“Yeah,” he muttered, “on the official report to the NTSB, it says weather-related. But this was the Army version, Sloan. This was a field investigation by my peers who were pilots, and all of them served in the Night Stalker squadron before moving on to other ranks and responsibilities. One colonel made it clear to me in that room, that even though weather conditions contributed heavily to the situation, it was still up to me to nail that landing.”
“I’m…so sorry, Dan. They weren’t there. They didn’t see it happen. I was there! No one, not even God himself, could have landed that Chinook under those conditions.” She pushed her fingers through her hair in an aggravated motion. “Did you know that our team was called into that investigation? Each of us gave our eyewitness testimony to them about the crash. None of us said it was your fault. We all said it was a gust of wind that hit your bird as you landed it the first time. We saw that wind knock the helo sideways. And if you hadn’t quickly lifted it up off the scree, those blades would have slammed into the slope, destroying them. You did the right thing, Dan, under those horrible circumstances.”
“I didn’t know they’d called in your team for the investigation. It was never brought up. And it’s not in the final report.”
“They swore us to secrecy, Dan.” She turned, holding his confused stare. “I couldn’t tell you anything about it. That tribunal didn’t know you and I had been in a relationship.” Her voice wobbled. “It tore me up not to tell you about it. I could see what the investigation was doing to you. I felt helpless. I’m so sorry they released you from the Night Stalkers. I know how much it meant to you to be one of them, Dan.”
It was then that Sloan realized Dan had taken responsibility for the crash squarely on his shoulders. “You’ve been thinking for four years that the crash was pilot error, haven’t you?”
Dan sighed heavily. “I’ve rerun that approach and landing a thousand times in my head, in my nightmares, and during my waking hours, Sloan.”
“And what did you come up with? Are you going to believe the Army’s crap about you being the secondary cause of it?”
Giving a painful shrug, Dan muttered, “I don’t know, Sloan. What you’re telling me, I didn’t know before. This puts things in a different light, and I have to think about it.”
“I found out through my captain, weeks later, that you broke up with me the same day as the Army ordered you to come in and receive the final report on that investigation. You never told me you’d been demoted to a Black Hawk squadron.”
“I had immediate orders to leave for that FOB,” he said, humiliation flooding him. “I came back and told you that our relationship was done. I never told you why and I should have. That’s why I’m sorry, Sloan. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. I’m a failure in a lot of ways, and I never meant to hurt you like I did.”
She made a helpless gesture with her hand. “I was waiting for the Army to give a reason for the crash so I could tell you that my team and I had protected you during the investigation. I never thought they’d demote you like that.”
Dan stood up and walked up to Sloan. “I felt disgraced. I didn’t think anyone, much less someone like you would ever want to be seen around me again or have any kind of relationship with me.”
“You’re kidding me!”
He frowned, seeing the disbelief in her eyes. “I got an Army demotion, Sloan.”
“So the fuck what? I didn’t fall in love with you because you were a Night Stalker pilot! I fell in love with you, the man, dammit!” She took several steps away from him, shaking her head in disbelief over his admittance.
She had fallen in love with him? They’d never said they loved one another at Bagram! The topic never came up for discussion. They both worked in black ops where death was a bullet away. There was no way Dan wanted to profess how he really felt toward her. He was afraid Sloan would abandon him one day as his mother had.
When his father came home one evening with bad news that he’d been fired from his job because his company was bought out by a larger corporation, he remembered his mother losing it. He remembered her storming into the bedroom, grabbing her coat, filling a suitcase, and marching to the door. She slammed it behind her. That was the last time Dan ever saw her.
His father fell to the floor, sobbing, his hands buried against his face. Dan hurried over, never having seen him cry before, thinking he was going to die. He’d held him with his spindly arms, trying to get him to stop crying, to help somehow, but it was no use. He must have cried for half an hour and acted like a zombie afterward. At a later age, Dan realized his father had been in shock.
How could he go back to Sloan with his own brand of bad news? Dan decided to walk out of her life for good instead of her telling him she was leaving him. She was a beautiful person with a large, giving heart and deserved someone much better than himself. He was a loser. No high visibility. No one admiring him or his status as one of the finest pilots the Army had. Now, he was one of the thousands of nameless pilots who flew without being recognized for their worth, their bravery, and flight abilities.
As he stood there gripped by that horrible day in his life, he didn’t see Sloan. He saw his father on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. At night, after going to bed, Dan would press his face into the pillow, sobbing for his lost mother, wanting her back, wanting her to walk through that door again. He had cried endlessly the first three months she’d abandoned them. His father eventually got a new job for lesser pay, and he seemed to have all the life sucked out of him. A year later, his father received the divorce papers. Dan had seen tears in his father’s eyes that night as he’d read through the legal papers, but he didn’t cry. He just seemed too thinned out and was never his larger-than-life self again.
Dan not only lost his mother, he lost his father, as well. He never remarried, and as Dan grew up, he saw the devastation of what loving someone could do to the other person—and he never wanted that to happen to him. Through his late teens and early twenties, he had plenty of willing bed partners. But as soon as one of them professed their love to him, or wanted to make their sexual relationship something more substantial than just going to bed, he walked away without saying a word. Just as he’d walked out on Sloan. It was his pattern of behavior toward women, and deep down, Dan knew it came from his mother abandoning him.
“I’m sorry, Sloan. I didn’t know you loved me.” And he didn’t.
“I didn’t say anything because it would have been stupid to do so. We were in black ops. We were in constant danger. I didn’t want to tell you that because if I got taken out, you wouldn’t suffer as much, Dan.”
Sloan loved him. The epiphany struck him like a bolt nailing him where he stood. “I can’t fix the past, Sloan. Neither of us can. I hope this helps explain why I walked out on you—and I was a coward not to tell you everything.”
She slowly straightened, squaring her shoulders, “You’ve never been a coward, Dan. I know that from our Army days at Bagram. As a Night Stalker pilot, you were the bravest of the brave, so there’s no coward in you.”
Dan gave a bare nod of his head. “I think this is enough for tonight? I’m sure you’re tired and wrung out. I know I am. Why don’t we sleep on it? I’ll knock on your door at 0800 tomorrow morning, and we’ll go to the hangar. Fair enough?”
Her mouth twitched, eyes blazing. “There’s nothing fair about life, but then, you already know that and so do I.” She walked stiffly past him. Jerking open the door, she whispered unsteadily, “Goodnight.”
*