Ride the Thunder Page 8

  “Maybe this has taught Nolan that you’re a safe person to reveal his feelings to,” Laura said. “And with the danger to the helo crews out there now, well, there’s nothing like a wartime footing to make you a very tight, tight team. No, I think he’ll look out for you, just as you’ll look out for him.”

  “War,” Rhona whispered, her mouth flattening. She grazed the baby’s soft hair. “You’re right, Laura. The ante’s been upped out there in the basin. This morning we heard that this Diablo gang is still in area five, but moving toward area six. I’m worried…really worried. Not for us, but for the people out there. They aren’t armed properly to defend themselves against a bunch of civilians who have assault rifles and submachine guns. They’re virtually helpless.”

  “There’s a marine fire team of four people in place, though, right? That can afford them some protection.”

  “Yes and no.” Rhona lifted her hand away from the baby. “Lieutenant Mason over at Ops got word earlier that Diablo is a lot bigger than we first thought. They’ve found out from interviewing people who live in area five that it’s a group of adult males, all white, about thirty of them. They’re heavily armed with assault weapons, grenades and all kinds of other heavy military hardware.”

  “So, they’re confirmed as survivalists and not just a gang?”

  “That’s the latest from Ops. Yes.” Rubbing her brow, Rhona sighed. “You get thirty well-armed fanatics who want food and water and are willing to do anything to get it, and you’ve got a small war on your hands. And a marine fire team of four isn’t going to stop them. Besides, area six is two square miles—a lot of turf to try and protect. The fire team has no mobility. They have to go everywhere on foot just like everyone else. There are no roads. The land’s chewed up. Vehicles can’t move anywhere.”

  “I didn’t realize all this,” Laura murmured. “That’s bad…and they’re heading toward you…. Oh, dear, Rhona, you really need to be careful then.” Laura reached out and gripped her hand. “I don’t want you two shot in the head like those other pilots were.”

  Grimly, Rhona said, “The mistake those pilots made was in trusting these guys when they came up to them.” Her eyes flashed. “We won’t make that error. Apparently, members of Diablo wear white headbands. That’s a dead giveaway to us. So believe me, if we see some Anglo dude with a white headband coming toward us, we’ll shoot first and ask questions later. No way are we going to be victims to bastards like that. No way…”

  Six

  January 10: 0200

  Cursing softly to himself, Nolan tossed and turned in the darkened tent. How badly he wanted to crawl those two feet into Rhona’s arms. Throwing his forearm across his eyes, he lay on his back and keyed his hearing to a C-141 jet that had just landed. The tent shook and shuddered from the turbulence as the pilot reversed the engines once it was on the ground.

  That was how he felt: like a powerful aircraft in a brutal chokehold. Nolan was wild with grief, unshed tears, guilt and hurt. Why hadn’t he just talked it out with Rhona today after he got back? Why? He was afraid, he admitted. Afraid of the soft look he saw in her eyes when he’d met her in Laura Trayhern’s room after returning from Oceanside. Yet, wisely, Rhona had said nothing to exacerbate his raw feelings and chaotic state as they’d headed back to the flight line.

  All afternoon and into the evening he’d wanted to somehow broach the subject, but didn’t have the guts to do it. And in the chow hall, they’d sat across from one another, tense silence filling the void between them. Rhona, at least, didn’t try to cover things with airy chatter. No, she knew he was stoved up emotionally, and she had the intelligence to back off and say nothing. It was up to him to open up. He couldn’t expect her to pry like a can opener into his grieving, flailing heart. Automatically, he rubbed his chest beneath the goose down sleeping bag.

  The ground was hard and unforgiving. Just like life was, he decided grimly. Focusing his hearing inside the tent, he felt soothed by Rhona’s soft, shallow breathing as she slept. As soon as they’d come back from the chow hall and stumbled into their tent, reeling from exhaustion, she’d pushed off her black leather flight boots, crawled into her bag and slept—deeply.

  Nolan didn’t have the heart to wake her. She had flown just as much as he had today, and she was a workhorse behind the collective and cyclic. Nolan had been grateful for her professionalism in the clutch. Again he reminded himself that Rhona was a veteran. She had seen combat. He never had, so in the unspoken hierarchy among pilots, he was less a pilot than she was. That made him respect her despite the fact that she was a woman.

  Snorting softly, Nolan removed his arm from his eyes and glared up at the grayish tent ceiling. The engines of the C-141 were now winding down to a warbling shriek as it made the turn at the end of the ten-thousand-foot runway. The craft would now trundle back to the revetment area, to have its insides disgorged by hardworking ground crews. Starlifters could carry more supplies than any plane in the military fleet, and Nolan knew that teams of marines would immediately attack, moving the goods to the helicopters that were now down for maintenance, refueling and resupply. At 0500, the pilots would get up, and by 0600, they’d be in the air once again.

  Nolan turned toward Rhona, rolling onto his side. With a whispered sigh, he shut his eyes tightly. He had to talk to someone. He needed to talk to Rhona. Maybe tomorrow, in the cockpit, he’d try….

  January 10: 0600

  “You said Jake died in your arms,” Nolan began when they were halfway to area six on their first run of the day. It was raining out, as if the weather gods sympathized with how he felt: the sky was crying the tears that were lodged tightly in his chest.

  He saw Rhona glance at him out of the corner of her eye. “Yes…he did.”

  Quirking his mouth, Nolan muttered, “It musta made you feel really bad?”

  Realizing he was trying to get to his own grief, Rhona put the clipboard down on her lap, her gloved hands resting over the cargo bill of lading that had the contents they were flying into area six. Nolan had asked to fly the first flight of the day. He’d actually asked—a huge change in his demeanor toward her since yesterday. It was a pleasant surprise that he was being deferential toward her today. It made Rhona breathe a sigh of relief. Nolan was treating her like a comrade, a team member instead of the “enemy.” Rhona was more than grateful. “Yes…terrible. Like I told you before, I was sitting there sobbing and trying to stop the bleeding from that artery on the side of his neck. The thing was spurting blood a foot into the air, and nothing I could do would stop it.”

  “Felt pretty helpless?”

  “Very.” Rhona risked everything. “Is that how you felt yesterday? Going to see the families of the two pilots who were murdered?”

  It felt like someone had stabbed him in the heart with an ice pick. Hands tightening on the collective and cyclic, Nolan rasped, “Yeah, I felt just like you—helpless. I felt so damned helpless, Rhona….”

  Her heart surged with hope. He’d finally used her first name, instead of always calling her by her last name, which was typical in the military. Rhona decided not to say anything right away. She wanted to give Nolan the time and space to talk, if that’s what he needed. Licking her lower lip, she watched the rain strike the Plexiglas windshield and slough off immediately because of their air speed. Their navigation software was still down and they had to do line-of-sight flying. The rain had cut visibility down to half a mile. At one-quarter of a mile they’d be grounded, because their helo lacked the instrumentation to fly safely in inclement weather. At three thousand feet, it was hard, even with their good eyesight, to locate the landmarks they normally used to find their way to area six. They were flying in iffy conditions, but neither wanted to be grounded.

  “Pete’s wife, Vickie, already knew.” Nolan sighed painfully. “She had this awful nightmare the night before. We all lived in the same apartment complex, but now it’s in shambles. The families are living like cave people over there…. They’ve gathered
bits and pieces of roof, or siding, and made shelters out of it. When I found Vickie, and she saw me, she turned white. I thought she was gonna faint. The kids…” He grimaced. “Hell, it was awful. I stood there stuttering and stammering, my voice wobbling like a flat tire.”

  “Mine did, too, when I contacted my people’s families,” Rhona assured him gently. “They were crying at the other end of the phone line. I was crying at my end. It was hard, Nolan, and I’m sure no less hard than it was on you and the families you saw yesterday.” Instinctively, Rhona reached out, laid her hand over his hard, tense forearm and squeezed gently. “You’re a knight in shining armor in my eyes. You did the right thing.” And then she forced herself to release her hold on him, because if she didn’t, Rhona was afraid she’d be tempted to gather Nolan close and hold him. Hold him and rock him and help him eradicate that blackness jammed in his heart, which was eating him alive. She saw the grief in his slitted, forest-green eyes. And she heard it in his low, tortured tone the tears barely held at bay.

  Rhona’s touch was catalytic. Just the gentleness of her fingers, long and slender, wrapping around his forearm loosened the pain that was like a thrashing monster in his chest. The lump forming in his throat felt huge. He couldn’t swallow. He could barely breathe now, and his eyes burned. Somehow he had to keep his mind on his job of flying this crate.

  “When Vickie came to me, white as a sheet, and said, ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ I couldn’t believe it. I just stood there in shock. All I could do was blubber yes, he was. His two kids—both no more than five years old—were wrapped around their mother’s legs. I didn’t want to tell her what had happened in front of them.”

  “No, of course not,” Rhona whispered. She blinked her eyes, feeling his pain as well as the pain of those families. “And your other friend? Did you locate his family, too?”

  “Yeah, they were on the other side of that trashed apartment complex, sharing with another family a few pieces of wooden boards as a shelter.” Shaking his head, he said, “Janet didn’t know. She didn’t have a clue, but when I found them, and she saw me, she realized….”

  “They always send out two officers and a chaplain to the wife or husband of a military person who dies,” Rhona murmured. “How did she take it? Her kids?”

  “Grab the controls, will you? I’m not seeing very well….”

  Rhona slid the clipboard into the side pocket of her seat and wrapped her hands around the second set of controls. She glanced at him. His face was tight. She saw tears beaded on his dark lashes. Nolan was fighting with every bit of strength he had not to cry. “I’ve got the controls,” she whispered.

  Releasing his set, Nolan pushed back in his seat and pressed his helmeted head backward in an effort to take in a deep breath of air. His hands clenched and unclenched on his long thighs.

  “Thanks…” he said, his voice cracking. Lifting his hand, he rubbed his eyes furiously. The shaking and trembling of the Huey felt comforting to him. Even more important, Rhona was near. Her voice, like velvet sliding over his tense nerves, was soothing to Nolan. Wiping his thinned mouth with the back of his hand, he stared ahead. Off to the left, the thick columns of smoke were being scattered by the falling rain.

  “Janet was brave. Really brave, Rhona. They have three kids, two, four and seven. Janet just put her arms around all of them, held them, as I told her. She didn’t cry.”

  “Military spouses are the bravest people in the world,” Rhona agreed grimly. “They are made of very special stuff. They have to be in order to marry a guy or gal who’s in the service. It’s a career where every day could mean life or death, and they know it deep down in their hearts.”

  “Yeah…” Nolan shook his head and stared out the side window of the cockpit for a moment. “I was married once, did you know?”

  Rhona jerked slightly, then glanced at him. He was looking out the window, lost in the past. “Was?”

  Giving half a laugh, Nolan said, “Yeah…Carol and I married when I came out of the Naval Academy. We’d been childhood sweethearts in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where I grew up. It was a dream come true for us—getting married and all. I had my whole life planned out.” Nolan scowled and opened his right hand, then closed it into a tight fist. “Only Carol got breast cancer.” He laughed without mirth. “All along, we were worried about me goin’ down in a helo crash, or pulling duty somewhere and getting shot down…and she’s the one who died instead. Helluva life down here, you know?” He closed his eyes, the hurt flowing out of him now that he’d finally released it. Somehow, Rhona was the right person to hear his darkness, his grief. Something in Nolan told him that she could handle it. She was a brave, steady woman who knew herself well. Rhona was no cream puff when it came to adversity. She’d handled combat, which said it all as far as Nolan was concerned. And she’d lived to tell about it, although he could sense that the wounds from that time hadn’t healed completely yet.

  “I’m very sorry about your wife, Nolan,” she said. “How long ago?”

  Sighing, he muttered, “Two years. She died just as I was getting transferred here to Camp Reed.” Giving Rhona a sad look, he added, “Some days it seems light-years away and I can handle it fine. Other days…well, like yesterday…I have a tough time all around. I know what it’s like to lose a loved one.”

  “And yesterday it hit you like a sledgehammer.”

  Shrugging, Nolan whispered, “Yeah, and I’m still reeling from it.” He mustered a sad smile. “I’m not gonna be my normal sweet self in the cockpit today, so you might as well be warned now.”

  “Not a problem,” Rhona said, meeting his sorrowful gaze. She saw the grief that was eating Nolan alive. But there was nothing more she could do for him right now. In another ten minutes, they’d land at the baseball field. Señor Gonzalez would be there, as always, with his hardworking crew of young men and the old flatbed truck, to pick up their supplies and distribute them throughout the barrio.

  “Were you…well…are you married?” Nolan cringed as he asked that personal question, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed to know. Seeing her cheeks color fiercely, he felt even more embarrassed over the intimate query.

  Laughing unsteadily, Rhona said, “No, I’m not. Came close.” She gave him a rueful glance. “I was engaged to this navy helo pilot about two years ago. Everything was going along fine, just hunky-dory, until he started trying to tell me what to do when we got married. Like marriage was a yoke and I’m the oxen pulling the plow?” Derision filled her tone. “I didn’t agree.”

  “He had traditional values?” Nolan guessed.

  “Neanderthal values. And that doesn’t sit well in my world.”

  “He wanted you barefoot and pregnant?” Nolan guessed, seeing the spark in her gray eyes. There was a slight grin pulling at the corners of her delicious mouth. How he was enjoying having her with him! And how he respected her since she’d confronted him on his prejudice toward her as a woman.

  Laughing wryly, Rhona said, “Roger that one, loud and clear. Yep, Greg thought that I should just walk away from my career, marry him, be happy becoming pregnant and raising children. That was all I needed, according to him. Well, our engagement broke off at that point. He’d revealed his true nature, had finally come clean in the honesty department, and the life he’d mapped out wasn’t a path I wanted to walk with him.”

  “But you loved him?”

  “Sure, but you can love someone and not be able to live with them, too.” She laughed sadly.

  Nolan saw the hurt in her eyes. “It musta been a tough decision.”

  “Not really. I’m not giving my heart away to any man who won’t respect me as a human being. It’s real simple, Nolan.”

  “So, what made you leave the navy?”

  “Greg and his squad mates,” Rhona said. She brought the Huey to a hover, and they both checked out the rain-drenched baseball field below. Now, with the death of two marine pilots, everyone was under orders to hover and look over their landing area caref
ully before proceeding to land.

  “They made it hard on you, right?” Nolan asked. He gave her a thumb’s-up to go ahead and land the Huey. Off to the left he saw Señor Gonzalez and his young men waiting for them, umbrellas raised as they huddled together.

  “Very hard. I took it for six months, then tried to get a transfer to another Sea Knight squadron that had fifty percent women pilots in it, but I got turned down. So I resigned my commission.”

  “Stupid move on the navy’s part,” Nolan growled. The Huey began to slowly descend from three thousand feet. The rain was easing up, but the sky was a gunmetal gray, with scudding white clouds like ragged ribbons on the far western horizon. From their vantage point, they could see the dark Pacific Ocean in the distance.

  “Yeah, I thought so. But one door slams shut on your butt, another opens somewhere else.” Rhona brought the Huey down, watching the altimeter. They were now at a thousand feet. She kept looking around, feeling jumpy about Diablo. There were no reports that they’d come into area six yet, but she wasn’t going to risk being negligent about the matter. There was no way she wanted a bullet through her or Nolan’s head.

  “So, what opened up for you?”

  “I’m half Navajo, from my mother’s side. I’ve always been drawn to nature, and sound ecological practices. I love flying and didn’t want to give it up. So I started my own crop-dusting company out in Bonsall. I bought an older model Huey, retrofitted it for dusting crops, hung out my I’m Available sign, and have been busy ever since. Only I don’t use herbicides and pesticides on farmers’ crops. I use a biodegradable natural product from India, made with neem oil. It’s an antifungal and antiviral oil that comes from a common tree over there. It kills every kind of pest you can think of, but doesn’t poison the environment. It just washes off in the rain and returns to Mother Earth, in a nice, healthy way.”

  The Huey landed as gently as a feather. Nolan continued to be impressed with Rhona’s flying skills. He began to unbuckle his harness. “Let’s finish this conversation on the way back,” he said as he got up and slid through the narrow crack between the two seats. As he did, he brushed her shoulder with his hip. It couldn’t be helped; quarters were tight.