Conduct Unbecoming

She was aware of Miller in the way one was aware of the weather - not constantly, but reliably, whenever she moved outside her outbuilding or when the two elements came together for briefings. He was always where he was supposed to be and doing and saying what he was supposed to do and say.

She found this, unreasonably, mildly irritating.

She could not have said what she expected instead. They were on a classified joint operation in a disused agricultural facility in Romania. Professional correctness was not only appropriate, it was the only sane option. She knew that.

But the conversation by the ice machine in Bucharest had happened, and she felt the weight of it sitting between them in every shared space. He, on the other hand, showed no signs of carrying any weight at all.

Their spouses were very likely tiring each other out in bed while they were huddled in a decrepit Cold War era factory and he had simply... compartmentalized it away. She both admired it and found it strangely maddening in equal measure.

On the second day she was outside the outbuilding running a cable check when he came around the corner of the main structure with a length of antenna cable over one shoulder.

"Ma'am," he said.

"Staff Sergeant."

He indicated the cable. "Your team's secondary antenna. Kowalski noticed the mounting bracket on the east wall had come loose. We've re-seated it."

She looked at him. "I wasn't aware it had come loose."

"It was going that way," he said. "Better to catch things early."

He moved past her and went back around the corner. She stood for a moment and then went back inside.

She mentioned it to Dominguez, who checked the secondary antenna's signal quality and reported a marginal improvement. She did not mention where the improvement had come from.

The contact's timeline updated again on the evening of the third day. He was moving faster than projected. The extraction window was tightening.

Haskell called a joint briefing at 1900. The two elements assembled in the larger outbuilding around a folding table with a map and a laptop. She sat across from Haskell with Osmond beside her. Miller sat two seats down on the same side, his notebook open, a pen in his right hand. His people filled the remaining seats.

The briefing was efficient. Haskell ran them through the new extraction timeline, Kayleigh ran the asset protocol status, and they mapped the two operations against each other to identify the critical overlap window - the period when both objectives would be simultaneously active and the element's resources most stretched.

It was Specialist Lee who spoke first.

He did it with narrowed eyes, putting a finger on the map while Haskell was still talking. "Sir, if the hostile element accelerates here, our eastern approach to the asset gets exposed during the extraction window."

Everyone looked at the point on the map.

Miller looked at his other people. "Anyone else been on that ground?"

Two hands. Corporal Otieno and Specialist Kaine. Miller looked at both of them. "Agree with Lee?"

Otieno nodded. Kaine said, "Yes, Sergeant."

Miller looked at Haskell. "I think he's right, sir."

Haskell studied the map. "Solution?"

Lee outlined the problem's edges. Miller built immediately off it, incorporating what Otieno and Kaine had reported from their own perimeter walks. Dominguez threw in a suggestion which was accepted. Haskell modified the solution in one last sentence and an agreement was reached in under two minutes.

She wrote it down and looked at the map, seeing how the solution would work. When their eyes met, she nodded at the Staff Sergeant who had endorsed his man's observation in front of superiors without making it his own.

After the briefing the element dispersed. She was collecting her notebook when she became aware of Miller still at the table, talking quietly with Lee and Otieno, the three of them looking at the map. Haskell had already gone.

She looked at the map on her way past.

Lee glanced up. "Ma'am."

"Good catch, Specialist," she said.

"Thank you, ma'am." He looked back at the map.

Miller nodded at her, his gaze direct and appreciative. "Ma'am."

She went back to her outbuilding and sat down at her workstation and looked at her screens, a warmth in her cheeks.

The contact was still moving. The hostile element was moving. The asset sat in the dark eleven kilometers away, waiting.

She ran the protocol sequence again from the top and found nothing she would change.

The aviation element arrived on the morning of the fourth day, two hours before dawn.

She knew it was happening before she heard it - a change in the frequency of radio traffic from the Army side, a new tempo to the organized movement outside.

She saw and heard nothing of them. The aircraft were staging thirty kilometers out, at a field that Haskell's people had identified and prepared into a Forward Arming and Refueling Point over the previous two days.

Haskell came to her outbuilding at 0906 without coffee. He had driven out to the FARP at first light and come back.

"Both birds are down and being checked over," he said to Kay and Osmond. "Pilot in command is Chief Warrant Three Cameron. Good man. Two combat deployments." He paused. "Miller is staying out there with the maintenance element until we go active. Otieno has the perimeter here."

She nodded. "Understood, sir."

He left. She looked at her workstation and then at the door he had gone through and then back at her workstation.

The forward position was quieter without the full Army element. Kaine, Otieno and two others remained on the perimeter. The larger outbuilding had a different feel to it when she walked past - less inhabited, more waiting.

She worked her stations and ran her checks.

That evening Haskell drove back from the FARP and came to her outbuilding with the aviation element's readiness status. Both aircraft fully operational. Crews rested. Sergeant Miller's maintenance team had gone through both birds that afternoon and CW3 Cameron had signed off on the readiness report with no amendments, which Haskell made sound like a very rare occurrence.

She updated her timeline and confirmed the communications architecture was holding.

"We're as ready as we're going to be," Haskell said.

"Yes, sir," she said.

He looked at her for a moment. "How is your team holding up?"

"Fine, sir."

He nodded once and went back to the larger outbuilding.

She looked at her screens. The contact's channel was quiet. The hostile element's last tracked position was eight kilometers from the asset and holding.

She drank water and looked at the blackout material over the windows and listened to the generator outside and then went back to work.

The contact's channel came alive at 0341 on the sixth morning.

She was at her station - sleeping in two hour shifts, Kenley and Dominguez rotating through - when the ping brought her fully awake in a single breath. She put on her headset and confirmed the channel was clean and sent the acknowledgment and began logging the contact's position updates as they came through.

His voice was flat and controlled. She understood enough of the language to follow his route description as it was simultaneously translated in her earpiece.

He was four hours ahead of schedule.

She radioed her CO. "Sir. Contact established. He's four hours ahead. He says he's under pursuit and ready to come in."

Osmond's response came back immediately. He had not been asleep. "Understood. Notifying Haskell now."

She turned back to her screens and began running the revised sequencing. Four hours ahead meant the asset destruction protocol and the extraction approach were now almost perfectly overlaid. There would be no sequential window.

She was going to be running both simultaneously from the moment they went active.

She ran the calculation twice. Then a third time.

Through her headset she heard Haskell's voice on the encrypted aviation channel, thirty kilometers away at the FARP, calm and immediate. "Cameron. We're moving. Timeline accelerated four hours."

CW3 Cameron's response was immediate - like he had known all along and been awake for it - and utterly calm. "Understood, sir. Spinning up now."

In the background of the transmission, just audible, she could hear the sound of the FARP coming alive. Voices, equipment, the sounds of helicopters being prepared to fly.

She could not hear Miller specifically but she knew he was there, moving through the pre-flight checks with his maintenance team, making sure that when Cameron and his crews soared up in those aircraft everything would be exactly as it needed to be.

She wondered at her mind going to him, at her ears straining to pick up his voice amidst the noise on the other side.

Then Osmond and Kenley joined her and Dominguez in the outpost.

"Are we ready, Captain Palmer?" Osmond's voice was clipped, curt, nothing of his usual avuncular warmth in evidence as the mission began.

She kept her eyes on her screens and listened to the forward position come alive around her.

"Yes, sir. Ready."

________________

The radio call came in from Cameron at 0523. The contact had been picked up some minutes before.

The Chief's voice sounded... wrong.

Rough and halting, but not panicked. An aviator of Cameron's experience didn't panic.

"I'm hit," he grunted. "Bleeding. Rounds in through the tail section low. Large caliber. Hydraulic pressure gone - tail rotor controls are going with it. Could be the line. Could be the actuator." A pause that lasted about two seconds. "Flight controls are degrading. Putting her down. Position is..." He read out the coordinates. His voice was pained but steady through all of it. "Crew chief is down. I'm..."

The transmission ended.

Nathan was already at the toolbox as Haskell keyed his radio, jaw tight. "Lead bird, say status."

Nothing.

"Lead bird."

Reyes came on the channel instead. "I heard it. Two minutes out. If I break off..."

"No. Stay on course," Haskell said. "Bring the contact in. Is that clear?"

"Copy that, sir."

Nathan marched up to the O-5. "Sir. What are we doing about lead bird?"

"Priority one is the contact and the Air Force getting that asset to blow itself up." Haskell's voice was level. "Then we work out how to get to Cameron."

"He said line or actuator, sir. If it's the line I can fix it in the field." He looked at Haskell.

"Fix it?"

"Yes, sir."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Depends on the timeline, sir." Nathan said. "Reyes is ten minutes out. I can go back with him and see what I can do. Get Cameron and his crew back."

Haskell looked at the map on the shelter wall. Then at Nathan. Then he keyed his radio. "Captain Palmer. What's the hostile element's position?"

Kay's voice came back without delay, composed and precise. "Thermal overlay shows them fourteen minutes from the asset's coordinates, sir."

"When are you triggering the protocol?" Haskell said.

Osmond came on the line, sounding very different, sharper, harder. "Now."

"I have a bird and three people down, Jim," Mark Haskell said. "Give me ten minutes."

Silence. "Can't give you more than seven."

"Thanks, Jim."

"Good luck."

Haskell looked at Nathan. "Take some C4 and a remote detonator. Nobody gets that bird."

"Yes, sir."

"Who're you taking with you?"

Nathan saw the look and answered correctly. "Kowalski, sir."

Haskell nodded, his glare lessening. Then he strode away. Kowalski was already picking up the C4 case and walking over.

Reyes came in fast ten minutes later with the contact aboard - a thin man in hardy civilian clothes who had been running for three days and looked it. Reyes touched down long enough to offload him and was already looking back the way he had come.

Nathan and Kowalski ran over.

"Sergeant Miller," Reyes yelled over the rotor noise.

"Sir. Kowalski and I are going back with you to the Chief's position."

Reyes nodded. "Orders?"

"Get the chief and crew out. Bring the bird back or blow it to hell. Colonel's all in."

Reyes looked at the toolbox and line. He nodded. So did his crew. "Strap in. Let's go."

They were taking off when he heard Captain Palmer's voice in his radio's earpiece. He was still tuned to the main mission's frequency. "Executing now, sir." A pause of several seconds. "Done. Asset is destroyed. They have nothing."

Nathan felt a surge of gratitude. Osmond had held off for ten minutes after all.

It meant the other side would have to regroup, change direction and start for the downed Black Hawk from that much farther away.

Nathan had the hydraulic line on his knee as they took off. He went through Cameron's transmission again in his head - line or actuator, or both.

He'd only brought the line. There was no point going with an actuator assembly. If it was the line he would have seventeen minutes to work. If it was the actuator he had none, and he would be molding plastic explosive at strategic points on the airframe.

He thought about it for the duration of the flight.

Reyes's voice from the cockpit: "Two minutes."

Nathan looked at Kowalski. Kowalski looked back. Nothing needed saying.

The Black Hawk was in a harvested field fifty meters off the road, sitting nose-low but intact. Cameron had kept the damage minimal on the way down - the landing gear was whole and the airframe was upright and the tail boom was attached, which was the first thing Nathan checked from the air.

Reyes set down thirty meters away. Nathan was out before the skids settled.

The crew chief met him at the nose - young, a field dressing on his forehead, his eyes tracking but slow. "Sergeant. Chief's inside. Both legs. The other chief got the tourniquets on before he went down. He's concussed. Can't work."

"How's the Chief?"

"Conscious."

Nathan climbed to the cockpit.

Cameron was in the pilot seat with both legs tourniqueted below the knee and the color of old concrete. The shrapnel had done its work. He was breathing carefully, counting, managing serious pain by making it a technical problem. He looked at Nathan when he climbed up and his eyes were clear.

"Line," Cameron said without preamble. "Not the actuator. Fragment came through low and caught the hydraulic line clean. I had left pedal for four minutes before I lost it. She wanted to go left the whole way down. I let her drift and corrected at the last second." He paused to breathe.

Nathan looked at the component in his hand. Then at Cameron. "I'll confirm when I get eyes on it, sir."

"If it's not the line..."

"Then she's done," Nathan said. "Don't go to sleep, sir."

"Working on it," Cameron said, as Reyes' crew members began the process of extracting him.

Nathan climbed down.

Kowalski was already at the tail section. Nathan crouched beside him and put his torch on the damage.

The fragment had come through at a low angle and caught the hydraulic line along its lateral face - a clean tear, three centimeters, the fluid long gone. There were other holes but that was the one that mattered. He ran his thumb along it and looked at the actuator housing beside it.

Intact. Cameron had been right.

He looked at Kowalski. "It's the line. C4 on structural points. Remote detonator. If I tell you to go you trigger it when we're clear."

"Roger, Sergeant."

Kowalski started moving around the airframe with the C4. Nathan opened the toolbox and went to work.

The line came out in seven minutes. The surrounding bracket had taken a fragment too and needed partial removal before the line could be fully accessed - three minutes he hadn't planned for. He set the bracket aside and fitted the new line and began torquing the fittings.

Haskell on the radio. "Sergeant Miller. Hostile element is ten minutes out."

"Copy, sir," he said, and kept working.

Kay's voice immediately after, sharper but still precise. "They've accelerated, sir. I'm reading nine minutes on current vector."

"Copy, Palmer," Haskell said.

Nathan torqued the final fitting and looked at the repair. A field repair done in eleven minutes in a Romanian field before dawn. He stood up.

"Kowalski," he said. "Get on Chief Reyes's bird."

Kowalski appeared to develop a sudden and complete inability to hear.

"Kowalski."

Nothing.

Nathan looked at the Corporal for a moment. Then he climbed into the cockpit, ignoring the blood on the seat and instrument panel. He heard Kowalski climb in behind him.

He ran the pre-start sequence. The instruments came alive and he watched them and the tail rotor hydraulic pressure came up - not full, a field repair never gave full, but enough. The actuator was responding. The system was sealed and holding.

He keyed his radio. "Sir. Miller. Lifting now."

Haskell's voice. "Copy, Sergeant."

He started the engines.

The rotors turned. The airframe shuddered once as the systems loaded and settled. He ran his eyes across the instruments a final time. Hydraulic pressure holding. Flight controls responsive. The left pedal was soft, as Cameron had described, but it was there and it pushed back just enough.

He looked to his left. Reyes's bird was thirty meters away, rotors turning. Through the cockpit glass Reyes was looking at him.

He keyed the radio. "Sir. Going up."

Reyes: "I'm with you, Sergeant."

He felt rather than heard Kowalski settle into the seat behind him.

He pulled pitch.

The Black Hawk came up reluctantly and then with enthusiasm, the way aircraft did when they remembered what they were. Nathan felt the left drift, corrected and climbed to three hundred feet.

"Hostile element is at the field perimeter," Captain Palmer's voice on the radio. Steady. Immediate.

He saw the technicals zoom onto the field, heard the sound of small arms fire beginning, aimed up.

"Trigger it," Nathan said to Kowalski.

The C4 the Corporal left on the field went off a second later, the sound rolling flat across the Romanian countryside below them.

The shooting stopped.

"Nice," Nathan said.

"Thank you, Sarge," Kowalski said.

"Don't disobey my orders again."

Kowalski shrugged. Unapologetic. "Don't give dumb orders, sir."

He flew.

The hydraulic pressure held through the fifth minute and the tenth. The left pedal drift was constant but he held his correction and kept his altitude and heading and did not vary either.

Haskell radioed in at intervals. Reyes had fallen behind him, steady in his mirrors. The FARP appeared as a cluster of lights in the gray pre-dawn below.

He came in low and slow and set the aircraft down, his hands moving automatically, the rotors winding down in response. He took a deep breath and bumped fists with Kowalski before they climbed out.

Haskell was there. Sergeant Batiste, Cameron's ground chief was already moving toward her Black Hawk, her enraged eyes roving over the holes in the airframe. Medical personnel were moving to Reyes's bird where Cameron and the crew chiefs were being unloaded.

Cameron was still conscious. He saw Nathan as he was being moved carefully on a stretcher and raised one hand.

Nathan raised his chin in return.

"Good job, Miller," Haskell said when he stood in front of him.

They exchanged salutes, Nathan's hand went up first, as was proper. But Haskell's wasn't far behind.

"Thank you, sir."

Kowalski saluted Haskell too and got a hearty slap on the shoulder in addition to his salute's return before the LTC walked off.

"Later, Sarge," Kowalski said, heading off.

"Later," Nathan said.

He was turning to leave when he saw Captain Kayleigh Palmer, leaning against one of the vehicles they'd used to run between the FARP and her forward position.

She was in her field jacket, her hair tied back, and she was looking at him across the gray field, eyes utterly focused and assessing, and for a moment, she was all he could see.