An Honorable Woman

Her gaze snapped from the pilot whose legs barred her way to the one smoking at the table, his dark brown eyes alive with distaste—for her. Lastly, Cam looked across the room. The man standing at attention at the window wore an American flag on the right sleeve of his flight uniform. That was Chief Morales. He knew that when a C.O. entered, one came to attention until told otherwise.

Realizing with a sinking heart that her career as a leader could be over right now depending on how she handled this insubordination by the Mexican pilots, Cam allowed the anger she felt to flow through her.

“Lieutenant—” she peered down at the pilot whose feet barred her path “—Zaragoza. I know the Mexican military has different protocols, but I do believe one of them requires that you stand at attention when your commanding officer enters the room. Get off your butt and on your feet, mister. Right now.”

Gus choked back a laugh as Zaragoza’s head snapped toward the woman. Gus saw the firm, quiet look on her oval face. Even though her thick, shoulder-length chestnut red hair gave her the look of an angel, he saw the devil in her narrowed green eyes which were now focused like a laser on the hapless pilot.

“Get up, Lieutenant. And if you can’t make it to your feet, then crawl out of here and get out of my sight forever. Because that tells me you really aren’t serious about training for drug interdiction.”

Cam swallowed hard. She’d never been so brazen before, but her career depended upon it. Would Maya have said the same thing? Would she have handled this situation differently? Cam wavered inwardly, but refused to show her fear and indecision.

Zaragoza slowly retracted his legs and stood up in a semblance of attention, his eyes ahead, staring at the light green wall opposite.

Cam fixed her gaze on the second pilot, who was grinning down at the table, cigarette in hand. He had a lean, narrow face, short black hair, thick brows and a smirk across his full lips.

“And you…Lieutenant—” she peered at the leather patch sewn above the left pocket of his flight suit “—Dominguez. This is a nonsmoking zone. It will always be a nonsmoking zone, from here on out. Put out the butt, mister, and come to attention.”

Lazily, Luis smashed out his cigarette in the glass ashtray. The smirk never left his features as he pushed back the chair and got to his feet.

They thought this was a game, Cam realized with a sinking feeling. The only pilot here who had shown respect was the U.S. Army chief.

“With your permission, ma’am,” Gus said, “I’ll open the window to let in fresh air?”

“Good idea, Chief Morales. At ease.” Cam looked at the two Mexican pilots. “Sit down at the table, gentlemen. We have business to take care of.”

Turning, Gus drew up the venetian blind and forced open the heavily painted window sash. He saw that Chief Anderson had left the door open on purpose, to create enough of a draft to get the heavy smoke out of the room. Walking to the green metal table, he sat at her right elbow.

Cam forced herself not to appear nervous. She told herself to slow down, to take her time. Never mind that she had jet lag, or that she hadn’t slept in the last twenty-four hours because she was so anxious about this assignment. Never mind that two of the pilots obviously resented her and were barely giving her the respect the situation demanded. Opening her briefcase, she set several folders and a notepad on the table.

She noticed that Chief Morales took a pad from the right pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a pen from his left breast pocket. The other two pilots sat back, arms crossed, watching her with obvious distaste. Cam swallowed hard. Her throat felt dry, as if it was going to close up. She had to continue this charade and make them think she was in charge.

Taking a pen from her own flight suit pocket, Cam opened the top file. “First order of business is to ask each of you about your flight experience,” she told them.

“You’ve got our personnel jacket,” Luis drawled, his voice condescending. “Haven’t you read it?”

Antonio snickered.

Cam glared at them. “Lieutenant Dominguez, tell me the extent of your flight experience with helicopters.”

Shrugging nonchalantly, he said in a bored tone, “I joined the Mexican Air Force because it is a tradition in my family. I went through flight school and was assigned to helicopters.”

“How many hours have you flown?”

“Two hundred.”

Cam turned to the other pilot. “And you, mister?”

Chuckling, Zaragoza said, “Only two hundred hours, Luis?” He shook his head mockingly.

“Forget him,” Cam ordered tightly. “I’m interested in your hours, mister.”

“Four hundred.” Antonio nearly spat the words.

“And how did you earn them?” Cam asked, jotting down the information on her yellow legal pad.

“I started flying helos when I was seventeen years old.”

“And why did you join the Mexican Air Force?”

Glowering at her, Antonio said, “Not that it’s any of your business, Señorita or Señora, but I like to fly.”

“Mister, you will address me as either Chief Anderson or ma’am. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

Antonio’s jaw clenched. He held Cam’s narrowed gaze.

“If you can’t say it, mister, get out of this room and don’t bother coming back.”

His eyes flared with surprise. “You cannot threaten me—”

Cam leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “It’s not a threat, mister. It’s a promise. Now, you make up your mind here and now. Either go by strict military protocol from this moment forward or get up and get out of here. Comprende?”

Anger surged through Luis. How dare this slut of a woman make such a threat to him? “This—this is an insult! Do you know who I am?”

Cam gave him an icy smile. “Yeah, a pilot in a helluva lotta trouble with me and his superiors if he doesn’t square away right now.”

Silence fell in the room. Luis slanted a glance toward Gus, who was sitting there relaxed, hands on the table. He had a poker face, but Luis could see the laughter in his cinnamon-colored eyes. He knew Morales was laughing at him. That stung even more. Nostrils flaring, he jerked his gaze back to the woman who sat across from him.

“Your call,” Cam told him quietly. “Do it right or get the hell out of my sight, Mr. Dominguez. I don’t think your father will be very proud to learn that you can’t carry out simple military protocol, do you?”

Cam’s heart was thundering in her chest. She knew this was high-stakes poker. And she knew she held the cards to Luis’s career. If, indeed, he was in the Mexican Air Force to fulfill a family obligation, the last thing he would want was a dark blot on the family record by being thrown out of the U.S. Army’s Apache program—by a woman, no less. That would be an insult he would never live down, and she knew it. Cam was prepared to do just that, however. She’d get rid of any pilot who didn’t want to play by strict military rules.

Grinding his teeth, Luis looked for help from his friend, Antonio. The unhappy grimace on his friend’s face, the anger banked in his dark eyes, indicated he felt similarly. Yet he obviously didn’t want to be kicked out of the program, either.

“You do not have that authority over me!” Luis snarled.

Cam reached down into her briefcase, located another file and opened it before her. Lifting out some papers, she turned them around so that Luis could read the top.

“I’m sure you recognize this, Mr. Dominguez. It’s a set of orders. All I have to do to reassign you is fill in this blank—” she pointed to the page “—and sign my name down here, at the bottom. Now, I’ll be more than happy to do that for you. There’s a lot of good pilots who didn’t get this mission, and who want it a lot more than you do, apparently. So which is it? You want me to fill you out a new set of orders, sending you back to your superior? Or do you want to stay with us? Your call, mister. Just make it in a hurry, because I don’t have time to play games here.”

“You cannot do this!” Luis shouted, balling his hands into fists beneath the table.

“Try me. I’d love to sign you off, mister. I don’t need sulky little boys on my team. I need mature men who are ready to be responsible, who are hungry to fly and who want to go after the real bad guys. You want to target someone in your gun sights, you aim at them, not me. Is that understood?”

Wiping his wrinkled brow, Luis cast a desperate glance toward Antonio. His friend stared straight ahead and refused to look at him. Jerking a look at Morales, Luis saw the same hint of laughter in the warrant’s eyes. He thought this was funny! Angrily, Luis swung his gaze back to the C.O.

“I’m staying.”

“No, mister, you will say ‘Chief Anderson, I’d like to stay with the team. Please?’”

Breathing hard, Luis repeated the words through gritted teeth. He watched with relief as Anderson put the order back in the file and the file back in the briefcase.

“Very good, Mr. Dominguez. Thank you for the information on your flight background.”

Cam turned to the last pilot. Her heart speeded up, but not out of fear. It was something else—some other feeling that emerged so quickly under the tense circumstances that Cam couldn’t name it. As she looked into his warm, cinnamon-colored eyes and saw the slightest hint of a smile on his full, well-shaped mouth, she struggled to keep her voice low and firm. “Chief Morales?”

“Ma’am, I was born in a helicopter.”

She looked at him and blinked once. “Excuse me?”

Gus grinned and opened his hands. “My mother was in labor with me. She’s Yaqui Indian, from northern Mexico. She was visiting her family when she went into labor with me. My father, who is a U.S. Army helicopter pilot, had flown her to the desolate area where her parents lived, and flew her out again when her water broke. He was hoping to get to Nogales, and then across the border into Texas, to get her to the hospital on time.”

Cam smiled. “Don’t tell me! You were actually born in the helo?”

He liked her smile. There wasn’t anything not to like about their new C.O., Gus decided. That pale sprinkling of freckles across her broad cheekbones, the way her hair glinted with red-gold highlights beneath the washed-out fluorescent light above them…Chief Anderson suddenly looked a lot less threatening than she had earlier.

“Yes, ma’am. By the time my father landed the helo on the hospital roof, she’d given birth to me.” Gus’s smile widened. “The attendants who came out were kinda surprised.”

“That’s a great story, Chief Morales. So, did the helicopter ride stay in your blood?” Cam liked the way his eyes crinkled and dimples flashed as he smiled fully.

“Yes, ma’am, it did. My father flew civilian helicopters for the Civil Air Patrol in his free time. I got my helo license when I was thirteen years old, when my legs were long enough to reach the pedals.”

“I see,” Cam said, trying not to sound impressed. But she was. The natural warmth and openness of Morales compared to the other two pilots was like night and day. Cam realized instantly that he didn’t have a problem with his C.O. being a woman, as the other two did. Jotting down the info, she asked lightly, “And I suppose you have over a thousand hours built up in helos?”

“Yes, ma’am. I got fifteen hundred in civilian types. When I joined the army air program, I acquired six hundred more hours.”

“And in the Apache?”

He shrugged. “Not enough.”

Cam grinned. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be getting plenty of hours shortly. We’ll make up for it.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Hours in the Apache?”

“A hundred and fifty.”

Cam knew that the school gave each student seventy hours of flight time. She frowned and looked at Morales’s personnel jacket. “Where did you get eighty more?”

“Oh…” Gus opened his hands and had the good grace to flush beneath her sharp gaze. “Well, I volunteered for a special class on drug interdiction tactics before I went through Apache school.”

Frowning, Cam studied him. “How is that possible, Chief?”

Slightly embarrassed, Gus said, “My father’s influence, if you want the truth, ma’am. He’s head of an Apache squadron. He wanted me to learn the drill. At the time, I was flying another type of helo. Within his squadron, he had set up a unique program of flight interdiction tactics, so he wrote orders for me to attend it.”

“I see family nepotism at work,” Cam murmured. “Well…that’s good.”

“Yes, ma’am. I loved it.”

“And that’s what got you into Apache school, officially?” Cam knew there were hundreds of applicants for each seat in the training program, and it was the most highly prized aviation school in the army. Morales had the good grace to look humble when he owned up to the nepotism that had gotten him that far.

“I got in because I passed all the tests and qualifications,” he told her seriously. “Not because of my father.”

“I understand, Chief.” Cam brightened and sat back. She looked at all three pilots. “We’re officially a squadron, according to the U.S. Army, as well as a black ops branch of the Mexican Air Force. We’re Black Jaguar Squadron 2, a spinoff, as it were, of my squadron down in Peru.” Cam pulled three patches from her briefcase and carefully laid them out on the table.

“This is our squadron patch, gentlemen. As you can see, it is square, with a red and blue border around it. In the center is a black jaguar with gold eyes on a white background, and our squadron name is embroidered at the bottom in gold.” Cam pointed to the patches. “You’re going to earn them the hard way—through a lot of work and elbow grease, consistent one hundred and ten percent effort on your part. I have it in my power as C.O. to release you from the obligation to learn drug flight interdiction at any time, if you fail to jump over the bar I hold up for you. Where I come from, you earn every hour you spend in the seat of an Apache. It’s not a given that you deserve to sit there.”

Gus saw Anderson’s expression grow even more serious as she perused the three of them, her hands folded on the table. On the right shoulder of her uniform he saw the identical patch, on the other shoulder an American flag.

“If you thought Apache school was tough, just wait. This is where we separate the women from the girls…” Cam smiled slightly “…or in this case, the men from the boys. If you’ve got what it takes, at the end of an eight-week period you’ll be awarded this patch. If not, I’ll be calling you in, writing you up a new set of orders and you’re out of here. Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” the men murmured in a subdued chorus.

“Good,” Cam said, relief flowing through her. She gathered up the patches and placed them back in her briefcase. “Now, I need an X.O.—executive officer.” She looked at Morales. “You’re it, Chief Morales.”

“Me?” Gus hooked a thumb toward his chest, surprised. He saw a hint of approval in Chief Anderson’s green eyes.

“Why not you? You’ve got more hours in helos. You’ve had advanced drug flight interdiction training. From this moment on, you’re my X.O., which means you get a lot more duty and a lot less free time to party in Tijuana. Are you up for it, Chief Morales?”

Straightening in his chair, Gus took a deep breath. If he carried out his duties well, he just might go from a CWO2 to another pay grade. He could barely conceal his excitement. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll take it. Thank you. I hope I won’t let you down.”

Cam smiled thinly. “The only way you fail, Chief, is by not trying.” She looked at the other two pilots, whose sulky expressions indicated their current mood.

“Okay, let’s roll,” she told them. “Get on your feet, gentlemen, and let’s go out and meet our ladies.”

Chapter 4

Gus could hardly wait to get his turn in the Apache with Chief Anderson. The rest of the day was spent studying special manuals of flight interdiction operations back in their tiny H.Q. office while she took each of them for an introductory flight. Gus was still champing at the bit when he saw Luis Dominguez come back from his hour-long stint. The Mexican was looking disgusted. His brow was beaded with sweat and the underarms of his flight uniform were dark with perspiration. Chief Anderson escorted him to the office and ordered Zaragoza to come with her next.

The moment Dominguez was alone with Gus, he started bitching. “That woman is loco! Crazy!”

“Why?” Gus asked, placing his hand across his manual to keep his place. Luis’s face was dark with frustration. He started to reach for the pack of cigarettes he kept in the left thigh pocket of his flight suit and then thought better of it, remembering the orders that this area was now off-limits to smoking. Cursing, he glared around the simple but clean facility.

“She put me through a flight test of maneuvers I’ve never done before!” he fumed, crossing his arms and glaring down at his unopened flight manual.

“Isn’t that what the introductory flight’s about? To find out what areas we’re weak or strong in?” Gus asked Luis mildly.

“Bah! The witch had me trying to do things I wasn’t taught in school. I failed miserably. She sat in the back seat with that clipboard across her knees, rating me on every damn movement I made in the Apache.”

“Did she say you failed?”

Luis blew out a long breath. “She let me know every time I did something wrong! I heard her voice in my helmet every minute of that damned flight!”

Gus shrugged. “School doesn’t fully prepare us for what we have to do out here, Luis. No matter what squadron we got sent to, we’d have a lot to learn. It’s called advance training, amigo.”

“Oh,” Luis sneered, lifting his upper lip, his canine teeth showing, “and I suppose you’re looking forward to getting graded on every flight maneuver out there?”

“It’s inevitable. It’s part of our learning curve. How can Chief Anderson develop a proper training program for us if she’s not familiar with our abilities and skills?”

Getting up, Luis shoved the chair away in disgust. Pacing the room, he growled, “I can hardly wait until she flies with all three of us. It will be like the Spanish Inquisition. She’ll peel off our hides, one at a time. It’s shaming. It’s cruel. At least the inspector pilots back at Fort Rucker did it on a one-to-one basis. She’ll enjoy shaming us.”

Grinning, Gus said, “Luis, you never had this reaction to any of your instructors at Fort Rucker.”

“None of them were women, that’s why!” Standing, he glared out the window and tapped his boot on the floor.

Gus smiled to himself. He knew Chief Anderson was going to put him through his paces and then some. However, he wasn’t worried, because he felt intuitively that she would be fair.

“This wasn’t a flight test to see if you get to stay or not,” Gus reminded him. “If you screwed up out there, look at it this way—you have only one way to go. Up.”

“Bah! I need a smoke.” With a snort, Luis headed out the door and down the hall to the back door.

Sitting there, Gus closed his eyes and pictured Anderson in his mind. She was tall and womanly, curved deliciously in all the right places even though she wore that drab and loose-fitting flight uniform. He liked her face, liked the sprinkling of freckles that made her look younger than she probably was. Her face was oval, with huge green eyes that he could easily read, although Gus wasn’t sure she realized how much her emotions were revealed in them. Oh, Anderson tried to keep a poker face, but Gus felt he had an edge because he could see her feelings clearly in those evergreen eyes of hers.

He liked the fact that although she worked in a man’s world, she kept her reddish-colored hair long, wearing it parted in the middle. He liked the way it curled slightly around her attractive face. He longed to ask her personal questions. Maybe he’d get the chance on the flight, but he didn’t think so. She was all-business.

Gently closing the manual, after marking his place with a piece of paper, Gus got to his feet. Glancing at his watch, he realized it would be another forty minutes before Chief Anderson came back and asked him to sit in that cockpit and fly the Apache. A thrill raced through him. He loved flying that helicopter. And he sensed that Anderson was one helluva pilot at the controls of that combat machine. Gus could barely rein in his eagerness to learn the finer techniques of flying from her.

After pouring himself another cup of coffee, he stood at the window and pondered another reaction he was having to Anderson. She was a woman. Not just any woman, but a very unique one in the highly skilled role of combat helicopter pilot. That excited him. Enthralled him. Made him very curious about her. Who was she really? Where had she been born? What had happened to her as she was growing up to push her into this line of work? Was flying a passion with her or just a job?

So many questions and no answers. At least, not yet, he thought, grinning a little as he lifted the cup to his lips.

As he stood there eyeing the small, sun-baked military airfield and the many red roofs in the distance that showed where the sprawling city of Tijuana began, Gus felt a twinge in his heart. Frowning, he wondered where it had come from. Unsure, he turned and went back to his manual. The more he read, the more he would be prepared for what Chief Anderson would put him through. He didn’t want to fail her. He wanted to at least scrape by with a shred of her respect for him intact. After all, she’d chosen him as X.O., and he didn’t want to start off by having her questioning her choice.

Cam’s heart wouldn’t settle down as Chief Morales flawlessly took the Apache off the ground and rose to an altitude of five thousand feet, heading in the direction of San Diego.

The shaking and shuddering of the Apache always soothed her fractiousness when she felt uptight or nervous. Now, as she sat in the piggyback seat above and behind the pilot’s cockpit, with the late afternoon sun shining through the Plexiglas and the cooling air-conditioning sweeping around her, Cam smiled for the first time. She settled the clipboard on her lap, the pen in her gloved hand shaking with the vibration of the aircraft.

“Memorize this route, Chief,” she told him over the cabin intercom, moving the mike a little closer to her lips. Pulling down the dark green visor that shielded the upper half of her face from the invasive sunlight, Cam kept her attention on the two HUDS—heads-up displays—in front of her.

“The U.S. and Mexico have authorized us to use one specific air corridor along the border for takeoffs and landings during our training phase. Because the president of Mexico doesn’t want the civilian population to get overly concerned about military gunships in the vicinity, we have to fly in restricted airspace.”

“I understand, Ms. Anderson,” he replied.

“It was in your new flight manual.”

“Yes, ma’am, it was, and I’d already read that part of it.”

Cam chuckled. “You’re probably the only one who’s cracked the manual.”

Gus grinned. He liked the feel of the Apache around him. She was a deadly machine—board ugly, but dangerous and efficient. His right hand on the cyclic between his legs, his left hand around the collective, he said, “I’ll bet they’re both looking at it in detail now.”

How badly Cam wanted to break down the all-business facade with Morales. She liked his easygoing nature. Earlier, when he’d walked around the gunship as part of the ground check, she’d seen his eye for detail. He missed nothing. How friendly a C.O. could be with her X.O. was something Cam hadn’t a clue about. Was an executive officer like a best friend? Someone she could confide in? Or should she trust her X.O. only up to a certain point and try to keep an emotional distance from him? Cam wished she could talk to Maya about this. And she would, tonight, after she went to her barracks room. In the meantime, she would simply enjoy Gus’s warm, low laugh, which sent tingles through her for no explainable reason.

“Once you hit the San Diego vector at Imperial Beach, make a ninety degree left turn and head out to sea for fifteen miles, Chief Morales.”