The crew chief had them adjust six inches forward as they juggled the chains. They had the rear ramp lifting with five seconds to spare. The crew of Abby’s bird were as good as its pilots.
Derek surveyed his team as they double-checked their personal gear, even after such a short move. That’s the way he liked it—nice and tight.
The half team that was gone? He had to dismiss them from his thoughts. He’d find out more in the after-action report, but until then they were out of his hands. So, what were he and his squad in for?
He didn’t even have to catch himself as they pulled back aloft at thirty seconds, because they were that smooth. Telling himself to stay out of their way didn’t slow him down much; he headed up front toward the lady pilot. Derek eased into the cockpit, a little disappointed to see that Abby Rose was once again the pilot-in-command. No one in his right mind would distract a pilot flying NOE where death by crashing lay well inside a single second’s inattention.
“I can feel you shifting my weight.” Her tone was now deadpan and professional. Abby hadn’t turned at all in his direction.
Even with one team and DAGOR gone, it was still twenty tons of helo. He didn’t know whether to retreat back to the cargo bay or?—
“Sit your butt down already.” The Maine accent was also lighter. Your only had a hint of being yo-ah.
He swung out the jump seat, sat, and pulled on the headset again, but left the mike swung up in the off position. It was a very different experience with her piloting. No words. No excess movement. No jokes that he could imagine included a raised eyebrow or that sideways quirk of a smile he’d glimpsed. Instead? He felt like he was back in Space Mountain, hanging with his two young nephews screaming with delight as they roller-coastered through the dark. As Sis was a single mom—she’d consistently outridden her rodeo husband, which he hadn’t taken well—Derek was always her date for the boys’ annual Disneyland treat. Honestly? He’d miss it if they ever outgrew the place.
By the time his NVGs resolved the obstacles ahead of the helo; they were already slashing by. His night vision was for slipping into a building unnoticed and taking down individual targets, not for cruising along at a couple hundred kmph. He knew the Night Stalkers had special displays to do that. They’d practically pioneered night vision after losing one of their founders in a nighttime run that, he recalled with a shiver, was pioneering the Black Route runs like this one. But those views were projected inside their helmets, and he didn’t dare interrupt her to ask about them.
“You can talk,” Abby’s voice still lacked the earlier teasing tones. “Just don’t, you know…”
“Be my distracting self?”
“Ayuh.”
“How far ahead can you see?”
Ethan was the one who answered, though he didn’t turn from his tasks. “Three layers. Wire-frame of everything accurate to a couple meters, programmed from detailed satellite surveys. Radar to pick out any changes. All overlaid by ten-eighty night vision, made up of mixed IR and enhanced visual. Near range is practically daylight visibility. For distance, we can see the shape of what’s behind the next hill.”
“Which,” Abby was indeed carving around a knob or hill or whatever they called them now that they’d crossed back into Kentucky, “is useful except when it distracts you from the object right in front of you.”
Even with the description, he struggled to imagine such a thing—and couldn’t. And the ten-eighty thing was straight out of Delta. A thousand and eighty degrees. Three times three-sixty. Not only aware of everything around you as in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle, but two more circles—above and below. But Delta mostly lived in the horizontal world. Not the Night Stalkers; nastiness could come at them from any direction. They traded Delta’s Situational Awareness for all-around Airspace Awareness.
Derek’s gut tried to slide out his ass, saying Abby had entered a hard climb. He didn’t see anything to avoid, but she topped out and cliffed off the other side like the peak of a rollercoaster ride. “What was that?”
“Power lines. We worked hard on night vision, but it wasn’t enough. So thin that the radar barely showed it, but it’s dead clear on the wire frame.”
“That’s gotta be a head splitter.”
He saw Ethan’s nod against the starlight outside his windshield. “A top reason for pilot failure. Imagine that three-layer view. Now overlay tactical displays and aircraft status. You add in that CCA,” a head tip to the side where Derek assumed it still flew, “and you’ve got a whole other headache.”
Derek had been delivered to plenty of battles and exfiltrated back out without ever thinking much about what it took to do that. Delta Force were simply the best. The British SAS came close, and the Russian Spetsnaz had too—until decimated by their position as the first troops into the Ukraine War. But he was starting to think that The Unit wasn’t the only best out there.
He knew he was biased partly by gender. Women were under twenty percent in any branch of the service and way under one percent in Spec Ops. But he figured his chances of meeting—connecting with—another woman like Captain Abby Rose were damned low. Of course a woman in the Spec Ops world had her pick. Unless she already had. For all he knew, she was doing it with her copilot. Against all the rules, but there were certain rules that folks flat out ignored. Mostly it was only the bad breakups that hit the courts-martial.
Too bad he hadn’t buddied up with any Night Stalkers who he could ask about Abby—major oversight in hindsight. He couldn’t ask Ethan. But…there were the four crew chiefs hanging out in the back with his team.
“I’m gonna go check on my guys. Thanks for the tour.” He waited for a reply, but he didn’t get one.
7
She sighed. At least she was consistent. Abby could always grab a guy’s attention, but she’d never had any luck holding onto it. In bars back home, she had to hide her skills and her brains. Not like she was a conversation killer on purpose, but she had a real knack for it. I fly helicopters for the US Army; guys didn’t like being outperformed. I’ve flown in twenty countries on five continents; most guys in Maine bars had never traveled farther than the tax-free liquor stores just over the New Hampshire border, I?—
What was the point? She scared off guys in Fort Campbell bars just as effectively. Though spooking away a Delta operator might be a new low for her; an honor she could have done without.
Something flickered at the edge of her awareness. “Ethan, check the CCA position. See what that damn thing is up to.”
“Nothing much. Holding position. It’s enough higher that they won’t be running ten million bucks of experimental aircraft into a hillside anytime soon.”
Higher. That meant?—
