Airwolf And I, Vice Versa

CHAPTER FIVE

Kristien had spent all of the night at Airwolf’s computers. She had five laptops linked up to Airwolf running various diagnostics and working through some of the new hardware she had installed. Constantly reprogramming the onboard computer whilst sat inside Airwolf at the EDCC with a laptop on her lap and typing directly into Airwolf’s own laptop. The information she recalled about Airwolf came to her with ease. Although the damage had been substantial to Airwolf from the previous mission, Kristien worked out it would only take her a a few more hours full on to get the helicopter to her former self and probably a lot better than that. Archangel’s replacement parts were state of the art so Airwolf should be upgraded to a very high standard.

Kristien was so engrossed with Airwolf that she hadn’t heard Hawke walk back into the hangar earlier nor how he had settled himself down to sleep, bringing the mattress from the hangar bedroom to right next to Airwolf on the port side next to the wing sponsons that housed the cannons and chain guns.

The port door was wide open but such was the hum of the computers and how deep Kristien’s concentration was on the job in hand when she stepped out of Airwolf to go and check the other laptops she froze seeing Hawke laid there asleep. Hawke with the jet lag had only just settled down to sleep as the sun rose. He was so tired and the delayed hangover along with the grave retelling about the loss of the baby had taken its toll.

Kristien watched Hawke sleeping peacefully. He was naked just covered by a sheet. Kristien looked him up and down remembering how she knew every inch of his body. Kristien continued to watch Hawke sleeping and she let out a deep sigh. Hawke stirred in his sleep.

Bugger, she thought, better not wake him. Kristien had done enough reminiscing for one lifetime. She left the Hangar and walked over the Lodge. Carsten appeared from nowhere.

“I see you have been left on your own to do the work.” Carsten said looking down at his PDA.

Kristien looked at Carsten and then realised that Hawke had already somehow disposed of the GPS Locator. “That’s how I like it.”

“So what’s the connection between you three then?” Carsten was trying to fish for answers.

“Airwolf obviously.” Kristien replied now stepping through the open door that Alfred held open to Kristien at the Lodge. Alfred glared at the bodyguard making him realise that he was far too close to the Lodge and Kristien’s privacy.

Carsten halted in his tracks knowing he could not go any further but realised the line of questioning was never going anywhere either. He allowed Alfred to close the door in his face and turned to run back to his security office where he would do some more checking.

Dominic sat outside having his breakfast that Alfred had served. He thought that it was very grand last night having a meal in a huge banqueting hall and now moved to a different house to have breakfast at the invite of Kristien. The lodge had Kristien’s own stamp on it. Adorned with oil paintings of all of her beloved horses along with all the worlds top racing trophies, a very private collection indeed. He wondered if Kristien had a different house for each day of the week. He did not have long to wait if he wanted to ask her just that.

Kristien dived into the pool and swam about 20 lengths before getting out. Dominic was impressed at how quickly she managed the swim especially as it didn’t feel that warm this morning compared to the Californian heat that he was used to. Kristien didn’t care that it felt cool outside after all it was only May in England, the pool was heated to a very warm temperature and she needed to wake up after spending the last couple of days working on Airwolf non stop.

As she got out Alfred greeted her with a warmed towelling robe which covered her completely. She wandered over to the table where Dominic was pouring another coffee for himself to wash down the breakfast he had just devoured.

“How’s the lady doing?” He asked her.

Kristien threw the towel that she had lightly dried her hair with over to the stone bench near the pool. She brought up her knees on to the chair to get more comfortable and to keep warm.

“I reckon she will be ready to fly this afternoon.” Kristien replied still checking in her head that she had gone over everything in Airwolf.

Dominic was impressed. “Really this afternoon? That’s quick work.”

“Well we shall see.” Kristien looked over the days messages that Alfred had just put down by her. “She’s repaired but whether the on board systems will accept everything I have done is another thing. A quick jaunt around the block should do it. Either that or we will have to go back to the drawing board.”

“Hey, tell me to mind my own business but how come you know so much about Airwolf then?” Dominic asked.

Kristien looked over at Dominic realising that Hawke had never told Dominic how they met. “I chose String to test Airwolf. You know how stubborn he is, well he spent three weeks dragging his arse around before finally coming to fly her. So I flew her whilst waiting for him.”

“Oh.” Dominic said surprised and he picked up his cup of coffee and started to drink from it.

“And Archangel got me to memorise all the blue prints and all the passwords to Airwolf.” Kristien said waiting for the next reaction.

Dominic spat out the coffee. “What? You know the Lady inside and out then?” Dominic was shocked at this information. “But that means you can build another Airwolf then?”

“Why on earth would I want to have another one of those infernal machines?” Kristien did not hide her unhappiness at that thought.

“Not you, the FIRM.” Dominic stated quite shocked that someone did not appreciate the Lady as he did but also that String’s hold on the prototype was now at risk.

“Why the hell would I give the FIRM another bloody Airwolf? They lost the first one, twice.” Kristien replied deadpan. “Their track record is not very impressive now is it.” Kristien quoting the facts that not only had Moffet stolen Airwolf but Hawke too.

Dominic looked straight at Kristien realising that she had a dislike of the FIRM also.

“So you mean to say that if Archangel asked you to give him all the blue prints for the Lady you would refuse?” Dominic played devils advocate.

“Having read the file on Airwolf and knowing why String has her, sure would and I would enjoy saying no also!” Kristien replied happy in the notion that again she could tell another government to get stuffed.

“I bet String is really happy about that.” Dominic said hoping that the two of them had managed a civil conversation together.

“He’s asleep with Airwolf.” Kristien replied.

“Oh asleep you say.” Dominic raised his eyebrow hoping that Hawke really wasn’t sleeping. “So you two managed to catch up on the last five years?”

Kristien peered over the Horse and Hound magazine she had picked up and looked over at Dominic. “Well I wouldn’t say we caught up. But we actually exchanged a few words.” Kristien remembered the previous night’s one sided conversation from her.

Dominic remembered back to when String and Kristien were inseparable and at how they knew what each other was thinking, they hardly spoke back then so a few words now must mean that they were getting on again. He really hoped so as the last five years had been so hard on String, although for a few days Gabrielle had lightened the young mans life from the constant brooding. Even a couple of other girls later had helped String nurse some wounds but nothing ever lasted. Whether it was the fact that String lived so far from civilisation or the fact that the girls felt that they would never understand the scars that would never heal deep in String’s soul, Dominic could not be sure.

In the Hangar Dominic was patting Airwolf and talking to her as if she was his pet. Hawke watched the older man and shook his head.

“Dom, really it’s just a machine.” Hawke insisted still trying to understand Dominic’s love affair with Airwolf.

“Oh you think so huh? Then how come she’s let Kristien reset everything without a fight then?” Dominic asked. “I told my baby that she was to work with Kristien.”

“Because Kristie knows all of Moffet’s passwords that’s why.” Hawke informed Dominic trying to get a reality check on things.

“Moffet, she knew Moffet?” Dominic questioned remembering the two times he came across Dr Charles Henry Moffet. Once on the sand dunes in Libya where String unleashed all of Airwolf’s armament on the sick bastard that tortured and led to Gabrielle’s death and then when Moffet planted a logic bomb inside of Airwolf’s computers creating a ghost. Dominic did not like remembering the creator of Airwolf.

“I wouldn’t say she knew him but Archangel made sure she followed him and got all the passwords. I doubt they spent any social time together, as she spent a lot of her time memorising employee schedules to avoid when he was about.” Hawke remembered the first night that they spent together and that Kristien stayed at the cabin to avoid going back to Red Star Control, and seeing Moffet.

The two men left Airwolf and came out of the hangar. They met Kristien and Carsten who were making their way to the hangar.

“If you want to check Airwolf over I suggest we take her to spread her wings to see if she is happy with what I have done so far.” Kristien suggested to the two men.

“Sure, I am sure we can take a spin round Iceland and back.” Hawke suggested.

“Well you need to file a flight plan.” Carsten reminded them.

Kristien, String and Dom all looked with disbelief at the Agent’s comment.

“Er, why would we give the location of a top secret prototype to the authorities?” Kristien asked not really interested in the answer. Airwolf’s radar absorption was working back to 100 per cent. “Anyway no one will be able to see us anyway.”

Hawke smiled at Kristien’s quick jibe towards her bodyguard.

“We are only going to be a couple of hours.” She told her bodyguard knowing that she had already programmed Airwolf with all the codes to disable the security matrix that protected the estate and for good measure she had hacked into the Secret Service Computer and put Airwolf’s on board computer listed as a PDA in Kristien’s possession to receive the updates for when the codes changed.

“I know as I am coming with.” Carsten told her secure in the knowledge that he had just had a handful travel sickness tablets.

Kristien was too tired to argue this one out and felt it should be left to Hawke if he wanted to tackle the Secret Service Agent after all it was him that technically ‘owned’ the bloody helicopter.

Hawke looked over at Dominic. “Looks like you are sitting this one out Dom.” Hawke did not raise the gauntlet to Carsten thinking he would really show the agent was air sickness was all about this time.

“That’s ok, me and Alfred are swapping stories about the good old days,” Dominic informed them happy that he had found another person to reminisce about the good old days and what they got up to.

Airwolf cut through the air effortlessly at Mach One. Hawke flew her with ease with Kristien sat at the EDCC. They both ignored Carsten who was sat in the Co pilots’ seat. Hawke was pissed off at the Agent for making Dom sit this one out. He was also quite surprised that Carsten had managed to keep his stomach on this trip. Despite Hawke’s best attempts to do hammerhead stalls and tight turns, really pushing Airwolf. Carsten just sat there awkwardly in the silence.

Hawke had just finished a few tight turns and a tremendous nose dive from thirty five thousand feet. Airwolf had performed magnificently.

“How we doing?” Hawke asked Kristien about the condition of Airwolf breaking the silence in the cockpit.

“Well, so far all systems are in the green.” Kristien did another cursory check over all of the systems. They had zipped over Iceland and were well on the way back, Kristien was so far very happy with everything that she had done on Airwolf. It only took less than a couple of days to reprogram Airwolf with the new hardware that Archangel had sent. To Kristien it really wasn’t that hard to do. She did notice that one of the fuel injectors could be working a little bit more efficiently but it still was in the green.

Hawke too was pleased the way Airwolf was performing. It had been a couple of months since all the systems were fully operational and he was happy at last everything was finally working the way it should be. Airwolf was really stretching her legs on this trip.

“So Hawke how come you have got Airwolf then? I don’t see any Government department behind this little venture, no one lets a prototype out by itself.” Carsten pieced a few bits of information together. Never in his time protecting Kristien did he ever see such an experimental aircraft without its own team of scientists and guards with it and yet Airwolf was here with just two men.

Hawke smirked to himself. “That’s because it doesn’t belong to anyone.” True enough Airwolf really stood in no mans land. Not belonging to the FIRM, nor the Government and hidden only by Hawke who was really holding Airwolf to ransom. He would prefer a quieter life. “It’s not like it would have ‘Made by the FIRM’ stamped on its arse now would it.” Hawke spat back.

“Quit jerking me around here. You are telling me that the United States number one spy has nothing to do with Airwolf? He’s behind all of this.” Carsten was trying to second guess a few things. “What’s the FIRM doing with a tactical weapon?” He had seen the ADF pod and the cannons. Airwolf seemed to be one hell of a covert mach one deadly killing machine.

“Perhaps you had better ask him?” Hawke was getting tired of this line of questioning and he was hoping Kristien would pull her bodyguard back in line.

Kristien listened in so far without adding any comment. She was interested in working out where Carsten was going with this. What was it to him who Airwolf belonged to? Both men’s egos were making the cockpit very crowded.

“Believe me I will make sure I find out.” Carsten started to think ahead about contacting the White House on his return. He had played ball so far but he had no idea about Kristien’s involvement with the Airwolf project and neither did the present Administration.

“What the fuck’s it to do with you anyway?” Hawke raised his voice angrily towards Carsten. “Officially I have no idea what you are on about.” Hawke tried to duck under the official route about Airwolf. Officially it had been destroyed in Libya.

“Officially? That’s bullshit and you know it.” Carsten kept digging. “Perhaps I had better inform the President that Kristien is involved with the FIRM………….”

“What’s got into you Carsten?” Kristien could remain quiet no longer. “You start informing anyone of what you have seen here and I will personally cut your balls off with a blunt knife.” Being a qualified vet Kristien had performed many a castration on her own horses that needed it and Carsten had often been present so he knew she wasn’t joking.

Hawke smirked quietly to himself. Round one definitely to Kristie, he thought.

Carsten did not have time for a return, not that he had one planned but Airwolf’s alarms went off at the same time Hawke started to lose control of Airwolf as the engines droned trying to keep the aircraft in the air.

“We have a fuel leak in one of the injectors.” Kristien looked over at the panels all flashing red and various alarms. Kristien was pressing various buttons and typing various codes into the Airwolf computer.

“Kristie I can barely keep her up.” Hawke relayed to her. “I need more power.”

“I am diverting as much as I can.” Kristien had already worked quickly in trying to stop their decent. “She’s certainly split an injector somewhere. We need to set her down before she loses too much fuel.”

“I need the turbo’s.” Hawke told Kristien.

“Negative. You will blow us to pieces with the ignition with the fuel leak.” Kristien reminded him.

“We’re going to crash” Carsten’s face started to drain of colour and he started to feel sick.

“Well we certainly aren’t staying up in the air.” Hawke stated the obvious fighting to keep Airwolf up in the air with gravity pulling them down. The altimeter was whirling down quicker than anyone liked.

Kristien thought quickly. “Standby to reverse thruster engines.” Kristien needed to slow their rate of decent.

Airwolf droned and the reverse thrust lurched Airwolf backwards, which gave Hawke the chance to regain control of the rapid decent that they were on.

Hawke pulled the button for the landing gear and Airwolf landed heavily on the ground on the side of a Scottish Highland Mountain.

Thank God Kristien thought fast, Hawke sighed. “That was close.” Taking off his helmet and turning to her.

“Close? You call that close?” Kristien repeated with some disbelief removing her helmet. “What the hell are you playing at? I had a quick look at Airwolf’s engines yesterday. When was the last time you had her overhauled? For fuck’s sake no wonder you got hit by a missile and ended up in bits! I would think it was caused by your lack of aviation engineering. And another thing.” Kristien was on a roll now. “Some of her circuits are corroding. This was a finely tuned state of the art sophisticated covert Mach One plus helicopter until you got your grubby little paws on her. Where the hell are you keeping her? In a bloody bat cave?”

Kristien could not be any further from the truth. Hawke accepted the reprimand knowing she was right and got out of Airwolf and walked away without a fight.

Carsten did not have time to count up what was left of his nine lives after that rapid decent in Airwolf. For once he was listening to Kristien tearing a strip off someone other than himself and boy was he going to enjoy this even though he was in his first ever crash landing. He was also glad that Kristien was as brainy as her PhDs stated she was. He was sure that it was Kristien’s quick thinking that had kept them up in the air and not the arrogant flyboy at the flight controls.

“Well that told him.” Carsten added also pleased that his travel sickness pills had been tested to the fullest. “These flyboys need to know…..”

“And as for you!” Kristien now turned her unfinished anger on to her bodyguard. “Who the hell do you think you are? If I find that you go to anyone about Airwolf I will make sure that I will shoot you myself and I won’t give a shit how quickly I will kill you either. After all we still behead people in my country” Kristien was furious and she never usually used her power of being first in line to the Throne of Dubawi but she felt this was required to pull her bodyguard back in line, permanently. “Now get your arse out there and do a perimeter check and do what you are paid to do, keep your mouth shut and be a bodyguard, and if you can try to take a bullet for me out there from a killer haggis that maybe lurking, so we don’t have to take you back.”

Carsten left Airwolf immediately as the threaten castration had elevated to his demise, something he did not wish to find out. Airwolf was now empty leaving Kristien to fall back into the engineer’s chair. “GGGRRRRRR MEN!” And she let out a deep breath.

Hawke walked away to the top of the rise and stood looking from the magnificent Scottish highlands down to a stunningly beautiful loch. The purples and mauves of the heather moving over the mountains looked like a rolling sea moving in the breeze. He sat down on a large granite rock and looked at the breath taking surroundings absorbing its beauty and serenity.

He looked back at Airwolf and saw Kristien already repairing Airwolf having opened a panel up at the top of the engines near the main rotor, he felt he should be over there helping but he was still licking his wounds from her rebuke. He turned and continued to absorb the beauty of the surroundings, listening to the sounds, breathing the pure mountain air, tasting the sweet smells. About ten minutes later, he felt Kristien walk up behind him. He allowed a few minutes to pass to allow her to enjoy the beautiful scenery. Kristien looked over the Scottish scenery and absorbed its beautiful setting. Part of her was regretting how angry she had got and had given Hawke the full helping of it. She needed to remind herself that she did disappear, not only to save herself but Hawke also. Maybe the next time a kidnapping was ordered the people around would be killed. Something she did not want to happen.

“I’m sorry for everything.” He stammered. “I couldn’t find you, anywhere. I even kicked Archangel across the room for failing. You……… just…………..disappeared.” Hawke’s apology came from the heart and was sincere as he said it the barrier between them started to fall. “I could feel you every single day, the pain, the helplessness but could not find you.” Hawke’s eyes became watery barely holding back the pain that he felt from both of them. “I would have given my life to find you………….”

Kristien listened as Hawke offered his apology to her. She knew he was right, she had just disappeared. She had only admitted to the White House twelve months previous that there was someone from her past that could possibly find her. They had agreed to lay a trail and monitor anything that came through.

Hawke again put out his hand hoping to touch her but she turned to leave and his hand had nothing but air to hold. “I’ve managed to bypass the split injector.” Kristien said getting back to business. “You will have to keep her below 200 knots and no turbo’s. She’s limping but she can fly.”

“Kristie…..” Hawke wanted to tell her how he felt, how he wanted to rekindle their relationship, how he wanted to feel complete again but he was too scared of hurting her. He could still feel her pain from the previous night’s conversation about the violent kidnapping.

“String, please……………… I……….I just can’t.” Kristien begged knowing what Hawke was asking. “Please………….. please, let’s just get home.” Kristien could not deal with the plea from Hawke for reconciliation, not here, not now.

Kristien walked away, fighting back the tears.

Hawke stood up and was about to follow when he felt immense pain and worse, fear, from Kristien. Why the hell was she scared of him? Hawke had never done anything to Kristien or any woman that would want them to fear him. Hawke at heart was an idealistic romantic, he would wine and dine and look after the women that he had dated, tending to their every need.

Hawke watched Kristien withdraw to the safety of Airwolf. He would need to investigate this ‘fear’ further and he was not about to take ‘no’ from her for an answer.

Hawke paused and remained in thought for a while, a small smile appeared on his face as he came up with a plan to recapture Kristien’s shattered heart.