"Yeah. Three months ago.”
"Captain Hale." The surgeon shot him a disapproving look. "You're going to feel this for a while. No flight ops for a minimum of two weeks."
"Understood."
"I mean it, Captain."
"I heard you." Hudson meant it less than he'd implied.
The debrief took another hour. Major Okafor ran it and Hudson walked through the timeline from the initial call for support, the extraction, the tail rotor hit and the landing at Echo-Six. He answered everything accurately.
At the end, Okafor held his gaze. “You were ordered to pull back.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Multiple times.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you refused.”
“Yes, sir.”
Okafor sighed, clearly torn. He made a note. “Formal reprimand for non-compliance, Captain Hale. Goes in your file.”
“Understood, sir.”
“It’ll also go in my report that your non-compliance saved four lives.” Okafor closed the folder and gave him a nod. “Dismissed.”
Four lives. Even if Major Okafor had sent him stateside there would have been no regrets.
Hudson walked out into the corridor trying to find the way to the operations building.
Replaying the mission that almost killed him had changed his mind. He didn’t want distance. He needed to find Shaw and figure out what the hell was going on between them. He deserved some answers.
Martinez was waiting with two cups in hand, one of which he handed over without a word. “Reprimand?”
Hudson nodded while taking a sip of the much-needed coffee.
“Same,” Martinez said. “Worth it though.”
“Yeah.” He glanced down the corridor towards the exit. “It was.”
Despite Hudson’s best efforts, Shaw was nowhere to be found and Hudson wasn’t exactly familiar with the layout of the base. So instead he hit the showers. Probably for the best, anyway.
Afterward he needed to check on his bird. He found her in the base hangar—or at least what was left of her.
The tail rotor was gone entirely, sheared off clean. The rear section had shrapnel damage along the port side. Three punctures were visible from where he stood, but there were probably more on the other side. The cockpit windows were intact, which felt like a small miracle given everything else. She was tilted slightly to starboard, one landing strut bent, a dark stain spreading across the concrete beneath the fuel line.
She’d gotten them down somehow, against most reasonable expectations.
“Hell of a job, girl,” he said and put his hand flat against the hull.
Footsteps from behind startled him.
“You could have died today.”
Hudson turned around. Shaw was in the hangar entrance, arms crossed, clearly not here to assess the damage on the helicopter.
