She knew exactly how much abuse the aircraft had taken while sitting on Mercer’s flight line.
The mechanic had not disappeared when she entered the cockpit.
The mechanic was helping keep the pilot alive.
Another enemy truck broke away from the ridge and moved toward a lower approach.
Claire followed its movement but did not fire immediately.
She waited.
At Mercer, a corporal watching through binoculars whispered, “Why isn’t she shooting?”
Hale saw the reason a second later.
The vehicle was moving toward the ammunition position.
Claire was letting it lead her to something more important.
When the truck stopped, additional enemy movement appeared around it.
Claire adjusted her angle.
The strike that followed forced the ammunition crews to abandon the position and scattered the fighters gathering nearby.
The eastern ridge, which minutes earlier had looked like the launching point for Mercer’s final destruction, had become confusion.
But confusion was not defeat.
Hale knew that.
Claire knew it too.
Enemy small-arms fire continued from multiple points.
A surviving heavy weapon opened from farther north.
The Apache could disrupt the assault, but Claire could not erase an entire enemy force by herself.
And fuel was finite.
So was ammunition.
“Donovan,”
Hale said, “status?”
Claire checked her instruments.
“Aircraft operational.
Continuing.”
Hale almost smiled at the understatement.
Then a voice from the operations center cut across the radio.
“General, movement west of the ridge.
They may be shifting the assault route.”
Hale looked toward the map table inside the hangar.
The enemy was adapting.
Claire had forced them to.
That alone had changed the battle.
Their original plan depended on speed, concentration, and the belief that Mercer had no air response.
Now every movement had to account for an Apache that should not have been flying.
Hale relayed the change.
Claire banked west.
The gunship crossed the valley low enough that the ridgeline briefly hid it from several firing positions.
Then it climbed just enough for Claire to see the new movement.
She found fighters using the broken terrain to approach the base from another direction.
This time she did not need to destroy everything in front of her.
She needed to make them stop moving together.
She struck the lead element and forced the rest into cover.
Mercer’s defenders took advantage immediately.
Rifles and defensive weapons along the perimeter began firing on positions that had been preparing to advance.
Soldiers who twenty minutes earlier had stared at the floor because no pilots remained were now calling targets, moving ammunition, and rebuilding fields of fire.
Claire had not only given the base an aircraft.
She had given it time to remember how to fight.
The same young mechanics Claire had ordered to “move or die” during the siege were now running across the aviation bay preparing the landing area.
One of them looked at the empty workbench where Claire’s wrench still lay.
“Did you know?” he asked the other.
“Know what?”
“About her.”
The second mechanic shook his head.
