And she knew she held the cards to Luis’s career. If, indeed, he was in the Mexican Air Force to fulfill a family obligation, the last thing he would want was a dark blot on the family record by being thrown out of the U.S. Army’s Apache program—by a woman, no less. That would be an insult he would never live down, and she knew it. Cam was prepared to do just that, however. She’d get rid of any pilot who didn’t want to play by strict military rules.
Grinding his teeth, Luis looked for help from his friend, Antonio. The unhappy grimace on his friend’s face, the anger banked in his dark eyes, indicated he felt similarly. Yet he obviously didn’t want to be kicked out of the program, either.
“You do not have that authority over me!” Luis snarled.
Cam reached down into her briefcase, located another file and opened it before her. Lifting out some papers, she turned them around so that Luis could read the top.
“I’m sure you recognize this, Mr. Dominguez. It’s a set of orders. All I have to do to reassign you is fill in this blank—” she pointed to the page “—and sign my name down here, at the bottom. Now, I’ll be more than happy to do that for you. There’s a lot of good pilots who didn’t get this mission, and who want it a lot more than you do, apparently. So which is it? You want me to fill you out a new set of orders, sending you back to your superior? Or do you want to stay with us? Your call, mister. Just make it in a hurry, because I don’t have time to play games here.”
“You cannot do this!” Luis shouted, balling his hands into fists beneath the table.
“Try me. I’d love to sign you off, mister. I don’t need sulky little boys on my team. I need mature men who are ready to be responsible, who are hungry to fly and who want to go after the real bad guys. You want to target someone in your gun sights, you aim at them, not me. Is that understood?”
Wiping his wrinkled brow, Luis cast a desperate glance toward Antonio. His friend stared straight ahead and refused to look at him. Jerking a look at Morales, Luis saw the same hint of laughter in the warrant’s eyes. He thought this was funny! Angrily, Luis swung his gaze back to the C.O.
“I’m staying.”
“No, mister, you will say ‘Chief Anderson, I’d like to stay with the team. Please?’”
Breathing hard, Luis repeated the words through gritted teeth. He watched with relief as Anderson put the order back in the file and the file back in the briefcase.
“Very good, Mr. Dominguez. Thank you for the information on your flight background.”
Cam turned to the last pilot. Her heart speeded up, but not out of fear. It was something else—some other feeling that emerged so quickly under the tense circumstances that Cam couldn’t name it. As she looked into his warm, cinnamon-colored eyes and saw the slightest hint of a smile on his full, well-shaped mouth, she struggled to keep her voice low and firm. “Chief Morales?”
“Ma’am, I was born in a helicopter.”
She looked at him and blinked once. “Excuse me?”
Gus grinned and opened his hands. “My mother was in labor with me. She’s Yaqui Indian, from northern Mexico. She was visiting her family when she went into labor with me. My father, who is a U.S. Army helicopter pilot, had flown her to the desolate area where her parents lived, and flew her out again when her water broke. He was hoping to get to Nogales, and then across the border into Texas, to get her to the hospital on time.”
Cam smiled. “Don’t tell me! You were actually born in the helo?”
He liked her smile. There wasn’t anything not to like about their new C.O., Gus decided. That pale sprinkling of freckles across her broad cheekbones, the way her hair glinted with red-gold highlights beneath the washed-out fluorescent light above them…Chief Anderson suddenly looked a lot less threatening than she had earlier.
“Yes, ma’am. By the time my father landed the helo on the hospital roof, she’d given birth to me.” Gus’s smile widened. “The attendants who came out were kinda surprised.”
“That’s a great story, Chief Morales. So, did the helicopter ride stay in your blood?” Cam liked the way his eyes crinkled and dimples flashed as he smiled fully.
“Yes, ma’am, it did. My father flew civilian helicopters for the Civil Air Patrol in his free time. I got my helo license when I was thirteen years old, when my legs were long enough to reach the pedals.”
“I see,” Cam said, trying not to sound impressed. But she was. The natural warmth and openness of Morales compared to the other two pilots was like night and day. Cam realized instantly that he didn’t have a problem with his C.O. being a woman, as the other two did. Jotting down the info, she asked lightly, “And I suppose you have over a thousand hours built up in helos?”
“Yes, ma’am. I got fifteen hundred in civilian types. When I joined the army air program, I acquired six hundred more hours.”
“And in the Apache?”
He shrugged. “Not enough.”
Cam grinned. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be getting plenty of hours shortly. We’ll make up for it.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Hours in the Apache?”
“A hundred and fifty.”
Cam knew that the school gave each student seventy hours of flight time. She frowned and looked at Morales’s personnel jacket. “Where did you get eighty more?”
“Oh…” Gus opened his hands and had the good grace to flush beneath her sharp gaze. “Well, I volunteered for a special class on drug interdiction tactics before I went through Apache school.”
Frowning, Cam studied him. “How is that possible, Chief?”
Slightly embarrassed, Gus said, “My father’s influence, if you want the truth, ma’am. He’s head of an Apache squadron. He wanted me to learn the drill. At the time, I was flying another type of helo. Within his squadron, he had set up a unique program of flight interdiction tactics, so he wrote orders for me to attend it.”
“I see family nepotism at work,” Cam murmured. “Well…that’s good.”
“Yes, ma’am. I loved it.”
“And that’s what got you into Apache school, officially?” Cam knew there were hundreds of applicants for each seat in the training program, and it was the most highly prized aviation school in the army. Morales had the good grace to look humble when he owned up to the nepotism that had gotten him that far.
“I got in because I passed all the tests and qualifications,” he told her seriously. “Not because of my father.”
“I understand, Chief.” Cam brightened and sat back. She looked at all three pilots. “We’re officially a squadron, according to the U.S. Army, as well as a black ops branch of the Mexican Air Force. We’re Black Jaguar Squadron 2, a spinoff, as it were, of my squadron down in Peru.” Cam pulled three patches from her briefcase and carefully laid them out on the table.
“This is our squadron patch, gentlemen. As you can see, it is square, with a red and blue border around it. In the center is a black jaguar with gold eyes on a white background, and our squadron name is embroidered at the bottom in gold.” Cam pointed to the patches. “You’re going to earn them the hard way—through a lot of work and elbow grease, consistent one hundred and ten percent effort on your part. I have it in my power as C.O. to release you from the obligation to learn drug flight interdiction at any time, if you fail to jump over the bar I hold up for you. Where I come from, you earn every hour you spend in the seat of an Apache. It’s not a given that you deserve to sit there.”
Gus saw Anderson’s expression grow even more serious as she perused the three of them, her hands folded on the table. On the right shoulder of her uniform he saw the identical patch, on the other shoulder an American flag.
“If