Chapter 1
Gunnery Sergeant Marianne Beaubien, USMC
Day: E-Day +2
Time: 0300 hrs CST / 0900 hrs GMT
Location: An airfield outside Madison, Wisconsin.
She was cold. Though the weather had been unseasonably warm for December, the temperatures at night still dropped into the forties, or “the singles” as she would have called them back home. Marie wrapped the blanket around herself a little more and refused to open her eyes. To save fuel, they had shut everything down, robbing her of the familiar hum of the engines. After their last close call the decision had been made to forgo putting the plane to bed which, while logical in the circumstances still left her uneasy. Curled up in bits of survival gear, her cheek against the troop bench of the KC-130J air transport, falling asleep had been hard enough the first time; she had no desire to hamper its return.
She turned her head away from the rough straps of the troop bench and took another long breath of the cold air. The cargo ramp was opening, allowing the northern air to sweep up and down it at will. She forced her eyes shut. Sleep should not be a challenge. In the last two days she had totalled eight hours of rest, catching brief naps in between the mad dash to refuel after landing, and taking off again an hour or so later.
“Gunny.” A firm hand shook her shoulder. The shake was unnecessary. Her eyes snapped open as a surge of anxious energy filled her with the evocation of her rank.
“Sir?” The grim face of Maj. Thompson, the plane’s Aircraft Commander, stared back. He was a serious man, a dyed-in-the-wool-Marine-for-life. She respected him and all he had done for her over the last few years. Even now, she knew that he understood what was going on enough to see the crew through this.
“Wheels up in twenty eight minutes. We’ve got another storm coming.”
