Flash of Fire (21 page)

“Only the pilots,” the officious North Korean representative insisted. “No others may have permissions to fly into the great Democratic People's Republic of Korea.”

Mickey was nearing his limits. The last time he'd slept had been along a small river upstream of Larch Creek, Alaska. He'd just flown seven hours to Japan and—once the helos were unloaded and Denise had certified them for flight—three more hours across the Sea of Japan to reach Korea.

It was now lunchtime the next day and Mickey's patience with Emily, Mark, and everyone else was hitting its absolute limit. Or maybe it had already passed it.

They'd clearly been relegated to the Korean equivalent of Podunk and it was named Yangyang International Airport. The one-runway field had a beautiful three-story, glass-fronted terminal building with three Jetways, a small plane parking area, and a soaring air control tower sufficient for a decent international hub. The four MHA helos were parked out on the unmowed grass beside the narrow, paved taxiway between the concrete runway and the terminal.

The airport's lone fuel truck had raced up at their arrival, its driver thrilled at having something to break the tedium of his days.

“You are the first flight in two months.” He bounded joyously to and fro, hooking up grounding lines and running out the hose from his truck. “Yangyang not have commercial flight for three years. High-speed train very bad for new airport. No planes. No people.”

The terminal looked only a few years old. The fuel truck driver appeared to be the sole employee.

“Only pilots,” the little North Korean man in his brown Army uniform insisted again, clearly displeased with the interruption to the sound of his own voice ringing across the empty airfield.

Mickey wondered if the five-person South Korean “honor guard” dressed in green uniforms was there to make sure that the North Korean was fully escorted, or to make sure that he wasn't beaten to a pulp by an irritated American pilot.

The inspector started with Mickey. Spent a long time on his pilot's license as if it wasn't about the easiest thing on the planet to forge. Then he inspected the helicopter, apparently shocked at not finding dual-mounted nuclear missiles and a half-dozen miniguns. That lack got Mickey off the hook fairly easily.

Vern also passed muster, though the official didn't know quite what to make of Denise, who was even shorter than he was.

“I am
not
letting my husband fly into North Korea without me,” she'd told Mark and Vern earlier in no uncertain terms.

“You are a woman.” The official inspected her license.

Duh!
Mickey wanted to say. He knew he was overreacting to what was occurring around him, but he couldn't seem to stop his urge to do so. It had started with shouting at Emily and it had yet to settle.

“Many proud women fly our fighter jets in the great Democratic People's Republic of Korea.”

If the inspector said that whole phrase one more time, Mickey just might do a little destruction of foreign relations himself when he throttled the man.

But the official kept looking at Denise's long, blond hair as if it might attack him at any moment. Between Robin's white-blond chop, Carly's elegant, straight fall of gold to her jawline, and Denise's bountiful waves down to the middle of her back, he'd probably never seen so much blond hair in his entire life, and Mickey did what he could to keep his smile down.

“You.” He'd moved on to Cal at Firehawk Two. “No cameras. You may not go to our country.”

He started to move by, but Cal stopped him. “Don't you want pictures of the great battle of the Kumgang wildfire? Our helicopters in the air and your people on the ground, fighting together.”

The official scoffed.

“I often take pictures for the cover of
Time
magazine,
National Geographic
, and many others.”

“
National Geographic
?” His dark, piggy eyes that had spent entirely too much time dwelling on Robin's bosom lit with sudden interest. “Prove it to me.”

Cal pulled out his tablet computer and pulled up a copy of his latest cover for the magazine. The two of them were soon negotiating over what he could and couldn't take pictures of.

“I promise to be most careful,” Cal assured him.

“You may go.” The official granted royal dispensation, so Cal was in. The official moved on to Firehawk One.

That's when the explosion occurred.

“What is this? And this? And this?”

It was Steve's computers for controlling the drone—though they didn't mention that—and Carly's special screens in the copilot's position to receive those feeds and perform her fire behavior analysis.

At Mark's suggestion, they had left the launcher and drones under lock and key at a nearby safe house. Mark had declined to mention why it was safe or who it was safe from—though that was now apparent.

They tried calling all of the gear “fire monitoring equipment,” but that didn't help.

“No! No! No!” He wasn't satisfied until everything had been removed. He walked back and forth between Firehawk Two and Firehawk One to make sure there was no extra equipment he didn't recognize.

When Carly held up her license, the little man repeated, “No! No! No!”

“But I have to see the fire to fight it,” Carly protested as Steve stepped up to rest a hand of restraint on her arm. She was far taller than the inspector and was looming over him enough to have him stepping back with nerves.

“You try to bring spy equipment into our country. If this were the native soil of the Great DPRK”—he barely dodged the bullet of repeating his country's full name again, but the name stiffened his resolve—“I have you both arrested as CIA spies. No! No! No! You!” The little man went toe-to-toe with Mark though he was a foot shorter. “What do you do? I can smell spy from across the border in my own country of the great—”

“I'm the fire boss,” Mark interrupted him, but kept his temper in check. “I fly overhead in a small plane and tell these pilots what to do.”

“You no fly firefighting helicopter, you no fly!” And the man walked away.

Mickey sidled up to Mark. “You know, it's almost worth the trouble that's going to cause us just to see your jaw hanging loose in surprise.”

Mark recovered his jaw and replaced it with a grim expression. “I am this far”—he pinched a finger and thumb close together—“from pulling the goddamn plug.” He practically shouted the last of it at the inspector's back.

Mickey looked at him. Then up at the sky graying with the high, thin clouds of the storm passing far to the south, at the plume of fire smoke to the north, and then back to Mark.

“But you can't, can you?”

Mark bit his lower lip, then shook his head sharply no. But it looked as if he was trying to hide a smile, which didn't make any sense at all.

“You need to fill the others in.”

“I was going to—”

“No, now.” Mickey had never confronted Mark in the three years they'd flown together. But what the hell. After yelling at Emily yesterday, maybe he was getting good at it. Or developing a death wish.

“Not just yet.”

“I won't let them go aloft.” Mickey braced to take him on. “All I have to do is tell Robin to say no and none of them will—”

Mark raised one finger and then pointed it south toward the far end of the terminal building.

The high whine of a racing car engine caught on the wind and blew toward them. Moments later Mickey spotted a white SUV hauling ass around the corner of the building, shooting under an extended Jetway with only inches to spare and racing in their direction.

Aircraft by aircraft the other pilots had followed in the official's wake until they were all gathered around Firehawk One. Even the official had stopped being officious over his individualized authorization forms to see who was coming at such a speed.

A rental-white Kia SUV slammed on the brakes at the last second and skidded in sharp chirps of rubber on dry concrete, leaving long, black marks on the pristine sun-bleached surface. It drifted sideways toward the North Korean official for a long moment before twisting to a halt close behind Firehawk One. A wave of burned-rubber stench rolled over them.

Mickey, at first, thought it must be a lunatic, but then he saw the driver's grin flash through the windshield and decided that he was a very skilled lunatic and had known exactly what he was doing.

A couple piled out of the car. The driver would be a small man if he weren't so broad and muscular—he looked like one of those guys who could bench-press the car he'd just been driving. His black Foo Fighters T-shirt was stretched tight over his chest and clung around his massive biceps. His eyes were hidden behind wraparound shades that might be appropriate on a Florida beach during spring break. He wore his dark hair short and his smile broad.

The woman was something else entirely. Her long form emphasized by the Maroon 5 T-shirt that was as tight on her lithe form as the Foo Fighters one was on her companion's expansive one. A tumble of mahogany hair down past her shoulders framed tanning-cream-ad skin and mirrored aviator sunglasses just like the ones Mark wore.

“Sorry we're late, Mark,” she called out merrily. “So who's stuck flying solo?”

Mickey looked at Robin, and they both tentatively raised their hands.

“Aw, he's a cute one.” She strode over, looking him up and down. Then turned to Robin. “You and me, babe. 'Cause women rule.” Then she held up a hand for a high five. When Robin raised her own, the smack the woman delivered was so loud it almost hurt Mickey's ears.

“You and me, pal.” The guy came up and gave Mickey's hand a crushing handshake. Mickey returned it and came out about even.

He could see that Mark was not showing the least surprise, so Mickey played along. “We've been waiting on you.”

“I need your licenses.” The North Korean inspector came up to them and they each dug out FAA cards.

Mickey managed to spot their names. “Lola and Tim Maloney,” he whispered to Robin when she looked at him inquiringly. The names Mark had given to the President.

“So, Tim, buddy…” If Mark wanted him to, Mickey could play the game as well as anybody. “What kept you?”

Tim just hooked a thumb toward Lola and leered happily.

Mickey bought it and also didn't believe it for a second. Their arrival had been as well-timed as it had been orchestrated.

“You are not military pilot?” the North Korean asked them both.

Lola snorted out a laugh. “Do I look that stupid?” Yet she'd greeted Mark like an old friend. Like…a fellow Night Stalker.

He glanced at Robin, who nodded.

* * *

Robin recognized military even if the North Korean didn't.

“Way more money in firefighting than the military.” Lola continued her expert razzle-dazzle of the official. Which was true. Robin's present pay scale wasn't even on the same page as her Army National Guard income. Even the overseas hazard pay in a war zone didn't match…

Robin coughed to hide her surprise. She'd just figured out what the “Special Projects” pay-rate column had meant on the MHA paperwork. This. Doing something as stupid as flying across the Pacific to fight a fire in North Korea for reasons unknown.

Well, she'd certainly be able to afford a hot motorcycle sooner rather than later. Though she could hear Mom's advice to bank it against a lean season. Mom was usually right—thrifty was a major Harrow-woman trait—but Robin would worry about that later.

The other thing that Robin appreciated about Lola's arrival was that her own chest was no longer the only one snagging the official's attention. That he was short enough for Robin's breasts to be close to his eye level didn't make her any less tempted to pop him in the nose—which she guessed would be bad for business, even if it had increased business at Phoebe's Tucson Truck Stop.

If Lola and Tim were military…and they knew Mark…and Mark knew them—

MFDD. When is a Tea Cup also a Mighty Furrow of Death and Destruction? When two unknown military pilots show up using false identities as firefighters. When two…Night Stalkers! That's what Mickey's look had meant.

Lola was as different from Emily as could be, loud and boisterous versus calm and cool. But it was also easy to see the simple assumption of power that both women carried.
I'm just that good
radiated off both of them. Not bragging. Fact.

And if top military pilots were joining their firefight, then something far bigger than fire and smoke was in the air.

Robin wasn't a big thinker about herself, but she could feel Emily waiting off to the side just dying to ask her question:
What did you learn about you?

What she was learning in this moment was that her feet felt more firmly planted on the Korean concrete than they had on the Alaskan tundra. Suddenly, more of her was going to be needed than her ability to fly a helicopter. She'd been a soldier for six years, and with the arrival of Lola and Tim, she suddenly was again. Another piece of the multifaceted riddle of why she'd been hired so quickly and landed in Emily's command seat.

She wished she could tell Mickey, but saying
I'm a soldier
in front of the Korean official currently handing back their FAA licenses would be a bad choice. Even out of the Guard, it was a part of who she was.

She wished she could tell Mickey though.

That too was a new thought. There was someone in her life that she wanted to share things with. Things about herself. Weird.

Robin looked at Mickey, really looked at him. He was as solid in being a firefighter as she was in being a soldier. There was a completeness to him standing there beside her. All afternoon, he'd remained a half step in front of her. Ready to jump in to protect her from the North Korean, even from Mark.