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  There it was. Now Cal could see the whole picture, or at least a lot more of it. MHA still flew for the CIA, on call just like their summer contract in Australia. Or was that trumped up as well?

  “Is there a war on?”

  Jeannie looked at them in alarm.

  Henderson shrugged.

  Christ, what had Cal just stepped into the middle of?

  Chapter 7

  “Ante up,” Henderson called out loud enough for Cal to hear him over the four roaring Pratt & Whitney F117 turbofan engines.

  They were on the ground in Hawaii only long enough to fuel up. They were doing the twenty-hour flight straight through, with only two stops en route for fuel and fresh crews.

  Once airborne again, they had gathered inside the belly of the roaring C-17 for lunch. The helicopters were crammed in, each twisted slightly so that the tail sections overlapped, strapped down so that they couldn’t shift an inch in flight. He’d chatted with the loadmasters. Five helicopters crowded the bay but weighed only about a quarter of what the transport plane could carry. Apparently a C-17 could easily carry an Abrams main battle tank. He didn’t know what that meant beyond really big and really heavy.

  People were obviously an afterthought. Many of the fold-down seats mounted along the sides of the fuselage were blocked by the tight load. The MHA crew had clustered in a forward corner for poker. They had to be careful not to stand up too quickly because several of them had to sit on crates beneath the tail of a parked Firehawk.

  At Henderson’s call, the crowd shifted about. Soon, a crate of smokejumper water pumps was set up in the middle as a table in a circle of seats, some on the aircraft’s side fold-downs, some made of packs. Two guys had scrounged up a life raft and sat side by side on its hard plastic shell.

  Cal sized up the crowd and decided it would be an interesting game. Henderson, ex-Army major, wearing his trademark mirrored sunglasses despite the plane’s dim interior, was obviously a serious opponent. His wife kissed him on top of his head, then very deliberately pulled out a paperback and moved over to the other side of the plane to find somewhere to read, her daughter asleep in one of those car seats converted into a carrier that she took with her. Some story behind that one. Maybe she couldn’t bear to watch him play.

  Mickey Hamilton, one of the 212 pilots, and Vern Meany, a MD500 pilot, pulled up seats. Bruce Menotti, the other 212 pilot, bowed out.

  Steve sat in and Carly sat beside him with an arm over his shoulder. They were an interesting couple themselves. Steve was some kind of drone wizard and a former lead smokejumper who walked with a distinct limp that no one paid any attention to. Carly was like Beale in some ways. Emily Beale looked like the U.S. Army recruiting poster, “Yes, our women really do look this amazing.” Carly, with her light-blond hair and softer features, was obviously civilian and belonged in a Hollywood movie as the one woman to anchor some team of handsome guys doing impossible things as if they were easy.

  Jeannie dropped down beside Cal. “I’d like to play. So how does this game work?”

  He and Henderson shared a groan. At Henderson’s shrug, Steve turned to explain the game: pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, and so on. He went through it all a couple of times to make sure she had the order right and explained basic play.

  “You play nickel to the dollar for the first five hands,” Henderson decreed. “Then you’re on your own.”

  Jeannie nodded her willingness.

  Early on, they were just getting a feel for each other. Mickey wasn’t a threat. Vern was okay. Carly was a better player than Steve, often changing his bets even as he made them. Henderson was impenetrable, no way to read the man. Jeannie was just having a good time. She’d sat close enough to Cal that their legs pressed together from foot to knee and they kept bumping elbows, though they kept their cards to themselves after the second time he reminded her to keep her hand up.

  By the end of five hands, Jeannie had turned two dollars into twenty, but at a twenty-to-one exchange rate, playing nickels and winning dollars, it didn’t mean much more than beginner’s luck. He and Henderson were about even. Carly was also up a few dollars. Vern and Mickey were looking unhappy.

  By twenty hands, Vern and Mickey were tapped out. Cal and Henderson were still pretty even, and the Carly-Steve team was struggling to stay afloat. Interestingly Jeannie was still doing okay.

  By thirty hands, Jeannie had swept the table.

  “What the hell, Jeannie?” Henderson cried out in frustration as she raked in the final pot.

  “Older brother in the Oz Air Force. I can’t believe you two were dumb enough to buy the helpless woman act. Do both of yourselves a favor; don’t try playing poker when you’re Down Under. We’re an entire nation who are descendants of Britain’s worst criminals and dissidents. We gamble as easily as you breathe.”

  Cal burst out laughing and dragged her into his arms. He was really getting to be totally crazy about this woman filled with a hundred surprises. Despite how much of his money was now in her pockets.

  ***

  Jeannie had one more surprise for Cal.

  She waited until after the C-17’s refueling stop in American Samoa. After that, people spread out air mattresses and tried to get some sleep. No matter what time they arrived in Oz, it wouldn’t be their body time, so a padding of sleep should help the readjustment.

  She set her own mattress up in the shadows at the rear of the plane behind her old MD500. Half a very cluttered football field away, she was well out of sight of the others. Then she fetched Cal and guided him to the rear of the plane.

  “You a member of the mile-high club, Hotshot?” It was terribly forward compared to anything she’d ever done, but she didn’t hesitate. When it was right…

  He grinned at her. “Not yet, Helitack.”

  “We’re flying over a mile high, more like five. Wanna join?”

  His answer was to gather her in those strong arms of his and pull her so tight against him that she wondered if she’d ever breath normally again. His merest touch sent her pulse flying high. She’d used the gentle rubbing of her leg against Cal’s to distract him during the poker game. Had made it subtle enough that Cal hadn’t noticed, but so that Mark Henderson had, distracting him in turn by being amused at her antics. It wouldn’t work a second time, which was why she’d warned them off—they were both really good. Still, she’d made a quick two hundred, well worth the effort.

  But the plan had almost backfired. She’d been thoroughly distracted as well by the electric heat that never stopped between her and Cal at even the simplest contact. It was supposed to be wearing off by this point. Instead it kept finding more and denser fuel and burning hotter and hotter.

  He undressed her layer by layer until she stood naked before him. She hoped that the rest of the crew were indeed sacked out. But a part of her didn’t care. Even though the shadows here were deep, it was far lighter than the tent in the middle of the night. She could see his appreciation as he inspected her as thoroughly as last night, but with the added sense of sight.

  Each time he moved over her body, she stripped another piece of his clothing until they were both naked in the back of the C-17’s cargo bay. When he went to lay her down, she refused. Instead, she pushed his back against the MD500. He shivered as his back came in contact with the cool sheet metal.

  She kept him pinned there with her body. She’d flown the same model in Australia herding cattle in the Northern Territory, spreading fertilizer in New South Wales, even carting around a marine scientist in a version with floats instead of skids as he spot-checked the health of the Great Barrier Reef. And she’d flown this exact bird for three summers and more than a year full-time with MHA before she graduated to the Firehawk. She knew every nut and bolt of this machine. It was as close to being hers as any craft on the planet. And now that her parents lived in a small apartment on the coast rather than a
sprawling cattle station in the Outback, this chopper was as close to a home as she had.

  She’d never before made love to a man against or in a chopper, and there wasn’t room to do so inside this one. The MD500 was so small that they flew without doors on the cockpit because there really wasn’t room for two men to sit side by side if they had broad shoulders. It also improved the visibility immensely.

  At the moment, what it allowed her to do was grab the door frame with one hand and pull herself tight against Cal. With one foot she stepped up onto the landing-strut footrest, then wrapped the other leg around his hips and lowered herself against him. He cupped her behind with both hands, kissing her hard.

  She leaned back until only her grip on the door and his grip on her kept her from tumbling over backward. He leaned forward, capturing one of her breasts in his mouth. She felt his suckling draw right down into her insides. She flung her free arm around his shoulders to hang on.

  It was too much.

  Jeannie wasn’t ready to be feeling this for any man. Not Cal, not anyone.

  But she couldn’t stop him any more than she could keep her emotions from shifting as fast as flame. No one had ever evoked so much from her. She’d always thought of her heart as burned out, but Cal kept finding embers buried deep in the ash. He didn’t nurse them to life; he caused them to be reborn at full blaze.

  When at last he pulled her into a kiss and plunged into her, he created some circuit of fire that flowed and cycled through her body, out through her breath into his mouth, and back in through his penetration. Even the sheath he’d put on didn’t block the runaway cycle.

  She tried desperately to find a way to pull herself back together. To haul herself back to her chopper. To hold on to something solid with more than one shuddering hand and a barely maintained foothold.

  But she didn’t find it. Couldn’t do it.

  By the time she came, she was long past thinking, long past caring—she was falling. Tumbling free into the sky and falling straight toward Cal Jackson.

  The heat roared through her as he held her tight in his embrace.

  It burned when he turned and laid her against the 500’s metal skin where he’d warmed it with his own body. He finished her and himself off against the helicopter she’d flown alone so many hours into so many fiery battles.

  And he had left her on the edge of weeping when he lowered her to the air mattress with an infinite tenderness and kissed her to sleep.

  Chapter 8

  Cal was barely conscious as he watched them unload the choppers. Even the chilly nighttime air had little effect except to make him shrug on a flannel shirt. He hadn’t been able to sleep. Courtesy of the International Date Line and way too many time zones, after twenty hours in transit, it was oh-dark-thirty-something two days after they’d left California at ten a.m. It was like Thursday had never existed except in some body-numbing vibration machine. His ears still rang though the C-17’s engines had cycled down more than thirty minutes earlier.

  Jeannie made a lousy counterpoint to his mood, having slept nine straight. She kept bubbling over with how great it felt to be back on home soil. How much she couldn’t wait to try the first Firehawks ever to enter Australia. Thanking him several times for how incredible she felt as she rushed about prepping her craft.

  The customs guy who, despite the hour, welcomed them with a cheerful, “G’day, mate. Welcome to ruddy Australia, Calvin Jackson,” as he stamped the passport didn’t help matters in the slightest.

  “I still can’t believe that your parents named you for a cartoon character.”

  With his middle-of-the-night wit running as foul as ever, he kept his mouth shut.

  No, the nuns at the orphanage had named him for stupid St. Francis Bernard who had done nothing of much interest except be nice to a bunch of animals. When he was nineteen, Cal had renamed himself for a feisty, badass cartoon character. But he could find no way to explain his rootless past and more rootless present to this woman who spewed family with every other sentence.

  She was beloved and knew it.

  He was unwanted. And knew that truth just as assuredly as she knew hers. Cal was spared making any explanations when she rushed off to check in with the refueling team.

  Cal moved to stand outside the circle of lights surrounding the unloading zone. The moon was low in the sky. And that was north, not south. He was in two different hemispheres than the last time he’d slept. He’d traded north for south and west for east. He didn’t know which way to turn any more than he had last night.

  On the flight, as Jeannie sighed happily in her sleep, Cal had dressed and watched her. There was something going on that he couldn’t place. Couldn’t figure out. Something that was going to make him into a stark raving lunatic if he didn’t solve it soon. He wanted to lie down beside Jeannie. He wanted to wake up with her. He wanted to do that over and over again.

  And it scared the shit out of him!

  Cal was homeless, even more so than the bum on the street. The bum at least had a past and a place to go, even if it was a cardboard shelter. While Cal wouldn’t trade his comfortable itinerant lifestyle with the street homeless for a moment, neither did he have a home, a city, or even a state to call his own. American, that was the closest label he could come up with. Mostly out West because that’s where the fires were.

  Cal had made that homelessness into a lifestyle since he was sixteen. He didn’t need this beautiful, kind, sensual woman messing with that.

  “You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”

  He twitched as Jeannie slid a hand around his waist.

  “Not much.” He almost said he didn’t sleep well on planes, but it would be a lie as he always had before. And while he might not be willing to tell her the truth, he wasn’t going to lie to her.

  They stood a long time in companionable silence, just watching the night beyond the end of the Australian airfield. It smelled different. Dry, arid, but not with the oak and scrub grass of southern California. The air here smelled as if this was where it was born to begin with. Like standing on the ocean, but without even the salt and algae smell. Pure. Clean. And, except for some continuing service sounds back at the choppers, so quiet that his ears were ringing.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Jeannie’s question was as soft as the night.

  “Other than being amazingly incredible, not a thing.” Also truth.

  “And is that such a crime?” This time he heard the pain in her voice and it nearly broke him. The last thing he wanted was to hurt this woman. Normally he didn’t care all that much. If women became too clingy, then they were just asking for what they got. If they tried to trap him, well, he knew how to work his way out of those places too. Usually by leaving.

  Jeannie was killing him with kindness. With an open and generous heart. He was going to hurt both of them; that was becoming inevitable. He wished to God he could figure out how to avoid doing that.

  Cal wrapped her in his arms, enjoying the way they fit together as she rested her head on his shoulder and snuggled. He breathed her in, as unique and rare as a spring bloom in the middle of the Outback.

  He’d seen that once. Hundreds of miles of sandy soil covered with the occasional patchy scrub grass or rare tree. He’d been halfway “down the Alice.” Somewhere between Darwin and Alice Springs over a small rise on the Stuart Highway, an acre, maybe two, had decided it was springtime. A localized rain shower, a brief rise in the water table, a bit of whimsy by Mother Nature…no idea what caused it. All he knew was that in a land of endless beige and brown beneath a shockingly blue sky, he happened upon a thousand colors of flowers blooming as if there was no tomorrow.

  And there wouldn’t be here. Such blooms are very short lived in the Outback—take advantage of the water, duck back under the soil. He’d stopped his rented motorcycle and just watched it for hours. Oddly, when he checked later, he hadn’t t
aken a single photograph of the spectacle.

  Yet now it revisited him years later. It came back as a woman who bloomed in his arms. At least in this moment, in this place, she belonged there. Maybe if he simply accepted that it wouldn’t last, he could enjoy what it was now.

  And if it did last?

  He stared out at the fathomless dark lit by a hundred thousand stars and the moon on the wrong side of the sky. He’d always been so comfortable with the unknown, the only common thread that traced through his whole life. This time, the discomfort made him shiver despite the balmy night and the warm woman in his arms.

  Chapter 9

  “Where the hell are we, anyway?” Cal asked when Henderson strolled up beside him.

  Jeannie had gone off with Beale somewhere. Probably some pilots’ meeting. The 212 guys and Vern were missing as well.

  “Australia. Exactly per plan. I need a plane. You coming or not?”

  Cal looked around. Just the two of them left. Not even the C-17 crew. After unloading, they’d fired up their plane and roared off into the night. The airstrip itself was dead quiet.

  “What the hell?” He kicked at the soil. There was something familiar about it. He pulled his tablet out of his camera bag, tapped it awake, and turned it around to shine on the dirt. Red. Dry. Almost dusty.

  “Your prognosis, doctor?” Henderson was still waiting for him.

  “Nothing better to do; I’ll go with you.” He’d only seen this kind of dirt in one part of Australia. They were in the Red Centre, the geographical center of the country and the heart of the Outback. The only airports big enough for a C-17 in the Red Centre were Alice Springs or the big tourist strip out at Uluru Rock. Both were commercial airports with plenty of traffic. Well, he was good and stuck for now, but in the morning—whenever that was—he could catch a flight out and be gone.