Survive Until the Final Scene

by M. L. Buchman

  Nothing.

  This time it was Major Lola, the mission commander, who called them. “They’ll be on the site in five. Hot on your trail in six. We’re running out of options, folks.”

  “Acknowledge,” was all Carla said.

  Kandace was close. Somewhere, somehow, Captain Kandace Eversmann was seriously close.

  The breeze was strong enough that it blew a hot ochre breath of dust that was unavoidable.

  He raised his goggles and wiped his eyes clear of sand.

  It was blackest night. Not like night on a well-lit military base or even just dark. It was pitch black. The nearest lights would be from the town miles away. A town too small and primitive to have streetlights.

  With the state Somalia was in, power might even be a rarity.

  Nothing to see.

  No sign of any track.

  The only light was a faint green trace that the goggles cast around Carla’s eyes.

  “We found her helmet.”

  “Buried,” Carla agreed.

  “No NVGs, how is she navigating?”

  “Flashlight.”

  “No,” Bob looked around again. “She knows someone is after her. She’s fully night adapted and navigating by shadow and starlight.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how she’s hid her track.”

  Bob wasn’t sure, but maybe it did in some strange way.

  “If someone is tracking you, the best thing you can do is look like something else. And go in an unexpected direction. Right?”

  Carla went quiet.

  Bob dropped his NVGs back into place. “Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Both jumping onto the same horse wasn’t enough to fool the trackers. But becoming payroll guards in Bolivia, and going straight, had been the perfect disguise, until it wasn’t.”

  “Never saw it. Don’t do movies much.”

  “She went sideways here,” Bob pointed at the water bottle, which had been behind a bush from the direction the track had been taking.

  And now that he’d said it, he could see it. “The sand is too smooth. Like a road roller went over it.”

  He didn’t wait for Carla. Now that he’d seen it, he broke into a run.

  It went straight for fifty meters, but then the path started to wander. Finally, he had to slow down, just to negotiate the odd jinks and turns.

  He prayed that it wasn’t what he thought it was—the pilot’s brain shutting down through lack of blood.

  When he hit a line of sand ripples, he spun around. Every direction was rippled except the one he’d come from. End of trail.

  “She’s here.” But no matter which way he looked…she wasn’t here. Had she found some new way to evaporate into thin air?

  “Now would be good,” Lola called down from the helo. He could hear it passing nearby. There was an absolute calm in her voice, so different from her earlier tone that it told him just how tight time was becoming.

  “I know she’s here. I just need a moment,” he told Carla.

  She nodded once. Then she was moving back the way they’d come.

  Not knowing what else to do, Bob sat in the last clear flat spot.

  Behind him was the path he’d followed here.

  Just like at the plane, he scanned a slow circle but didn’t see anything.

  Yet he knew she was here.

  Here but disguised…even from the heat sensitive eyes of night vision.

  Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator. He’d hidden himself from the Predator’s infrared vision with mud.

  How to do that in the desert?

  He smacked his forehead.

  She wasn’t here.

  She was under here—buried in the sand.

  The only thing exposed would be her face or a breathing vent if she’d gone really extreme. He lay down and looked under every bush and clump of grass.

  At a loud burst from a machine gun and the hard Crump! of an RPG explosion, he spun around to face the way they’d come. That would be Carla running interference.

  Because he was still on his belly, he saw it.

  A warm mound of sand, underneath a bush, one smooth patch back in the direction they’d come from.

  His missing Captain Kandace had doubled back to hide her trail.

  He took a second for a short radio message. “Got her.” The firefight didn’t abate and he didn’t have time to care.

  Unearthed, her breathing was slow and shallow, but the pulse was there.

  No point in taking her blood pressure, he knew there wouldn’t be enough blood in her to give the numbers any meaning. He fished out her dog tags to check her blood type. Good. He had her covered.

  As he tapped a unit of blood from his pack into one arm and a unit of saline into the other—finding the veins was a bitch—there was a vast barrage from above.

  He looked up and saw a strange sight.

  The Black Hawk helicopter might be nearly invisible, even in the NVGs. But the twin snakes of fire that the crew chiefs’ miniguns were unleashing like Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth stood out in brilliant green.

  He laughed.

  Of course. That was the emblem on the side of the pilot’s helmet: the stacked golden Ws of Wonder Woman.

  He jabbed a local into her leg unsure of what else she’d dosed herself with. He checked her med kit, but it still had the standard stock of two fentanyl suckers. So maybe she was on nothing.

  Damn but that was strong.

  Once he unwrapped her leg, he knew he was in the presence of greatness. She’d ministered to herself, moved hundreds of meters, fooled a Delta operator, and hidden with the skill of Arnold. Doing it all with a nightmare wound in her leg. Whatever metal had gone into her had been tumbling, and drilled a nasty hole.

  For now, he pulled out a sponge injector, shot a half dozen into the open wound, and re-bound it as the sponges expanded to congeal blood and release antiseptics.

  Captain Kandace Eversmann groaned herself awake as the sharp hiss of launching rockets sounded from the Black Hawk somewhere overhead. The brightness of their impacts lit the sparse terrain. It was a bad night to be taking on the Night Stalkers in Somalia.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty.” And she was. There hadn’t been time to notice that before.

  “She’sh…blonde,” Kandace mumbled. “I’m brun-ette.”

  “Right now your hair is the red color of sand. Eversmann, like Black Hawk Down Eversmann?” He wanted to keep her talking. Make sure her brain was still functioning.

  “Second cousin, I shink. Never met him. Kinda weird seeing him in the film. Part of the reashon I joint. Joined.” Her speech was getting better—a little. Still slurred, but a good sign.

  “Burying yourself was Predator slick.” Now he checked her vitals. Blood pressure low but rising. Pupils responsive to the flashes of the firefight going on overhead.

  “Peeta in—”

  “The Hunger Games. Same trick. It worked. Almost too well. Made you damn hard to find.”

  She squinted up at him.

  “What did you do to hide your trail? You totally confused a Delta Operator, just so you know.”

  That earned him a lopsided smile that added a bright humor to her face. She began singing, soft and hoarse at first, it took him a moment to pick out the tune.

  “Waterloo? Like ABBA? No, not Mama Mia.”

  She shook her head and kept singing. Damn but he could get to like that smile. He changed out the empty blood bag for a second unit.

  “Wait a sec. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Uh, the water slide scene at the end. Yeah, okay. Your track was wide and flat like a water slide, but you’re in the middle of the desert. I still don’t get it.”

  “Sliding. On parachute,” her voice caught hard, and he fed her just a sip of water. Muscle control would be slow to return and he didn’t want her choking on it. On her third try, she managed to pluck at the fabric that spread beneath her.

  “Damn, you really are Wonder Woman.”

  “Name,” sh
e croaked out and he fed her another sip of water.

  “Your name is Captain Kandace Eversmann. Not all that far from Katniss Everdeen. No wonder you remembered Peeta’s hiding trick before Schwarzenegger’s.”

  She grimaced at his tease of telling her her own name as she took another swallow.

  “Sergeant Bob Redford.”

  Kandace spat her water into his face, then coughed and choked on it.

  “Didn’t think it was that bad.”

  “Robert…Redshferd.”

  He sighed. “No relation that I know of. I’m named for my Uncle Bob. Died in the service the week before I was born.”

  7

  Kandace had managed not to cry out as they shifted her onto the stretcher and lifted her into the hovering helo.

  Bob Redford. She still couldn’t get over that, her parents were going to laugh their asses off—Mom had a major crush on his non-namesake.

  Their tastes had overlapped for superhero movies, but where she’d gone in for flying, he’d always followed science fiction—a blank to her beyond Star Trek because, hey, Zachary Quinto was seriously cute.

  Bob Redford might not look anything like his namesake, but there was a slight resemblance to Mr. Spock that she could seriously like.

  When she woke on the aircraft carrier after the surgeons had re-jiggered her leg, he was leaning on the empty infirmary bed next to hers.

  “Just like The Horse Whisperer, they say you’re too good a pilot to put down. Instead, you’ve got some new nano-tubing in your leg, so you’re now The Bionic Woman. You’re going to be able to fly again.”

  It was the first thing she needed to hear and he was kind enough to know that. She’d managed not to think about that over the hours she’d been crawling across the desert. But at the news, she couldn’t help the tears that slipped down her cheeks.

  “That’s good news,” she managed to choke out as he dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue. “Really good news.”

  “What? No snappy movie reference?” His smile said he couldn’t think of one either.

  She could only shake her head.

  “I don’t like that sad look at all. Doesn’t fit you for a second, Kandace.”

  “I like you,” it just slipped out before she could stop it.

  “Mutual, lady. Wonder Woman who is a pilot and a movie fiend? Yeah, a lot to like.”

  Kandace had always found that it was far too easy to imagine Wonder Woman going into a future—in which her true love Steve Trevor is dead and gone. Well, true love might happen someday, but there was a major obstacle with the man who’d used movies to save her life.

  Once she was returned to flight status, she’d be back to her Air Force posting. And when Bob had returned to the Army’s Night Stalkers, they’d probably never see each other again.

  Unsure what else to do, she pointed at herself then him. “Air Force. Army.”

  He made the same gesture, himself then her. “Air Force. Air Force. Night Stalkers were just giving me a ride. Plus a little help from Delta.”

  “You’re Air Force?”

  Bob nodded. And damn but he liked that lop-sided smile on her. Especially now that he knew it natural and not blood-loss induced.

  “How would you feel about being a flying medic on my new Hercules, when I get one? I fly mostly humanitarian missions.”

  Bob could feel his own smile.

  That’s when he realized that he’d been looking for a reason to re-up. Like Kirk in the Star Trek reboot. Joining because it was what he was meant to do.

  And flying with Kandace?

  Chris Pine had played both Steve Trevor to Wonder Woman as well as Captain Kirk who always got the girl—except Chris Pine never did.

  Finding a way to fly through life with Kandace? Seriously cool plot twist!

  Be sure to keep reading to see an excerpt from the exciting Night Stalkers White House series.

  Daniel’s Christmas (excerpt)

  If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love this series!

  Daniel’s Christmas (excerpt)

  Daniel Drake Darlington III pushed back further into the armchair and hung on for dear life. Without warning the seat did its best to eject him forcibly onto the floor. Only the heavy seatbelt, that was threatening to cut him in half he’d pulled it so tight, kept him in place.

  “You never were the best flier.”

  Daniel glared at President Peter Matthews as Marine One jolted sharply left. They occupied the two facing armchairs in the narrow cargo bay of the VH-1N White Hawk helicopter. The small, three-person couch along the side was empty. The two Marine Corps crew chiefs and the two pilots sat in their seats at the front of the craft.

  “I’m fine,” Daniel managed through gritted teeth. “I just don’t like helicopters.”

  President Peter Matthews sat back casually. Apparently all the turbulence that the early winter storm could hand out had not interfered with his boss’ enjoyment of Daniel’s discomfiture.

  “And why would that be?”

  The President knew damn well why his Chief of Staff hated these god-forsaken machines. Even if Marine One was probably the single safest and best maintained helicopter on the planet, he hated it from the depths of his soul along with all of its brethren of the rotorcraft category.

  “My very first flight. I suffered—” a jaw rattling shake, “a bad concussion. Then we crashed.”

  “Yes,” the President stared contemplatively at the ceiling less than foot over their heads.

  Daniel kept his head ducked down so that he didn’t bang it there as they flew through the next pocket of winter turbulence.

  “That was one of Emily’s finer flights.”

  And it had been. If the helicopter had been flown by anyone of lesser skill than Major Emily Beale of the Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Daniel knew he’d have been dead rather than merely bruised and battered. Thankfully the Army trained the pilots of the 160th SOAR exceptionally well, even better than the four Marines flying the President’s personal craft. And Major Beale was the best among them, except for perhaps her husband.

  The tape of that flight and the much more fateful flight a bare two weeks later had become mandatory training in the Army’s Special Operations Forces helicopter regiment. To this day he knew his life would have ended if he’d been aboard for that second fiery crash. The crash that had taken the First Lady’s life a year ago.

  But that didn’t make him like this machine one whit better.

  “There’s home.” President Matthews nodded out the window just like any tourist. Any tourist who was allowed to fly over the intensely restricted airspace surrounding the White House.

  Daniel managed to look toward the window as the helicopter banked sharply to the left. Please, just let them land safely and get out of this storm. The White House did look terribly cheery. November 30th, she wasn’t sporting her Christmas décor yet, but she was a majestic building, brilliantly lit, perched in the middle of the most heavily guarded park on the planet. Another jolt and he squeezed his eyes shut.

  He did manage to force his eyes open as they settled flawlessly onto the lawn with barely the slightest rocking on the shock absorbers.

  In moments the door slid open and a pair of Marines stood at sharp attention in their dress uniforms as if the last day of November were a sunny summer day, and not blowing freezing rain at eleven o’clock at night.

  Daniel stumbled out and managed to resist the urge to kneel and kiss the ground. For one thing, it would stain the knees of his suit. For another, the President would laugh at him. Okay, he’d laugh even more than he already was.

  Both feet on the ground, Daniel found himself. Managed to pull on his Chief-of-Staff cloak so to speak. He grabbed his briefcase and kept his place beside the President as they headed toward the South Entrance. They each carried umbrellas of only marginal usefulness that the Marines had thoughtfully provided. Now that they were on the ground, Daniel didn’t mind the cold rain in his face. It meant he was alive.
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  “I’d suggest turning in right away, sir. We have an early start tomorrow.”

  The President clapped him on the shoulder, “Yes, Mom.”

  “Your mother is over in Georgetown.”

  “Well, I’m not going to call you ‘dear’ so don’t get your hopes up there.”

  Daniel had come to really like the President. Even at the end of a brutally long day, including a flight to Kansas City, then Chicago, and back, he remained upbeat with that indefatigable energy of his. He was easy to like. There’d now be no oil workers’ strike in Kansas City and his Chicago dinner speech had benefited the new governor immensely.

  “You go to bed too, Daniel.”

  “Just going to drop off this paperwork,” he held up his briefcase.

  The President headed for the Grand Staircase and Daniel turned down the white marble hall and headed over to the West Wing.

  Somewhere behind them in the dark, the helicopter roared back to life and lifted into the night.

  The phone hammered him awake. Daniel came to in his office chair with the phone already to his ear.

  Someone was speaking rapidly. He caught perhaps one word in three. “CIA. Immediate briefing. North Korea.”

  He must have made some intelligible reply as moments later he was listening to a dial tone.

  Daniel rubbed at his eyes, but the vista didn’t change. Large cherry wood desk. Mounds of work in neatly stacked folders that he’d sat down to tackle after the long flight. His briefcase still unopened on the floor beside him. Definitely the Chief of Staff’s office. His office. Nightmare or reality? Both. Definitely.

  Phone. He’d been on the phone.

  The words came back and, now fully awake, Daniel started swearing even as he grabbed the handset and began dialing.

  Maybe he could blame all this on Emily Beale. In the three short weeks she’d been at the White House, Daniel had risen from being the First Lady’s secretary to the White House Chief of Staff and it was partly Emily’s fault. As if his life had been battered by a tornado. Still felt that way a year later.