A gruff man with a shaved head and grease-stained sleeves stepped forward. “Staff Sergeant Umeh.” He extended a hand. “I’ll keep your bird in the air. You keep us from dying in it.”
Shannon grinned. “Fair trade.”
Next came her door gunner. She was a wiry woman with sharp eyes and a sharper grin. “Corporal Neema Touré,” she said. “I shoot straight and complain loudly.”
Shannon laughed. “Perfect.”
Their medic, PFC Aaron Keating, waved shyly. “Uh… ma’am, if you get shot, please don’t yell at me. I pass out when yelled at.”
Touré clapped him on the back. “He’s lying. Mostly.”
The crew laughed. It felt like a family forming around her in real time.
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 bein 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 supposedto 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!”
