Vegas. That must be what had him on edge, too many dark-cloud memories of his last trip here with Monica. They'd been so damned jazzed over landing a joint TDY—Temporary Duty. Then the news of her sister's capture had come through and everything spiraled out of control in a flat spin—unrecoverable.
Ridiculous to think for a second Monica would hang all over him in gratitude once she found out he'd taken on the upcoming mission to save her sister. Clinging vine wasn't her gig. Fine by him. He'd never wanted her to change.
Much.
Hell, no, he didn't expect gratitude complete with waterworks and hot, thank-you sex. Well, okay, yeah he would give his left nut to have Monica na*ed in his bed again. He was human. Male. Alive.
But he didn't want her taking him back out of gratitude. Rescuing the hostages was the right thing to do. It was his job. His mission. His calling. He would do the same for anyone's sister, mother, daughter—be they from the United States or Timbuktu.
Still, he couldn't stop the bitter surge of satisfaction in knowing that once he finished, he would damn well be imprinted on Monica Hyatt's memory, if not her life, as she'd been imprinted on his.
Only one more week and he would be free to sleep without hellish nightmares or tempting dreams. He could erase her name from his brain and off his mouth. Because no way did he intend to tap a keg for a call sign change to "Rodeo Two."
In two minutes flat Monica Hyatt talked her way past the cleaning lady outside Jack Korba's room at the Warrior Inn VOQ—Visiting Officer's Quarters. Piece of cake, since she'd changed into her flight suit after flying in on a commercial airline from Charleston.
Facing Jack again, however, would be tougher and more embarrassing than taping Band-Aids over her ni**les for the bathing suit competition in the Miss Texas pageant.
She'd been first runner-up for Miss Texas. She wouldn't accept anything but a win today with the stakes a helluva lot higher than scholarship money for medical school.
Monica clicked the door closed behind her. The thud of her combat boots against industrial carpet echoed a lonely tattoo in the empty room. The need to bawl her eyes out clogged her throat, her nose, her head. She couldn't afford the luxury. She didn't lose it often, so when she did, all the bottled emotions overflowed.
And since her sister's capture, she'd been containing a flood in a Ziploc bag.
Slinging her green military bag to rest on the foot of the bed, she paced off restless energy, tugged the spread smooth again. Straightened a lampshade. With each heavy thump of her boots, she reminded herself she was in control, a combat veteran. Sure she might have only taken the Air Force contract as a way to pay her way through med school when the pageant gig flopped. But the minute she'd put on the uniform, she knew.
It fit.
As a flight surgeon she treated the aviators, specializing in ailments induced by aerospace stresses to the body. A challenging way to serve her country while fulfilling her dream of being a doctor. Sometimes she broke into a sweat over how close she'd come to missing her niche. Of course, her high school guidance counselor in Red Branch, Texas, never mentioned combat boots as an option to graduating senior girls.
She'd just never expected to lace those boots in defense of her own family.
Monica stacked loose coins on the oak dresser, avoided touching Jack's wadded-up T-shirt trailing over the edge and tamped down images of what her sister must have endured during three and a half months of captivity. Her baby sister who splashed in puddles and forgot her lunch box.
Unshed tears burned like alcohol on an open wound.
Don't think. Her feet carried her to the minifridge where she helped herself to a bottled water beside a half gallon of milk. Her eyes grazed over Jack's predictable box of Froot Loops on top of the refrigerator. A smile tickled as she thought of how he hated mornings, always carting along a quick breakfast to bypass the extra time to find a mess hall or restaurant.
er 1
Major Jack "Cobra" Korba, USAF, had mastered butting heads with mountains by the fifth grade when he discovered his ability to make people laugh. But right now he suspected there wasn't a knock-knock joke on earth that could offer much help against the 6500-foot rocky peak screaming toward his windscreen at three hundred knots.
"High terrain. Coming thirty degrees left," Jack clipped through the headset to his copilot.
Adrenaline crackled inside him like the popping flickers of light across his night-vision goggles— NVGs. The gear strapped to his helmet narrowed his vision into a neon-green tunnel.
"Copy that, Cobra, thirty degrees left," affirmed his copilot, Captain Derek "Rodeo" Washington.
The C-17 cranked left, massive cargo plane hugging craggy landscape. Desert dunes and jagged ridges whipped past in an emerald kaleidoscope haze.
He lived to fly. But today he flew as lead pilot for this mission so that others might live. One person in particular.
Rodeo ran his hands along the dimly lit control panel checking readings while Jack gripped the stick. No steering yoke like with older cargo planes, the Air Force's C-17 boasted the stick and grace of a fighter jet despite its hulking size.
Four more C-17s packed with Army Rangers trailed behind in formation. Total night swallowed them, no lights on the wings or ground. Only minimal illumination on the instrument panel guided them through the roller-coaster pass in their low-level flight.
Hazardous as hell to fly with NVGs, but necessary for stealthy penetration into enemy territory to offload cargo holds full of Airborne Rangers—the final phase of the mission to seize a Middle Eastern terrorist camp. Aside from having ties to 9/11, the radical faction had assassinated the ambassador to Rubistan and taken three American hostages.
Jack worked the rudder pedals, refusing to allow the need for vengeance to chink his concentration. Mountains to the left and right posed a constant threat outweighed by the benefits of masking them from detection by enemy radar. Visually, dark aircraft blended with the thrusting backdrop of sand and rock. Sound reflected off the mountains until pinpointing a plane's locale became all but impossible.