The Elite: The Complete Series of Boomer and Player (With Bonus) (24 page)

“We don’t yet know what kind of resistance we will face once we get there, but if they have full control of the military facilities we expect severe resistance from surface to air missiles and anti-aircraft guns, most of which are mobile. We’re working with the CIA to get as much intel as we can to determine the players in the game and where they’re hiding out, but we know some of the rockets being launched at us are coming from these two locations, which is where the bombers will concentrate their efforts until we get more intel.”

The lights came back up and everyone took a moment for their eyes to adjust as we all soaked in the information in regards to the operation. Commander Grissom turned his attention away from the screen and started listing off names of those of us in the Ready-Room. I perked at the mention of my own name. “—McGuire, Sparks, and Johnston, I need you leading the way. We’ll keep you apprised as new information comes in. For the moment, make sure your gear is squared away, get up on the flight deck, check your armament and let’s get up in the air and do our job!”

A chorus of “yes sirs” rang through the room.

“Dismissed!”

Everyone sprang to their feet and shuffled from the room in single file through the doorway.

Up on the flight deck, everyone was in full speed motion, whizzing back and forth to get the planes ready for takeoff as quickly as humanly possible. Orders were barked between the flight deck crew, pilots were checking their armaments, double checking every last detail, and the air was humming with the anticipation of battle. Our thoughts were on the ground troops, taking fire, pressed up against the Sinjar Mountain range, outmanned, outgunned and surrounded.

I checked in with my plane Captain and his crew, as they did the final run through the pre-flight checklist. Everything moved so fast, but with care and consideration to every tiny detail, because even the smallest error could mean the difference between life and death. Not only for the pilot in the plane, but for the other pilots, the crew aboard the bombers, and certainly for the troops on the ground who needed our help.

As I strapped into my cockpit, I quieted my mind, zeroing in on the task at hand, and found my center of calm in the midst of the chaos swirling around me. As a pilot, I needed absolute concentration. Nothing else could be in my mind other than getting this operation completed and keeping the ground troops alive.

In reality, all of the scramble took over half an hour, but it went by in the blink of an eye, and I was catapulted off the edge of the carrier, taking my jet to the sky. I climbed quickly and got into position. The A6 bombers were coming behind, and it was up to me and three other pilots to keep the way clear and make sure nothing hit the bombers.

Even if that meant taking fire ourselves.

In all my years as a pilot, I’d never been one to fear death, but the idea of it was always close to the surface when cruising over enemy lines. It was always a possibility, and if it meant keeping my brothers and sisters alive, then it was a price I’d be willing to pay, but there was a slight difference in my thinking as I spotted the coastline up ahead. The mental image of Holly, sitting at home one afternoon, and getting an unexpected visitor. She’d open the front door to reveal Player, standing with a solemn look on his usually happy face, and he’d have to be the one to tell her that I wasn’t coming home.

Before I’d left, I’d made Player promise that if something happened to me, he’d go to her and tell her in person and that he’d stay with her until he was sure she’d be all right.

The idea turned my stomach, knotting it into a tense ball, but I had to keep my head in the game.

“Boomer, watch your flank,” the voice of Sparks, a fellow pilot, came over the radio inside my helmet, and pulled me from the somber image in my mind that had momentarily distracted me.

Fuck, Boomer, get your head in the game, I railed at myself.

“Copy.” We had crossed the border and the threat ratcheted up higher as we were in hostile territory. The Middle East had been a hotbed of terrorist activity in recent years, and while we had a handle on the majority of the big dogs, there was always a chance that there would be a cell hiding in the rocky, desolate terrain, and would jump at the chance to take down a US aircraft.

I kept my eyes trained on the screen and forced slow, steady breaths.

We neared the target and the bombers were getting into position in the middle of the four fighters, when all hell broke loose. From the ground below, miles from the attack we were going to intercept, a single rocket launcher shot into the sky. Within seconds, rockets and anti-aircraft gunfire exploded from the ground like fireflies! We were taking fire from every direction.

“Shit!” Sparks cursed over the radio.

Another explosion, and I jerked, narrowly avoiding the flare. “What the—how many are there?”

“Command? Command, we’re taking heavy fire from the ground! Anti-aircraft guns!”

Command scrambled instructions and the A6 bombers dropped some fire for us, as we climbed higher into the air. The shots from the ground ceased for a few seconds and I thought the threat was over.

“Sparks! You all right?” I asked my wingman and in a split second, my radar detected half a dozen incoming missiles coming our way. “I’m tracking at least six missiles!”

“I’m tracking eight! Break right! Break right!”

I pulled the plane hard right, climbing and deployed my anti-missile defense system just as I took a hit to my left wing. “Fuck!” My panel was flashing in and out, losing power, the alarms were blaring in the cockpit. “Sparks!” I yelled, “Sparks! You copy?” I’d lost all communication, and I knew this was bad—I was going down!

“Mayday! Mayday”

Chapter Eight

Holly

I couldn’t bring myself to turn off the video call that connected me to Jack’s computer. He hadn’t returned since running out of the room nearly an hour before, even though the siren and announcements had long since faded. While I waited and prayed for his return, I turned on the TV and scanned through the channels until I found the news station that focused on international news. The frustrating part was realizing how little I had to go off of. I didn’t know where Jack was, I knew the name of the ship he was on, but I didn’t know anything about his role in anything—other than his rank and the fact that he was a fighter pilot. We hadn’t talked much about it, and I didn’t even know what he actually did. I didn’t have his specific unit information, any contact information for someone at his base, or any of the details that would have made searching websites and the TV stations easier to narrow down.

When the news station began discussing activity in the Middle East, I leaned forward, grabbed the remote, and turned the volume up. The anchor was a petite looking brunette woman. She wore glasses and looked intelligent and official in her sharp plum colored blazer. She began speaking about a protest that occurred in a Turkish marketplace earlier in the day, and I hung on her every word, waiting for her to get to the part about the attack. However, the story wound down just as quickly as it had begun, barely a blip on the radar of news for the day.

I sank back into the couch cushion and sighed as a commercial started to play. It was such a strange dichotomy. A story of a protest in a country thousands of miles away, where everything was so foreign and different than my life in sunny, Southern California. Then, just as I’d settled into the story, I was ripped out of it and kicked back to an advertisement for a cell service. I squeezed my eyes shut and told myself to keep it together, as the echoes of the siren and harsh directives played in my mind. With each loop through, my heart rate jumped higher and higher. The look of alarm in Jack’s eyes. His frantic apology. And his even quicker disappearance from my sight.

The news anchor came back on, and I opened my eyes again. I looked over to my phone, to check the empty room that Jack had left behind, and I yelped when I saw my reflection in the black screen. I unlocked the screen and swiped to get back into the app. “Please, please. No, no. Come back,” I begged, desperate tears springing into my eyes. The app came back on the screen, but the call had timed out. Jack’s room wasn’t there, and his avatar was no longer listed as being available.

Jack was gone.

I dialed his number again, ignoring the protest that it was pointless, and pleaded for him to answer.

“Shit.” I canceled the call after the tenth ring, and threw myself back against the couch. Two hot tears slipped past my lashes and streaked down my cheeks. The two quickly multiplied, and within seconds, my cheeks were soaked. My breath came in tight puffs in between sobs and I curled into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest. Hunter came into the living room from the kitchen and nudged my arm with his nose. I wrapped an arm around his body and buried my face in his dark fur, praying to God that jack was all right.

* * * *

The next morning, despite scouring news sites for most of the night, I still had no information on what had happened. I’d sent an email to Jack, with an attached read receipt, so I’d be notified the moment he opened it. It wasn’t something I normally did, but it was the only thing I could think of. If he was able to get back online, but not have long enough to call or write me, at least I’d know he was okay.

Sunday’s were slow for news, and the stories looped over and over again on TV, until I finally shut it off and went back to only searching news websites for anything breaking.

I was mid-search, when my phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound, and whipped the phone from the coffee table where I’d set up camp the night before. “Hello?”

“Hey! You’re not still sleeping are you?” Rachel’s voice came over the phone and all of the composure I’d mustered, cracked.

“No,” I mumbled. I’d had less than a couple of hours of sleep, and even then, they’d been fitful, nightmare laced bouts on the couch.

“Hey girl, are you okay? Are you sick?”

I shook my head, unable to find words.

“Holly?” The concern in her voice shifted to alarm. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home,” I croaked out. “Jack—he’s—I don’t know where he is but something happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were on video chat last night, and everything was fine, but then all of a sudden, this siren went off and he had to leave. The voice over the speaker was saying something about an emergency. Rach, I think he’s in trouble.”

“Oh my God!”

“I’ve been up all night, watching the news, but they aren’t saying anything about an attack. But I don’t even know where he is or where he was going. He couldn’t tell me anything. But…Rach…something’s wrong.” I sniffed and wiped away the beginning of a new rush of tears.

“I’m sure he’s okay. Maybe it was a drill? You know, like a practice?” Rachel replied, her voice forcing a note of positivity.

I shook my head again. “No, Rach. It wasn’t. Something bad is happening.”

She hesitated. “I’ll be right there.”

“Okay.”

“Just hang in there, okay? We don’t know anything yet.”

“I will.”

I hung up and set my phone to the side. I knew Rachel was just trying to be nice and keep me calm—but there was no way in hell I could pretend everything was normal. Something had taken Jack away, and if he was alarmed, I could only draw one conclusion.

Something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

Jack and I hadn’t known each other all that long, but in the time we’d spent together, I knew him to be one of the coolest, calmest people I’d ever met. He was always in control. And I had no doubt that when he was on the job—he was the exact same—keeping his stoic, unruffled exterior even in the thick of things.

The fierce look in his eyes haunted me and had me unraveled because it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

I stroked Hunter’s head, trying to gather some semblance of calm. I hated feeling like this!
Is he okay? Are we at war? Is it just a regular drill?
The crazy thoughts kept rambling around in my head and I wanted them to stop!

I turned the TV on to get some background noise and studied the headlines scrolling underneath the news anchor’s desk, in a black box along the bottom of my screen. Nothing was related to his Aircraft Carrier, nothing about a battle in the Middle East, or about fighter jets crossing enemy lines.

As the same stories began to recycle, I turned my attention back to my computer and continued searching for anything that hadn’t been shown on TV. I wasn’t entirely sure how TV news worked, but I figured it was a lot faster to throw up a news article on a website, than it was to get the script into the prompter for the TV anchor to read it off. I started with CNN and went from there, getting lost in a mess of links and referral websites.

I had no idea how much time had passed until I heard Rachel using her key in the front door. I tore my eyes away from the screen to see her walk into the entryway. Hunter launched from the couch, oblivious to what was going on, and ran to circle her legs and beg for attention. Rachel smiled down at him and pat him on the head, before he backed off enough to let her into the living room without tripping over his wiggling body.

“Hey, honey. Did you find anything yet?” She asked, coming over to sit beside me.

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

“Well, that’s good. Isn’t it?”

I shrugged and turned my attention back to the computer, refreshing the news page for the dozenth time since beginning my search. “I don’t know.”

“Stuff like this happens fast, so I’m sure if something big had happened, we’d know about it by now,” she replied, laying a hand on my shoulder.

I glanced at her, wishing I could feel as certain as she looked. “You didn’t see his face, Rach. He’s never looked like that before. It was like he was…scared…”

She sat silent for a moment, as though she didn’t know what to say. After a few seconds, she gestured at the computer. “Have you tried to call him again?”

“There’s no answer. I emailed too.”

Rachel nodded. “What would you say to going out for some food? We’ll give it some time and see if we can’t figure out what’s going on. Who knows, by the time we get back, he’ll probably be back online again.”