Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

Jen

W e fired up the aircraft and started to taxi out. Mark and Laura were ahead of us lining up near the runway. My muscles tensed, causing a slight ache in my shoulders. I tried to relax in spite of being nervous. I had no reason to be. I'd already done missions out here, and done them with Mark. It was the way he had offered to do it; I was suddenly feeling like I was on a first date. A date with a bunch of witnesses. If that wasn't enough to set a girl on edge, I wasn't sure what was.

Mark made the radio call for both of our aircraft and we took off, with him in the lead. He called over the radio, "Our first stop is the Friendship Bridge, it's not far from here. Captain, we don't need you that close to us." I had pulled along side him, about two or three rotor disks away, which was around one hundred fifty feet.

"This is standard formation flight," I responded.

"Standard for Black Hawks, not standard for us. We need room to maneuver in case someone shoots at you. And if you stay that close to us, someone will shoot at you."

Two minutes into this flight and already he was back to being a pain in the ass. I obliged him though and backed off a bit. "What if they shoot at you?" I asked him.

"Not likely, it's why we bring you along as bait," he joked. Nick just scowled in the seat next to me as my laughter echoed through the cockpit.

"Anyways," he called back on the radio, as I slowed down again because I was already catching up to him. That was the other problem, they were so slow. Our engines weren't weighed down with rockets and ammo, so we flew a lot faster than the Apaches. "Up here in the river is the Friendship Bridge, it's the bridge the Russians used in their withdrawal from Afghanistan. On the other side is Uzbekistan.

He made a turn to the west and continued along the river. "Behind us to the north east is Tajikistan, in front of us here over the mountains in the distance is Turkmenistan. Nothing to see that way. So we'll head over to Mazar." He didn't sound like much of a tour guide. He sounded like he was commanding the tour. It was the same way he spoke on mission. I wondered if he ever wasn't in control. The thought had my heartbeat picking up slightly. Images of what I could do to break the grip he had on his self-restraint had a bead of sweat rolling down my back.

We flew over an open stretch of desert with tents spread out all around. "Here's a special sight for you. Bedouins. Desert nomads. You're in luck, they have their camels with them." He started an orbit around the camp, and sure enough there were dozens, if not hundreds, of camels throughout the camp.

"Is this normal?" I asked over the radio. Leaning over, I smiled down at the animals who raised their heads to watch us fly by. They were so cute, I wanted to land and go spend the day petting them.

"Normal, yes. Consistent, no. A week from now they might not be here. They move about following the seasons. You'll see them through your time here, but never in one place for long.

Sheppard's voice wasn't overly deep. Certainly not ‘sultry' like the damned weather officer. But it had a calming effect. I couldn't imagine him panicking or being overly excited. It was just…comforting. It was bad enough that he was so overtly strong, but to be so in control all the time, it was just sexy.

We made our way to the outskirts of the city. It surprised me how big and active it was. Modern. Traffic. Neon signs big enough to see in the daylight.

"The blue roofs are usually schools. Anything with a dome and four towers in the corners is a Mosque. Try not to fly directly over them. The warlord that runs this city likes us, more or less. And we want him on our good side. Keeps things quiet at the base." By quiet he must have meant that we would have fewer rocket attacks.

"Who knew the Apaches could be so considerate?" This was from Sarah.

"Is it just me or does anyone else get a warm tingle when he tells you what to do?" Karolyn asked. Naturally Karolyn would say that. I was pretty sure she had daddy issues. Her crush on Mark was getting out of hand.

And it's not just her with the annoying crush. A little voice betrayed in my head. Yeah, well, at least I'm age appropriate. Sort of. I responded to myself.

"Next up on the west side of the city is the Citadel. This is where Alexander the Great decided to take a pause and make his mark." Sheppard started circling a wall. It was drawn out in a circle close to half a mile in diameter. It was old. Not that east coast New England farmhouse old, but biblical old. Pre-biblical as it turns out.

That feeling I had on my first flight was back. The feeling of following history. Now it was making sense. We really were in the footsteps of ancient warriors.

I turned into the orbit with him. I had to remind myself to look up and forward out the window to make sure I wasn't flying too close to them. There were walls within the walls. The outer one was washed down with time. No longer crisp and straight like the newer walls in the city. But it was still sturdy. Further inside were more modern walls, the type we had at MES. There were people inside, Afghan National Army soldiers were occupying it. Battered, weathered, but not fragile. I had no doubt that it would last another two thousand years.

I wasn't the only one impressed. Mark had been talking the whole time, but I missed all of it. "You came in broken, you'll have to give me the history when we get back," I called over the radio, hoping he wouldn't notice I hadn't been paying attention.

"No problem, there's a lot of history out here. We'll swing near the Blue Mosque, then continue south for the rest of it."

"You gonna have him give you a private history lesson, Cap?" Karolyn asked jovially, though I couldn't figure out if she was teasing or jealous.

"Kinda zoned out there looking at the Citadel, just didn't want to tell him I wasn't paying attention."

"Think I'll ask him for a private lesson then." Jealous. Definitely jealous. I had no intention of following through with his offer, but when Karolyn put that idea in my head I decided maybe it wasn't a bad idea. What would be the harm? You like history, or at least you don't dislike it.

" No tour of Mazar would be complete without the Blue Mosque. You can see it at our nine o'clock. Under no circumstances do you ever fly over it. Legend has it that's where the prophet Muhammad's successor is buried. This is as close as you or I will ever get to it. You fly over it and you'll have the whole city ready to burn down our base. Next we head south."

The city ended in a valley. We flew south through it and followed the river. Small towns and farms continued along the river.

"This is nuts. Everything is built up on either side of the river, but one mile past the river and it's just desert," Sarah said, awe filling her voice.

We broke to the east off of the mountains and over some deep ravines. We were still high, at least two thousand feet above the tops, but we could see the glint of light off the streams running through them.

"If we were stateside I would have this helicopter down in those ravines in a heartbeat," I said. What a rush, being a few feet above the water, twisting and turning to follow the contours of the river. But we weren't stateside, and being that low is never a good idea out here. Doubly so considering that people were clustered around the river.

Mark was following the ravines in reverse, climbing to the mountain they originated at instead of following them downhill to where they emptied out. We were getting high up, eight thousand feet and climbing. By contrast the terrain at Ft Hood was barely one thousand feet.

We crested the ridge of the mountain and I found Mark doing another circle around a village. I keyed the radio. "I can't believe that there are people this high up. We're over ten thousand feet right now!"

He responded back, "Oh yeah, these guys have it made. Their little brick houses are decades, maybe centuries old, and they will last for generations more. They're so far away from everything they probably don't know that there is a war going on. Or they might think that we're Russians that never left. Either way they don't seem to give a shit. They have their house, their family, and their sheep."

On a plateau behind the village was a flock of sheep so dense it could have covered a football field. "You sound jealous," I teased.

"Maybe a little. Who doesn't want to live on a secluded mountain getaway? I bet they have great skiing during the winter time."

I laughed at the thought. Looking down the sides of the mountain I tried to imagine what skiing down them would be like. Brief probably, with an abrupt stop. Then I turned my eyes back on the village.

"I could imagine being in a ski lodge with him. Though I wouldn't be doing much skiing," Karolyn said in a sly tone.

"That's enough, Karolyn," Nick chided her. I was going to have to have a talk with her later. Nick gave me a side-long look with a scowl on his face. He was thinking the same thing.

Now I couldn't shake the thought she'd voiced though. The thought of a warm fireplace inside a stone cabin occupied my mind. It did have a romantic feel to it. Nice strong arms wrapped around me while on a couch watching the fireplace. That's when I snapped myself out of fantasy land and decided to rejoin the flight. I wasn't here for that and certainly not with…him. Focus on the flight.

We left the mountain village and continued northeast. Over every ridge was another village, and in some cases fairly large towns. And as Sheppard had pointed out, in these remote areas the locals hardly seemed to take notice of us.

The mountains themselves were incredible. Higher than anything I had seen before, with such deep valleys, and so long and drawn out. The colors were spectacular. The contours formed by the different sands and minerals made them contrast every couple hundred feet and created a beauty like I'd never seen before.

"This about wraps up our flight," Sheppard announced to us, turning back to the north. "Just over this ridge and then home. Be mindful of the updrafts."

"Updrafts?" I asked. His response came through as a demonstration. I watched him fly out over a ridge, then suddenly shoot up into the air a few hundred feet higher than he already was. He looked like a dolphin, nose high in the air, then rolled right, straight into what looked like a vertical dive and disappeared below the ridge line.

"Um, where did he go?" asked Karolyn. Her answer came as we crossed the same ridge. The updraft caught us, and with the amount of power that I already had applied the aircraft shot up into the air just like Mark's had. I adjusted the power to stabilize the helicopter. Then I looked down. Way down. This ridge had a four-thousand-foot shear drop off. I hadn't realized it, but we had just flown over the top of The Wall. All the way down at the bottom was Mark. He had dove all the way down and leveled off near the ground.

"Well, I guess we follow." I pitched up and rolled, letting the helicopter settle into a dive. Both Karolyn and Sarah let out excited screams, and I couldn't help but notice Nick tensed up a bit. "Not used to this?" I teased. He didn't respond. I kept us accelerating to the ground behind Mark, finally leveling off at our max airspeed. The girls were giggling in the back. I couldn't keep the huge grin off my face, even when Nick gave me a sour look. Who wouldn't have enjoyed our own personal rollercoaster ride?

"This concludes our tour, now we head back to the house."

"Sounds like a plan," I responded. "This time, can you avoid setting the airfield on fire, please?"

The silence seemed to take too long. Like he was putting it to serious thought. Finally, he responded with "You Hawk guys, ah hem, girls, are no fun at all."

I shook my head, still smiling, because there was a teasing note to his words. Hope that we were finally figuring out how to work together was rising and if I could somehow keep mending the tear between our two communities this might end up being a fun time after all.