AN: I don't own Airwolf; Mr. Bellasario and Universal do.

Chapter 5: Revelations and Reunions

When Hawke awoke, he felt as if he'd had a long, comfortable nap. He had a long way to go before he was at the controls of a chopper, but at least the grogginess was beginning to dissipate. An orderly had brought him a cheese sandwich a few minutes earlier, and to his pleasant surprise, Hawke found that he'd actually wanted to eat it.

When the sandwich was nothing but crumbs and the accompanying applesauce was a trace of liquid in the bottom of the cup, Hawke set the tray aside and thought about seeing his brother again. What would it feel like to end sixteen years of waiting? Would he even know what to say?

He raised a hand to rub his face, and felt something rasp against his skin. With a frown, he turned his hand to the light, and saw hard, slightly shiny ridges on his fingertips. The memory of a haunting song tugged at him, and suddenly the pieces clicked.

Calluses, he thought, from playing the cello. He rubbed his thumb against his fingertips, feeling the rough surfaces catch against each other. Something wasn't right here, something—

A voice cut into his thoughts; Dr. Holgate was standing at the door, grinning from ear to ear. "Stringfellow, you have a visitor."

Time stopped as Holgate stepped back, and a man dressed in casual pants and a tweed sportcoat limped into the room. The man's face was etched with deep lines, and the dishwater blond hair was beginning to show signs of gray, but the eyes were just the same blue as they had always been. Hawke felt his heart stutter in his chest, and the breath caught in his throat.

The man gave a half-smile. "Well?"

"Saint John," Hawke whispered, and then he was caught up in a brotherly hug that made sixteen years seem like just a few moments. He wrapped his arms around his brother's shoulders and wept.

In the hours that followed, the brothers talked at length about their lives, and caught the other up on what they had missed in the long years they had been apart. For the moment, String edited out anything overtly regarding Airwolf, but admitted that he worked for a government agency from time to time. Saint John's wry smile let String know that he knew exactly which agency String was working for, but he discreetly said nothing.

After the blond nurse had brought soup and crackers for String and coffee for Saint John, the older Hawke brother began to recount his time as a prisoner of war. String had the feeling that Saint John had also done some prodigious editing of his story, but he told enough to make String's skin crawl. Especially horrifying was the story of the day Saint John had tried to escape a remote prison camp with several other American prisoners.

"It was a disaster," he said, shaking his head. "We might have made it, except we triggered a booby trap about two miles out from the camp." He sighed heavily. "We were exhausted, and it was raining so hard that we didn't see the trip wire. I got a piece of land mine in my knee—" he gestured to his leg, propped on the lowered rail of the bed—"and the two other guys who survived were hurt pretty bad, so we were just a bunch of sitting ducks, waiting for them to come find us."

"How many did they get?" String asked, his voice quiet.

"Five. There had been eight of us."

Damn shame, String thought. "Were any of the survivors with you when you were rescued?"

"No. The VC kept us moving around a lot, so we didn't form too many attachments." Saint John chuckled ruefully. "It's odd, String. Our lives are full of so much activity; we don't realize that everything we've ever done, said, tasted or smelled or heard is stored between our ears. When everything is stripped away, we can relive those moments with perfect clarity."

String laid his head back against the pillow and studied his brother. "I've heard that from other POWs who made it out. That's incredible."

"Yeah." Saint John nodded. "I was kept in a cell—oh, about a third of a size of this hospital room—but I learned to have total freedom in my mind." The elder Hawke shifted in his chair and repositioned his leg more comfortably. "I used to think through some of the most incredibly detailed projects—I built a house once." He smiled, obviously reliving a life-giving moment in his hellish experience. "I cut every two-by-four by hand and hammered in every nail. It was my dream house; took me about six months to do that one."

The mental image of a ragged, gaunt Saint John retreating into a peaceful inner life while sitting in the corner of a leaky hovel sent a cold chill through String. "A bloody horror," he commented.

Saint John's proud smile for his dream house quickly faded. "Well, it's all over now, thanks to your friends."

String braced himself, fearing the answer to his next question but needing to know all the same. "How did Dominic die?"

Saint John lowered his gaze to the floor for a moment. "It was quick. The unit had three choppers—two Chinooks and a Cobra for support. Dom and Archangel were in the Cobra. They took some small-arms fire on their way out, flew about five or six more miles…then went in."

So there it was, the death of Dominic Santini: Mentor; friend; patriot. It still seemed so unreal that String felt his second question well up before he could stop it.

"No chance they survived?"

"No." Saint John's voice held the quiet acceptance of someone who had grieved and then forced themselves to move on. "It looked like napalm when they hit the ground."

String tried to dismiss a pang of jealousy. While his brother's months-old grief was beginning to mellow into wistful remembrance, String's was raw and angry. Besides, he mused, Saint John had much more to heal from than just Dom's death.

Saint John hadn't even known Michael, except perhaps for a few chaotic moments, but String found himself genuinely regretting Michael's death. No matter what their personal disagreements were, the man had put the safety and security of the American people first, last, and always. The Firm would be hard pressed to find a replacement of his caliber, String mused.

Must have hit Marella pretty hard too, he thought. Hope she's doing okay.

He sighed, and Saint John smiled. "Tired?" asked the elder Hawke, getting stiffly to his feet.

Pushing aside his grief, String returned his brother's smile and reached up to clasp his hand. "Yeah. It's too good of a day; I don't want it to end."

There was a long moment of silence between the brothers as they looked into each other's eyes. String remembered how they had communicated with just a look as they were growing up, and how their ability to seemingly read each other's minds gave their friends the creeps. Somehow, though, whatever link they'd had as boys wasn't working anymore, leaving String with nothing before him except the face of a worn ex-soldier. He kept staring at Saint John, trying to see some spark of the big brother whom he'd fought with and confided in and tried to emulate—but there was nothing left of that boy in the haunted eyes above him.

The silence was quickly becoming awkward, but to String's relief, it was broken by the arrival of Dr. Rothschild. The doctor was trailed by a man in an expensive suit, who held a pipe in one hand and exuded the air of a government official.

"Sorry to interrupt," said Dr. Rothschild, but Saint John shook his head as he collected his coat and walking stick.

"No, you're not interrupting. I was just leaving," he assured the doctor. "Say, Doc—String would like to know when I can take him home."

Rothschild turned to rake a professional gaze over String, and then smiled, obviously pleased by what he saw. "Oh, I'd say in a week or so." He turned toward the suit; to String's surprise, the man puffed a small white cloud from his meerschaum pipe.

"This is Morton Abrams, Mr. Hawke," said Rothschild by way of introduction. "Do you have the energy to talk to him for a couple of minutes?"

It was on the tip of String's tongue to say, "No," but once again he thought it might be better to get the interview over with. He shrugged tiredly, and Abrams stepped into the room.

"I'll see you tomorrow," called Saint John, and String gave him a nod of understanding.

"I'll walk with you," said Rothschild. String kept his eyes on his brother until they had rounded the corner, and then turned his attention to Abrams.

"You don't mind?" Abrams asked, gesturing with the smoldering pipe.

At this point, commenting about the dangers of smoking in a hospital seemed rather a moot point, so Hawke shook his head. "No."

Abrams fished his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to Hawke. "Like Dr. Rothschild said: I'm Morton Abrams, Deputy Director for the Firm."

Hawke gave the ID a cursory glance, and then gave the wallet back to Abrams before the small print had a chance to bring back his headache. "You're Archangel's replacement."

Abrams tucked the wallet away. "No," he countered, a smile playing about his lips, "just the man who got his job. He was…unique." With pleasantries concluded, Abrams got down to business. "You and I need to discuss the location of a certain important piece of United States military hardware."

Hawke sighed. Of course. "Airwolf."

"Well, since you don't seem to have any further use for it." Though Abrams' tone was polite, it was backed with the kind of steel Hawke had often heard in Michael's voice. "Now, if we could clear up this little matter right now, I could go back to Virginia tonight."

The man was most definitely a bureaucrat, Hawke thought sourly. He'd imagined this moment before, thought about what it would be like to unload Airwolf and stop risking his life every other day, but now he had a strong urge to keep her hidden.

It's because of Dom, he thought. They had always been close, but depending on each other in life-or-death situations had brought another dimension to their relationship. Airwolf was a living reminder of those times, and part of him wanted to hold on to her like a talisman.

He glanced up at Abrams. "Do you have a Las Vegas sectional map?"

A look of triumph flashed briefly on Abrams' face before he controlled it back into his bland bureaucratic mask. "I can get one here in a minute." He turned and spoke to the blond nurse at the nurses' station, and she nodded and left the desk for a moment to enter an office where the blinds were drawn. When she came back in a few minutes, she had a folded packet of paper in her hand, and she gave the packet to Adams. They exchanged a few words, and String heard them both laugh softly.

Abrams was already beginning to unfold the map when he walked back into the room. He laid the heavily creased paper in String's lap and then stepped back as String smoothed out the unwieldy page.

Seeing the route in his mind's eye, String ran his finger along a solid green line that led out of Southern California. "Take the 10 out of L.A., then get on the 15 towards Vegas. There's an unmarked road that leads into the back of the nature preserve and skirts around the edge of the Indian reservation." He skimmed his fingertip northward over the map and stopped in an area marked with crosshatched lines.

Abrams took his bifocals from another pocket and put them on. "'Valley of the Gods'," he read, peering at the map. "Quite fitting."

"There's a big rock formation about three miles into the valley. She's in a cave on the northwest side of that formation." Hawke tapped the page again for emphasis, and then looked up at Abrams.

The new Deputy Director's brows came together. "How did you manage to get a helicopter into a cave?"

Hawke smiled briefly, remembering Dom's pride at having scouted the location. "There's a funnel at the top of the formation. Just keep it still and drop it down about two hundred feet. Plenty of clearance to spin it up at the bottom."

Now Abrams' brows rose. "Very impressive," he said, refolding the map. "No wonder we couldn't find it." He held out his hand. "Well, Mr. Hawke, this is where our association ends. On behalf of the United States government, it's been a pleasure doing business with you."

The protective feeling was still tugging at Hawke as he shook Abrams' hand. "Pleasure was all mine."

After Abrams left to go collect his prize, Hawke lay back and stared blankly up at the ceiling. It's over. He and Saint John could go up to the cabin and relearn what it meant to be a family—except this time, Dom wouldn't be there to hold them together.

Tears welled up in his eyes at the thought, and he reached up to brush them away. Once again, his fingertips dragged across his skin in a way that was strangely familiar—then he remembered. Calluses, from the press and slide of his fingertips across the thick strings of the cello, as he wove his bow left and right, the antique wood of the cello's body thrumming against his knee—

A flash of something like electricity went through him, awakening every nerve and cell of his body. The day of the crash seemed to run at high speed through his mind, like a video cassette player set on fast-forward. He caught glimpses of the day as they flew past: Tet, sleeping at his feet; the gaudy red-and-white tail rudder of Moore's biplane; Moore's sad smile as he talked of his lost brother; the vertigo and helplessness he'd felt during the crash. Eight months had passed since that day…

No. There was absolutely no way he'd been lying in a hospital bed for eight months—and yet a part of him knew it was true, knew it with everything in him. The crash, Dom, Saint John…

He rubbed his fingertips together again, and suddenly, he knew. Someone—he didn't know who they were, but he had a hunch they spoke fluent Russian or Arabic—was after Airwolf, and he'd led them right to her.

He had to get out of there quick, but he needed help. His brain was finally shaking off whatever Mickey Finn they'd pumped into him, but he didn't think he could drive or fly. He also didn't relish confronting a bunch of KGB agents in an air-conditioned hospital gown, which meant trying to find some clothes.

If his captors were going to get Airwolf, it meant that they either had someone who could fly the chopper out of the funnel, or they were planning on forcing him to take it up for them. Saint John would be able to do it, but with his injury—

A sick feeling came over him as he thought of Saint John—or perhaps, the man who called himself Saint John Hawke. String had felt that something was off when he'd met the man, but in his drugged state he'd written it off as sixteen years of separation and the mental trauma of war. Now he realized there might be something much more sinister at work: If that man was indeed his brother, then Saint John was a traitor. With a shock, String realized that if he could choose for Saint John to die in the killing fields of Vietnam or live and yet be a traitor to his country, String would rather see him dead.

Hawke ventured a glance over at the nurses' station, but the desk was empty. For the first time, he noticed that there were no clocks in the room, so there was no way to tell if it was mealtime or time for a shift change. He heard footsteps in the hallway, so he shut his eyes and deliberately concentrated on slowing his breathing to mimic sleep.

The ruse worked, for the person who came into his room didn't speak, but began to jostle the IV setup. Hawke dared to open his eyes to the barest slits, and saw the tall blond nurse remove the amber-colored bag from the IV pole, switch it with a clear bag, and inject a clear liquid into the second bag. She capped the syringe, and through his lashes Hawke saw the woman's face twist into a smug smile as she left the room.

When the footsteps had retreated, Hawke eased the needle from his vein and pressed the small wound hard for a moment. Then he gathered the needle and tubing into his other hand and covered his IV hand with it, and closed his eyes again. When they came back, he knew he would be ready.

When Susan's shift ended, she'd clocked out like usual, but she'd left her purse and belongings in her locker in the basement. Instead of going home, she made sure no one was watching, and then slipped into the service stairwell. Silent on her thick-soled nursing shoes, she crept up four flights of stairs to a door marked 'Storage.' There she paused, her hand on the doorknob.

I could get fired for this, she thought. On the other hand, who would fire me for going into a storage room? It's probably not even open.

To her surprise, the door swung open as she turned the knob. What was more, the door did not open into a dank storage room but a lit hallway that looked the same as the rest of the hospital. The floor beyond was silent, except for the squawk of the PA system. She took a tentative step into the hallway and let the door swing closed, but not latched, in case she needed to make a hasty retreat.

All the things that had been happening lately had made her feel strange, as if there were something going on that didn't quite fit. The blond nurse who had yelled at her, the patient stumbling down the hallway, the wounded veteran with his kooky newspaper and 'special' key to get to the 4th floor—it was all very mysterious, and even a little scary. Still, that patient had looked like he was in bad shape, and if there was one thing that she couldn't ignore, it was the need to help someone in trouble.

She hadn't gone very far when she spied the patient lying quietly in a large private room. He looked better than he had the last time she'd seen him, but there was something that was still wrong about him. She stepped into the room for a closer look, and reached out her hand to feel his forehead.

The man's hand flashed out and grabbed her arm, and his other hand came around and clapped over her mouth before she could even scream. She struggled hard against him, but he was strong, and he'd lifted her too high for her feet to gain purchase on the floor.

"Shhh!" he hissed in her ear. "Don't scream! I just wanna know what day it is."

Susan immediately stopped squirming, and as soon as his hand came away from her mouth, her jaw dropped open in shock. "What?"

His sapphire eyes bore into hers. "What's the date?" he demanded.

Delirious? Mental breakdown? Her brain grabbed for a possible diagnosis. "March third," she heard herself say in a stage whisper.

He still had hold of her arm, and he shook her a little for emphasis. "What year?"

Now she was really confused, and more than a little alarmed. Had he been isolated because he was a danger to others? Was he some rich weirdo, like Howard Hughes? Humoring him seemed safest. "1984," she answered.

An expression akin to relief moved across his face, only to be replaced by one much grimmer. He held his hand up before her face. "Look," he said. "Calluses."

Susan gulped, able to clearly see the hard ridges on his fingertips from playing some stringed instrument. "Sure are."

"I wouldn't have calluses if I'd been in a coma for a year," the man hissed. "Would I?"

She slowly shook her head, wondering what on God's green Earth she'd gotten herself into.

All day, Dom had had the feeling that something was wrong.

Normally, his hangar was a shining example of organization, efficiency, and cleanliness, but today everything seemed to be utter chaos. Tools mysteriously moved from where they should have been, parts were nowhere to be found, and even the coffee maker was on the blink.

As the day wore on, the feeling only got worse. Determined not to let something so vague bother him, Dom resolutely went about the business of running his airfield. About four o'clock, he was knee-deep in oil-soaked machinery, hammering at a stubborn bit of metal, when the hammer slipped and he whacked his thumb soundly. Frustrated and in pain, Dom let out a string of curses in both Italian and English that could have blistered the paint off the JetRanger.

He stalked over to the tool box and chucked the hammer in, then slammed the lid of the box over the offending instrument. With his anger spent and his pain fading, Dom realized that he was being watched. He whirled to meet the concerned look of Jim Dawes, the high school boy who cleaned up around the hangar every afternoon.

"Everything okay, Mr. Santini?" The kid was standing with brows knitted in the middle of the hangar, gloved hands clutched around the handle of the push broom.

Dom forced a tight smile. "Yeah—well, no, not really," he admitted. "You ever get the feeling that something just ain't right?"

Jim looked around at the disarray of the habitually neat work space and shrugged. "Maybe it's because Mr. Hawke isn't here?"

Maybe that's it, Dom wondered. Thanks to the savvy investments made by String's late father, as well as the interest from the life insurance policies Dom had seen straight into the bank, String worked at the hangar for something to do, rather than to earn a paycheck. At the ripe old age of thirty-five, String was effectively retired, but he rarely missed a chance to work with the machines he loved. Yesterday, he'd told Dom that he was going to do some work around the cabin, so Dom hadn't expected to see him.

So why have I been praying all day that he'll walk through the door?

It was as if he'd been struck by lightning. In a flash, he knew what was wrong. Pulling a rag from the pocket of his coveralls, Dom wiped his hands and headed for the office.

"Listen, Jimmy," he said over his shoulder, "let's finish up tomorrow. You head on home now."

The kid frowned, but obediently took off his gloves. "Yessir. See you tomorrow."

A few moments later, Dom faintly heard the sound of the outer door opening and closing, and the high-pitched growl of Jim's motocross bike flared and faded. Dom closed the office door, and then thumbed the radio to life. "Santini Air to Hawk's Nest," he called. "Hawk's Nest, come in."

He closed his eyes, and found himself mouthing Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee…

There was no answer, and he clicked the button again. "Santini Air to Hawk's Nest," he called. "String, you there?"

No answer.

Slowly, Dom replaced the mic on the shelf. He scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed; was he being paranoid? String was a grown man, more than capable of taking care of himself, so what did it matter if he didn't answer his radio? He could be out in the yard, or fishing on the lake, or taking a nap—

No. Dom had always known when the boys were in trouble, even when they were young. When String had been in the car wreck that took the life of his fiancée, Dom had known then, too.

There was one person who might know for sure what was going on—or at least, with the vast resources at their disposal, could find out in a quick hurry. Besides, String knew where a very valuable piece of government hardware resided, and if something had happened to him, there were people who needed to know.

Without hesitation, Dom picked up the phone and dialed the secure number he'd long ago committed to memory.

"Yes?" said a female voice on the other end.

"This is Dominic Santini," he said flatly. "I need to talk to Archangel."

It was late when the phone rang again. Dom awoke with a start, having dozed off at his desk. He snatched up the handset. "Santini Air."

The voice on the other end was that of Marella, Archangel's aide. "Do you know where the airfield at Crofton is?"

"Yeah. Is String—"

"We'll brief you when you get here." There was a heartbeat's-worth of silence. "Just hurry."