She checked the panel above their head, again following her fingers with her eyes, and adjusted a lever. “Seriously? You’re a legionnaire?”
“Yes, ma’am. Caporal Cody Castillo du groupement des commandos parachutistes du 2e régiment étranger de parachutistes de Calvi.”
She did a three-sixty check through the windows, and engaged the starter. “Commandos parachutistes,” she repeated disdainfully. “A parachute commando?”
“You know, most people are impressed by that.”
“You’ll never catch me jumping from a perfectly good aircraft.”
“Afraid of heights?”
“Only of falling from them, which is totally rational and something you should be grateful for right about now.”
“Yes, ma’am. That I am.”
“Are you for real with that ‘yes, ma’am’ thing?”
“Habit. My abuela would have me over her knee if I didn’t show respect to women.” Okay, so he might be hamming it up there. His grandmother controlled the family fortune from a laptop, not a rocking chair. Why haul your grandson over your knee when a withering stare was plenty scary?
As Tia worked the controls with deft fingers and sharp eyes, a muted whine filtered through the headset and the shadow of a blade glided across the ground in front, slowly pursued by another.
“Vous parlez très bien français,” she said.
“So do you.”
“Expensive education—and that’s about all I remember. But you had an abuela?”
“My family’s from Mexico.”
“And you’re not?”
“Texas—born and raised.”
She gave a sharp laugh. “Right, so you’re a legionnaire commando from Texas.”
“Now, what have you got against Texas?”
“Nothing. It’s just that you’re not what I...” She shook her head. “It’s just one of those places that seems, I dunno, mythical.”
You’re not what I...expected? Hell, neither was she. “Says the woman who lives in Middle Earth. But go ahead and believe what you want about me. I just care that you’re a good pilot.”
The seat underneath him hummed, as if the chopper were straining with impatience. He knew the feeling.
“The best,” she said.
“Where did you learn to fly?”
She sighed, a scratch through the headset. “Would you ask me that if I was a guy?”
“Uh, yeah.”
She increased the engine speed and the blades whipped faster. “I get asked that a lot and you know what? My male counterparts don’t. I’ve checked with them. They don’t get the question.”
Shit. Was she right? Would he ask a guy that question? “Ma’am, I got total respect for all pilots—planes, helicopters, fucking hang gliders. Takes guts and brains and composure, and that’s something few people have.”
She scoffed, as if she wanted to be pissed at that but couldn’t manage it. “Nice recovery.”
The chopper lifted without a shudder and skimmed above the tarmac. He liked the way she talked. Sharp and combative but with enough humor that she didn’t cross into mean or bitter. Sparring, not landing real blows.
“You don’t mention on your website that you’re a woman. You don’t have a photo.” Because he was damn sure it would’ve given him extra incentive to book her, on top of her stellar reviews and safety record. “Was that deliberate?”
“I don’t say I’m a man, either. If people assume the wrong thing, that’s on them, not me. I don’t want my gender to help me or hold me back. I’ve had journalists wanting to make a big deal out of it. Even a publisher once, though she was more interested in...” She frowned. “I say no to everything. I don’t want to be the ‘plucky aviatrix keeping up with the big boys.’”
He got the feeling that’d happened before—and that it was the big boys who did the keeping up. They rose over a braided river, the shallow, bleached water in no hurry. The Awatapu’s lower reaches. Around him the chopper felt weightless, a mosquito next to the albatrosses he was used to.
“I guess what I’m asking,” he said, “is how a civilian pilot in probably the least gun-crazy country in the world knows her sniper rifles.”
“Nine years in the New Zealand air force.”
Ah. “Flying choppers?”
“Yep, though I started on transport craft—Orions, Hercules.”
“They’re still making those things?”
“The ones I flew were Vietnam relics. Of course I grew up with visions of racing Skyhawks, but by the time I enlisted they’d been sold.”
“You didn’t fly other jets?”
“We didn’t have any.”
“An air force without jets? You serious?”
“And our emblem is a kiwi, a flightless bird. Go figure.” She activated the radio. “I’m just going to call in.”
She spoke in clear, clipped shorthand. Phonetic call sign, position, altitude, direction, destination. Ahead, the last of the spring snow clung to the range’s shadowy folds, in denial about the blue dome that curved above.
“To be fair,” she said when she’d signed off, “all that Top Gun shit went out with the nineties. The future’s in drones, which doesn’t leave many options for real combat pilots. I’m not into that remote-control crap. If you don’t have the guts to go to a place you have no business blowing it up.”
“Where did you serve?”
“Samoa, the Philippines, hunting pirates in the Middle East... Took a bunch of scientists to Antarctica one summer. Mostly disaster relief and humanitarian missions, which is how it should be.”
“Word. Though they can cut you up as much as combat. Why did you leave?”
Silence. “We had a...family crisis. My koro—my grandfather—he’s lived in Wairoimata all his life, and he was struggling to get his head around it. And my brother and I needed to...get away. So we made a pact to come down here for a bit. Lie low, look out for Koro. Of course, Koro thinks it’s us who needed him. Didn’t mean to stay this long but it’s one of those places that sucks you in. Besides, now I have this monster to pay off.” She slid a hand across the top of the instrument panel. “So I’m here for a while, like it or not.”
He got the feeling she liked it okay. There was more to her story, but if she didn’t want to share, then all good. Who was he to pry? Happy families weren’t his thing, either, not anymore.
“I know a guy you might know,” he said. “Ex-legionnaire. Came to us from the New Zealand army.”
“Yeah, because I know everyone in this country. We all went to school together. Or is this more of a ‘You’re brown, he’s brown, so you must know each other’ kind of thing?”
“Hey, I’m just as brown as you.”
“So you should know better.”
He laughed. He was almost sad it was such a short flight.
Way below, the chopper’s long shadow flickered over green rock-strewn foothills, like some slimy black creature rolling and jerking over the land.
“Okay, Cowboy, what’s his name?” Tia asked, the words rushing