Chapter 5

5

Fin glanced over her shoulder into the Stealth Hawk's cargo bay as the action team loaded aboard—looking ghoulish in the lone red night light.

"Gonna be messier than a meet against Whitney Point," Fin told her.

That was a crazy comparison. Two tiny towns in upstate New York dairy country; their rivalry ran deep. She and Fence were both staunch Marathon Olympians against the nearby Whitney Point Eagles.

No, that had been him, not her. She'd been mostly victorious in the town library…until spring of senior year. Fence had been the star forward during fall soccer, apparently; she didn't follow such things back then. But that final chilly spring? Fence had ruled the track-and-field meets. After the fence painting episode, she'd started taking her books to sit on the sole five-tier bleacher in all sorts of awful weather to watch Fence out there cleaning the Whitney Point Eagles' clocks and any other cow town foolish enough to challenge the team.

Messier than a meet? Times a thousand! By, like, six Delta Force operators with their butts planted in her cargo bay. And now warming up on the Flight Deck to either side of them were three more stealth birds: two Little Birds armed to the teeth in the Killer Egg configuration and, perhaps most startling of all, a Direct-Action Penetrator gunship.

Then she caught his look and couldn't resist the laugh. It was a ridiculous comparison. And he'd trapped her with it.

No way could she let that stand. So rather than taking off from the deck, she taxied straight ahead, adding lift, but not enough to carry them aloft. Instead, they fell off the edge of the Peleliu's Flight Deck and plunged forty of the fifty feet down to the ocean.

Fence didn't yelp, but he slammed back in his seat hard enough that he could have concussed himself against the padding if not for his helmet.

"The briefing said to come in low," she offered him as she leveled out three meters off the ocean's surface and raced away from the Peleliu . "And nobody flies low like a Night Stalker."

"Right." His tone said she'd pay for that one later. Excellent.