Midnight Trust

by M. L. Buchman

  Tanya and Daniela ignored him.

  “I have no shooters that skilled. My suspicions grew the way you worked together when I tried to make you jump off the bridge.”

  “And you didn’t kill us then either?”

  “You weren’t trying to kill me…ahh. Which of you was it on the motorcycle?” Daniela turned to Chad.

  “That would be this amazing woman,” Chad pulled her into a one-armed embrace and kissed her temple.

  “I’d have caught you, too, if Chad hadn’t shot me.” She elbowed him in the gut, but not too hard. Her elbow just bounced off his rock-solid abs anyway.

  Daniela briefly raised her eyebrows before continuing.

  “How did I know? Remember, before la Capitana, before Gerald the Boatman, I was a trained narcotics officer for Colombia. We were trained by the very best, members of your Delta Force. I knew who you were for certain the way you fought at the gold field—all four of you. No one else fights like that.”

  “Actually,” Tanya grimaced. “I’m not Delta. I’m with Israel’s Mossad.”

  “Yeah, about that.” Chad started to let her go.

  This was it. This was the moment where it all came apart. She closed her eyes for the coming blow. Chad wasn’t even going to wait until they were somewhere private. He was going to tell her goodbye right here and now in front of everyone. And they’d all get to see her heart shatter.

  She steeled herself for it. Knew she had no way to hold it together, but by God she was going to try.

  “I, uh…” Chad let her go completely and the chill shook her.

  Maybe she’d been the one locked in a refrigerator all day. It certainly felt that way.

  “I, uh… Look, I’m really sorry, guys, but—” he turned to face Colonel Gibson, actually saluting sharply. “Sorry sir, but I quit.”

  There was stone silence.

  Tanya opened one eye.

  Everyone was looking at Chad in shock. Except Gibson, who was still doing his I’m-so-neutral-you-forgot-I-was-here-again-didn’t-you thing. She had.

  She opened the other eye.

  Chad however looked completely serious.

  “You…what?” Carla asked perfectly calmly. It was her most dangerous mode and even Chad recognized that enough to take a step back. Then he shook his head like a cornered bull and stepped forward once more.

  “I quit.”

  “Dude!” Duane sounded hugely disappointed.

  “I’m going to apply for Kidon.”

  This time Tanya felt the shock as it rippled through her and the circle.

  Chad turned to her. “Only way I can figure to wind up next to you, Tanya. Which is the only damn place I want to be. Figure if I go Kidon, maybe we can make up a team.”

  “Like a husband-and-wife team?” She didn’t know why that was the first thing she’d said. Getting married had always been something right down there with the crime that had placed her father into her family.

  Chad’s big hands flapped uncertainly for a moment. Then, with a muttered, “Shit!” he actually went down on one knee.

  “Wouldn’t want anyone else, lady. Hadn’t thought about the marrying part, but you want that, I’ll sign up.”

  Did she want that? Ever after? Consecrated as her husband according to the laws of Moses and Israel, or whatever they said in the US?

  With Chad? The answer was easy.

  “Yes.”

  “Cool.” He took her hand, and for one shining moment, Tanya’s world almost made sense.

  “Bullshit!” Carla snapped out.

  And the image crumbled.

  “No goddamn way are we letting you leave this team.”

  Chad rose until he towered over Carla, who was most of a foot shorter. “You got no say in this, pint-size.”

  Tanya wanted to cover her eyes. Carla was the team’s elemental force. This was going to end so badly—along with a dream she’d never dared have.

  “I got plenty of say, you idiot. Why the hell would you leave our team, when it’s exactly where Tanya belongs? Huh? Answer me that one, Mr. Hawkins.”

  Chad squinted down at Carla, still trying to digest that one.

  Tanya was feeling a little bewildered herself.

  “You deserve to be with this team,” Daniela spoke softly. “The way you fight together? There is no other option.”

  It wasn’t an option…because never in a hundred years had she thought of herself as deserving to be on a team like this one. She was the whipped girl. The loner. The one fighting all out until fate decided it was tired of her and killed her off.

  But with this team, she’d…belong?

  “Duh!” Carla must have seen the doubt on her face.

  Tanya looked at Chad. She wished she could take him aside and talk it out. He was still frowning down at the spot that Carla had stepped away from. Frowning so hard that something must be wrong.

  “Damn!” But it was suddenly his cheerful voice. He grabbed Daniela by the shoulders and kissed her right on the mouth. Quickly, but it surprised Daniela no end.

  Then he grabbed Tanya’s shoulders until they were practically nose to nose.

  “What do you say, lady? Want to come fight for the good guys?”

  Tanya opened her mouth, hoping that she’d somehow find the words to say how good that sounded before her heart simply busted from joy.

  “Hey!” Chad cut her off and turned away before she could answer.

  She practically stumbled forward into the sudden vacuum.

  “That’s it!” He practically shouted at Daniela. “How about you coming to fight for the good guys, too? You took down el Clan del Golfo so sweet. Asshole Sánchez as a bonus. Good thing I didn’t know about that before or I’d have beat him to death with my bare hands. You could join us and help us take down your old operation. What do you think?”

  “Duh!” Carla answered for her.

  “Okay, so I’m a beat slow,” Chad grumbled.

  Now it was Tanya’s turn to pull him in close enough to kiss his temple. It felt as if she was holding all the hope in the world.

  “Daniela,” Tanya was amazed she could speak. “You started out with the good guys. Just the wrong good guys. Come on back. Make Fred a happy man.”

  Smith blushed brighter red than his hair.

  “He loves you for your brain, trust me,” Chad laughed as Smith impossibly went even redder.

  Tanya had been so sure that Chad hadn’t noticed. So, he wasn’t totally oblivious, just a guy.

  “We’ll find a girl for you too, Silva. What you looking for? Can’t have perfection, I already got her.” Chad pulled her in tightly once more.

  Tanya managed not to giggle happily.

  Silva turned to Daniela, “I quit.”

  “Wait…what?” Tanya had nearly died when Chad had said those words. And now Silva?

  Daniela pulled him to her, held him tightly, and kissed his cheek. When she turned back, she was crying.

  “My big brother is married. He’s a dog trainer. He came to help me after Sánchez. After…” her voice choked off as she brushed her hand down his arm.

  “I stuck with her so that she didn’t kill herself while chasing revenge. I couldn’t stop her, so I decided that keeping her alive was my job as a big brother. But oddly, now my job as a trainer will be much safer. I trained drug-sniffing dogs. El Clan del Golfo had a very high price on my head, but I think that doesn’t matter as much anymore.”

  “Well?” Carla asked Daniela.

  Tanya could see the answer so easily that she laughed aloud. She couldn’t help herself.

  She turned to Colonel Gibson for his approval of two new people joining his team.

  Except he wasn’t there anymore. Or anywhere in the hangar.

  Chad noticed her looking around. “Yeah, he does that. Kinda freaky.”

  As Carla twisted around looking for Gibson, Tanya spotted a white envelope sticking out of her back pocket and pointed it out.

  “Uh,” Carla pulled it out. “Th
at wasn’t there before.”

  Kyle plucked it up and pulled out the two sheets inside. Then he began to laugh softly before he handed one to Daniela and the other to her.

  Everyone crowded in close to read them.

  They both held formal offers to join Delta Force—signed by Colonel Michael Gibson. Tanya’s was already countersigned by her own Kidon commander.

  “Okay,” Chad whispered in her ear. “Maybe he’s more than a little bit freaky.”

  Epilogue

  “Long way down, bro.”

  “Damn long, dude.”

  Chad stared over the edge of the Las Lajas bridge at the river rushing so far below.

  “Woulda died for sure,” Duane declared.

  “I dunno. Maybe that spot there?” Chad pointed at the hole of an eddy current far below.

  “Nah, fish bait. But might be some good fishing down there.”

  “We could try later.”

  Duane slapped him hard enough on the back that Chad would have found out just how deep that hole was if the balustrade had been a few inches lower.

  “Chad, got news for you. Wedding is one thing. Wedding night sex is another.”

  “I already know what to expect there.”

  “You haven’t a clue, dude. Tell me that again tomorrow.”

  Chad eyed the Las Lajas Sanctuary speculatively.

  Somewhere inside there, two women were getting dressed up in wedding white. The three other female team members and Silva’s wife would be fussing over them.

  Chad leaned back against the railing and stared across the width of the bridge at the white marble-winged angel playing the saxophone. There was a drummer, French horn player, dude with a fat-bellied lute, but he liked the expression of the sax-playing angel. Looking like she was getting down with it.

  “What’s next?”

  Duane shrugged uncertainly. “El Clan del Golfo is gone. La Capitana shattered her own organization. Wasn’t hard, since she kept control of all the reins for just that purpose. Mostly just paying folks off and telling them to go home.”

  “Fit right in, didn’t she?”

  “Way Fred and Sofia go on about her, she’s our next tactician. One thing we know. Whatever is next…”

  “…is gonna be damn fun.” Chad finished. “Glad to just be a shooter.”

  Duane fisted bumped him. “Shooter on a hell-a team, dude.”

  “Damn straight, bro.”

  Kyle came up to them with Richie. They had a dazed Fred Smith in tow. Three months to finish the cleanup of the worst of the cartels, and Daniela still had his head spinning.

  Actually, Chad could feel that in himself, too—not that he’d ever admit it.

  “Ready to do the married thing?” Kyle had his of-course-you-are tone in place. Which was how he led the team whenever Carla wasn’t watching.

  “Long as it’s Tanya Zimmer waiting at the head of the aisle, I’m game.”

  Kyle gave him one of those looks.

  “Easy, boss. I’ll say ‘I do’ and mean it when the time comes.”

  Kyle eased back.

  “Great idea for the rings,” Fred commented as he and Chad fished them out to turn them over to the best men.

  Chad read the inscription to himself: Shot straight to the heart. He hoped she liked that. That and the shining blue sapphire that matched her eyes; the white gold already matched her hair.

  “Wish I could claim it, but the idea was Duane’s.” He was the one who’d suggested they should make the rings from that lump of gold Chad had taken as a souvenir from the river camp as a keepsake.

  “Actually,” Duane looked uncomfortable. “Might have been something Sofia mentioned. She said something like, ‘it might be a good idea.’ But she had this odd tone, the one like it isn’t a choice?”

  Chad was getting to know that tone. Why would Sofia have thought of that? He’d already forgotten about the thing, tossed in the bottom of his rifle case from the cartel takedown mission and forgotten there.

  “Won’t they be surprised when we tell them.” Fred was happily inspecting them one last time before handing his over to Richie.

  Chad glanced at Duane. Yeah, fifty today gets you a hamburger next Tuesday that the women were all in cahoots on this already. Oh, they’d act surprised and never in a thousand years admit knowing, but…

  “Inscrutable,” he whispered to Duane.

  “Till their dying day, dude. Till their dying day,” his best man confirmed.

  Chad decided it was better not to think about it and turned to Kyle.

  “So, you heard from Gibson yet about what’s next?” Chad could never slip a subject change past Carla or Tanya, but sometimes he could get it past Kyle.

  Richie’s smile lit up. “Did he ever! You wouldn’t believe where we’re headed. We’re—”

  Kyle clamped a hand over Richie’s mouth and sighed. “After the honeymoon.”

  He remembered what Duane had said about married sex being even better than engaged sex.

  “I’m good with that.”

  There was a friendly round of laughter and backslaps.

  Chad locked arms with Fred and began heading for the church.

  “Gonna be so good,” Fred assured him cheerfully.

  “In so many ways.”

  It was hard not to compare the fifteen stories of Gothic majesty of Las Lajas Sanctuary with the run-down neighborhood Catholic church back in Detroit that reeked of desperation—his own and that of the others who cowered in the back. He had come impossibly far…yet it felt like the journey was only beginning.

  Chad took one last glance at the radiant blue sky of the Colombian Andes.

  “Bring it on, bro,” he whispered. Then he focused on going in and marrying the woman who brought it like no other.

  Want more? Try flying with the Night Stalkers!

  (excerpt)

  Target of the Heart (excerpt)

  Major Pete Napier hovered his MH-47G Chinook helicopter ten kilometers outside of Lhasa, Tibet and a mere two inches off the tundra. A mixed action team of Delta Force and The Activity—the slipperiest intel group on the planet—flung themselves aboard.

  The additional load sent an infinitesimal shift in the cyclic control in his right hand. The hydraulics to close the rear loading ramp hummed through the entire frame of the massive helicopter. By the time his crew chief could reach forward to slap an “all secure” signal against his shoulder, they were already ten feet up and fifty out. That was enough altitude. He kept the nose down as he clawed for speed in the thin air at eleven thousand feet.

  “Totally worth it,” one of the D-boys announced as soon as he was on the Chinook’s internal intercom.

  He’d have to remember to tell that to the two Black Hawks flying guard for him…when they were in a friendly country and could risk a radio transmission. This deep inside China—or rather Chinese-held territory as the CIA’s mission-briefing spook had insisted on calling it—radios attracted attention and were only used to avoid imminent death and destruction.

  “Great, now I just need to get us out of this alive.”

  “Do that, Pete. We’d appreciate it.”

  He wished to hell he had a stealth bird like the one that had gone into bin Laden’s compound. But the one that had crashed during that raid had been blown up. Where there was one, there were always two, but the second had gone back into hiding as thoroughly as if it had never existed. He hadn’t heard a word about it since.

  The Tibetan terrain was amazing, even if all he could see of it was the monochromatic green of night vision. And blackness. The largest city in Tibet lay a mere ten kilometers away and they were flying over barren wilderness. He could crash out here and no one would know for decades unless some yak herder stumbled upon them. Or were yaks in Mongolia? He was a corn-fed, white boy from Colorado, what did he know about Tibet? Most of the countries he’d flown into on black ops missions he’d only seen at night anyway.

  While moving very, very fast.

&nb
sp; Like now.

  The inside of his visor was painted with overlapping readouts. A pre-defined terrain map, the best that modern satellite imaging could build made the first layer. This wasn’t some crappy, on-line, look-at-a-picture-of-your-house display. Someone had a pile of dung outside their goat pen? He could see it, tell you how high it was, and probably say if they were pygmy goats or full-size LaManchas by the size of their shit-pellets if he zoomed in.

  On top of that were projected the forward-looking infrared camera images. The FLIR imaging gave him a real-time overlay, in case someone had put an addition onto their goat shed since the last satellite pass, or parked their tractor across his intended flight path.

  His nervous system was paying autonomic attention to that combined landscape. He also compensated for the thin air at altitude as he instinctively chose when to start his climb over said goat shed or his swerve around it.

  It was the third layer, the tactical display that had most of his attention. At least he and the two Black Hawks flying escort on him were finally on the move.

  To insert this deep into Tibet, without passing over Bhutan or Nepal, they’d had to add wingtanks on the Black Hawks’ hardpoints where he’d much rather have a couple banks of Hellfire missiles. Still, they had 20mm chain guns and the crew chiefs had miniguns which was some comfort.

  While the action team was busy infiltrating the capital city and gathering intelligence on the particularly brutal Chinese assistant administrator, he and his crews had been squatting out in the wilderness under a camouflage net designed to make his helo look like just another god-forsaken Himalayan lump of granite.

  Command had determined that it was better for the helos to wait on site through the day than risk flying out and back in. He and his crew had stood shifts on guard duty, but none of them had slept. They’d been flying together too long to have any new jokes, so they’d played a lot of cribbage. He’d long ago ruled no gambling on a mission, after a fistfight had broken out about a bluff hand that cost a Marine three hundred and forty-seven dollars. Marines hated losing to Army no matter how many times it happened. They’d had to sit on him for a long time before he calmed down.