8:30 PM, Mountain Standard Time
February 17th, 2012
El Paso, Texas
Mitch Tucker had been circling El Paso for about half an hour now in his Beech King Air. Agent Carina Hansen of the Drug Enforcement Administration had been using that time to do aerial reconnaissance of Fort Bliss, twenty-seven thousand feet below.
“Alright,” she said, comparing the photos she had been taking with her digital camera to the printout she had of Fort Bliss. “This appears to be the ECOMCON building, and according to the fix they have on Senator Graham’s dermal implant, he’s in there.”
“Wait, his do who with the what now?” Tucker asked. “Dermal implant?”
“He had it put in when he was the DCI,” Carina replied. “It’s a computer chip in the deeper layers of skin. It’s undetectable by anything the Army has, and it’s powerful enough to be detected from behind the strongest communications jammers that the United States has.”
“Interesting,” mused Tucker. “Okay, continue.”
“There’s a road approximately one and a half miles long that runs right past the building. There’s no gates on it, no blocks – you should be able to land and takeoff on that road, no problem. We land, we invade, we extract Senator Graham, and we get the hell out.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Tucker replied with a laugh. “What about aerial defenses?”
“We fly out about twenty miles, take it down in the dirt, and pop up right before we hit the fort’s boundary,” Carina said. “Simple as that.”
“Yeah, if you have a death wish,” Tucker grumbled. However, he turned away from Fort Bliss, putting it on his six and accelerating.
In less than ten minutes, the King Air had reached a point about twenty-five miles from Fort Bliss. “Okay, you need to turn to a heading of 154 to line up with the road,” Carina told him.
“Turn-ING…” Carina looked up and rolled her eyes at Tucker’s deplorable Fozzie Bear impression.
The King Air lazily rolled to the right, coming slowly around to a heading of one hundred fifty-four degrees. Once he had his heading set, Tucker took the Beech aircraft earthward.
His rate of descent was fairly sharp at first, but as he got closer to the ground, he leveled out, until he came to a steady altitude of two hundred feet. “I may have to make some sharp maneuvers depending on terrain,” he warned Carina. “I hope you don’t have airsickness issues.”
“Not generally,” she replied. “As long as I can see out the window.”
Tucker continued at about two hundred feet until he was three miles out from Fort Bliss, and then he dropped the altitude to fifty feet. “Dirt time.”
At two miles out, the radio crackled to life. “Unidentified aircraft, you have entered restricted US Army airspace. Reverse course immediately or you will be considered a threat.”
“Bring it on,” Tucker muttered to himself. He pushed the King Air’s throttle to the limits. The twin turboprops growled and whined as it pushed the aircraft to its maximum speed.
The aircraft dashed over the boundary of Fort Bliss at three hundred fifty miles per hour. Anti-aircraft guns tracked it and shot off a few tracers, but quickly stopped as the Beech airplane flew over the fort.
Tucker could see the dimly lit end of the road directly ahead. He chopped the King Air’s speed and brought the aircraft down into ground effect, lowering and locking the landing gear as he did so. As soon as he crossed over the end of the road, he cut the throttles to idle, letting the Beechcraft bounce to the paved surface and decelerate.
He let the airplane roll out for about a mile, until he came up on the ECOMCON building. Standing on the brakes, he brought the King Air to a stop directly outside the building, using the starboard turboprop to turn the aircraft back around.
As Carina opened the hatch, a group of four soldiers came dashing up to the aircraft. “Who the hell are you?!” one of them shouted.
Carina’s response was to extend her hand, holding a Taser, and put an electronic dart into each of the four men. They all collapsed to the pavement, collapsing. Carina jumped out of the airplane, and started running toward the building, Mitch Tucker hot on her heels.
The front door had a thumbprint scanner on it. Carina didn’t have the time for that, so she pulled out her gun and shot the front door. The glass panel shattered.
“No bulletproof glass… lazy, lazy,” she muttered as she dashed through the door.
The Army couldn’t have made things any easier on her. There were big signs on the wall pointing to the “ECOMCON COMMAND CENTER.” Carina smiled and shook her head, running down the hall, Taser at the ready.
By the time she and Mitch Tucker reached the command center, four more soldiers lay convulsing on the floor behind them. The command center, again, had a thumbprint entry system – and as Carina quickly found out, the Army had chosen once again to not invest in bulletproof glass for the facility.
As Carina stepped through the door into the command center, Taser held high, a dozen soldiers swung M-16s in her direction. But she ignored them all. “Good evening, Senator Graham!” she called across the room to Art Graham, handcuffed to a chair.
Graham looked at her, and rolled his eyes. “Of all the agents to send to get me out,” he said. “You gonna handcuff me to a bed next?”
Carina smiled and pouted in a rather seductive – and in Tucker’s opinion, completely inappropriate to the moment – fashion. “Only if you want me to.”
Tucker had had enough. He stepped into the room as well – and the guns started to turn toward him, but the soldiers holding them wavered a bit upon seeing this 6’6” black man, wearing a battle dress uniform, with the stripes of a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant on his sleeves. He looked around the room, took stock of the situation, and then boomed, “GOOD EVENING, SOLDIERS!”
For every non-commissioned officer in the room – from the privates with the guns to the master sergeant manning the radios, the reaction was instinctive and automatic. They all snapped to attention, and in unison, shouted back, “GOOD EVENING, DRILL SERGEANT!”
Tucker smiled. “Stand down, soldiers!”
Colonel Ron Lesley jumped out of the command chair in the center of the room. “I don’t think so!” he shouted. “Weapons up, soldiers!”
“Listen to me!” Tucker bellowed. “You have a choice here! If you disobey the colonel, you might get in trouble. You might be disciplined for disobeying a senior officer. However, if you OBEY his orders, you will all be subject to charges of treason and conspiracy against the President of the United States!”
Tucker was kind of bullshitting that last part. He didn’t know for sure that they would be subject to those charges even if the mission was successful. However, hearing those words come from the mouth of a man who was clearly a drill sergeant was enough for every single one of them – most of them lowered their weapons, but two actually turned and aimed their M-16s at Colonel Lesley.
“Alright!” Carina exclaimed, a note of happiness in her voice. “Now that we’ve got that settled, I need somebody to uncuff Senator Graham, please?”
A young corporal, standing next to Graham, immediately reached into his pocket and retrieved a key. Bending down, he unlocked Graham’s handcuffs. “My apologies, sir,” he said to the former CIA director as he rose from his chair.
“Don’t worry about it,” Graham replied. “You were just doing your job.”
He crossed the command center to the two standing by the door. “Agent Hansen,” he said. “And you are…”
“Gunnery Sergeant Mitchell Tucker, United States Marine Corps Reserve, sir!” Tucker responded.
“Art Graham, Senator from North Carolina. May I recommend we get the hell out of here?”
“With pleasure, sir!”
11:14 PM, Eastern Standard Time (9:14 PM MST)
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
The secure telephone unit on Director Tyler’s desk rang, rousing Chuck from his half-sleeping state. He looked around the room dazedly. Director Tyler was out somewhere in the building, and John Casey was sleeping like the dead.
Rubbing a hand over his face, he took a breath. Picking up the phone, he said, “Uh, Bartowski, secure?”
“Well, hello, hot stuff,” he heard from the other end.
Chuck sighed. “Hello, Carina. Are you secure?”
“That’s a negative,” she replied. “Just wanted to let you know, mission accomplished. And I will be coming by to collect at some point. I guarantee it.”
“Carina… don’t start.”
“You’ll never know what hit you,” she replied with an evil laugh. And then she hung up the phone.
Chuck sighed, replacing the handset of the STU-8 in its cradle. He knew Carina wasn’t joking. He knew there was a very real possibility that in the near future, the DEA agent would show up and try to seduce him. And when that happened, there were going to be problems.
Reaching into his pocket, Chuck withdrew his cell phone. He had no idea where Sarah was, had no idea when she would get the message, but he needed to let her know that Senator Graham was safe and secure.
He started to compose a text message, but then stopped. To the best of his knowledge, Sarah didn’t know that he had even been captured.
Chuck closed his eyes, then started writing on a piece of paper. He needed to make the message as brief as possible.
Finally, he had it. “SenG cpt b/Flc Ft Bliss. Resc b/Carina & Moab USMC. Miss u 5683.”
1:30 PM, British Indian Ocean Territories Time (3:30 AM, EST)
February 18th, 2012
Near Diego Garcia, BIOT
Sarah was roused from her fitful sleep by the feeling of a vibration in her pocket. Drowsily looking around, she saw that Bryce was still sleeping. Rachel and Will were flying the Shadow, and they both looked exhausted.
“You guys doing okay?” she asked sleepily as she reached in her pocket to retrieve her cell phone.
“Yeah, we’re good,” Will replied. “It’d be nice to land soon, but we’re good for the moment.”
Sarah withdrew her cell phone. She had one bar of service – Must be getting a bounce off a tower on Diego Garcia, she thought.
The phone told her she had one new text message. She pressed the read button.
“SenG cpt b/Flc Ft Bliss. Resc b/Carina & Moab USMC. Miss u 5683,” it said.
She translated that in her head. “SenG cpt b/Flc Ft Bliss” meant that Senator Graham had been captured by Fulcrum when he had gone to do his site inspection. That was not good. “Resc b/Carina & Moab USMC” meant that Carina Hansen and Mitch Tucker had gone in to retrieve Graham and had somehow been successful. That was almost unbelievable.
And then there was “Miss u 5683.” The “5683” was a shorthand that she and Chuck used in text messages for “I love you,” since 5683 spelled out “love” on the telephone keypad.
She smiled at that, and hit the reply button. The one bar of service kept flickering, so Sarah quickly typed out “5683 2” – “I love you too” – and hit the send button.
“Message sent,” the phone told her, just before the bar of service was lost.
Sarah slipped her phone back into her pocket and closed her eyes. She quickly fell back asleep.
Half an hour later, she was reawakened by Will Williamson’s hand shaking her knee. “Hey,” he said as she opened her eyes. “It’s go time. I need you and Larkin to start firing up the computers and getting ready to shut down the Eisenhower.”
“Right,” she said, her voice still heavy with sleep. “Bryce…”
Bryce didn’t stir. “Hey, Bryce,” she said, reaching over and shaking his shoulder.
“Don’t wanna,” he grumbled, not even really coming to a conscious state.
“Bryce!” She reached over and gently smacked the back of his head. His eyes popped open, and his hand reflexively reached out and grabbed Sarah’s wrist.
“Good morning to you, too,” she said sarcastically. “Can I have my wrist back?”
“Sorry,” Bryce said insincerely, letting go of her wrist. “Guess I’m not used to being woken up via smack to the head.”
“Well, you weren’t waking up any other way,” Sarah replied. “We need to get to work. Start firing up those computers, would you?”
Ten minutes later, the computers were finally ready to do their thing. “Okay,” Rachel Harrison instructed them from the pilot’s seat. “Both of your sets of computers should have icons marked ‘Full-spectrum jam’. Double click on that to start the program.”
Bryce and Sarah both started the program. “It’s asking me to turn on my transmitters,” Sarah reported.
“Mine too,” Bryce added.
“We don’t want to do that yet,” Rachel replied. “It would tell the Eisenhower where we were before we’re close enough. We need to wait about another fifteen minutes, and then we’ll be close enough that the full-spectrum jamming will shut down their radar and track-on-jam systems as well.”
“Hey, what’s this?” Bryce asked, holding up a 1/8th inch stereo cord.
“That’s for connecting an audio source,” Will Williamson said. “We use that when we’re MIJI’ing the enemy – in other words, we broadcast false audio signals over the full spectrum. It’s especially useful if we’re doing psychological warfare sorts of things.”
“Interesting,” Bryce mused, and then fell silent.
The next fifteen minutes seemed to take forever. Sarah felt like she was sitting on pins and needles waiting for something to happen. Finally, Rachel detected a radar sweep from the Eisenhower and said, “Okay, fire ‘em up!”
Bryce and Sarah both flipped the switches to activate their transmitters, and clicked “OK” on the computer screens to begin transmitting. Immediately, the radios started emitting an unfortunate squealing noise. Will reached out and flicked a switch to squelch the sound.
“We should be alright between here and the carrier,” Rachel said. “They might send up fighters to check us out, but they won’t fire on an American aircraft without damn good reason.”
And sure enough, five minutes later, two F/A-18 Hornets joined up on the Shadow, one on either side of it. Immediately, Rachel and Will reached to their shoulders, pulled off Velcroed-on American flag patches, and held them against the windows.
The two Hornets held formation for a moment, then both wagged their wings and broke off. “Alright, we seem to be in the clear for the moment,” Rachel said. “Let’s do this thing.”
The carrier was just a speck at that moment, but as Rachel descended and approached, it grew larger and larger. “I’ve got the ball,” she muttered to nobody in particular, with the radios offline.
Will pulled a lever to deploy the tailhook, and the ES-3 continued to sink toward the deck of the Eisenhower. Sarah watched in fascination as the Nimitz-class carrier grew in size. She watched as the edge of the deck passed under the Shadow –
And then there was a bone-jarring jolt as the Shadow hit the deck. Rachel shoved the throttles to full, but pulled them back as soon as she felt the deck cable engage and yank the ES-3 to a stop.
“That felt like a three-wire,” Williamson said, turning to Rachel.
“Be my twenty-seventh in a row if it was,” she replied with a rather proud grin.
“Aw, yeah, gimme some SKIN!” Williamson said, holding his hand up in the air. Rachel’s grin grew even bigger as she high-fived her fellow pilot.
A group of deck handlers, dressed in brightly colored uniforms, came running up to the aircraft. One of them yanked open the hatch. “Who the hell are you peo – RACH?!”
Harrison had turned around to face him. “Well, howdy there, Commander Byrnes,” she greeted the commander of VFA-83 with a smile.
“What the hell is going on, Rachel?” he asked. “You land in an ES-3 that’s jamming the full spectrum, out of nowhere. Captain Drexler declared you AWOL three days ago.”
“I really don’t have time to explain,” Harrison replied. “All I can tell you is that I need you to do a hot refuel and load me on cat 2, and while we’re doing that, these three folks are going to go spring Commodore Saxon from the brig.”
Commander Byrnes looked at Lieutenant Commander Harrison as if she’d gone straight around the bend. “You want the deck crew to do an engines-on refuel, and you want me to let three people I’ve never seen before remove Commodore Saxon from custody? Are you kidding?”
“No,” Sarah said, removing her NCA identification card from her pocket. “National Command Authority. You need to do whatever we tell you.”
Byrnes’ eyebrows went up. “Oookay,” he said slowly. “I saw the card, I can say I was just following orders.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said.
That same time
Combat Information Center
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Alright, so we’ve got the source of the jamming sitting ON DECK?” Captain Drexler exploded in amazement. “Shut it down!”
“Can’t, sir,” one of the officers replied. “The transmitters that Ling Temco Vought built for that thing are way too powerful for us to simply counteract. I need to actually hack into their computer system and shut down the software.”
“Can you do that?”
“Absolutely, sir. I just piggyback a carrier wave onto their jamming signal. That should get me into the computer, and then I just take the damn thing down.”
“Do it!”
Sarah, Bryce, and Will were being led through the bowels of the Eisenhower by two uniformed Marines. Sarah’s NCA identification card had quieted any doubts the Marines had.
One of the Marines entered in an access code, and a door opened, revealing a fairly nicely-appointed set of quarters – albeit one that doubled as a jail cell. Forrest Saxon looked up from his bunk.
“Well, Agent Larkin, how nice to see you again,” he said upon seeing Bryce’s face. “Have you come to rescue me?”
“We have indeed, sir,” Larkin replied. “We need to go, right now.”
“Just to warn you,” Saxon said, “it would seem that Captain Jack Drexler, the commander of the carrier air wing, is a member of Fulcrum. He’s the one who tossed me in here and relieved me of duty.”
Sarah stiffened. “Wait, you mean the acting commander of CTF-77 is Fulcrum?”
Saxon nodded. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“No, it means we’re in deep shit,” Sarah responded.
“Well, then we should get moving,” Saxon said. “What’s your name, young lady?”
“Sarah Walker Bartowski, Central Intelligence Agency,” Sarah responded. “And this is Captain Will Williamson, United States Marine Corps.”
“F/A-18 pilot, sir,” Williamson added, saluting Saxon as he stepped out of the quarters.
Saxon tossed off a salute back. “Well, then, shall we?”
Five minutes later, the four reached the flight deck. The Shadow’s engines were still running, and it had been moved to the angled catapult. “This is where we part ways,” Williamson said to Sarah.
“Be careful, Will,” she urged him.
He grinned. “Sarah, I’m a gay Marine, and I’ve been okay for twelve years so far. I don’t think an aircraft carrier’s going to give me pause.”
She nodded, and then jogged off to catch up to Saxon and Bryce.
When they climbed into the Shadow, Saxon immediately took the co-pilot’s seat. “Somehow, I’m not at all surprised to see you here, Harrison,” he said to Rachel by way of greeting.
“Good to see you, too, sir,” she replied.
Sarah and Bryce were getting buckled in when their computers went down. “Uh-oh,” Bryce uttered.
“What?” asked Rachel.
“We just lost computers.”
“Oh God,” Rachel said. “That’s a big problem. The transmitters are still running, but with nothing going out, we can’t actually jam anything.”
She looked outside at the catapult operator and whirled her finger in a panicked fashion. The operator nodded and backed up quickly. “Hang on!” Rachel shouted.
A moment later, the steam catapult activated, flinging the ES-3 Shadow off the deck of the Eisenhower. Rachel shoved the throttles to full, pushing the Shadow into the sky as it dipped slightly below the flight deck.
“Everybody and their mother knows exactly where we are,” Rachel told the two in back, keeping her eyes on the sky as the Shadow clawed for altitude. “We need to get those computers back online right now.”
“I tried,” Bryce said despondently. “I got a picture of a jolly roger with a caption that said, ‘Pirates never succeed!’”
Saxon shook his head. “Drexler hacked your computer system,” he told them. “You have nothing to transmit.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “Wait a second,” she said. “That’s not true! We’ve still got the audio input – that’s strictly an analog thing!”
She dug around in her messenger bag and came up with her iPod – an iPod that Chuck had loaded with music to further “educate” her. “Bryce, plug it in and hit play!”
Bryce didn’t ask questions, he just did what Sarah ordered. A moment later, a string and brass sequence started pouring out of the radio – but it was no orchestral song.
I’m gonna make you bend and break… say a prayer but let the good times roll, in case God doesn’t show.
Bryce looked over at Sarah, an amused look on his face. “Since when does ‘Ms. Rolling Stones are Gods of Music’ like Fall Out Boy?” he asked.
“Don’t blame me, blame Chuck. He’s the one who put it on there.”
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
Combat Information Center
“They’re gone, but we shut down their computers, sir!”
“Fantastic,” Drexler said. “Alright, launch the alert birds.”
Even as he spoke, an F/A-18 shot off the forward catapult, blasting into the sky. “That was quick,” he mused.
But the lack of jamming was short-lived. Without warning, the bridge speakers began blaring a punk rock beat.
And I want these words to make things right, but it’s the wrongs that make the words come to life.
The phone in CIC rang over the din of the song. Drexler picked it up. “Drexler… what do you mean, that wasn’t one of our pilots in the Hornet?” His face grew red with anger. “WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?!”
If that’s the worst you got, better put your fingers back to the keys!
“GET ONE OF THE TOMCATS READY!” Drexler roared, storming out of the CIC.
Onboard the Shadow
Although “Thnks fr th Mmrs” was effectively blocking out any radio communication, it was not stopping radar signals. So, when Rachel saw one blip followed shortly thereafter by another take off from the Eisenhower, she started feeling somewhat of a sense of dread in the pit of her stomach.
“We’re gonna have company!”
One night, and one more time, thanks for the memories, even though they weren’t so great – he tastes like you, only sweeter!
Sarah just sat in her seat, staring at the blank computer screen in front of her. The Shadow was not meant to maneuver – it was built almost like a miniature airliner, and there was no way it could take on supersonic fighters.
She pulled out her phone and pulled up the text message from Chuck. If she was going to die, then she was going to do it with a message from her husband telling her that he loved her in front of her.
One night, yeah, and one more time, thanks for the memories, thanks for the memories – he, he tastes like you, only sweeter!
F-14 “Dachshund-One”
Drexler had been shot off the catapult of the Eisenhower without a weapons systems officer. However, he’d been flying F-14s for his entire career, and could easily pilot one solo – could probably even do it blindfolded.
Radio was down because of that damnable song streaming from the pirate ES-3, but he was still receiving radar feed over the JTIDS link with the E-2C Hawkeye that was airborne over CTF-77. Getting an exact fix on the Shadow, he punched the afterburners and roared in.
Been lookin’ forward to the future, when my eyesight is going bad, and this crystal ball…
Onboard the ES-3
“We’ve got a Tomcat coming in FAST!” Rachel called out. “Everybody hold on!”
And with that warning, she jerked the Shadow hard to the left, pulling it around TOWARD the direction the Tomcat was coming from. The pilot of the Tomcat didn’t have enough time to adjust, but he still fired his guns as he came in.
No shells hit the Shadow, but Commodore Saxon could still see the stream of tracers going past the Shadow within fifty feet as they maneuvered. “That was a little too close,” he informed them as the big fighter boomed past behind them.
It’s always cloudy except for when you look into the past, one night stand – ONE NIGHT STAND!
Dachshund-One
Drexler cursed as he pulled the F-14 back around. He suspected that Rachel Harrison was probably flying the Shadow – she was the only pilot he could think of who would’ve been able to just land a pirated aircraft onboard his ship and then convince the deck staff to get it turned around and ready to fly again.
As he brought the Tomcat back around for another pass, he warmed up the AIM-9X Sidewinders hanging from the wings. There hadn’t been time to get any Phoenix missiles loaded, otherwise he would’ve just dropped one of those on the Shadow to begin with and been done with it.
One night, and one more time, thanks for the memories, even though they weren’t so great – he tastes like you, only sweeter.
ES-3
“Shit, shit, shit!” Rachel cried out when the missile detector picked up the computers on board the Sidewinder missiles coming online. “He’s getting ready for a missile pass!”
“I’ll just assume that’s bad,” Bryce said dryly.
One night, yeah, and one more time, thanks for the memories, thanks for the memories – he, he tastes like you, only sweeter!
Dachshund-One
Drexler pulled the Tomcat around to bring it nose-to-nose with the fleeing ES-3. The newest Sidewinders had a nose-on firing ability, and he wanted to see Commodore Saxon and Commander Harrison go down in a blaze of fire.
Sixty miles between the two aircraft rapidly spiraled down. Drexler grinned as he prepared to fire – and then noticed a radar blip.
“What the hell?!”
They say I only think in form of crunching numbers, in hotel rooms, collecting Page Six lovers…
ES-3
Rachel Harrison desperately pushed the Shadow into a shallow dive, pulling it around to the left, but the much faster, much more maneuverable F-14 was more than a match for the ES-3.
She breathed deeply. “Folks, we may not be around much longer,” she said. “I’d like to say, though, it’s been an honor serving with you, Agent Walker, and Bryce, I wish we could’ve had something more. I really do.”
Commodore Saxon looked over at her. “Commander Harrison, you’ve been a dedicated member of CVW-7, and I’d like to thank you –“
He was interrupted by the sonic boom of an aircraft passing directly over them. As they watched in astonishment, an F/A-18 Hornet pulled out in front of them, and fired an AIM-120 AMRAAM missile at the approaching F-14.
Get me out of my mind, get you out of those clothes… I’m a liner away from getting you into the mood…
F/A-18 “Pirate-One”
“Dun-du-du-dun-dun, dun-du-du-dun-dun, dun-du-du-dun-dun, dun-du-du-duh!” Will Williamson sang Wagner’s Die Walküre into his oxygen mask as he came screaming in, flying to the rescue.
“FOX ONE!” he shouted as he loosed the AIM-120 missile, even though nobody would hear him say it. It was just habit.
He watched, a maniacal grin growing on his face as the AMRAAM bore in on the F-14 piloted by Jack Drexler. Drexler attempted to jink away from the incoming missile, forgetting about firing his own, but it was to no avail. The AMRAAM struck the F-14 directly between its stabilizers, blowing out both engines.
The fuel tanks ignited, and the Tomcat disintegrated, a gigantic fireball exploding and little pieces of aircraft shooting out and falling to the ocean.
One night, and one more time, thanks for the memories, even though they weren’t so great – he tastes like you only sweeter.
ES-3
The four onboard the Shadow watched in incredulity as the F-14 Tomcat disintegrated in front of them, and the F/A-18 that had blown it out of the sky flew a victory loop.
“That’s gotta be Will,” Sarah said, reaching over to the transmitter and shutting it off.
“HOWDY HO!” they heard through their headsets almost immediately.
Sarah grinned. “Nice timing, Will!” Rachel called into the microphone.
“Thank you kindly!” the Marine Corps pilot called back. “Let’s get the hell out of here, shall we?”
“You got enough gas for Guam?” Rachel asked.
“Hell yeah!” Williamson replied. “I’ll see you on Guam!”
One more night, and one more time, thanks for the memories, thanks for the memories – he, he tastes like you only sweeter!
