Chinook (+audio)

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Six months ago
Outside the crippled AC-130J Ghostrider gunship, two men wearing the only two parachutes were falling through the midnight darkness toward life.
Inside there was only death.
US Air Force Colonel Vicki “Taser” Cortez stared at the inside of the jump door she had just closed, blocking her own chance of survival.
Except she wasn’t any of those labels anymore.
If she set foot back on US soil, she’d be stripped of rank and court-martialed along with every other person on this plane. Too guilty to ever plea bargain a lesser sentence. Leavenworth for life. For what this crew had done, they might bring back the firing squad.
The sick joke was, she wasn’t even Vicki Cortez. That was just the name on the identity papers her mother had bought when they’d slipped across the Mexican border a lifetime ago. A name she’d since associated with bank accounts, pensions, and security clearances that properly would belong to a dead girl.
With the two civilians off the plane and parachuting to safety, and the Ghostrider yawing drunkenly through the last of its death throes, there was nothing left to do.
No one left to be.
She pulled the challenge coin from her pocket. A cast metal coin, the very first one every handed out by her commander after he made general. It was a sign of his respect, and the honor of it had been her anchor for nineteen years.
Nineteen years she'd spent following General JJ Martinez on his quest. A man of perfect integrity.
He had fought for what was best for their country—his country, not technically hers.
And when blocked one too many times despite their combined efforts, the three-star general had taken on the battle himself.
Had it been a failure?
The shuddering of the deck through her boots would argue for that. The highly modified C-130J Ghostrider was damaged past any ability to land. Two hundred million dollars of stolen aircraft was in its last minutes of life.
The main gun mounted in the middle of the cargo bay, the 105 mm howitzer, had exploded and was still on fire. Through the small round view-glass in the jump door, she could see that both portside engines were also now burning. Fuel pouring from the shrapnel-punctured wings caught fire even as it streamed out.
Yet tonight they had destroyed four major drug cartel strongholds along the south side of the Mexican border. Hundreds had died beneath the barrage of this gunship. Millions, perhaps billions of dollars of drugs had burned as well. It wouldn’t stop the flow, but it would cripple it while each cartel fought an internal battle to establish new leaders now that so many had been executed.
Perhaps it would finally force the United States and Mexico to do something useful together.
Perhaps not.
But all that was over.
All that was left to do was to die.
There would be no landing in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert—impact with the terrain was imminent.
A day ago, even a few hours ago, she’d have gone to sit by the general and await her fate.
But Jeremy Trahn had shown her something before she’d strapped him into the last parachute and shoved him out the jump door to safety. Against his sweet nature, he’d helped her. He hadn’t killed. But he’d shown her how to, and she’d done it without compunction.
While being her prisoner, he’d also improvised a weapon that would have blinded her, would have stopped the general—but hadn’t used it. The unused weapon and a final kiss were the last things he’d given to her.
Yet he’d given her more.
An anger.
A fury!
The plane slid hard across a pocket of turbulence, slamming her against the closed bulkhead door. She could feel the plane’s will to survive.