poker, are we?”
“I’ve been playing more lately, like a chance to win a bit of my own back.” There was some other level going on here that Connie couldn’t follow, but it appeared to be ticking off Major Beale. Never a good choice.
“Only if my crew can play as well.” Henderson winked at Connie over the President’s shoulder.
They’d played twice since the flight. Even without Henderson’s wife behind him, Connie had won neatly, pocketing fifty of his hard-played dollars each time. It didn’t anger him, rather it intrigued him. She didn’t like being thought of as a puzzle to be solved, but it was a way she’d found to fit in with the people around her and she’d not give that up any more easily than the Major gave up his money.
“It’s a date.” The President.
Wait a minute. She was supposed to play poker with the President?
Then the Commander-in-Chief faced Major Beale. “I’m coming, Em. Now can we get this mission under way?”
The Major clenched her jaw for several moments, turned to her husband who merely shrugged.
“The President’s as stubborn as you are, honey. I wonder which one of you learned it from the other.” He took one step farther from her. “He’s nicer about it, though.”
He hadn’t moved far enough. Emily’s four-finger jab caught him in the ribs before he could block. He winced as if it really hurt.
Damn, she was fast.
Chapter 21
John checked the last of the weapons. Their armament was all in place. For this exercise they’d dismounted one of the big machine guns. Now they had a rack of four Hellfire tank-killer missiles, a nineteen-rocket pod of Hydra 70s, the Vulcan 30 mm cannon, and a laser where they would normally hang a 20 mm chain gun for cockpit control. It would let them fire harmlessly at friendlies busy playing an unfriendly role.
His and Connie’s miniguns were locked and not loaded, though spare ammo lay close at hand. Instead, a laser had been mounted in tandem with the six barrels for simulated warfare. For the twentieth time he checked the two observer seats now rigged in the center of the Black Hawk’s cargo bay. Standard combat seats. He’d half expected them to put in airliner seats; this was the President after all. But they’d left in the ones used by the vendor’s technicians during testing and calibration.
Connie finished the preflight check of the non-weapons systems and arrived outside the cargo door.
“Here.” She handed him a stack of barf bags.
“Good one.” He slid them into the elastic ceiling mesh where he or Connie could grab them easily for distribution.
She paused there. She had something more to say.
He waited. He’d learned that offering her a bit of silence was pretty much the only way to get her to speak when she was unsure of something.
“ADAS cameras. Stealth rotors. President riding along.”
As she always did, she’d used the minimum number of words to set his thinking on a whole new track. He’d been excited by the new technology. And figured the President was just coming along for the ride.
Not Connie. She’d connected the pieces and just given him the heads-up that a major mission was in the works. One that needed a quieted helicopter, which meant going somewhere they weren’t supposed to be or perhaps had never been before. The new cameras meant they were going somewhere deep where other feeds, like high-circling command platforms, wouldn’t be available. And the President. That meant it was going to be damned serious.
A deep breath and a bit of a shrug, though John felt the pre-mission tension settle on his shoulders. It was what they’d signed up for when they went SOAR, but heavy missions always carried their own pressures.
He didn’t question her conclusion for a second; he knew better than to do that. Always thinking, that girl.
Watching her, he’d learned. At the last poker game, he couldn’t beat the Major, but he could read Connie. At least on occasion. He didn’t yet know
“I’ve been playing more lately, like a chance to win a bit of my own back.” There was some other level going on here that Connie couldn’t follow, but it appeared to be ticking off Major Beale. Never a good choice.
“Only if my crew can play as well.” Henderson winked at Connie over the President’s shoulder.
They’d played twice since the flight. Even without Henderson’s wife behind him, Connie had won neatly, pocketing fifty of his hard-played dollars each time. It didn’t anger him, rather it intrigued him. She didn’t like being thought of as a puzzle to be solved, but it was a way she’d found to fit in with the people around her and she’d not give that up any more easily than the Major gave up his money.
“It’s a date.” The President.
Wait a minute. She was supposed to play poker with the President?
Then the Commander-in-Chief faced Major Beale. “I’m coming, Em. Now can we get this mission under way?”
The Major clenched her jaw for several moments, turned to her husband who merely shrugged.
“The President’s as stubborn as you are, honey. I wonder which one of you learned it from the other.” He took one step farther from her. “He’s nicer about it, though.”
He hadn’t moved far enough. Emily’s four-finger jab caught him in the ribs before he could block. He winced as if it really hurt.
Damn, she was fast.
Chapter 21
John checked the last of the weapons. Their armament was all in place. For this exercise they’d dismounted one of the big machine guns. Now they had a rack of four Hellfire tank-killer missiles, a nineteen-rocket pod of Hydra 70s, the Vulcan 30 mm cannon, and a laser where they would normally hang a 20 mm chain gun for cockpit control. It would let them fire harmlessly at friendlies busy playing an unfriendly role.
His and Connie’s miniguns were locked and not loaded, though spare ammo lay close at hand. Instead, a laser had been mounted in tandem with the six barrels for simulated warfare. For the twentieth time he checked the two observer seats now rigged in the center of the Black Hawk’s cargo bay. Standard combat seats. He’d half expected them to put in airliner seats; this was the President after all. But they’d left in the ones used by the vendor’s technicians during testing and calibration.
Connie finished the preflight check of the non-weapons systems and arrived outside the cargo door.
“Here.” She handed him a stack of barf bags.
“Good one.” He slid them into the elastic ceiling mesh where he or Connie could grab them easily for distribution.
She paused there. She had something more to say.
He waited. He’d learned that offering her a bit of silence was pretty much the only way to get her to speak when she was unsure of something.
“ADAS cameras. Stealth rotors. President riding along.”
As she always did, she’d used the minimum number of words to set his thinking on a whole new track. He’d been excited by the new technology. And figured the President was just coming along for the ride.
Not Connie. She’d connected the pieces and just given him the heads-up that a major mission was in the works. One that needed a quieted helicopter, which meant going somewhere they weren’t supposed to be or perhaps had never been before. The new cameras meant they were going somewhere deep where other feeds, like high-circling command platforms, wouldn’t be available. And the President. That meant it was going to be damned serious.
A deep breath and a bit of a shrug, though John felt the pre-mission tension settle on his shoulders. It was what they’d signed up for when they went SOAR, but heavy missions always carried their own pressures.
He didn’t question her conclusion for a second; he knew better than to do that. Always thinking, that girl.
Watching her, he’d learned. At the last poker game, he couldn’t beat the Major, but he could read Connie. At least on occasion. He didn’t yet know
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