Airwolf And I, Vice Versa

Chapter ONE

PRESENT DAY April 1988

Hawke awoke bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat from the dramatic ending that his dream always had. It always ended like that and no matter how hard he tried not to think of Kristien he would always dream about the time that they had together. The ending would never improve with time either as much as he wished it to be different, it would never be.

As Hawke became more conscious he realised that Tet was uncomfortable and was whining. Hawke felt the earthquake tremors shake the cabin. There was a sound of breaking glass downstairs. Tet did not follow his master preferring to stay under the bed where he felt safe from the shaking cabin.

Hawke went downstairs noticing the various paintings had moved under their lights. He left them crooked as he wasn’t sure if the main earthquake had hit or whether the aftershocks had just woken him.

Hawke looked closely around the cabin and everything looked in their normal place. His eyes came around from the Stradivarius cello and there on the floor was a photo frame in bits on the floor. He walked over to the hearth where the broken glass was strewn about and knelt down to pick up the frame. Hawke knew it was the photo of Kristien and him with her stallion. As he picked it up the frame fell apart. Hawke looked at the photo. He remembered the day clearly that he had first gone to her stud in Kentucky. They had both ridden several horses out that day and then spent the evening together enjoying each others company. A small smile of happiness returned as he quietly reminisced of happier times.

Hawke held the photo up and then noticed on the back some writing. There in Kristien’s handwriting was a name ‘Kalasadi’. That was the name of her stallion, Hawke never knew the racing name of her beloved horse, she always called him ‘Kalli’.

Hawke did not believe in coincidences. With a new purpose Hawke went to the bar and from under the counter he picked up a white satellite phone. Hawke pressed one button. A few seconds passed.

“Hawke it’s very early.” Archangel answered.

“Michael I have a favour to ask.” Hawke said not even bothering about what time of the night it was or wasn’t.

“Your favours usually end up costing the Firm a lot of money.” Archangel replied.

“I have a name I need to you look up Kilo, Alpha, Lima, Alpha, Sierra, Alpha, Delta, Indigo.” Hawke spelt out the name. “And yes this will cost you a lot of money.”

“Kalasadi?” Archangel repeated.

“Yeah.” Hawke replied. “It’s the name of a horse.”

“What the hell am I? Your bookie?” Archangel was puzzled with the request. “Hawke what’s this in connection with?”

“Kristien.” Hawke said before pressing the red button on the phone as if he didn’t need to say anything more.

Archangel was used to Hawke hanging up on him on the secure phone. Archangel walked over to the keyboard of the big computer in his office and typed in the name. He pressed enter and walked away for a couple of steps and then faced the large screen.

Up came a range of information regarding the horse. Winner of the English Derby at Epsom, Winner of the Kentucky Derby same year. Standing at stud. Various other bits of information came up which Archangel ignored. There were photos and a telephone number.

Archangel clicked on the photos, he was also alerted that someone somewhere was tracing who was looking at the information. There were 3 studs, 2 in the states and one in the UK. Archangel went to the UK one first. Archangel looked up various pages and saw a phone number. He picked up the phone and tapped in the numbers whilst checking the wall with all the clocks that kept the times of the world cities. It was 9am the UK.

Archangel had put a trace on the call the sophisticated program was at work on the screen, lines darting from one country to the next and finally coming back to the States, Washington, The White House to be precise. Why the hell would the call come back to the States? And more importantly who the hell was tracing him?

“Good morning Archangel, How may I direct your call?” The white house switchboard answered.

“I am looking for a horse called Kalasadi.” Archangel gave the information over as if it was a code word.

“Of course Sir, Connecting you to the Secret Service now.” The Switchboard reconnected the call. Archangel looked up at the screen to see if the trace moved. It didn’t.

“Good morning, please give your designation and code now.”

“Angel One, code Bravo Two Six Delta Zero.” Archangel repeated. Archangel was connected to another line.

“This is Special Agent Carsten. What the fuck is the Firm doing tracing this call?” Carsten spat at Archangel.

Finally the screen moved and went directly to the UK, Newmarket.

“Agent Carsten, Special Agent Matthew Carsten?” Archangel repeated recognising the Agents name from a report he once read. “This is Archangel.”

“I know who this is, how else do you think you were sent direct to the White House First? Everyone else is sent to front team.” Carsten said crossly. “Why is the Deputy Director of the Firm interested in Her Royal Highness?” There was a pause. “And how the hell did you find out her horses name?” Carsten was head of security and thought he knew everything. Unbeknown to him a trail had been laid for this very reunion to take place.

Archangel loved the barrage of questions being hurled at him and he ducked every single one.

“I need to talk to her about the classified project that she worked on six years ago.” Archangel told him. “Why is the Secret Service involved?”

“We’re involved as you failed to protect her.” Carsten stated.

Archangel was furious. The Firm had never been contracted to protect Kristien at any time. Carsten was out of line and he would tell him that to his face when they would meet.

“WE were never asked to protect her.” Archangel kept his temper even though he really wanted to kick the Special Agent’s arse for that comment.

“Can I speak to her please?” Archangel requested.

“NO.” Carsten enjoyed having power over the country’s number one spy and hung up the call. He placed the phone back into his pocket of his black suit and continued to watch the two horses galloping around the training track. His eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, fixed on one horse only and its rider. The horse was at full gallop as it came off the turn, racing against another horse on the inside. Each stride being matched by each horse, neither of them giving in. On the straight the horse was asked to pick up the pace by its rider which it did with ease and somehow found an extra speed on top of the full gallop and passed the horse on the inside as if it was stood still. The horse and rider now in the lead, flew past Carsten at an amazing speed of 47 miles an hour. Carsten smiled, he never got bored of watching these horses at work. Beats running with the President any day.

The horses slowed up from their flat out gallop downward in their transitions to a canter and finally a trot. The two riders exchanged a conversation whilst the horses started to recover from their exertion. One horse and rider came trotting over to Carsten. The rider had mirrored goggles on complete with a jockey skull cap, the white shirt the female rider was wearing, billowing in the movement from the horse. A groom walked forwards and held on to the horse as the rider dismounted. The rider happy with the work out patted the horse and started to take off the gloves.

“Make sure you wash him off straight away and walk him off for an hour, then schedule a spa for his legs this afternoon.” The rider instructed the groom. “He’s ready for the Guineas on Saturday.”

“Yes, Miss Kristien.” The groom replied as he took the hat that she gave him.

Carsten smiled at Kristien as she undid her hair from the band she had tied up her hair when riding. He watched her shake her head and put on the sunglasses from her pocket of the white shirt she was wearing. Her black jodhpurs outlining her muscular legs.

This really was the best protection job he had ever had the pleasure of doing. Kristien’s household was very informal, very ‘english’ but no heirs and graces here. And thankfully Kristien didn’t jog, how he hated that detail when he did the main man.

“Eagle one, move from stables to main.” Carsten spoke to the covert sophisticated microphone and earpiece that was wearing.

Another three men in black joined Kristien and Carsten and they all walked up together to a huge country house all of them constantly looking around. Before entering into the house the three other agents dispersed to other duties having finished their escorting duties. Kristien paused and looked back at the changing skies. She took off her sunglasses and squinted at the billowing clouds that were forming in the distance ready for a fresh shower of rain. There had been plenty of storms in April which in England was nothing unusual.

But more than that she felt something deeper, a pain deep down inside rose to the surface causing her to clasp her hand to her right side. She took a deep breath.

Someone was coming, someone from her past.

Archangel was already reaching for the red phone on his desk when Special Agent Carsten ended the call. The fucking little prick, who the hell did he think he was!

He would have to do this the old fashioned way.

“Get me the President.” Archangel instructed.

9 hours later

The white limousine pulled up at the impressive gates as the early evening sun was starting to make its downward journey for the day. The huge gate posts had bronze statues on of rearing horses and also in front of the posts at the sides were full size bronzes of rearing horses. Archangel smiled knowing that these were excellent security measures, anyone hitting those would certainly not get any further. The gates also were not your usual gates. They were very heavy metal alloy gates and needed rather large hydraulic arms to open them. After the various passwords and codes had been checked Archangels limo made its way up a long a winding driveway. A few miles down you could see a huge imposing stately home built around 1555 in the Elizabethan era of and full of history standing majestically and boasting around 100 bedrooms.

All the way up the driveway were different paddocks housing hundreds of bay and black thoroughbred horses, some with foals at foot. Archangel enjoyed this part of the journey and he remembered the times that he and Kristien discussed about the worldwide breeding and racing of thoroughbred horses as he himself a keen rider was always interested in her views. Her detail to breeding had ensured that she had won every classic horse race in the world.

As the limousine pulled up at the impressive house, staff appeared and one of then opened the door the limousine. Archangel stepped out of the limousine with Marella at his side. They walked up the stone steps to the door which was already opening. Archangel was met at the entrance to the house by the head of the household, Alfred.

“Good Evening Sir, Good Evening Miss.” Alfred respectively welcomed the guest. “Sir may I take your hat?”

Archangel handed over his hat. “Thank you. Please would you inform Kristien of our arrival.”

“Of course, Sir.” Alfred replied. “If you would be so kind as to follow me.”

Other household staff had appeared and were getting the luggage out of the limousine to bring into the house.

They walked through various enormous hallways which were full of Italian art and very rare antiques. Something that the 9th Earl had collected on his many travels to Italy in the Seventeen hundreds. Kristien’s ancestors had exquisite taste. The ceilings also were beautifully painted in the style of Michael Angelo. The rooms were so alive they seemed to transport you to other places around the world.

They came through to an open courtyard where Kristien and Carsten were looking outward over the estate drinking tea. Kristien was busy catching up the racing gossip in the Racing Post. She had a couple of Tattersall’s catalogues by her side for the up and coming Breeze Up sales all marked with various different coloured stickers throughout the pages of horses that she felt warranted a close up look before the day of the sales. Tattersall’s always opened their doors privately to Kristien so she could see the horses without anyone else around for security reasons, that and the fact that having ten black suits hovering around her all of the time she could not ever see the horses with them in the way.

“Mr Coldsmith-Briggs the third and Miss Marella.” Alfred introduced the guests.

Carsten dropped the china cup and saucer complete with the liquid to the stone floor, smashing it into several pieces. Alfred raised an eyebrow at the secret service agents ‘faux paux’ at obviously not telling Miss Kristien of the impending arrival of the guests. How he loved catching the Secret Service out.

Since arriving five years previous the Secret Service had been a pain in Alfred’s side. He ran the huge house all its contents, restoration and looking after Kristien were his duties and had been for around 50 years with the former Duke, Kristien’s Grandfather. He was borne into service into the house as his Father too was the Butler to the Duke and he had just followed suit. It was an honour to remain in service and he adored Kristien as he had brought her up after her mother quite unexpectedly left a two day old premature baby at the ancestral home whilst she went back to the Arab State that her husband ruled too scared to take her back to Dubawi. Before Kristien her mother had given birth to two other daughters, neither of whom survived.

Kristien remained composed on hearing not only the name of Archangel but also the fact that her bodyguard had yet again smashed something else in the house probably due to not telling her about the request from the FIRM. Luckily Alfred had just got the everyday china out bought from Harrods, two years previous. Alfred did not want the family heirlooms smashed by the Americans who lived at Kristien’s family home.

She waited for Archangel to settle himself and allowed Alfred to serve tea to the guests. Finally she put down the copy of the racing post that she was absorbed in and looked up with her sunglasses on. Alfred withdrew from the gathering back to the rest of his duties inside.

“Hello Michael, hello Marella,” Kristien greeted her arrived guests. She ignored the fact that Archangel had a walking stick and one eye blackened out. “What brings you over the pond?”

“Airwolf.” Archangel got straight to the point as he looked over at Carsten picking up the pieces of the broken china.

Kristien looked over at Carsten. “Best you go and do your security briefings now.” She was dismissing him. “Oh and tell Alfred you have broken another set of china and to reorder the same. I can’t have odds and sods around.”

“My place is here as your protection detail….” Carsten started.

“I don’t think the Deputy Director of the FIRM is here to assassinate anyone soon so your services will not be required. Thank you.” Kristien dismissed her bodyguard for the second time and less politely.

“I must protest…….” Carsten put in a last complaint.

“Will you just piss off then.” Kristien told him now getting quite riled by the insistent bodyguard who she knew was only going to want to eavesdrop on the conversation anyway.

Carsten knew not to hang around anymore. He hastily walked away and if he made it back in time to his security office he maybe able to get one of the cctv cameras to pick up the conversation that he was just leaving.

“What about the infernal machine?” Kristien asked watching the bodyguard exit the courtyard.

“Ah have we got a long story to tell you.” Marella interjected preparing to relay the last three years to Kristien.

“Moffet stole it, Hawke got it back and kept it.” Archangel told Kristien.

Marella shrugged her shoulders. “Well not that long apparently.” She felt as dismissed as Carsten did a few moments before.

Kristien listened to the very abridged version from Archangel. She knew Hawke and that he would have never kept Airwolf unless he had a good reason to. Why on earth would he keep the helicopter? What was going on? Something was missing and she wanted to find out. Archangel knew Kristien had all the blueprints to Airwolf stored into her memory and she knew it would probably take her less than a couple of days to put all the designs down onto memory card. She was not about to hand over anything until she had spoken to Hawke. That’s if he would talk to her.

“He kept it? What the hell did you do to piss him off that much then?” Kristien asked not about to give up anything to anyone until she had found out why Hawke had kept Airwolf. “So what exactly are you wanting from me then?”

“Airwolf was seriously damaged on a mission surveying the Iran-Iraq war five weeks ago.” Archangel started to explain missing out the reason why Hawke had actually kept Airwolf.

“The Halabja poison gas attack?” Kristien kept up with everything in the news both unoffical and official from all of her sources.

“Yes the very same. About 10 MIGs went after Airwolf after they dropped their chemical weapons over Halabja, Kurdistan.” Archangel told her. “Hawke and Santini are fine by the way.”

Kristien took off her sunglasses with total disbelief. “Dom in Airwolf?” What the hell was Hawke dragging his best friend around in Airwolf? Why not just hold the bloody thing ransom? What the hell was going on?

Archangel opened his arms too in disbelief and shrugged his shoulders as he had no control over anything that Hawke did with Airwolf. Least of all who he trained up to put into the helicopter.

“I would like you to repair Airwolf if you can.” Archangel got straight to the point and handed her one of the files from his briefcase. “You can see that internally she has a few problems. Moffet’s programming did not allow for upgrades and we don’t have any of the original components left. We have tried to recreate some of the systems but Hawke doesn’t trust anyone to keep Airwolf landed for any length of time. So Hawke has been flying her ‘cold’.” Archangel was hoping that this would be enough for Kristien to agree to.

Kristien scanned over the reports and photographs of the damaged Airwolf. It had been a direct hit into the starboard side of the helicopter. Quite a bad one at that. How the hell did Hawke allow that to happen? He was a hell of a pilot and something had had to go wrong for Airwolf to be hit like that. “Repair? That’s the understatement of the century.” Kristien said sarcastically. “She needs a whole new EDCC according to this.” She corrected Archangel pointing at the file written by top scientists from MIT.

“Well.” Archangel rubbed his moustache. “This is a walk in the park for someone with your abilities.” Archangel started to compliment her hoping she would take the bait. “Hawke will trust only you and as I know you do ‘eyes only’ projects here for the US and the British Governments then this one would be ideal.”

Kristien knew Archangel had got his information direct from the President. Archangel allowed her to scan the reports further. He got out several other Airwolf files from his briefcase. He wanted to give them over and hastily leave as he certainly did not wish to be about for any comments that she would probably hurl his way and deservedly so especially when it came to the reports about Moffet stealing Airwolf.

“Hawke was devastated when you were kidnapped.” Archangel told her leaving the confidential files of Airwolf on the table in front of her. “You will see that we lost two agents getting Airwolf back. Hawke was involved with one of them.” Archangel tried to warn Kristien of one of the reports. He did not want to be about when she read that particular report. Archangel and Marella took the last mouthfuls of their drinks and Alfred appeared to take them to their rooms where they could freshen up after their long flight over before the evening meal that would be served in the huge banquet hall.

“Not that devastated then.” She replied coldy.

“We could not find you, Kristien was the man supposed to wait?.” Archangel hoped he had backed Hawke up and walked away from Kristien and paused at the doorway without looking back tapping his walking stick on the flagstones. “I read the debriefing about the kidnapping.” Archangel wanted her to know that he knew. “I am sorry about the loss of your baby.”

Kristien closed her eyes trying to keep her composure whilst taking a deep breath. “Does String know?” The wounds of the past had never healed and had opened up once more.

“One of my assistants is taking the report to him today.” Archangel informed her.

“Make sure Dom is with him.” Kristien knew that the news would strike him like physical blows and having his mentor at his side may help him come to terms with the devastating news. Kristien looked out over the estate trying to find some kind of solace.

“I will make sure.” Archangel for once agreed with a plan. He for one was glad that he was not the one giving this report to Hawke in person. He could not imagine what Hawke had made himself go through these past five years and here in one unpleasant report was the news that Hawke would have been dreading to hear and the reluctance to admit that his curse had struck again.

Archangel left her to tend over the deep wounds that he had just reopened. Sometimes he hated his job.
Kristien read through the reports on Airwolf and Hawke for the last 3 years. How he had kept Airwolf in return for his brother Saint John who had been MIA in Vietnam for over 18 years. Kristien calculated the odds of Saint John even being alive was fifty thousand to one. What the hell was he thinking? Why hadn’t Dominic talked some sense into him? Nothing made sense about the Hawke that she knew. Had her kidnapping caused him to become even more of a recluse?

The report from the Summer Palace at Kafir was brief. However, she did not need anyone to fill in the gaps. Moffet had stolen Airwolf to go to Libya to continue what he started on Project Proteus in the White Sands. Hawke had killed Moffet by unleashing all of Airwolf’s deadly weapons onto the creator of Airwolf in revenge for Gabrielle’s death. Kristien sat looking out over the thousand’s of acres that surrounded her. She wanted to be alone.

Alfred stood behind Kristien and gave her a PDA. Kristien handed him the confidential files on Airwolf. She pressed a few buttons on the PDA ensuring the GPS locator Microchip that was inside of her was disabled but transferred to the PDA. She would need to be alone and she had done this many times before. No one ever suspected that Alfred helped Kristien keep her privacy so secret.

“Alfred, we are going to have more visitors.” Kristien advised him. “Please inform Archangel that String can bring Airwolf here and I will sort out her computer.” Kristien sighed heavily trying to make sense of what she had just read. “I would think Archangel will have to leave first before Airwolf can come.” Kristien looked up at Alfred. “Please can you get Archangel and Carsten to at least talk to each other over this? We don’t want Airwolf being blown out of the sky with the Estate’s Weapons matrix.”

“Of course Miss Kristien.” Alfred noted the sadness that had overcome Kristien since the arrival of Archangel. “Is there anything more I can do, Miss Kristien?” Alfred hoped that there was something he could do to help her through the pain and sorrow that she was experiencing.

Kristien shook her head slowly and walked away from Alfred. Alfred took the PDA and headed back to the house with the Airwolf files which he would now read to see what had hurt Kristien so badly and to get lots of chocolate ready with probably ice cream on her return.

Kristien’s dobermann Thor had appeared, eager to go with his mistress. He loved the estate as it was and loved even more the long walks around with his mistress. He often accompanied her when she didn’t have the men in black bothering her.