Chapter 54
“I’ll take you there if it resolves this mess.” Captain Cutcher was looking back and forth between her and the three colonels.
Abby looked to Colonel Beale, but she shook her head.
“What?”
“Not a wrong step yet, Captain. Keep going.”
If Group Captain Cutcher and half a brigade of Royal Military Police weren’t gathered about, she’d… Abby didn’t know what. Scream? Shoot the colonel? In the foot maybe, but still! Keep going? Like that made any kind of sense.
Probably the same kind of sense as holding a Group Captain at gunpoint on British soil.
It was more normal than finding an orange-and-black lobster—about one-in-fifty-million chance—but not by much.
Yet here she stood in command of a team doing just that.
She remembered one of Pa’s favorite sayings: Horse sense is what horses have to keep them from betting on people.
Which was odd as the family had never owned horses that she knew of.
At the moment none of this made a lick of sense but she couldn’t see any exit from the path they were on.
Derek offered an infinitesimal shrug and flicked a thumb’s-up of encouragement over the barrel of his rifle.
Some big help. Yet he raised no questions.
Made no complaints, instead stepping straight into the fray on no more than her say-so.
Whatever else he was thinking, he trusted her and, at the moment, that was a prize of immense value.
Abby turned to the Brit. “Captain Cutcher. Would you be so kind as to lead us to that hospital bed?”
Cutcher was so calmly British that all she did was turn slowly to glance over her shoulder at Derek.
Abby waved for him to lower his rifle.
Once he did, Cutcher nodded. When she turned for her Land Rover, Abby shook her head. She had hanging-by-fingernails control of the situation and refused to give up any of her advantages. Colonel Beale had made it clear that this was Abby’s to solve.
Well, she couldn’t do that from the air.
She was no ground pounder, but Derek was.
She remembered his comments during the debrief from the second night’s exercise, making the hard choice to be the mission commander in the air rather than going in with his team.
He’d stayed in the sky, now it was her turn to come to Earth.
“We’ll take my vehicle,” she pointed at the DAGOR.
“Colonel Beale, you will board Charlene One and assist Captain Ethan Merced as copilot. I want you aloft inside sixty seconds and flying overwatch on us. Keep birds Two and Four on perimeter patrol. If the Tower argues, drop a Delta team on their roof. Derek, load ’em up.
Dilya, you two are with us. But goddamn it, stay behind us this time. ”
Derek must have been issuing his own orders.
Just as she and Dilya finished herding Cutcher and Zackie into the DAGOR behind Hot Rod and Compass, Charlie Four grounded.
One of the hybrid motorcycles was rolled down the rear ramp.
Derek climbed aboard and Four was airborne before Abby could decide if that was an improvement.
Misty climbed on behind him. Abby also noted that in addition to the carbine hung across the front of her uniform, Misty’s long sniper rifle now hung crosswise over her shoulder—its muzzle sticking a good foot above her head.
As they raced through the base with Derek and Misty as flankers, she wondered who would play her in the movie version.
With her luck, probably some white guy over twice her age like Tom Cruise.
No, he’d play Derek. She’d be replaced by a blonde with a massive cleavage—the kind who didn’t wear a t-shirt under her deeply unzippered flight suit.
Abby slapped her hand against her forehead and thanked God that Cutcher and Dilya sat in front of her and couldn’t see the gesture. She considered doing it again to knock the image out of her head.
Derek spotted it, of course. Only a few arm lengths separated them, and both his electric motorcycle and the DAGOR were quiet enough to speak over.
However, her Chinook flying overwatch above them—without her at the helm, which counted as beyond weird—and the phalanx of RMP vehicles close behind them made speech impossible.
She was on her own. Except she wasn’t. Derek was right there beside her, even if they couldn’t speak at the moment. His proximity was a comfort.
Not something to expect from men in her experience. Yet here he—not some movie hero—rode beside her, Captain Abigail Rose. That image sustained her through the next ninety seconds until they reached a remote building along the north side of the base.