Page 63 of Operation Rescue
He silently hoped Walker was right about this coming to an end that fast.
And safely.
Chapter 32
Erin knew something was up the moment Rafe asked Blaine, “Feeling a bit grounded lately?”
“Yeah, a bit,” Blaine answered, looking at the other man curiously while he tapped edgily at the steering wheel. “Why?”
“Thinking a flyover might be a good start.”
Erin watched Blaine go very still, but could also feel the sudden alertness in him. “You have access?”
Rafe nodded. “We can have. We have somebody here with a small fleet, who owes us a favor. If you think you can manage without all the armor and weaponry.”
Blaine’s half grin and nod were confident. “Yeah, I’ll manage. I’ve done it before.”
And it hit her what Rafe was talking about. An aerial search. A flyover. As in Blaine doing the flying.
The search part made perfect sense. The Blaine flying part had her once more weighing the risk against the hoped-for result. If they could find where Ethan was hiding, wouldn’t that be worth…everything?
I just don’t get shot at anymore.
She remembered his words, when he’d told her he was still flying, but teaching now. That made it different.
Ethan made this different.
“—too bad Walker had to start that other case, but Foxworth committed to it, so it’s done. We’ll need Cutter on the ground, but you need an observer.”
“Without all that armor and weaponry, I can fly and observe both,” Blaine said.
“Hello?” she said, not bothering to mask the tinge of sarcasm in her voice. Both men looked back at her. She pointed at her face with two fingers. “Eyes? Twenty-twenty vision?”
Blaine stared at her. “But… I thought you hated flying.”
She couldn’t blame him for that, so reined in the temper that had flared at being left out of this too often. Ethan was her son, and she would do a lot worse than climb into a helicopter to look for him.
“I hatedyouflying,” she corrected. “Because I always worried. But this is way beyond worried already, so can we get moving?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rafe said, sounding as if he’d just been given marching orders. And that made her smile, inwardly at least.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous about it. Because she was. And she was going to have a twenty-minute ride to the airport to stew about it. But then Cutter stuck his head over the back seat to nudge at her. Again, as if he’d sensed her tension. She didn’t hesitate this time to stroke his head, and felt anew that soothing calm.
Blaine started the engine and headed back to the road, while Rafe began making arrangements on the phone. She could only hear his side of the conversation, but she couldn’t help but notice that once the name Foxworth was mentioned, the pace picked up immediately, and faster than she could have ever guessed, arrangements were made.
When Rafe put down the phone, all he said was, “It’ll be ready and waiting when we get there. They offered a copilot, but it’d be a couple of hours and I didn’t think you’d want to wait.”
“No,” Blaine said firmly, “no more waiting.”
“All right,” Rafe said. “You’ll need to be in touch with air traffic, although my guy with the bird says it’s not heavy in the area. As long as our fellow Marines just five miles away don’t lose track of the base boundaries.”
“If they do, I’ll deal,” Blaine said.
Rafe shifted his gaze to her. “I’ll be back in the area by the time you get airborne. Any possibility you spot, I’ll head Cutter that way, and he’ll let us know quickly if Ethan’s there, or ever been there.”
She no longer doubted the clever dog would perform exactly as described. And whoever those kids were, they were no match for one of the best snipers in military history. Or one of the best pilots.
The private helicopter, a sleek, blue-and-white number she thought she might have seen now and then flying along the coastline, was already out on the tarmac and waiting for them. Blaine and Rafe were talking about the make and model, something about an Airbus, but she didn’t pay much attention except to notice how big it was.
