His Woman in Command
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“Oh, I’m sure you think that,” Nike said, laughing. She shook her head and moved up the ramp.
Gavin stood watching her pull on the helmet and get situated in the right-hand seat in the cockpit. Nodding to the load master, Gavin mounted the ramp.
His men were grinning expectantly at him as he made his way to his nylon seat right behind Nike. He held up his hands in a show of surrender and they all laughed. Gavin didn’t mind making himself the target of fun or prodding. His team had had a two-week rest, and now they were going out again. This time, he hoped, to something less dangerous, but he wasn’t sure of that.
The ramp groaned and rumbled upward until finally the hatch was shut with a loud clang. Darkness, except for the light coming in through the cockpit, made the inside of the helicopter gray. Gavin watched his men strap in, their weapons in hand, their faces belying their real thoughts. He prayed that as they approached Zor Barawul nearby Taliban soldiers wouldn’t be firing RPGs at them as they came in for a landing. He knew from the premission briefing that the townspeople hated the Taliban. But were they pro-American? There was no way to know except to walk in, offer humanitarian aid and see what happened next. They had no script written for this newest idea by General Chapman.
After pulling on his helmet, Gavin plugged in the radio connection and heard Nike’s honeyed voice as she talked with the base air controller for permission to lift off. She had already engaged one engine on the helo and then the other one. Gavin had found out at the briefing with his people that her usual copilot had food poisoning and there was no one to replace her. Nike was flying alone, which wasn’t a good thing, but Gavin had seen it happen.
If they weren’t wearing helmets, the noise created by the helicopter would be horrendous and would destroy their hearing in a short time. The bird shuddered and shook around him. The deck beneath his booted feet constantly shivered. If his men had any worry about a woman flying this huge, hulking transport helo a hundred feet off the earth, they didn’t show it. Flying nap-of-the-earth took a helluva lot of skill. Gavin wondered how many hours she had of flight time. When Nike had finished her conversation with the tower, Gavin piped up, “Captain, how many hours do you have flying this bird?”
All his men heard the question, of course, because they, too, had helmets on and were plugged in to the inter-cabin radio system. Gavin saw the load master at the far end turn and give him a questioning look. He also heard the explosion of laughter from Nike.
“Oh, let’s see, Captain, I got my helo-driver’s license at Disneyland in Orlando, Florida,” she drawled. “Does that count?”
His men were guffawing in reaction, but no one could hear it over the noise of the vibrating helo around them. Jackson chuckled. “I feel better, Captain Alexander. So long as Mickey Mouse signed off on your pilot’s license I feel safe and sound.”
Jackson thought some of his men were going to fall out of their nylon seats they were laughing so hard. He joined them. And then he heard Nike joining their collective roar of laughter. She had a wonderful, husky tone and it made his body ache with need. What kind of magic did this Greek woman have over him?
“Actually,” Nike said, chuckling, “it was Minnie Mouse who signed it. You have a problem with that?”
“No, not at all. Now, if Goofy had signed it, I’d be worried.”
Even the load master was giggling in fits, his gloved hands closed over the fifty-caliber. Unaccountably, Gavin felt his spirits rise. If nothing else, Nike Alexander gave as good as she got. Even more to her credit, she could take a joke and come back swinging. Looking into the faces of his men, Gavin felt a warmth toward the woman pilot. Did Nike realize how much she’d just lifted everyone’s spirits? Probably not. But he would tell her—alone—and thank her for being a good sport on a deadly mission.
“Okay, boys,” Nike said, catching her breath, “let’s get this show on the road. Sergeant, once we’re airborne, lower the ramp and keep that .50 cal ready to shoot. We’re not in Disneyland and where we’re going, the bad guys are waiting. Hunker down, you’re about to go on the wildest roller-coaster ride you’ve ever taken. I’m ready to rock….”
For the next fifty minutes, Nike’s full concentration was winding between, around and down into one valley after another in the steep, rugged mountain range. When they roared past Do Bandi, another village, she knew they would soon be climbing steeply. Zor Barawul sat in a rich, fertile valley ringed by the snowy mountains. On the eastern side of those mountains lay the Pakistan border where Taliban hid. The valley was a well-known Taliban route. They boldly passed through it because the Afghan villagers could not fire on or challenge them. If they did, the Taliban would come in and kill men, women and children.
The sunlight shone in bright slats across the mountaintops as she brought the Chinook up steeply, pushing with throttles to the firewall to make it up and over the snowy slope that blurred beneath them. How badly Nike wanted a copilot to do all this other work, but that wasn’t her luck today. Captain Emma Trayhern, the XO who was supposed to fly with her, had caught a nasty case of food poisoning and was laid low for the next twenty-four hours. Her CO, Dallas Klein, had faith in her to handle this mission all by herself. Helluva compliment, but Nike would have preferred a copilot, thank you very much. The sunlight made her squint even though she wore a pair of aviator’s sunglasses. The bird rocked from one side to another as she aimed the nose downward at top speed and skimmed headlong down a steep, rocky slope and into another valley.
Nike could see herds of sheep and goats being tended by young boys here and there on the bright green valley floor. They would look up, wave as the CH-47 streaked by them. The herds of animals would flee in all directions as the noisy Chinook passed low overhead. Nike felt sorry for the young herders who would probably spend half a day gathering up their scattered herds. What she didn’t want to see was yellow or red winking lights from below. That would mean the Taliban was firing a rocket up at them. Not good.
The mountains were coated with thick snow even in April. The lower slopes showed hopeful signs of greenery sprouting after enduring the fierce, cold Afghan winter. The helicopter vibrated heavily around Nike as she flew the bulky transport through the valley. Shoving the throttles once more to the firewall, she urged the helo up and over another mountain range and down into the next valley. And, as she glanced out her cockpit window, it was comforting to see an Apache helicopter with her women friends from BJS 60 flying several thousand feet above her, working their avionics to find the enemy below before they shot her Chinook out of the air. She might not have a copilot, but she had the baddest son-of-a-bitch of a combat helicopter shadowing her flight today. That made Nike smile and feel confident.
The village of Zor Barawul contained two hundred people and sat at the north end of a long, narrow valley that was sandwiched between the mountains. On the other side lay the border of Pakistan. As in all villages Nike had seen, the wealthy families had houses made of stone with wooden floors. Wood was usually scarce. Those less welloff had homes made of earth and mud with hard-packed dirt floors. Some who could afford it would have a few rugs over the earthen floor. Roofs were made from tin or other lightweight metals. The poorer families had thatched material on top.