Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,32

obvious. Unlike the Spectre gunship “Coffin Flight” staged over Colorado—where most of them had “died”—no one was supposed to know what happened to their Ghostrider.

Gutz fully feathered the props on engines One and Two. With the left engines now just spinning in neutral and the right engines still at full claw, they entered a counterclockwise spin.

It drove Tango to the right; would have dumped him in the aisle if not for his harness.

It was time to shed their Ghostrider’s own excess crew. That was going to be even easier…and far less messy.

Tango got on the radio. “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Shadow Three-five declaring an emergency. We have lost engines One and Two.” Then Tango had an evil thought, “Correction: One, Two, and Three.”

Gutz feathered the prop on Three and scowled at him. Keeping tight control on a C-130 Hercules with only a single outboard engine was going to be a major challenge.

Tango only grinned back.

It made up for the time Gutz had informed him there was a hot missile on his tail when it was only a F-35 Lightning II jet passing through the testing range. Explaining away that particular evasive maneuver to the flight leader had taken some serious song and dance. It was bad form to blame the other guy.

Tango continued his report as he watched the little C-12 Huron finally auger into the Pacific Ocean below. “Engine Four controls are nonresponsive. Entering hard spin.” With just the outermost engine running at full power on the right wing, that was becoming dangerously accurate.

“We’ve got about thirty seconds,” Gutz said calmly. But he didn’t bring any of the other engines back online—that would have been cheating. Ronny Gutierrez hadn’t come by his nickname only because of his surname. He was a stone-cold flier in any situation. Stone guts. Tango had always liked that about his best friend.

Tango keyed the onboard intercom.

“All hands! All hands! Abandon the aircraft. I repeat. Abandon aircraft immediately.”

18

Even knowing what was coming hadn’t fully prepared Rosa Cruz for the sudden pitch change when Gutz took out the observer plane. It slammed her against her safety harness so hard that it knocked the breath out of her.

For half a second she froze in fear.

No.

Her newly discovered fetus wasn’t at risk. Still too small to be harmed, even by such a hit. Her PSR, Pink Stick Revelation, was less than forty-eight hours old. No one knew.

Then the Ghostrider pitched nose down and entered a hard spiral.

At the controls for the M102 Howitzer, Pierre yelped.

“We’re going down?” He cried out sharply enough that her eardrum hurt.

“Big, brave master sergeants with over a dozen years in the service are not supposed to squeal like little schoolgirls.” She knew it was a faked emergency and couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease her fellow gunner.

“Well, excuse me, Tech Sergeant Rosa. It’s my first-ever crash.”

“Oh, then squeal away.”

“No, you’ve broken the mood now.” He sniffed in a deeply offended way as he safetied his weapon.

She matched him move for move. She half suspected that he’d squealed completely for her benefit. He looked like a tough guy—the kind that came from a longshoreman’s bar, not UC Berkley. His nose was even crooked. Every time she asked about it, he had a new story.

A grandma I was helping cross the street took umbrage at me feeling her up and smacked me with her purse. But she was a seriously hot octogenarian.

Doc took one look at my face when I was born and decided this would be an improvement. It did add to his dangerously capable look.

I did this dive off the high board in school. You should have been there to see. It was just beautiful. But I was paying too much attention to Mary Beth McAllister’s bikini cleavage and dove before I got to the end of the board. Landed nose-first right on the end. She was even less interested in my nose going where any man’s would want to after that. Blood! Snot! He’d made gushing motions as if it had been a geyser’s worth.

The spiral was getting harsher than she’d expected.

“I think we’re in real trouble.”

“No shit, Tech Sergeant Rosa.” Pierre could always make her laugh.

Tango totally tapped her wild animal fantasies.

Gutz, however, was like a long pull on a bottle of good tequila—the burn slow, deep, and powerful.

She’d hinted once or twice about a threesome, but neither alpha bull liked the idea at all. Now she didn’t know which one the birth control had failed on, or how to