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Camp Raven, the Green Zone, Baghdad

The leather sofa in the Black Management trailer really wasn't wide enough for Camille and Hunter, but it was bigger and more comfortable than the bathroom floor, so they made it work. Camille woke up with Hunter spooning her, his muscular arms wrapped around her, keeping her from tumbling off the edge. Her skin was clammy, her hair matted with shampoo and she smelled of sex, but she was happy. She caressed his arm and felt a scar on his left bicep that she didn't remember. She traced its outline with her finger. Hunter muttered something and shifted his legs.

“You awake?” Camille said.

“Yeah, my body's been so constantly blasted with adrenaline for the last few days, I can't come down.”

“I don't remember this scar. What's it from?”

“A tactical mistake I'm not going to make a second time.”

Camille reached for a penlight on the coffee table. Hunter pretended to let go of her and she put her arms out to break a fall that never happened. She turned on the penlight and shined the thin beam onto his arm. “Ouch. That looks like it hurt. A knife, huh? I was expecting a bullet wound. You get in a bar fight?”

“Something a little rougher than that.” He reached for her hand, deflecting the beam. “Give me that. I'm going to use it to inspect you over from head to toe.”

“That's a tattoo there underneath the scar, isn't it? I thought you hated tattoos?”

Hunter immediately pulled the sheet up over his arm.

“What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing. Get back here and let me show you why they call us Bushmen.” He laughed.

Camille flung the sheet back and shined the penlight on his arm. A scar ripped through a tattoo of a heart. Much of the black lettering had been cut away with the damaged tissue, but she saw all she needed. As in a Rorschach test, she tried to see an “S” in the first mangled letters; then she looked for a “C” even though he never called her Camille, but she had known even before she pulled down the sheet that it was once a “J.”

“J” for Julia Lewis.

Hunter had once had a tattoo for his ex-wife and after having it removed, he swore he would never do it again—and he wouldn't for Camille. But apparently he felt differently about Julia Lewis.

“I should kill you.” All she could think about was getting away from him before he hurt her even more. She sprang from the sofa to grab her clothes and turn on a light.

 

When Stella jumped off the sofa, Hunter was sure she was going for a weapon. Earlier he had made note of a USP Tactical lying on the coffee table and he caught another glimpse of it as she moved the penlight away from him. He lunged for it and beat her to it. He flipped off the safety just as she flipped on the light.

“Hand's up. Don't move.” Hunter pointed the gun at the center of her chest.

“You son of a bitch. You're screwing me again.” She held her hands out, but seemed to be shifting her body weight to her left leg.

“Listen to me, dammit!”

“Fuck you!”

 

Camille could feel the heat rise from her chest, up her neck and into her face. What the hell was he doing, pulling a weapon on her—her own gun—when she was trying to turn on a light? The fucker was lying and he had plenty to hide.

Hunter said, “It's not what it—”

“—seems. Go to hell.” Camille lowered her hands and took a step toward him, glancing to where she always kept her Ka-Bar knife on the right side of her desk. She wanted to slice. She wanted blood. She wanted pain, ripping, cutting pain. “I'd rather be dead than hear you say that one more time. Shoot me, you motherfucker. Do it!”

 

“Stop!” Hunter said.

Stella was calling his bluff, closing the gap between them. She moved smoothly, a panther, sensing weakness, moving in on her prey. He could never shoot her and she knew it. Her eyes were wild with rage. As she looked around the room, she averted them from the Ka-Bar knife on the edge of her desk. She wanted that knife. He took a step closer to where his clothes were piled on the floor to make it a little easier for her to get to it. At the moment she lunged for the knife, he tripped her and knocked her to the floor, snatching the weapon for himself.

As fast as he could, he scooped up his clothes and ran from the trailer.

Camp Raven, the Green Zone, Baghdad

Hunter didn't understand why she was reacting so strongly, but he had scars that reminded him not to stick around and try to find out. He sprinted naked across the Black Management compound, circling behind her trailer so she wouldn't have a clean line of fire when she ran out the door. Knowing her, though, she might blow out a window to get to him. The sun was just coming up and no one was outside. A few hundred yards away, a dozen Black Hawk helicopters and several Little Birds were parked unattended. He knew that like all military helicopters, they would be serviced and ready for flight. With a natural sense for roll, pitch and yaw, he could fly anything—anything which was meant to fly. As far as he was concerned, god intended flight only for things with wings and anything else was begging for trouble, particularly helicopters. But he didn't see much other choice if he wanted to make it out of the Green Zone alive. Stella would be after him any second.

He ran toward the helicopters, trying to figure out which one to try for. The Little Bird observation and assault helo was favored by black-ops types for its heavy weapons and maneuverability, but the Black Hawks had greater range and his limited piloting skills meant that he wouldn't be able to take advantage of the Little Bird's greater maneuverability anyway. He ran to the nearest Black Hawk and jumped inside. He slung his leg around the stick and reached for the ignition, but the key was missing. He used the knife as a screwdriver and worked as quickly as he could to remove a metal plate below the ignition like he'd seen pilots in his unit do whenever they had lost a key. The first rays of the morning gave him barely enough light to see what he was doing. His big fingers fumbled with screws and he pried off the panel, sliced through the wires leading to the ignition, then twisted them together.

Keyless entry, Zulu-style
.

There was still no sign of Stella, but he knew the only indication of her could be a small red laser dot ranging the distance between her rifle and his chest. He reached to the overhead console and flipped on the APU, then the generators and the start button for each engine.

Silence.

The engines didn't even let out a whimper.

The trailer was spinning and Camille touched her forehead to see if there was any blood where Hunter had made her smack her head on the desk. As soon as she could stand, she grabbed for a desert tan T-shirt and khaki shorts, not bothering with a bra or panties. An M-4 assault rifle in hand, she dashed from her trailer, still sticky from sex and burning from anger. Pete stepped from her trailer.

“Which way did he go?” Camille said.

“Who? What's going on?” Pete said.

“Stone. I want all personnel on the alert for him. Deadly force is authorized. I want that lying son of a bitch dead.”

 

Hunter's mind raced through the startup sequence. If a helo were on the tarmac, it had to be airworthy. These things were kept in top shape and it wasn't like a car which might have run its battery down from leaving the lights on all night. He leaned back and glanced at the battery behind the copilot's seat. It was unplugged—standard operating procedure for military helicopters. He turned everything back off, then wedged his body between the seats, leaned back, but couldn't get to it. Counting the seconds, he jumped from the cockpit, threw open the crew door and shoved the plug into the battery.

He sprung back into the pilot's seat without bothering to strap himself in and flipped the overhead switches.

“Come on, baby.”

He pressed the starters and breathed again when he heard a welcome hum. At first the huge blades lumbered past the window and in moments turned into a dark distortion in the otherwise clear early morning air. He shoved the throttles all the way forward. With his left hand, he pulled up on the collective and the bird lifted into the air.

Textbook
.

 

Camille heard the whoosh of the Black Hawk starting up and dashed around the trailer in time to see it lift into the air. She wouldn't even take Chronister's money. This one was on her. She dropped to one knee, aimed the M-4 at the vulnerable tail rotor and she squeezed off a burst.

Hunter heard bullets pinging against the hull. Only a dozen feet off the ground, the helicopter immediately yawed to the right, turning clockwise along with the rotors. None of the warning lights on the dashboard had gone off and he knew the bullets weren't his problem—he was. He stomped the left pedal and the helicopter spun the other direction and didn't seem to want to stop. His heart pounded as he hit the right pedal and it whirled again the other way. Saddam's Presidential Palace blurred past him, then Stella's trailer. A hundred feet off the ground, he danced on the pedals as he struggled to compensate for the gyrations while the helicopter spun around out of control.

 

Camille stopped firing, stood and watched as the helicopter twirled around like a Tilt-A-Whirl, all the while gaining altitude.

“That was a damn good shot.” Pete stood beside her and watched it spiral upwards.

“I don't think so,” Camille said. “If I hit it, it would behave that way, but he wouldn't be climbing. Without the tail rotor he should enter auto-rotation and take her down immediately. I think he's just a really lousy helicopter pilot. That asshole better not crash my bird.”

 

Hunter was dizzy and his stomach felt like it had been left behind several rotations ago. He realized he was overloading the machine with inputs before it could even respond. His eyes closed and focused on finding balance. With each spin he forced himself to go easier on the pedals, overcompensating a little less as he slowly gained command.

 

As soon as Camille realized Hunter was getting the hang of it, she ran toward the helicopters on the ramp. “Get me a pilot, now!”

 

Hunter clutched the cyclic control so hard, his fingers were growing numb. The bend in the Tigris was in sight behind him, its deep green waters still a dark strip in the early morning light. He could see the famous cross sabers on Saddam's old parade ground in front of him. More or less in control of the helicopter over Baghdad, Hunter had now executed his plan in full and didn't know what the hell he was going to do next, other than get dressed. Flying in the nude was not what it was cracked up to be. His ass was sweaty and sticking to the NOMEX seat, but the rest of him was freezing to death. The troop doors in the back had been removed for combat and the cool air was whipping around. He pulled the shirt on, then managed to slither into the Dockers without sending the helo into a spin.

He checked the fuel indicator. There was enough to fly a little over four hours, depending on the winds, so he was in range of Iran, Saudi, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait and probably even Turkey, although the altitude would zap his fuel. All of the choices sucked. He couldn't find any charts and the last thing he wanted was to run out of fuel in the desert, so he was limited to following the Tigris or the Euphrates. The port of Kuwait offered ships to anywhere in the world, but travel by sea took too much time and the place had too many Americans and too many bad memories. He pressed on the left pedal, shoved the cyclic forward and headed away from the rising sun into the desert. He would hit the Euphrates, hang a right and follow it north to Syria. With any luck, his old contacts in Damascus would still be alive.

The Green Zone, Baghdad

The Rubicon security executive Larry Ashland had just dozed off when a phone call from the CIA case officer Joe Chronister woke him up with good news: Hunter Stone had been spotted in Baghdad. It wasn't good news to Ashland, because it meant that he was still in danger of exposure. As long as the Force Zulu operator was alive, Ashland's cover with Rubicon was at risk. Stone had recognized him from Afghanistan and also from the Iraqi insurgents' safe house and the Zulu operator knew he was a spy. Judging from their middle-of-the-night encounter in the Rubicon offices at Camp Tornado Point, Stone didn't seem to understand who Ashland was working for or what he was doing spying on Rubicon. But it didn't matter. If the Zulu operator passed along the information about him, some analyst along the way might put the pieces together and blow his cover. He couldn't allow that to happen. Stone had to die.

Seven hours later word came in that Stone had stolen a Black Management helicopter. Ashland immediately dialed the Rubicon Baghdad chief of operations, stepping into his pants while he waited for him to pick up.

“It's Larry.” Ashland said into the secure phone as he zipped his fly. He gave the Rubicon ops chief a situation report. “I don't care how much of a head start he's got on you. Find some helicopters in the direction he's headed, scramble them and neutralize him. I'm on my way.” He slammed down the phone, cursing his own stupidity. Ashland sensed that the blow-back was just getting started. All he'd wanted to do was keep Stone from tying him to that earlier operation in Afghanistan and blowing his cover. He should've taken Stone out himself instead of relying on his former assistant Kyle to do the cleanup work. At least his own tidying up with Kyle was a little more thorough.