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"Minot tower," Bo barked into theoff, present heading We just took a bird strike and we’ve shut down an engine"

"Roger, zero-one," tower answered "Are you declaring an eency?"

Bo rocked the microphone button down for private inner-phone "Colonel, are you ready to declare?"

Lean and impassive, Quade hesitated, then nodded "I think she’s flying okay, but yes, let’s go ahead and declare"

No surprise Quade was a conservative aviator to the end Not a bad thing right now

Bo thuer, tower, I aency at this time"

"Copy, zero-one, are you able to switch frequencies or are your hands full?"

"Zero-one will accept a frequency change"

Chatter froht up the new frequency reserved for eeon’s office,In spite of his resolve,last year’s crash landing there’d been no help, no friendly faces waiting for theround as they descended their crippled craft into enemy territory A ht-plan leak fro up, three-to-dot-two"

Command Post responded, "Moose zero-one, Minot Coency personnel were up and listening "Moose zero-one, souls on board and fuel re?"

"Four souls and 35,000 pounds"

"Copy four and thirty-five K What’s your plan?"

"We’re going to do a controllability check and then a straight-in approach for landing"

Bo continued the radio calls while Quade slowed the cargo plane inspeed At least in the air they could bail out And there sure as hell was plenty of level, empty and totally treeless countryside for the and Mako thundered up the stairwell into the cockpit and strapped into the two instructor seats behind the pilots, higher in the craft being safer in an e situation

"Gentlemen--" Quade’s near-whisper calls had the da "--

everyone locked down tight?"

"Roger," the answer echoed in triplicate

"Excellent Once we land, no hesitation, haul ass out and as far away from the plane as possible" In case the plane blew The unspoken possibility clouded the air with a noxious threat "Now let’s get this baby down in a way that doesn’t feature us in the six-o’clock news"

Bo’s hands clenched along with his gut He issued instrurounded with his reason for being here in the first place, to check up on Paige Haugen and her daughter He wasn’t sure why he felt so damn responsible for her after what her traitorous bastard husband had done--

Okay, he did knohy, and it sucked even re with his own teary-eyed mother on her weekly visits to her convict husband His father Father being a da cars than hanging out with his wife and son

Bo rechecked his five-point harness Not that he’d felt any loss over his father being locked up He couldn’t re around the apartment

Then--surprise, surprise--Jackass had filed for divorce after his release Teary-eyed Teresa Rokowsky had opened a vein rather than live without hi enough reason for his ed, but that still didn’t stop his heart froen’s face when she’d walked into the police station the night of her husband’s arrest The disillusioned expression had multiplied exponentially in newspaper photos after her husband’s mob-hit death in prison

Bo tried to blink away the haunting ie even now Damn it all, he preferred his dreams be filled with visions of luscious babes in bikinis Instead his sleep was packed with nightmares of a ith troubled eyes and a kid as better off without her old man but probablyand closure Outside the windscreen, the runaited in the cracked expanse of Dakota soil and cluster ofarea, other craft for the weekend’s air show scheduled to start tomorrow

Lower, lower still they descended Sathered to watch today’s arrivals

Was she there already? Regardless, he would find her

After he checked on Paige Haugen and her daughter, he would be free to decide his future in or out of the Air Force He already had his dreaht of peaceful sleep By Monday evening he would be snoozing his way into a Caribbean fantasy, his guitar in hand, serenading a coconut-oil-scented blonde with a penchant for skinny-dipping

A wo pain-filled eyes

Paige Haugen nudged her glasses straight on her nose again, righting her view of the landing cargo plane Military fire trucks and security police shrieked onto the runway toward the hulking gray cargo plane touching down, slowing, s brakes