Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon by Glynn James, Michael Stephen Fuchs

feet.
    Sixty seconds later, she had single handedly cleared up a major chunk of overrun Kentish real estate. But then she remembered another Churchill quote – “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” – and performed another careful battle damage assessment (BDA). Her effect on target was still excellent. She’d knocked the dead, at least in her sector, halfway back to effing Calais.
    With these weapons and targeting systems, she almost couldn’t miss. And against that level of firepower, nothing could stand. Basically, nothing cleans house like an Apache.
    “Quality, mate,” she said aloud. “Fucking quality.”
    After this one-sided curb-stomp battle, she was now “Winchester” on ammo (totally out), and within five minutes of “bingo fuel” (just enough to get her home). And with that, her radio chirped up on the air-mission net, a flat and staticky voice, but recognizably masculine, growling at her across the sky – and approaching quickly.
    “Wyvern Two Zero, this is Dambuster One One, coming on station. We are a flight of two Typhoon FGR4s, with standard weapons payload and two hours playtime. Requesting handover of your sector, over.”
    Charlotte smiled as she keyed her mike. “Dambuster One One, Wyvern Two Zero. She’s all yours, mate. Happy times. Out.” And she kept on smiling – because she knew it took four men in two 90-million-Euro jet planes to take the place of her, riding alone in her dragon.
    For the past 36 hours of this combat mission, she had been grabbing gas, and ordnance, and the odd half-hour of sleep, at a forward rearming and refueling point (FARP), about two klicks behind the MLR. But now her deployment was definitely done – it wasn’t safe to fly any longer without sleep, and CentCom wouldn’t let her try it even if she asked.
    So she tightened her grips on the collective and cyclic, checked the moving map display, and mentally computed a course. She would be heading now toward the opposite horizon, the green and hopeful one. And, out beyond that, maybe her future lay waiting for her… So she wheeled her agile and deadly bird of prey around in a tight arc, the whole 80-foot and 16,000-pound machine feeling like a single sleek prosthesis, an extension of her body.
    And she pointed it toward home.
    “Home.” She said that aloud as well.
    She liked the sound of it.
    * * *
    “Hotel X, this is Wyvern Two Zero, I am RTB minus one mike, requesting priority clearance for primary helipad.”
    Because she was so obviously within radio range, and because this was such a routine clearance request – hers was one of only a handful of helos that used the USOC helipad – she hadn’t even waited for an acknowledgement before broadcasting it.
    But now nothing came back. No clearance. No acknowledgement. No answer of any sort.
    “Hotel X, Wyvern Two Zero, commo check.” Her eyes darted down to her radio panel. Everything was glowing in the right places. Looking up again, she could actually see the base, nestled in the Herefordshire hills, and growing in perspective. She was actually visual with the people she was trying to talk to.
    But her Spidey sense was perking up now, so instead of flying straight to the X and flaring in to land, she instead wheeled around and did a clockwise circuit over the base.
    Not only were there no other aircraft coming or going – but she couldn’t even see anyone moving on the ground. That made zero sense. She did a second circuit, while hailing the TOC twice more. Sweet F-A. No radio contact, no visual on anyone or anything.
    Her dragon was basically breathing fumes at this point, so she had no choice but to put it down. She didn’t have the range to reach any other military airbase now. And she certainly wasn’t going to put it down outside the wire. Not with the island's defenses breached and the hills crawling with dead fuckers.
    Dust billowed up around her as the beast settled on its three fat tires.