Authors: Lindsay McKenna
“He’s careful,” Stang muttered, enjoying her fingers massaging his tight scalp.
“Holt’s not stupid enough to drink heavily. He knows alcohol and flying don’t mix. No, the man’s savvy as a wild animal.” Indeed, Melody thought, there was something primal about Sam Holt. Because she was a psychologist, she was trained to watch and record. Holt walked quietly, his eyes constantly perusing, missing little, if anything. “He’s a lone-wolf type,” she told her husband. “And he doesn’t trust anyone enough to let down his barrier about his past to them. What we need to find is a woman who can get past those walls. Armed with his past, you might be able to get him upset and maybe, lose some of that cool behind the stick of a jet.”
“Right now I needle him about the crash. That gets a hell of a response out of him.”
“Yes, he’s guilt-ridden over Russ Davis’s death. You should keep reminding him of that when it’s prudent.”
Chuckling, Jack slowly opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Don’t worry, I do. Tomorrow, I’m going to start on Porter’s case about it.”
“Oh, Jack, don’t! She’s just as strong and bullheaded as you are. The whole thing will backfire on you.”
He smiled. “Don’t get upset, Melody. You’re not the only one that took psychology. I want to put Porter and Holt at odds. I want to break up the buddy system they’ve established between one another. If I can put doubt in Porter’s mind that she’ll be dead flying with Holt, then she may start grading him lower.”
Jack patted her arm and stood up, coming around the chair and pinning Melody against him. She felt good in his arms, and he felt that familiar, burning feeling in his lower body, wanting her, needing her. “Yeah, tomorrow ought to be a banner day. I can bug Merrill about his no-show wife, and get Porter thinking about Holt in a different light. I can hardly wait.”
Melody nodded and rested her head against his shoulder. “There’s one more thing we need to discuss, darling.”
“What’s that?”
Hesitating fractionally, Melody said, “Scotty. I got a call from Miss Roberts today.”
Groaning, Jack pulled away from her. “What now?”
“Jack, Scotty won’t or can’t sit still in class. He’s being totally disruptive. You know how he is around here—in constant motion. Ever since he was born, he’s been on the move.”
“Well, dammit, there’s nothing wrong with it. Scotty will be a star athlete when he grows a little more. He’s in Little League this year. That ought to take the edge off him.”
Risking his temper, Melody added, “Jack, our son had this problem last year, and it seems to be worse this year, from what I can tell. Miss Roberts apparently hasn’t looked at his personnel file at school yet.”
“There had better not be anything incriminating in Scotty’s file. We paid plenty of money last year to have those reports destroyed. If she files a report, Melody, it won’t look good for my fitness report if it gets out and around base. If Colonel Yale or General Dalton get ahold of that kind of damaging information, I’m in big trouble. The kid has got to straighten out!”
Upset, Melody moved away from her husband and went to sit down. Automatically, she checked down the hall to make sure Scotty’s door was closed. It was. “Jack, keep your voice down. This is our problem and we’ve got to solve it.”
“Who’d you talk to last year when that damn Linda Yarnell blew the whistle on Scotty?”
“I talked to Brad Jamison, the assistant principal.”
“What did he want to destroy those reports?”
“Money, of course.”
“Get him on the horn. Tell him to get to Roberts and tell her to knock it off.”
“He’ll want more this time, Jack.”
“So, give it to him! Money is something we don’t have to worry about. But money can’t buy my test pilot career. You give Jamison what he wants.”
“Jack,” Melody protested, “I really think we ought to get Scotty to a doctor in Los Angeles and have him tested.”
He resisted the plea. “Dammit, Melody, you’ve been on me about this for over a year.”
“Yes, because Scotty isn’t normal for his age.” She saw his eyes narrow with fury. “And don’t go getting angry with me, Jack. It’s not my fault.”
“Scotty was born premature. Could that be it?”
“Possibly.” She rubbed her brow in thought. “Part of my degree in psychology was with dysfunctional and behavioral problems involving children, Jack. I really think Scotty is hyperactive.”
He snorted. “We’ve been over this before. I’m not going to have my son on some drug that dulls him to the point of behaving like a mental retard! Dammit, Scotty is bright and intelligent, Melody! There’s nothing wrong with him! It’s these lazy-assed teachers who don’t want to babysit them like they should who are at fault.”
Rising, she said nothing. Jack followed her down the hall toward their bedroom.
“You’ll call Jamison in the morning?” he demanded tightly.
“Yes, I’ll call him.”
The first voice Holt heard when he swung in the doors of Operations Tuesday morning was that of Jack Stang.
“Hey, Merrill, my wife said Becky wasn’t at the NASA luncheon yesterday. How come?”
Frowning, Holt took off his garrison cap and tucked it in one of the pockets of his dark green flight suit. He saw Curt at the weather desk, Stang standing next to him.
“She had the flu,” Curt lied.
“Flu? In late September? That’s kind of early for it to be going around, isn’t it? Scotty hasn’t said anything about it at school, either.”
Uncomfortable beneath Stang’s needling scrutiny, Curt took the weather information and turned away. Becky hated the luncheons, was always uncomfortable in large groups of people. She had called General Dalton’s wife and begged off with a case of flu. If she missed too many luncheons, it wouldn’t look good on his fitness report, which was issued every six months, but Curt didn’t have the heart to get angry about it. Becky was still under strain from this last move. He nearly ran into Holt.
“Morning, Sam.”
“Morning, Curt.”
Stang turned, sizing up his competition. “How’d the balloon rally go, Holt? Did you come in dead last?”
“You’re just a sunny spot in my morning, you know that, Jack?”
He grinned. “Is my pessimism showing?”
“No, your ignorance. I came in second out of twenty entries.” Sam turned, walking down the highly polished white tile hall, Curt at his shoulder. Merrill was chuckling under his breath.
“Holt one, Stang nothing. Damn good thing you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this early in the morning,” Curt said, flashing him a grin, “because I never am.”
“Stang doesn’t know when to ease off the throttles. How’s Becky doing?”
Lowering his voice, Curt told Sam the truth.
“Smart idea about the flu angle,” Sam said.
“Yeah, with Stang snooping around, looking to heap any kind of gossip and trouble on my head, I had to think of something to cover for Becky,” Curt growled.
“Hang in there, buddy, don’t let him get to you. Once he does, it’s all over,” Sam warned. He worried about Curt, who didn’t have a thick skin like he did. Stang was one of those people, who, if he didn’t stir up the pot on a daily basis, creating chaos and roller-coaster feelings among his compatriots, wasn’t happy. Of course, everyone else was unhappy when Stang did it, not totally immune to his sometimes lethal comments. Still, Sam felt as long as he dished it back at Stang just as strongly, he’d keep the pilot somewhat in check. Somewhat…
They halted at the door that said Design, and entered. Sam spotted Major Lauren Porter at one desk leaning over a bunch of blueprints, cup of coffee in hand. She was dressed, as usual, in her olive-green flight suit and highly polished black flight boots. However, that didn’t detract from her femininity in Sam’s opinion. Lauren was elegant, like a thoroughbred with good breeding. She was tall, thin and refined. Unlike a lot of other women flight officers, she wore makeup when she wasn’t flying. Today, she didn’t, because she’d be in the cockpit with him later.
They found out a long time ago that air would leak out between the oxygen mask on a woman’s face if she wore makeup. Already, his day was getting better. Sam raised a hand in her direction.
“Morning, Port.” The last five months of working with the flight engineer had been pure joy in Sam’s opinion. She was their boss and headed up the Agile Eagle project. Chestnut hair, intelligent brown eyes and a computerlike brain plus Lauren’s good looks was an excellent combination. It didn’t hurt matters that Lauren preferred to fly with him, and gave him higher percentile marks for flight skills.
“Hi, Sam, Curt.”
Holt headed to the coffeemaker near her desk. It was only 7:00 a.m., but everyone in testing was hard at work. It was one of the few professions he could think of where the people involved hated to leave work at night and could hardly wait to get back to work early the next morning.
“Well,” Lauren said, continuing to study the blueprints on the F-15 Eagle, “did you get lucky and run into Stang out at the weather desk?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s in a particularly virulent mood this morning.”
Chuckling, Sam handed a cup of coffee to Curt, took one for himself and then ambled over to her desk. “That’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“That’s all right,” Merrill said, sitting down at his desk. “Holt nailed Stang’s tail to the ground.”
Lauren’s thin brows rose. She glanced over at Holt, who leaned over her shoulder and studied the prints. “Oh?”
“Yeah, so far the score’s in my favor.”
“Let’s tally it up at the end of the day,” Lauren warned dryly. “Stang’s usually ahead by that time.”
A careless grin crossed Holt’s face as he studied the proposed new landing gear assembly on the F-15. “If he stays out of your gun sights, Port. Only then does he win. Otherwise, you shoot him down.”
“Well,” Lauren muttered, pulling her computer keyboard closer, punching in some numbers and, studying the monitor intently, “I’m in a bad mood today, so he’d better watch his mouth or he’ll crash and burn so fast it will make even his seasoned head spin.”
“Ohhh,” Merrill hooted with delight. “I hope Stang is stupid enough to walk through the door. When Lauren is ‘on,’ she’s ready to go Mach 3 with her hair on fire.”
Laughing, Lauren shook her head. “You’re both crazy.”
“But you love us anyway,” Sam murmured, sipping the scaldingly hot coffee.
“I’d never admit it.” Frowning, she put some more numbers in the computer, unhappy with the readout. “Damn…”
Sam studied the numbers on the monitor, and then the blueprint under her elbows. “Problems?”
“Yes…and no. I’m working with the McDonnell design engineers over at Palmdale to reinforce the landing gear assembly on number 71290. After Stang cracked the frame on the left gear two weeks ago, we’re trying to figure how it occurred and then ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
Sam nodded. The F-15 was the hottest fighter the Air Force owned. It was a single-seater, although two had been specifically rigged with a second seat for the flight engineer during the ongoing test flights. There were three Air Force flight engineers working on the Agile Eagle project, and he considered Lauren the best. So did General Dalton, the head of testing. “That gear assembly cracked because Stang dropped the bird to the deck in order to make that fifteen-hundred-foot landing limit.”
Hell, Stang had stalled the bird. The F-15 had literally fell from an altitude of thirty feet, like a rock dropping out of the sky, and slammed into the end of the runway. During the inspection, Lauren, who rode with Stang on that test, was the first to discover the crack. Stang had bitched that she had it in for him; an immature response, but Holt didn’t expect much else from the golden boy here at Ops. Stang knew he was number one, and it was obvious to him. He had one hell of a powerful sponsor—no matter whether he flew good one day and lousy the next, he could do no wrong.
Tapping the monitor, Lauren remarked, “Holt, you took your test pilot training with the navy.”
“That’s right.” Sometimes, the services swapped pilots and put them through the other’s test pilot school. Holt had been fortunate enough to be chosen to go to Patuxent River, Maryland, and take the U.S. Navy equivalent to the Air Force test pilot school. Only there, Holt had to learn how to land and take off from the heaving deck of a carrier; something no other Air Force pilot had experience doing. That was one of the reasons he’d been chosen for the Agile Eagle project; creating a bird capable of short takeoffs and landings, just like a naval aircraft. The Air Force chief of staff had decided that during a wartime situation, most runways would be bombed, making the F-15 incapable of taking off because of the craters. So now, they were redesigning the bird for a much shorter takeoff so it could get into the air and fight.
“Tell me, did Stang land it properly? When he dropped in, I thought he’d come in too high. And when he hit—” Lauren ruefully rubbed the back of her neck “—I felt like I’d been in an auto accident. I think I got whiplash out of the deal.”
Sam nodded sympathetically. “I watched the landing. He brought the nose up too high and stalled it. When you come in for a carrier landing, it’s a controlled crash situation. You have full flaps and slats down and locked, the nose is up, but just this side of stall position. Stang went over the stall limit, and the bird fell.”
Using his hands, Holt showed her what he meant. “If the nose is pitched up at the correct angle, you get a last moment cushion of air that helps to take the brunt of the landing jolt.”
“And the gear assembly doesn’t take half the punishment as a result. Right?”
“You got it.” And then he smiled. “It’s all in the attitude of the nose.”
Grumbling, Lauren went back to study the figures on the monitor. “That chauvinist bastard crashed my bird and crippled it. Probably handles his women the same way—he figures a little abuse is good for them.”
Chuckling, Sam watched Lauren work for several minutes. Flight engineers frequently adopted the plane they worked with as their own; their baby, so to speak. Lauren’s chestnut hair gleamed with a few red highlights, reminding him of Megan Roberts. By military regs, her hair barely brushed the back of her collar. There was nothing for him to do until eight o’clock, when the second F-15, tail number 71291, would be prepared for the flight. He’d take the jet up and run it through a series of landing tests and try to hit the magic fifteen-hundred-foot limit—without cracking the landing gear. So far, no one had been able to because of a number of reasons. It was the flight and design engineers’ headache to figure out why, and then fix the situation so they could.
“Met a gorgeous redheaded lady Saturday out at the balloon rally,” Holt confided. He saw Lauren’s mouth curve into a doubtful smile. She was a feminist of the first order, and Sam respected her for it. “Now, don’t go getting that look, Port. It’s not what you think.”
“Usually you tell me about the gorgeous blonde, brunette, or raven-haired beauty you’ve met over at the O Club on the weekend.”
“Well…”
“Red’s your favorite color.”
He brightened. “Yeah. And she’s got the spirit of a redhead.”
“I know—you like your women hot, like the jets you fly.”
“Now, Port.”
Lauren gave him a one-eyebrow-raised look. “Sam, what you do in your free time’s your business. I just don’t like hearing about you guys chasing down these poor teenage groupies who don’t know any better. That’s like letting a fox into the chicken coop, and you guys aren’t the chickens.”
Smiling, Holt nodded. “Touché, Major. No, this lady’s different.”
“Sure.”
“Honest, Port, she is. Listen to this….” He filled her in on Megan Roberts from beginning to end. Sam saw interest in Lauren’s eyes when he was done with his story.
“A schoolteacher? That’s really blasé compared to what you normally like. I mean, a month ago, it was that black-haired sprint car driver from L.A. Two months ago, it was a blond-haired mountain climber from Europe. Isn’t Megan a bit pedestrian for your tastes?”
Raising his hands, Holt protested, “No way! She’s a fighter, and I like that.”
“It doesn’t sound like she’s too crazy about you.”
“Give her time. I rub off on people.”
“Don’t I know it.”
With a smile, Sam straightened, going for his second cup of coffee for the day. “Port, I’m your favorite pilot, and I know it.”
With a chuckle, Lauren wrote down a set of figures on her test flight form. “I know, Holt—nobody needs to tell test pilots how great they are. They’ll tell you themselves.”
The door opened. Holt barely turned his head and saw that it was Stang. He had a bunch of weather maps in hand.
“Hey, boys and girls, we’ve got excellent winds today,” Jack announced. He threw the data down on his desk and ambled over to the coffeepot.
“That your second or third cup, Holt?”
“Second.”
Jack reached for his ceramic mug that had Superstar written on the side of it. “Coffee makes the nerves jittery, Holt. And you’re flying in less than one hour.”
Watching the tall, lanky pilot, Sam leaned against the wall and sipped his coffee. “I’ll take my chances,” he returned dryly.
“Shaky hands,” Jack added, “are a bad start to your day. You could blow the test this morning.”
“I don’t think you’d mind,” Sam offered.
With a shrug, Stang wandered over to Lauren’s desk, looking over her shoulder. She ignored him. “Can’t say I’d cry over it, Holt. I need to put more distance between you and I in the percentile ratings. And I don’t have to worry about Merrill.”
Sam saw Merrill scowl, hard at work on some test flight reports that needed to be brought up-to-date in time for the Friday meeting of all concerned parties on the project. Curt was a good five percentage points behind and had had three weeks of bad luck on test flights. The winds had made the flights Curt flew tricky. As a result, many of the tests were blown and had to be rescheduled. It wasn’t Curt’s fault; he was a damn good pilot. It was just the luck of the draw.
“Well, maybe the winds will be with me this morning,” Holt said. He had to get down to the lockers, put on his G-suit chaps, pick up his helmet and get out to the apron, where the crew was preparing the Agile Eagle for his test flight. “Port, you coming?”
“Yes, I’ll meet you down at the lockers in about five,” she called, concentrating on the numbers before her.
“Hey,” Jack said, trying to get Lauren’s attention, “how’re you and that fianceé of yours doing?”
Quirking her lips, Lauren refused to look up at Stang. “That’s none of your business, Jack.”
“Oh…” He smiled slightly. “Set a date for the wedding yet? My wife wanted to know. She likes to buy gifts ahead of time.”
Sam slowed his walk toward the door, keying in on Stang’s latest needling. He had a habit of picking on the two individuals who had to fly a test. Did he do it consciously or unconsciously? Stang’s competitiveness didn’t have any honorable borders or lines. Anyone who didn’t fly with him was against him. And since Port wasn’t going to fly the test with him, Stang saw her as the enemy.