Flying Monkeys

  Victor drove them after they finished eating. She mostly remained silent as the three men bantered suppositions about what allowed the captured woman to survive her experience. Then they reached McChord. Kyong stepped into her instructor mode and focus once again returned to the job in front of them.

  The morning’s excitement over the captured fugitive quickly fell by the wayside as they dove into the day’s lessons. Victor had taken several turns at the stick already under Kyong’s watchful eye, and her doubts about his abilities to help fly the Panda had trickled into the pretty much nonexistent category at that point. She wasn’t quite ready to let him solo a takeoff and landing yet, and neither was he. But at least if an emergency developed, she knew he could step in and help.

  As they broke for lunch, Echo stood in the open cargo bay and stared toward the nose of the plane. “Hey, stupid question, guys. Well, more for K, I guess.”

  “What?”

  “How are we transporting our captured goose to Florida without risking infecting everyone else?”

  She stared at the cargo bay. “Good question.” She’d already taken measurements and knew the RV would fit just fine. Annie and Ak had welded tie-down points to the RV’s frame so it could be securely anchored with load binders to the floor of the cargo bay.

  The C-160s were used for large-scale patient transport and evac, but this bird wasn’t currently equipped for litter transport. They’d been transporting cargo for months previous to this. She had enough jump seats along the sides for their personnel. Not the best travel accommodations in the world, but at least safe enough to keep them from bouncing around if they hit turbulence.

  Ak and Annie had already rigged the RV’s interior with a secure rack system to allow them to keep the sample coolers and other equipment in place.

  “They’ll have to isolate her inside the RV, I think,” Kyong finally said. “That will be the safest option. Tranq her, tie her to a litter, and secure that so she doesn’t go bouncing around. Someone can ride in it with her and use the driver and passenger seat belts to keep themselves belted in.”

  She heard a Jeep drive up. Mal parked in the shade of the wing and got out, walking over to the cargo ramp. “Knock knock.”

  “How’s it going?”

  He smiled, holding up his tablet. “I should ask you that. Not often I get a carte blanche order for a plane, kiddo.”

  “Really?” She looked at the order, signed by General Joseph Arliss.

  Captain Kyong Tran, of the Punchy Panda, was hereby authorized to acquire or use whatever resources she needed to complete her assigned mission before her eventual departure, and the base commander was ordered to make it so without delay or explanations, and to put any and all resources at her disposal as requested.

  Mal pulled the toothpick from his mouth. “So, you want wall-to-wall shag carpet or something in here?” He grinned.

  She returned the tablet to him. “Nope. Just maintenance, fuel, and flight clearance as needed.”

  “You’re too easy. I could get you a full galley, no problem.”

  That drew laughs from all of them. “No, Mal,” she finally said. “I’ll be close on weight as it is when we finally depart.”

  “Really gonna haul an RV, huh? Didn’t people used to drive them to Florida in the winter? Seems overkill to fly it.” He tossed the toothpick out of the cargo opening and fished a fresh one from his shirt pocket.

  “Well, remember, I am dealing with a bunch of monkeys.”

  “Hey,” the other three men said, smiling despite their mock outrage.

  Mal’s expression sobered as he held up the tablet. “All joking aside, if you need me to, I can pull you in some guys. I already did some scouting. One of them was a loadmaster and crew chief on a C-160, and the other two had plenty of hours, including takeoffs and landings, on C-130s. That’s as good as a little brother for one of these birds.”

  It was tempting, but as she turned and studied the faces of the three men she was quickly coming to think of as friends, she realized she didn’t need Mal’s guys.

  “No, I think we’re good.” Then a thought hit her. “Hey, is the big flight sim available?”

  Mal’s grin returned. “Doesn’t matter if it’s available or not. It’s yours.”

  “Actually, I want it for him.” She pointed at Victor. “Can we get in there after lunch, set up as a Zeus?”

  He glanced at his watch. “I will make sure it’s open and ready for you from 13:00 hours until whenever you’re ready to quit virtually crashing birds.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Victor said. “I think.”

  * * * *

  Like many bases with an active air wing, McChord had several flight simulators available, multi-screened units with cockpits very close to the real thing and computers that could throw realistic situations at a pilot and crew.

  But McChord also had a big simulator, and many bases didn’t have one of those. On a raised platform, the flight deck capsule was an accurate recreation of a cockpit, with several different interior modules that took the sim crew less than ten minutes each to swap out. Each module simulated a particular aircraft, and McChord had a C-160 Zeus module.

  It meant not only would the video screens around them show a realistic image, the entire cabin would move, shake, and respond as if it were a Zeus. Also, it was programmed to handle with different cargo and fuel loads, so she could have Victor simulate a takeoff heavy with fuel and then a lighter landing.

  It was nearly 18:00 hours when she finally forced Victor to call it a day. He’d aced the easy, clear-sky, zero-breeze takeoffs and landings, but as she began instructing the techs to throw more difficult scenarios at them, including midair issues and landing heavy in a pasture, he’d ended up crashing them three times, his frustration at himself growing with each failure.

  She signaled to the sim crew. “We’re done.”

  “One more time,” Victor said. “Please, one more time, K.”

  She laughed. “Dude, you don’t understand. I’ve seen experienced pilots who wouldn’t have handled some of those situations as well as you did. Those weren’t failures. Those were benchmarks to let me know where you need work. We’ll come back tomorrow morning and start over here in the sim. I guess I should have had you in here sooner, but I needed to make sure you knew the Panda inside and out, first, in real life.”

  He looked disappointed but didn’t argue with her or make her pull rank on him.

  Back at the safe house they caught the tail end of evening chow, but Kilo and Foxtrot weren’t anywhere to be seen. Papa waved her into his office for a quick status report from her about the men’s progress.

  “I had Victor in the big sim today. I feel good about him.”

  “Can you spare the other two tomorrow?”

  “Sure, but can I ask why?”

  “I need them here on watch. I have to send out a scouting run tomorrow and I don’t want to stretch the team too thin. You and Victor go to McChord and keep drilling him. In the simulator, I mean. Flying, that is,” he quickly added.

  She smiled. “I knew what you meant.”

  “Just don’t want to be misunderstood.”

  “I’m a pilot, not an idiot. Which brings me to another point.” She brought up the issue of transporting Korey from Seattle to Florida.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Might not be an issue.”

  “Why?”

  “She might not make it that long.”

  “Oh.”

  “They have her restrained. She’s not combative, but she’s not exactly coherent, either. They think Kite the drug might have fried her brain.”

  “Did she say what happened?”

  “As best Doc and Annie and the others working on her could understand, she saw her fellow volunteer get killed at the airport, and so she ran, suspecting they’d be after her, too. She hid in the sewers and waited until it seemed safe enough to move.”

  But apparently extreme paranoia set in, whether from Kite the drug, or her
training, or the virus, no one knew. She found her way into the Seattle Underground, and for the past several weeks she’d been trying to survive there after going through the entire contents of her deadly payload herself. She’d been feeding herself by stealing whatever she could, afraid to use a prepaid debit card the church had given her.

  “Wow.”

  “Wow, indeed,” Papa said. “That’s one of the reasons I need Echo and Zed here tomorrow, so Omega and a couple others can go on a medical supply run. Doc and Annie need some equipment and supplies for her that we don’t have.”

  “Can’t we get her med-flighted out of here to the CDC or something?”

  “We could, except that right now, Doc says she likely wouldn’t survive the trip. He’s using a mix of drug cocktails to try to keep her metabolism stable. Whatever Kite the drug did to her, it’s fucked her body up like any other junkie, but worse.” He winced. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

  Her thoughts hadn’t been about Tuan, but as she realized what he meant, there they turned.

  “The other problem, of course,” Papa continued, “is we don’t know how secure the CDC’s personnel roster is. Bubba said General Arliss is working on cleaning house from his end, but we have the double threat of Silo will likely want her dead so she can’t reveal anything, or he’ll want her under his control so his scientists can guinea pig her.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing to her?”

  “Yeah, but at least when we get the vaccine figured out, we’ll make sure it’s available to the world, not just a few people. And we’re trying to keep her alive. But I will make sure I mention your concerns to the med staff so they can make the appropriate preparations. I agree, isolating her in the RV would be the safest option. Makes the most sense.” He tipped his head. “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Think I’m going to call it a night.”

  “Have a good one, then. I’ll pass word to Echo and Zed for you about tomorrow’s change of plans.”

  Rather than asking where Kilo and Foxtrot were and hunting them down to talk, she retired to her room and settled in for the evening. She needed to be alone.

  Especially since her mind traveled to dark places she couldn’t stop it from going.

  How had Tuan died?

  Had he been turned into some crazed guy? Had he hurt anyone, committed any crimes before finally succumbing to the drugs?

  She suspected part of the reason her parents had ordered her away was their own shame. Kyong could not accept her brother’s death had been as simple as authorities reported. Her parents thought their son had died a drug addict.

  Kyong would not accept that.

  Not unless Bubba came back with incontrovertible proof of that. If he did, she would accept it.

  Part of her would never believe it, but she would put it to rest and move on.

  There was no reason for her brother to go from a hardworking, responsible, dedicated employee, son, and brother, to…junkie. Financially, he wasn’t rich, but he was one of the increasingly rare middle class who could scrape by for the most part without having to live under a bridge in the process.

  Why am I doing this to myself? Why can’t I let it go?

  Eventually, she rolled over and tried to go to sleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After a restless night, Kyong tried to keep up her end of the conversation with Victor the next morning and found herself struggling to do so.

  “You feeling all right?” he asked over breakfast.

  “Yeah, just…tired. Things catching up with me. A little more coffee and I’ll be fine.”

  Papa walked in. “Good, you’re still here. Can you cut training to a half day and bring him back after lunch?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s up?” Victor asked him.

  “Doc and Annie, with some pharmaceutical tweaking by Canuck, were able to get Korey lucid for a while last night. We got her on video explaining what happened. And yes, the staff at the LA clinic told the volunteers Reverend Silo was behind the whole thing and had orchestrated it, even though officially his name and face never appeared anywhere in the documentation we found for the clinic.”

  “Can’t someone argue they were lying and doing that without his knowledge or consent?” she asked.

  “They could, except for a video the volunteers were shown right before they were sent out. It was a message from Reverend Silo wishing them luck and praising their efforts.”

  “Sorry to play Devil’s advocate, but a message specifically for them, or was it something they could have snagged from a broadcast feed and made it look like it was for them?”

  Papa held up a finger. “I passed the intel to Bubba and he went back over the clinic’s data. In the info dump Bubba got from the place, he found something he’d not paid attention to before, where they made a network connection to the headquarters at Albuquerque. Specifically, into a dedicated server system where the church’s network apparently stores all their video.”

  “So?”

  “It was a push feed out, initiated by the network specifically to the clinic’s secure computer system. In other words, a direct download to the clinic. And Bubba was able to crack into their broadcasting servers from that, found a weakness.” He grinned. “And now he’s into the main church’s network and downloading info like a madman. Even better, the video’s push feed was instituted by one Jerald Arbeid, Silo’s assistant.”

  Victor smacked the table with his hand. “Hot damn, we finally got the bastard pinned.”

  “Not exactly,” Papa said. “But we’re heading in that direction.

  “I checked the weather this morning,” she said. “There’s a storm system I’ve been watching in the Pacific. Looks like it’ll hit tomorrow, rains and low ceiling, so real training will be out of the question. If you want us to take a day off so you can have Victor here, that’d be perfect.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I don’t want you getting burned out either.”

  Victor turned to her, a wicked smile painted across his face. “Aw, isn’t that sweet? You don’t want me crashing and dying.”

  “The Panda’s an expensive piece of military hardware, buddy. Not to mention I like my skin. And a day off sounds great, as long as you’re sure we can afford it?” That last question she directed at Papa.

  “Wouldn’t have suggested it if we couldn’t.”

  She wanted to ask about Kilo and Foxtrot and bit her tongue to keep the words in her mouth. She didn’t want to stir up rumors or conjecture any more than she already had.

  Not to mention she still wasn’t sure she’d settled the matter in her mind anyway.

  Victor stood. “Well, it’s a great day to die,” he said. “Let’s hit the sim.”

  “It’s never a great day to die,” she snarked back. “And if you crash more than twice this morning, you’re doing my laundry.”

  “And if I don’t?” He waggled his eyebrows at her, playfully but not suggestively. “Give me an incentive.”

  “Then I’ll buy you lunch on base.” She laughed and headed toward the stairwell as he groaned behind her.

  “That’s not an incentive!” he kvetched. “That’s more like a punishment. I’d rather do your laundry.”

  * * * *

  Victor actually crashed the sim five times. But, to be fair, she’d had them crank it up to expert level and he’d handled situations that even some experienced pilots might have farked up.

  “Guess I’m doing your laundry,” he grumped.

  “No, you’re not.” She explained how she’d stacked the deck against him as they headed toward the mess hall.

  “Still,” he groused, “I’d rather do your laundry than eat lunch here.”

  “Chicken,” she teased.

  “No, I have a very well-developed sense of self-preservation, thank you very much. I think I have a couple of expired MREs back in the truck.”

  “No. Suck it up, buttercup,” she said.

  “I’d rather suck up an ex
pired MRE. Why can’t we wait to eat until we get back to the safe house?”

  She smiled. “Because I’m a sadist.”

  Actually, that afternoon’s lunch wasn’t too bad. When they returned to the safe house and parted ways, Kyong realized she wasn’t exactly sure what she was supposed to do with herself. She did her laundry, repacked her gear…and realized feeling like this was very odd. On the Panda, she could always find busywork to do. There were always maintenance forms, or flight logs, or systems checks, or…something.

  After an update about the patient’s status—extremely critical and very dire—Kyong eventually headed up to the building’s rooftop garden with her tablet to read and have some time alone.

  Which wasn’t as alone as she thought she’d be when Annie joined her a few minutes later.

  “Oh, sorry. Didn’t know you were up here,” Annie said. In her arms she carried a couple of plastic tubs and kitchen shears. “Want to be alone?”

  “No, do what you need to do.” They had a pretty good garden going, lots of salad greens, spinach, and even some tomatoes coming in.

  Lots of things had been going through Kyong’s head. Not the least of which was watching the five women interact with their men.

  And since joining the unit, Kyong hadn’t had a lot of time to talk to any of the women alone.

  As good a time as any. “Can I ask you a personal question?” Kyong posed.

  Annie was working on snipping leaves from a section of mixed salad greens. “Sure, captain.”

  “This is woman to woman. Please, call me Kyong. Or K. That’s what…” She choked back the emotion welling inside her. “That’s what my brother used to call me.”

  Annie laughed. “Sorry. Old habits die hard, especially when drilled into your brain by the military. What’s on your mind, K?”

  “How’s it work with you and Roscoe and Niner?”

  Annie paused, thinking. After a moment, she shrugged. “A little rocky sometimes because Roscoe suffers from chronic foot-in-mouth disease, as you witnessed.” She smiled. “But he’s getting better. He just needed the right woman with a firm hand.” Her smile faded. “I didn’t think you and Kilo and Foxtrot were—”