Chatter from other aircraft faded as he brought up the new frequency reserved for emergency personnel—the fire chief, command post, flight surgeon's office, maintenance and the supervisor of flying. In spite of his resolve, memories whispered through. During last year's crash landing there'd been no help, no friendly faces waiting for them on the ground as they descended their crippled craft into enemy territory. A missile hit, not a bird, had nailed them because of a flight-plan leak from one of their own.
"Moose zero-one, reporting up, three-two-two-dot-two."
Command Post responded, "Moose zero-one, Minot Command Post. Hotel Conference initiated—" Emergency personnel were up and listening. "Moose zero-one, souls on board and fuel remaining?"
"Four souls and 35,000 pounds."
"Copy four and thirty-five K. What's your plan?"
"We're going to do a controllability check and then a straight-in approach for landing."
Bo continued the radio calls while Quade slowed the cargo plane in midair to ensure it would be controllable at landing speed. At least in the air they could bail out. And there sure as hell was plenty of level, empty and totally treeless countryside for them to ditch.
Tag and Mako thundered up the stairwell into the cockpit and strapped into the two instructor seats behind the pilots, higher in the craft being safer in an emergency-landing situation.
"Gentlemen—" Quade's near-whisper calls had the damnedest way of booming "—
everyone locked down tight?"
"Roger," the answer echoed in triplicate.
"Excellent. Once we land, no hesitation, haul ass out and as far away from the plane as possible." In case the plane blew. The unspoken possibility clouded the air with a noxious threat. "Now let's get this baby down in a way that doesn't feature us in the six-o'clock news."
Bo's hands clenched along with his gut. He issued instrumentation updates, keeping himself grounded with his reason for being here in the first place, to check up on Paige Haugen and her daughter. He wasn't sure why he felt so damn responsible for her after what her traitorous bastard husband had done—
Okay, he did know why, and it sucked even remembering tagging along with his own teary-eyed mother on her weekly visits to her convict husband. His father. Father being a damn loose term for a dirtbag who cared more about jacking cars than hanging out with his wife and son.
Bo rechecked his five-point harness. Not that he'd felt any loss over his father being locked up. He couldn't remember ever having Jackass Dirtbag around the apartment.
Then—surprise, surprise—Jackass had filed for divorce after his release. Teary-eyed Teresa Rokowsky had opened a vein rather than live without him.
As a kid, Bo had blamed himself for not being enough reason for his mama to live. As an adult, he knew where the blame belonged, but that still didn't stop his heart from squeezing at the lost look on Paige Haugen's face when she'd walked into the police station the night of her husband's arrest. The disillusioned expression had multiplied exponentially in newspaper photos after her husband's mob-hit death in prison.
Bo tried to blink away the haunting image even now. Damn it all, he preferred his dreams be filled with visions of luscious babes in bikinis. Instead his sleep was packed with nightmares of a widow with troubled eyes and a kid who was better off without her old man but probably missed him all the same.
Bo braced for landing and closure. Outside the windscreen, the runway waited in the cracked expanse of Dakota soil and cluster of military buildings. Planes dotted the parking area, other craft for the weekend's air show scheduled to start tomorrow.
Lower, lower still they descended. Small clumps of people gathered to watch today's arrivals.
Was she there already? Regardless, he would find her.
After he checked on Paige Haugen and her daughter, he would be free to decide his future in or out of the Air Force. He already had his dream custom ordered for that first night of peaceful sleep. By Monday evening he would be snoozing his way into a Caribbean fantasy, his guitar in hand, serenading a coconut-oil-scented blonde with a penchant for skinny-dipping.
A woman without glasses framing pain-filled eyes.
Paige Haugen nudged her glasses straight on her nose again, righting her view of the landing cargo plane. Military fire trucks and security police shrieked onto the runway toward the hulking gray cargo plane touching down, slowing, smoke puffing from the tires and screeching brakes.
Her other hand held firm to the sticky softness of her baby girl's fingers, not so little now.
All of six years and nine months, Kirstie proclaimed often enough.
Too young to have hurt so much.
Paige swallowed back bilious memories stirred by the sirens. She wanted to leave. She'd seen enough destruction in her life, thanks to her traitorous bastard husband. But her brother had dropped her off on his way into Minot to restock veterinary supplies, leaving her landlocked at the base for at least another half hour.
The plane jerked to a stop. Seconds later the side hatch dropped open, stairs lowering.