Dark Ops: Hotshot Part 1

Dark Ops.

Hotshot.

Catherine Mann.

Much love to my children Brice, Haley, Robbie, and Maggie. You have blessed my life with your gap-toothed smiles and boundless love.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Parenthood brings untold joys-and fears. It seems every generation vows times are tougher for youths. Without question, I believe teens today face greater challenges, temptations, and dangers than I could have ever imagined during my high school tenure. Now as a mother of four, I spend my fair share of hours worrying, the worst nightmare scenarios expanding in my overactive writer's imagination. Granted, my kids haven't given me much grief so far. (Not that we parents need an excuse to worry!) However, in the darkest moments of concern I feel a kindred motherhood connection to those struggling to keep their children safe. From that, this book was born, along with the hope that the next generation will find the world a safer place for their kids.

Many thanks to all who helped me in the telling of this story: my genius editor, Wendy McCurdy; my savvy agent, Barbara Collins Rosenberg; critique mavens, Joanne Rock and Stephanie Newton; medical fact-checker extraordinaire, Karen Tucker, R.N.; my law-enforcement honorary son, Jasen Wells; motorcycle experts, Dianna Love and her husband, Karl Snell; and as always, a special thanks to my own flyboy hero and the love of my life, Rob.

ONE.

HONDURAS: PRESENT DAY.

Major Vince "Vapor" Deluca didn't need to ask if there were Harleys in heaven. For him, hogs and planes both transported him from this world to brush the edge of paradise.

Not to mention both had saved his h.e.l.l-bound a.s.s on more than one occasion. And right now, he needed some of that heavenly salvation-on wings rather than wheels-in a serious way if he expected to pull off this potentially explosive mission.

Flying his AC-130 guns.h.i.+p at twenty-five thousand feet, Vince peered into a monitor, watching the increasingly restless crowd below in the rural Honduran town. With the help of his twelve crew members, he monitored citizens pouring out of the hills to cast their votes in the special election, an election that could turn volatile in a heartbeat, the politics of this country precarious with warlords determined to stop the process. Local government officials had requested U.S. help with crowd control, using any means possible to keep the peace.

Vince cranked the yoke into a tight turn, flying over the voting place, a white wooden church. The sensors bristled along the side of the aircraft to scan the snaking crowd lining up. His sensors were so good the guys in back were able to study faces, gestures, and even guns worn like fas.h.i.+on accessories.

He knew too well how mob mentality could unleash an atomic Lord of the Flies destructive force.

His fists clenched around the yoke. "Okay, crew, eyeb.a.l.l.s out. Let's score one for democracy."

"Vapor," the fire control officer, David "Ice" Berg, droned from the back, as cool and calm as his last name implied, "take a look at this dude in the camera. I think he's the ringleader."

Vince checked the screen, and yeah, that guy had whacko written all over him. "He seems like a hard-core cheerleader yelling and flapping his arms around."

Copilot Jimmy Gage thumbed his interphone. "Those gymnastics of his are working." Jimmy's fists clenched and unclenched as if ready to break up the brawl mano a mano. He'd earned his call sign Hotwire honestly. Vince's best bud, they'd often been dubbed in bars the Hotwire and the Hotshot. "The crowd's getting riled up down there. Hey, Berg, do things look any better from your bird's-eye view?"

"Give me a C for chaos," Berg answered, dry as ever.

Vince worked his combat boots over the rudders while keeping his eyes locked on the screen scrolling an up-close look at the ground. "Roger that. All Cheerleader Barbie needs is a ponytail and a pair of pom-poms instead of that big-a.s.s gun slung over his shoulder." A riot seemed increasingly inevitable, which was not surprising, since human intel had already uncovered countless attempts to terrorize voters into staying home. "Barbie definitely bears watching, especially with those ankle biters around."

He monitored the group of children playing on swings nearby while adults waited to vote. Conventional crowd-control techniques could sometimes escalate the frenzy. This mission called for something different, something new. Something right up his alley as a member of the air force's elite dark ops testing unit. In emergency situations they were called upon to pull a trick or two from their developmental a.r.s.enal and pray it worked as advertised, since failure could spark an international incident or, worse yet, harm a kid.

Today, he and his dark ops crew were flying the latest brainchild of the nonlethal weapons crowd. A flat microwave antenna protruded from the side of the lumbering aircraft. The ADS-Active Denial System-had the power to scorch people without leaving marks. Testing showed that as it heated up the insides, people scattered like ants from a hill after a swift kick.

Uncomfortable, but preferable to a lethal bullet.

Jimmy made a notation in his flight log. "Careful with your bank there, Vapor. Getting a little shallow." Once his pencil slowed, he glanced over at Vince. "Barbie might be providing a distraction for someone else to make a move."

Valid point. He increased the bank and smoothed the action with a touch of rudder. "Good thing there are thirteen of us to scan the mob, because we're going to need all eyes out."

A string of acknowledgments echoed over Vince's headset just as Barbie grabbed the b.u.t.t of his rifle and-slam-the past merged with the present.

A group of misfit teens festering with discontent. Four hands hauling him from his Kawasaki rat bike. Screaming. Gunshots.

A girl in the way.

Sweat stinging his eyes now as well as then, Vince reached up to adjust his air vents for like the nine hundredth time since takeoff. How could they make this airplane so high-tech and not get the d.a.m.n air-conditioning to work?

"Time's run out for Barbie." The rattling plane vibrated through his boots all the way up to his teeth. "Crank it, Berg."

"Concur," the fire control officer drawled from the back. "Let's light him up."

"I'm in parameters, aircraft stable, cleared to engage." Vince monitored as a crosshair tuned in on the infrared screen in front of him and centered on the troublemaker. He hoped this would work, prayed this guy was a low level troublemaker and not one of the area's ruthless mercenaries. He didn't relish the thought of the situation escalating into a need for the more conventional guns aft of the nonlethal ADS.

That wouldn't go well for the "get out the vote" effort.

"Ready," Berg called.

"Cleared to fire," answered Vapor.

"Firing . . ."

No special sounds or even so much as a vibration went through the craft. The only way to measure success was to watch and wait and . . .

Bingo.

Barbie started hopping around like he'd been stung by a swarm of bees. His AK-47 dropped from his hand onto the dusty ground. The crowd stilled at the dude's strange behavior, all heads turning toward him as if looking for an explanation.

Jimmy twitched in his seat. "I halfway wanna laugh at the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d, except I know how bad the ADS stings."

"Amen, brother." Before integrating the ADS onto the airplane, they'd tested it on themselves. It was disorienting and unpleasant, to say the least, but not damaging.

He was willing to take that searing discomfort and more to power through developing this particular brainchild, a personal quest for him. He could have been on the side of the evil cheerleader today if not for one person: a half-crazy old war vet who took on screwed-up teens that most good citizens avoided on the street. Don Ba.s.sett had never asked for anything in return.

Until this morning.

Vince relegated that BlackBerry e-mail he'd received minutes before takeoff to the back of his mind. "No time to get complacent, everybody. Keep looking. I can't imagine our activist with the automatic weapon is alone."

The system had the capability to sweep the whole group with a broader band, but he hoped that wouldn't be necessary, as it would likely shut down voting altogether.

Bada.s.s Barbie shook his head quickly, looked around, then leapt toward his AK-47 lying in the dust.

Berg centered the crosshairs again. "I think he needs another taste."

Vapor replied, "Roger. Cleared to fire."

"Firing . . ."

The rabble-rouser again launched into some kind of erratic pep rally routine.

"Stay on him." Vince eyed the monitor, heart drumming in time with the roaring engines. "Run him away from the crowd."

Berg kept the crosshairs planted on the troublemaker as he attempted to escape the heat. The wiry man sidled away. Faster. Faster again, until he gave up and broke into a sprint, disappearing around a corner of the building.

h.e.l.l, yeah.

Vince continued banking left over the village so the cameras could monitor the horde. As hoped, the crowd seemed to chat among themselves for a while, some looking up at the plane, discussing, then slowly re-forming a line to the church.

Cheers from the crew zipped through the headset for one full circle around the now-peaceful gathering. Things could still stir up in a heartbeat, but the pop from the ADS had definitely increased the odds for the good guys.

G.o.d, he loved it when a plan came together. "Crew, let's run an oxygen check and get back in the game."

His crew called in one by one in the same order as specified in the aircraft technical order, ending with him.

Vince monitored his oxygen panel. "Pilot check complete."

With luck, the rest of the election would go as smoothly, and they would be back in the good ole U.S. of A. tomorrow night.

Five peaceful hours later, Vince cranked the yoke, guiding the AC-130 into a roll, heading for the base, where he would debrief this mission and lay out plans for their return home.

And contact Don Ba.s.sett.

Vince finally let the message flood his mind. He couldn't simply ignore the note stored on his BlackBerry. The e-mail scrolled through his head faster than data on his control panel: I need your help. My daughter's in danger.

That in and of itself wasn't a surprise. Ba.s.sett's only daughter had been flirting with death before she even got her braces off. Her parents kept bailing out Shay's ungrateful b.u.t.t. What did surprise him, however, was Don asking for help. The dude was a giver, not a taker. It meant that, for whatever reason, he must be desperate.

Not that the reason even mattered. Whatever the old guy wanted, he could have. If not for Don Ba.s.sett's intervention seventeen years ago, Vince wouldn't need a motorcycle or airplane to transport him from his f.u.c.ked-up world.

Because seventeen years ago, he'd led the riots.

Seventeen years ago, one of his fellow gang members had been gunned down by cops just doing their jobs.

Seventeen years ago, he could have been looking at twenty-five to life.

CLEVELAND, OHIO: TWO DAYS LATER.

"Suicide hotline. This is Shay." Shay Ba.s.sett wheeled her office chair closer to her desk. Tucking the phone under her chin, she shoved aside the steaming cup of java she craved more than air.

"I need help," a husky voice whispered.

Shay snagged a pencil and began jotting notes about the person in crisis on the other end of the line: Male.

Teen?

"I'm here to listen. Could you give me a name to call you by?" Something, anything to thread a personal connection through the phone line.

"John, I'm John, and I hurt so much. If I don't get relief soon, I'll kill myself."

His words clamped a corpse-cold fist around her heart. She understood the pain of these callers, too much so, until sometimes she struggled for objectivity.

Shay zoned out everything but the voice and her notes.

Voice stronger, deeper.

Older teen.

Background noise, soft music.