Loosening his hold on the throttle, Bo flexed the stiffness out of his fingers, already anticipating a couple of hours with his guitar to work out the twinges and frustration. He hadn't "enjoyed" this much supervision since Sister Mary Nic had walked him to the lunchroom in first grade.
Of course he did have a habit of detouring even then.
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't volunteer to judge the Miss America Contest with Quade, much less spend the weekend under his thumb on a TDY—temporary duty.
But nothing had been normal for nearly a year, since the crash landing and capture overseas to be exact. Discovering that drug-running Air Force personnel and civilians in his own community had supported terrorists responsible for the shoot down only rocked his already cockeyed world.
He wasn't even sure he wanted to stay in the Air Force once his commitment was up next month. And wasn't that a kick-in-the-ass life crisis for a guy who'd been certain since the cradle that he would tear up the skies and raise hell with airplanes? He suspected he wouldn't have his answer until he'd put a piece of his past from a year ago to rest by checking on Paige Haugen and her daughter.
The widow and child of the man he'd helped send to jail. The drug-running bastard with terrorist ties.
"Well, Rokowsky?" Quade hissed low through the headset, punting Bo back into the present. "Are you planning to call for landing weather? Review the approach? Any of this ringing a bell for you, Captain? You're not a lieutenant anymore. How about pulling your weight."
"Roger, sir, I'm on it."
Radioing for the weather report five freaking minutes early, Bo scanned the sky and kept his temper in check. He might question his call to the air these days, but he knew his job and had done everything to the letter on this mission. His check rides attested to his overall nuts-on flying. But wearing the uniform dictated no arguing with the big kahuna.
Bo continued to scope the horizon while listening to the all-clear weather report. So what were those dots mutating the sky—
"Birds!" Bo shouted, yanking back the stick.
A flock of birds—geese maybe—swooped into view, funneling below the craft as the C-17 climbed. Somehow Mako's "clue bird" had taken on a life-threatening reality.
His heart drummed in his ears while his hands worked with training-honed instincts.
Smacking a goose at this speed would shatter the windscreen, could even kill a pilot.
The plane groaned at the abrupt ascent, then leveled, hummed again. Damn, that had been close. His pulse started to slow—
Whoomp.
His brain barked the answer in sync with Quade's affirmation.
"Bird strike in the number-one engine."
Death for a jet engine. And hopefully only one engine, with no explosion.
Caution lights flooded his control panel, an engine-fire alert. The landing strip grew closer, a stretch in a region as flat as any desert. But was it near enough?
Bo slammed aside memories of last year's desert crash landing quicker than he cut the fuel to the engine with a jerk of the fire handle. "Roger, fuel cut, beginning boldface checklist for engine shutdown."
Voices popped through the headset. Commands. Updates. The cargo plane shuddered through the air with the drag and pull of power adjustments to the remaining engines to compensate for the diminished thrust on the left. Protocol and division of labor was crucial for getting their butts on the ground in one piece. From here on out as copilot he would talk and Quade, in the aircraft commander's seat, would fly. No more evaluation, but plenty more scowling.
"Minot tower," Bo barked into the mike on his headset. "This is Moose zero-one, leveling off, present heading. We just took a bird strike and we've shut down an engine."
"Roger, zero-one," tower answered. "Are you declaring an emergency?"
Bo rocked the microphone button down for private inner-phone. "Colonel, are you ready to declare?"
Lean and impassive, Quade hesitated, then nodded. "I think she's flying okay, but yes, let's go ahead and declare."
No surprise. Quade was a conservative aviator to the end. Not a bad thing right now.
Bo thumbed the mike button up for open-air frequency. "Roger, tower, I am declaring an emergency at this time."
"Copy, zero-one, are you able to switch frequencies or are your hands full?"
"Zero-one will accept a frequency change."