Chapter 6 - The Tactical Resuption
The hangar at Hunter Army Airfield was huge, the corrugated tin roof drumming with the first fat drops of a November storm. Inside, two MH-60 Black Hawks sat with their main rotors chained down, their black skins glistening under the yellow work lights.
Sarah stood near the tail rotor of the lead aircraft, her boots dark with grease from the floor. She was wearing her old green flight jacket now—the one with the name tape removed and the small, rectangular shadow where the unit patch had been cut away with a razor blade.
General Carney walked up behind her, his boots making a dry, rhythmic sound against the concrete. He had a clipboard under his arm and a cigar that wasn't lit stuck in the corner of his mouth.
“The board approved the new governance structure,” Carney said, tapping the clipboard. “Titan Tactical is now officially a subsidiary of the defense logistics command under a non-disclosure charter. Curtis’s shares have been canceled under the national security statutes. You own eighty-four percent of the voting weight now, kid.”
“And the teams?” Sarah asked, her eyes fixed on the open cabin door of the helicopter, where a young crew chief was adjusting the seat harnesses for the door gunner.
“Team Two is coming out of Erbil tomorrow night,” Carney said. “They used the new transponders. No interference from the local units. The encryption held.”
Sarah reached out and touched the black metal skin of the fuselage, her hand finding a small, circular patch where a repair crew had riveted a piece of fresh aluminum over an old entry hole. “My father designed this specific tail assembly. He told me that if you give an aircraft enough structural redundancy, it can lose half its skin and still keep the rotors turning long enough to find a flat piece of dirt.”
“He was right,” Carney said. “I’ve seen birds come back to base with nothing holding the tail together but the control cables and a prayer from the crew chief.”
He looked at her profile, his gray eye narrowing. “Vance is going to run for the congressional seat next year. He’s using your trial as his primary platform line. He’s calling himself the man who cleaned up the defense sector.”
“Let him,” Sarah said. “He’s a politician. He thinks the world is made of ink and paper. He doesn't know that the only things that matter are the things that stay together when the heat gets above twelve hundred degrees.”
She turned to look at him, her face clear, the tension that had held her mouth tight since the morning of her mother’s testimony finally dissolving into something resembling peace.
“What about you, Duane? What are you going to do now that the ledger is clear?”
Carney took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it as if he had forgotten why he was holding it. “The Secretary wants me to take a seat on the advisory council at Arlington. A lot of meetings. A lot of dry chicken and bad wine with people who think a tactical map is something you look at on an iPad.”
He smiled—a wide, ugly expression that showed his gold tooth in the back. “I told him I’d think about it. But I might just buy a boat and go down to the keys. I hear the snapper are running good this time of year.”
“You’d hate it,” Sarah said, her voice lighter than it had been in months. “You’d be bored in three days. You’d start trying to organize the shrimp boats into an assault formation.”
“Probably,” Carney admitted. He tapped her shoulder with the edge of the clipboard. “The bird’s leaving for Fort Bragg in twenty minutes, Captain. You coming with us, or are you going back to that big office in Savannah to count your money?”
May you like
Sarah looked back toward the hangar doors, where the rain was now falling in a solid, gray sheet, obscuring the runway and the trees beyond. She could feel the old burn scar beneath her shirt—a dry, tight heat that didn't hurt anymore, but remained as a permanent record of where she had been and what it had cost to get back.
“Get your gear, General,” she said, her hand reaching for the cabin frame as she stepped up into the dark interior of the helicopter. “The office can wait. We’ve got teams to bring home.”
