenium Falcon, but now…
Touré slapped the side of her seat. “Falcon,” she declared. “Because nothing—and I mean nothing—gets past your eyes.”
Umeh grinned. “It’s official.”
Keating raised both hands. “Lieutenant Shannon ‘Falcon’ Johnson.”
Shannon felt something warm bloom deep in her chest. She rubbed her left wrist. Dante. She slipped her fingers into the neck of her flight suit. A piece of silk ran between her fingertips. Her mom’s scarf. Mom, I’m still your Millennium Falcon.
“I’ll take it,” she said softly.
Outside, the desert wind roared. Inside, her crew cheered.
The desert cooled as the sun dipped behind the ridgeline, the day’s heat bleeding off the sand in long, wavering ribbons. Shannon sat on a battered folding chair outside the rotary-wing barracks, boots kicked out in front of her, a bottle of water sweating in her hand.
Chief Warrant Officer Gil Peters dropped into the chair beside her with a grunt, ripping his helmet off and shaking sweat from his hair. “You earned your keep today, Falcon.” He shot her a sideways look. “Didn’t think we’d be getting our money’s worth this fast.”
Shannon snorted. “I didn’t plan on almost losing the tech.”
“You didn’t lose him,” Neema said. “You read that terrain shift before any of us. I’ll take those odds any day.”
Behind them, Umeh emerged from the hangar, wiping grease from his hands. “Falcon saved more than the tech’s ass,” he announced loudly, planting himself on an overturned ammo crate.
Keating, who had stepped out of the barracks with two MREs, raised one like a toast. “She’s right. I enjoy my limbs. I’d like to keep them attached.”
Shannon rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t fight the small lift in her chest, unfamiliar in the best way.
Peters tapped his boot against hers. “You fly clean. Your mom would’ve been proud of that pickup.”
Shannon stiffened. “You know my mom was a pilot?”
Keating sighed. “Johnson, we’re small but tight. We know you’re a legacy pilot. Both your parents flew.” He tossed an MRE at her. “Eat. You’re one of us now. That means suffering through chili mac with the rest of the degenerates.”
A ripple of laughter broke out.
Calder, one of the fixed-wing guys, wandered over with a metal mug. “Heard Falcon here threaded her hawk through a crosswind that would’ve grounded half the trainers at Novosel.”
Shannon shrugged. “Lucky break.”
“Bullshit,” Calder said cheerfully. “You flew the hell out of that machine. Even the captain radioed that you handled the dust devils like you’d been flying this AO for years.”
Umeh elbowed her. “You hear that? You’re officially interesting.”
Shannon shook her head, fighting a smile. For the first time since she’d set foot in-country a few days earlier, she wasn’t just functioning. She was belonging.
Neema leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs. “You did good today, Falcon.”
Keating chimed in, mouth full of MRE, “You keep flying like that, and we’ll let you pick music for the next sortie. Maybe.”
Shannon laughed—unexpected, sharp-edged, and almost startling. “I’ll try not to let that power go to my head.”
Peters tapped his water bottle against hers. “No promises. But welcome to the team, Johnson.”