Lindsay McKenna - Destiny's Woman

Opening her hands, Maya continued, “I’m asking more of you, Akiva, than I’ve ever asked before. This assignment is not about a guy named Joe Calhoun who has been chosen as your copilot and executive officer at this new base ops. It’s really a question of whether or not you want to take on a commanding officer’s role or not. You must rise above your personal prejudice. That is what a good C.O. does. Everyone should be treated equally and with respect.”

Nostrils flaring again, Akiva felt an internal trembling from her gut up to her throat. She was breathing chaotically because she was upset. Her fists tightened on the fabric of her black, body-hugging Nomex flight suit. “I would go to hell and back for you, Maya. Anything you’ve ever asked of me, I’ve tried to do to the best of my ability.” Her voice broke. “If you gave me a woman copilot and X.O., I’d say without hesitation that yes, I’d try my best to be a leader. But you’re throwing this white guy into the equation. Isn’t it enough that it’s going to be damn dangerous, with a lot of stress on the three-person ground crew and two pilots involved? Why throw in white bread?”

Mouth quirking, Maya said, “We don’t always get everything we want in life, Akiva. You know that better than most.”

“No kidding.” Her voice grated as she exclaimed, “I want this assignment, Maya. I know I can do it. I just don’t what an anglo along for the ride and in my rear seat.”

“Joe Calhoun is our best night operations pilot. He taught night ops back at Fort Rucker for the last two years. He’s here now, teaching all our pilots on the Apache Longbow upgrade. You even took training from him. You know how good he is at what he does. This little experiment in a bottle that the Pentagon wants us to undertake in Mexico in order to disrupt drug shipments across the Gulf to U.S. soil, is very important. The government is modeling this mission based on the success we’ve had down here in Peru, stopping cocaine shipments to Bolivia with our Apache gunships. Mexico is home to one of the big drug cartels. The Feds want to set up this base in the jungle—a place near what was once used by drug dealers as a touch-and-go ops to land and take on a lot of drugs. It’s the perfect locale for us to hide.

“I want this black ops experiment to be successful, Akiva. I need you to rise above your own prejudice toward white men and look at the larger picture. Through our work here, we’ve halted fifty percent of the drugs flowing to Bolivia for shipment across the world. That’s fifty percent less on the world market. The Pentagon is finally interested in the plan that I initiated here years ago. At long last they’re willing to invest time, money and coordinated effort to see if they can apply what we’ve learned here elsewhere.”

Maya got up and jabbed her finger at her colleague. “And you’re the best pilot for this, Akiva. I need your aggression, your nose for combat, your fearlessness because we don’t know what you’re up against once we get that Apache helo, that three-woman ground crew and your copilot set up in the jungle. I don’t want to see our years of hard work screwed up because you can’t get a handle on your prejudice.”

Lips flattening, Akiva looked up at her C.O., who stood six feet tall in her black flight uniform. Maya’s ebony hair shone with reddish highlights beneath the fluorescent lights. Maya wore no insignias on her uniform—standard operating procedure for a black ops covert operation, so as not to reveal any hint of who they were or where they came from. Still, Maya was a powerful woman, and Akiva’s respect for her transcended her own anger and frustration.

“Listen,” Akiva growled, “I don’t want to screw up your plans. I agree with them. I want to see what we’ve carved out here in the jungle put to use elsewhere, too. My gun sights are on the druggies. It does my heart good to turn them back or down ’em. Please…I don’t mean to be a pain in the butt about this. I know I am.”

“Yes,” Maya said mildly, “you are definitely being a pain in the butt, Akiva.” She came around her desk and sat on the edge of it, facing the pilot. Placing her hands beside her, Maya let the tension in the room build along with the silence. Akiva’s jaw was set, her full mouth a slash as she struggled to suppress her emotions. One of the many things Maya appreciated about Akiva was that she was always a straight shooter and honest about her thoughts and feelings. That was okay as a pilot. But as a commanding officer, Akiva couldn’t afford to use bald, undiplomatic words with the people on her team; it would cause immediate problems for everyone.

“You know, there’s a big difference between being a gunship pilot and being an officer in command of a base.”

“I know that.” Her mouth puckered, her arched brows knitted, Akiva flashed her a frown as Maya regarded her thoughtfully. “And I feel I can do it.”

Maya had her doubts. Pilots were a fraternity; and although they faced many stresses, not to mention outright danger, Maya knew from her own experience that it was easy to be a pilot than a manager of people.

“You know, when I hatched the plan for the Black Jaguar Base ops at Fort Rucker, I was mad as hell at the army establishment, at the prejudicial way they were treating our company of women training for Apache gunship flight.”

“You took your anger and did something proactive with it,” Akiva agreed in a low voice. She tried to relax. Sitting back, she folded her arms against her chest and crossed her legs. “And every one of us women were with you all the way on your concept for this base.”

“Yes, that made it easy for me to get on with my plans.” Maya saw the defensiveness in Akiva’s body. The intent expression on her oval face and the predatory look in her flashing, gold-brown eyes told Maya that Akiva wasn’t really listening to her; she was still wrestling with the fact that Chief Warrant Officer Joe Calhoun was to be her second-in-command.

“If you think that putting this ops into place was easy, Akiva, you’d be wrong. It wasn’t. I had never thought of myself as a C.O. All I wanted was to be allowed to fly combat and do what I loved most. I never entertained the idea of being here in this capacity, believe me.”

Akiva looked up at Maya, her eyes flat with confusion. “Who else did you think would do it? You created this place, this idea, out of nothing. Sure, we all helped, but you were the guide. You’re the one who had the vision.”

“Vision…hmm…Yes, that’s the right word to use here, Akiva.” Maya smiled slightly. “Among your people, the Apache, do you have vision quests? A ceremony where you don’t eat or drink for three to four days, and you pray to your spirits for guidance and help to reveal the future?”

“Yes, we do.”

“And you’ve gone on such vision quests?”

“Growing up on the res, I did. Why?” Akiva was becoming uncomfortable. She saw that glint in Maya’s emerald eyes and sensed she was up to something. That got Akiva’s attention, for her superior was a woman of immense mystical powers. Oh, everyone in the BJS—Black Jaguar Squadron—talked about Maya’s secretive background. It was whispered that she was one of the elite Black Jaguar Clan, a group of mysterious and powerful spiritual warriors who kept a very low profile, yet were out there on the leading edge, fighting the darkness. Akiva believed those stories about Maya, because among her own people, the jaguar was a living spirit. At one time, in the Southwestern U.S., jaguars had roamed freely—until miners had killed them all off and made coats out of their beautiful black-and-gold skins. Often Akiva had wanted to ask Maya about her background, for the rumors about her and her healer sister, Inca, were well known at the base.