Page 85 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

“When was the last time you flew?”

“Yesterday. Or was it Tuesday, Emma?” Mark glanced her way, but didn’t give her time to respond.

“Yep, thinkin’ it was Tuesday.” He pointed westward at the abrupt upward break of the Montana Front Range.

Their twenty-thousand-acre ranch ended there and the million-acre Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness began.

She, Mark, and Colonel Cassius McDermott had stopped their horses in the shade of a white birch copse atop a crest of the rolling landscape. It was one of Emily’s favorite views. They were on a lazy afternoon ride a couple hours from the ranch, and this would be their turnback point.

The sun glinted off the sharp peaks of the Lewis Range, emphasizing the alternating light and dark strata that slashed through the mountains like the insides of mile-tall layer cakes.

Being born and raised in DC, even six years living here hadn’t decreased Emily’s wonder at this vista rising in her backyard.

“Took a couple of fat-cat tourists on a spin out there, in our little Bell JetRanger helo. We spotted bear, moose, a couple herds of elk. Gonna be some good hunting for the larder this fall. Good photo safaris, too—we’re marketing those heavy this year.

You should come on out, Cass. It’ll be a good time here at the ranch. ”

“I don’t think that’s what Cass is asking, is it, Colonel?” Emily gave Mark the hint, but he missed it. “Six years since the last time we flew a mission.”

Then she caught the look in Mark’s eye. He’d known exactly what he was doing.

Instead of scowling at her for spoiling his game, he offered her one of his broad conspiratorial winks, including her in his play.

He’d always enjoyed his games but never been particularly attached to the winning or the losing.

Less so with each passing year. The ranch had mellowed him so much that it was occasionally hard to spot the former 5th Battalion D Company commander of the Night Stalkers’ regiment.

He pulled out a hip flask. After taking a sip, he offered it to Cass seated on Rollo, reaching over from atop Wind Runner. His big black gelding hadn’t slowed with age, but the years had made Mark a better rider—at least he rarely fell off anymore.

“Sorry, didn’t get you were talking about flying, not flying. Well, why didn’t you say it plain, old son?” His horsemanship may have improved; his phony Texas accent hadn’t.

Cass was looking at the flask as if there was something wrong with it, or the fact that it was still early afternoon. The early summer finally warm enough for no more than a light jacket.

“None of us on duty out here, Cass, and ’tain’t poison.

Licensed distiller from just down the valley a piece.

All local: water, grain, even the oak for the casks and the cooper who knocked them together—seriously hot, by the way.

I’d introduce you, but don’t want to tick off your wife.

” Well, his Texas was a little better, even if she’d never understood why a Navy brat turned Montanan kept toying with it.

As far as she knew, neither he nor his SEAL father had ever been so much as stationed there and his mother was pureblood Cheyenne from Wyoming.

“He also has a beard down to his solar plexus, except when he singes it while charring a barrel. You might object to that even more than your wife would.” Emily felt it was only fair to warn him.

Cass laughed and took the flask. The whiskey was too harsh for Emily’s palate, any whiskey was, but Cass seemed to like it well enough to take a second taste before returning it to Mark, who tucked it away.

It might be Mark doing most of the speaking, but it was Colonel Cass McDermott she watched carefully. He hadn’t brought his wife on this trip, which meant he was here on business—the Army’s business.

“Did you say six years, Emily?”

“You’re thinking eleven.” She kept her smile to herself.

“I admit I was.”

“The last five were under a different classification, Cass.” Meaning operations that her former commander hadn’t been cleared for. Always a bitter taste, one that showed clearly on his face.

“Yeah,” Mark said in his normal voice. “Classified mission compartmentalization sucks. I always found it as annoying as hell, too.”

Cass made it halfway through a nod of acknowledgement when a rabbit bolted from practically under the nose of Cass’ horse.

When Rollo ran, he had a habit like no other horse she’d ever seen.

The gray dropped low and bolted so fast that Cass looked as if he floated in space for a moment before plummeting to the thick Montana grass.

“Goddamn it!” Mark swung his reins over and gave Wind Runner a hard kick. He didn’t need it; his horse also loved to run, and he was the fastest on the ranch—because, of course, that’s what Mark had insisted on when they moved here, not realizing as a rank beginner what he was asking for.

Rollo offered an easy ride, good for a beginner like Cass—usually. Wind Runner? Not so much. Mark and the two horses raced out of sight over the bluff.

Knowing her own level of incompetence, she’d requested the friendliest of mounts and never regretted her choice. Chesapeake watched the others race away as she chewed her latest mouthful of the lush grass before reaching for another bite. Emily patted her on the neck.

She hoped that she wouldn’t have to go rescue Mark next.

Dropping the reins over her mare’s neck, she slid to the ground. Nothing much bothered her horse, and she wouldn’t run off even if it did.

“Anything hurt other than your pride, Cass?”

“Not much.” He remained seated in the foot-tall grass of the July prairie.

The rains had come late—late enough in June to strike fear into every rancher’s heart, even a Jane-come-lately like herself.

But the so-called million-dollar rains had finally come on strong and set the crops.

It had also turned the entire Front Range into a magic carpet of bluebells, buttercups, and windflowers.

Their bright colors danced on the air lush with the scent of green.

July’s typical dusty dry taste had been pushed out into August, making every Montanan walk a bit sprightlier, whether from the prairie or the town.

Cass picked up the cowboy hat they’d given him against the sun, but he didn’t put it back on. Instead, he worried the brim around in a slow circle through his hands as he remained seated on the grass. “Six years? Thought you were flying to wildfires.”

“That’s one way to look at it.” They’d also been flying black ops missions under the cover of being helitack firefighters, reporting only to the President and the Secretary of Defense. She sat down on the grass beside him. Emily felt Chesapeake come up behind her, but she didn’t react.

Her mahogany mare picked the hat off Emily’s head without catching her long blonde hair in its teeth.

“See? They don’t tell me squat simply because I’m the 160th SOAR’s commanding officer.”

She let her silence tell him that it was going to stay that way, too. Her years flying for the Night Stalkers of the Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment had been the highlight of her career, but that hadn’t been the end of it by a long stretch.

Chesapeake flapped Emily’s hat up and down, laughing through clenched teeth.

It was an old game between them, since back when they first met and the only thing Emily rode was Black Hawk helicopters.

She waited for the horse to hang her head over Emily’s shoulder so she could scrub Chesapeake’s cheek.

The horse sighed happily, dropped Emily’s hat in her lap, then turned her attention to ripping up grass.

Cass was thinking hard about her flying career…and something else as well. Didn’t matter, Emily was dug in here, but she was curious at what had dragged him all the way to Montana from Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Picking up her hat, she slid it on. Not for Chesapeake to steal again, but her light blonde hair and matching complexion didn’t offer any defense against the Montana summer sunshine even wearing a serious SPF number and sitting in the broken shade of the swaying birches.

“Six years is still too long for us to go airborne again, Cass. A single month off blunts that fighting edge in a top pilot. Six years…” she let that hang.

It would take a minimum of half a year of retraining to regain that edge, if she even could. Flying a Night Stalkers helicopter into a battlespace was not a bicycle that your body simply remembered how to fly.

“You knew that before you came here. What’s really going on?”

Rather than answering directly, he appeared to be watching the snow-capped ranges behind her. “I saw that you’re still listed as active duty.”

She was. Mark had finally retired when he’d hit his twenty years—Same as Dad is plenty good enough for me—his final four years as a trainer at the nearby Malmstrom Air Force Base.

He’d flown and taught leadership courses before finally standing down as a lieutenant colonel.

Getting the silver oak leaf had tickled him no end.

But when she’d pointed out that a few more years’ service might get him a bump to being a bird colonel, he’d scoffed.

Think I’m after Cass McDermott’s job? Not even a little interested.

And he hadn’t been.

Done my tour.

In the two years since, he’d settled in as if he’d never been anywhere else.

His dad still ran the place. Though pushing seventy, Mac was a retired SEAL and wouldn’t stop until he was six feet under the sod, if then.

But Mark and the ranch had started to fit each other in ways he’d never managed even as commander of the most elite SOAR company.