Look at Us Go!

WE DEAL IN STEEL -Hard Lift
by M.L. Buchman

-all rights reserved (This passage may not be used or duplicated without the author's written permission)

CHAPTER ONE

The CNN film crew had made it fun. But now . . .

The laptop stood balanced on a couple of dull green ammo cases for the minigun. Sweaty pilots and crew stood gathered around it, waiting for the network to roll the clip.

Captain Emily Beale and her crew had rushed to the tent from the Black Hawk helicopter landing area still in their hot, sticky flight gear, helmets clutched under arms.

Those who hadn’t been lucky enough to fly today wore as little as possible. A dozen guys packed the tent. They wore shorts and Army green, sleeveless tees revealing a wide variety of arm tattoos. Some with girl’s names, some snakes, some helicopters, all with feathered wings. They squatted on the dirt and sand floor, perched on cots, or stood at parade rest with their arms crossed over muscled chests. The observation jolted Emily a moment before she shrugged it back into her mind’s dustiest footlocker. Just another reminder that the entire female contingent of this forward deployment included only herself.

Wolf Blitzer came on, flashed his famous scowl cuing his multi-million person audience that the next clip would be fun, not war torn hell, not drowned mother of twins, not car pile-up at 11.

Emily’s free hand rested on the M9 Beretta pistol in her holster. Tempting. A couple of 9mm rounds through the screen might cheer her up significantly. But then they’d know how she felt. Be hard to laugh it off after that level of mayhem. She knew hundreds of ways to kill a person, but how do you kill a newscast? Shooting a laptop didn’t meet the ultimate criteria for complete suppression. She scanned the intent faces of her flightmates. Local destruction was still tempting.

“Hot from the fighting front, at an undisclosed location in the Middle East, CNN caught up with Black Hawk pilot Captain Emily Beale as she cooks up a storm for her flight crew. She’s the first, and so far the only female pilot to qualify to fly helicopters for SOAR, the elite 160th Airwing. With the Night Stalkers, as the Special Operations Aviation Regiment calls themselves, she flies, literally, where no woman has flown before.”

The clip rolled. A close-up of steak sizzling on a surface so black that it didn’t reflect the scorching, midday sun. The Black Hawk’s nose cone over the terrain following radar really had been hot enough to sear a steak. The meat had tasted damn good too. So far she could live with this.

Then the camera pulled back.

First the nose of her chopper, which was kind of cool. Nice surprise for the average viewer.

Then the camera swung toward the person wielding the cooking tongs.

She groaned. Silently. But, damn! She’d given them loads of flying footage, why she flew, had answered a thousand probing questions about a woman in a man’s world, and this is how they started. At least it would be uphill from here.
Ray Bans. Blond hair running loose over her shoulders. A trick only Special Forces, SEALs, and SOAR pilots could get away with in all the U.S. military. The first two were supposed to wear non-military hair, even mustaches and beards to blend in wherever they were inserted. SOAR pilots usually did the close-cropped, military thing, but not her squad.

The laptop image scanned down her body as if she were a model for Playboy or Hustler. This was not what she’d signed up for.

She belonged to the Black Adders, the nastiest and toughest unit that SOAR had ever fielded. That’s why they wore their hair long. It made them more like their customers, the black operations specialists they transported to and from battle. Of course, none of them minded the added bonus of being able thumb their noses at the establishment they’d give anything to defend.

The camera continued its slow scan down her body. Army green tanktop. Running shorts and army boots. Standard desert camp gear. She was soaked in sweat and the clothes clung to her like Saran Wrap. A point the cameraman had made the most of, both on his pan down and back up.

But this wasn’t who she was. It wasn’t the point of the interview. She flew the most dangerous helicopter ever devised by man, and they were turning her into a porn star. Her grip on the M9 grew painful, she clamped the pistol’s handle so hard, but she couldn’t ease off.

“Em-i-ly!” “Whoo-hoo, Captain!” “Now that’s what we’re talking about!” The catcalls in the tent overrode the voiceover. Attracted attention from outside the tent. More air jocks drifted in to see what was up. Is that how they thought of her every day? To change would only admit her intimidation. And that door was not going to be opened for anybody.

She should’ve shot the stupid screen while she still had a chance.

Even the tiny screen you could see good muscle definition, right at her fighting weight. Not bodybuilder, though she lifted enough weights. Still, she wasn’t particularly happy with how she looked. A disease her absolutely gorgeous best friend from high school claimed was universal to all women. And coming from her it was almost believable. Did guys feel that way? This crowd seemed pretty pleased every time the camera caught one of them. A lot of macho shoulder punching, hard enough to bruise, each time one of them made national television.

The next clip showed her pulling out an emergency foil blanket, good for reflecting away the worst of the sun if you were smacked down in middle of sand-dune nowhere. She’d demoed how to use one to hide from the sun, even digging it into the sand before disappearing beneath.

But in the next instant, she knew this broadcast didn’t go there. Instead they went with her quick origami moment to create a decent solar oven from the foil. Taken her a while to figure that one out. They jumped to a finished loaf of sourdough bread, from some starter she’d had smuggled in. Not bad. She could live with this. Somehow.

And then the next image rolled.

Not a helicopter or flight suit in sight. How long was this stupid clip anyway? They’d dogged her heels for a full day and this was the best they could do?

Back to the solar oven. The soufflé. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t. They did.

A whole circle of broad-shouldered, bad-assed flyboys standing around her with their arms crossed over bare, serious-workout chests, she’d hadn’t even noticed the crew getting that set up. Her tiny image on the screen lifted the chocolate soufflé from the makeshift oven. Perfect. And the desert was so frigging hot, that it didn’t start its inevitable collapse from cooling until after the camera moved on. The round of applause had tickled her at the time. But on the squidgy, little, piece-of-crap laptop, it just made her look like a half-naked Suzy Homemaker in shades.

“Flying into battle, you know her well-fed crew will follow Captain Emily Beale anywhere because she’s the hottest chef flying.” In the parting shot a helmeted pilot, visible only as a silvered visor and blue-black helmet lifted in a swirl of dust.

Her helmet was maroon with a gold-winged horse on the side and everyone in the tent knew it. It remained clamped under her arm at this moment in case they wanted to double check. She'd had no missions the day the film crew was in camp so they'd shot that dweeb Bronson of all useless jerks.

That couldn’t be it. But it was. The perfect wrap shot. The camera followed him high into the achingly blue sky.

All those interviews about her pride as the first woman serving in a man’s world.

Not one word made it in.

Descriptions of nasty, but unclassified missions that she had been authorized to discuss.

Cut. Actually, they hadn’t used a single word, she’d never spoken. Just cooked and been ogled.

And finally to drive the hammer home, using Bronson in his recon bird, not her heavy, in-your-face, DAP Hawk. When you wanted a joy ride, you called Bronson. When you wanted it done, you loaded up in her MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator Black Hawk.

They had to include at least one—

“In the New York’s Bryant Park today . . .” The laughter drowned out the parade of anorexic women who probably couldn’t shoot a lousy .22 without getting knocked on their narrow butts.

She pulled her gun and let fly at the laptop. The first shot shattered the screen and flipped it off the empty ammo case. The second spun it in midair and the third punched it into the sand.

A dozen guys inspected the smoldering laptop in the ear-ringing silence, and then Emily’s face as she reholstered the sidearm. A little more mayhem than she’d intended, but she was a pilot first dammit.

Then, as if on cue, several of them fist-pumped the air simultaneously.

“Sexiest chef flying, Captain!” “They got that right!” “Whoo-hoo!”

Before she could think up a good retort, like their next thousand meals would be cold egg burrito MRE’s, the very worst, a deep voice sliced through the chatter like the rear rotor of her Black Hawk through a stick of softened butter.

“’Tenshun!”

They all snapped to their feet as if they’d been electrocuted. Some part of the laptop still functioned, Wolf’s voice sounded into the sudden silence. “At a recent concert, the Rolling Stones—”

A booted foot smashed down and delivered the coup de grâce on the wounded machine.

Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson stood one pace inside the rolled-back flap of the tent. Six foot-one of clichéd soldier. Broad-shoulder, raw muscle, and as dangerous looking as anyone Emily had ever met. His straight black hair fell to his squared-off jawline. His face clean-shaved, eyes hidden by mirrored Ray-Bans. Rumor had it they were implanted and the major no longer needed eyes.

He swiveled his head once surveying the crowd in the tent. Every man jack of them knew he’d memorized exactly who was there, what they’d said, what they were about to say, and probably knew what they were thinking the moment they exited their mother’s wombs. If they weren’t careful, he’d start telling them what they would be thinking about during their last moment on Earth, and none of them, except maybe Crazy Jim, wanted to run head on into that level of mind blower.

“There will be no gender-based commentary in this unit. Understood?”

“Sir! Yes, Sir!” Rang out so loudly it would’ve hurt Emily’s ears if she hadn’t been shouting herself.