By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  Well, she’d always found having a standard to live up to was a strong motivator. And if Beale’s copilot had gone on to be the company’s first AMC, it was time for Kara to step it up if she was going to hang on to being the second one in the company’s short history.

  The GCS coffin itself was crowded up against the forward bulkhead of the hangar deck. Heavy cables snaked out of the side, one into the ship’s power, the other into the communications array to emerge at the six-meter dish she’d rigged high aloft for communicating with her RPAs. It auto-tracked the Gray Eagle when it was in line of sight and switched over to the Peleliu’s satellite feed when the RPA went out of range, like during her dive last night.

  At the door of the GCS coffin, Kara halted and looked back at Colonel Gibson. “You’re sure about this dude?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Kara already knew that there would be few higher stamps of approval than Michael’s; she just wanted another shot at Major Willard Wilson. She resisted tagging him aloud as Limp Willy, but it was a close thing.

  She keyed the code and then leaned in for the retinal scan. The heavy bolts thunked open and she led the way in, turning on the internal lights.

  * * *

  Justin was last in and stumbled to a halt. He’d seen the outside every day for two months. It looked like a white-painted cargo container, barely worthy of note if not for the heavy locks. But he’d never been in the GCS before, and it was like seeing a whole new side to Kara Moretti.

  How much did he know about this woman?

  “Not much” was the answer staring him in the face.

  One wall was dominated by a pair of long white boxes that he recognized as Gray Eagle coffins. He’d been responsible several times for transporting one of them to an appropriate airstrip, because the MQ-1C Gray Eagle needed a couple thousand feet of runway, more than twice the length of the Peleliu. So, when the 5D and the ship were on the move, the ground team would box up the Gray Eagle RPA. Then he’d fetch it, and them, for the move. Afterward, he’d deliver them to some handy Air Force base for launch and recovery.

  How odd to fly an aircraft that you almost never saw. It’s what those guys at NASA must feel like. He remembered a trip he and his siblings had made to Florida when they were all kids. His parents had taken the three of them to Kennedy Space Center for a shuttle launch. Rafe only ever cared about the horses, but Bessie Anne had wanted to be an astronaut. Sister who was an astronaut had sounded pretty cool to a nine-year-old. She’d gone U.S. Air Force, but hadn’t made it into the program before the shuttles went away.

  But he’d remembered that launch and the tour Ma had arranged of the command-and-control center. Granted there had been like sixty gals and guys there, but you could just feel that everything had a purpose and it all had a single focus—launching a rocket into space.

  Kara’s coffin was like that; it was immersion in an absolutely focused space.

  On the first stretch of the wall opposite the Gray Eagle’s containers were a long workbench and three much smaller coffins. They were barely two meters long each and as big across as his forearm. These would be the ScanEagle RPAs. They could be launched off a patrol boat or any ship with a little open space. He’d seen Kara use the little craft a couple times for simpler sorties or as a communications relay when the Gray Eagle was over the horizon and there wasn’t a satellite channel handy. Even now, one was out on the bench, clearly taken apart for service.

  It was the back end of the container that really drove home how different Moretti was. The Gray Eagle’s ground control station was a full pilot-and-copilot rig, but Kara’s only view of the world was through screens.

  And for such a seemingly simple craft, there were a whole lot of screens. Big ones where he had windows on the Jane, secondaries that must include sensor data when active. Then a full set of flight instrumentation and controls.

  On top of that was a bank of radios even more daunting than on his Calamity Jane, which was saying something. SOAR’s MH-47Gs had a whole lot more tech rigged up to them than your average Chinook: terrain avoidance, signal jamming, and advanced threat detection were only the start of what he’d had to learn when he transferred into the 160th Regiment. But the Gray Eagle specialized in signal interception and location, and had the hardware on show to back it up.

  He looked over at Kara to see if she’d changed somehow. No and a little bit yes. Still beautiful and with a dancer’s upright posture—ballet as a kid that had never worn off, maybe—that could just kill a man. She walked like a confident soldier and stood like one. Her expression didn’t look any different as she baited the newcomer over what flavor of soda he wanted from the small fridge beneath the workbench.

  But with this high-tech world wrapped tight around her, Kara looked as if she belonged. He supposed it was like how he felt when he settled into the pilot’s seat of the Jane; everything just kind of fit.

  This high-tech dungeon looked good on her, damned good.

  “Don’t!” She aimed a finger at him and he knew exactly what she meant, though clearly the other two didn’t.

  Justin couldn’t help himself, didn’t even bother to try.

  He just kept smiling at her.

  Chapter 6

  Kara forced herself to look away from Justin. She could see by Major Wilson’s face that he’d been inside RPA coffins before. A sweeping glance, and no more. It told her something about his security clearance at least.

  His eyes hesitated only twice: once on the poster of an MQ-1C Gray Eagle soaring among the clouds, and once on her Fordham University Rams banner. She made a guess based on his hesitation.

  “The Lions suck, by the way.”

  Wilson’s frown was as instantaneous as only a true Columbia University Lions football fan would have.

  “And we’re going to kick your butts this year too.”

  He actually growled, but it was hard to argue with Fordham’s winning streak. Reality sucks, dude! But she kept the last to herself, figuring that she’d pushed him hard enough.

  She could also see Justin looking like a kid on Christmas morning, finding a new colt under the tree or something. She still wasn’t sure what instinct had made her force Wilson’s hand to let her bring Justin along.

  It had been a hard-learned lesson to trust that instinct. But once she’d learned to listen to it, she’d graduated top of her ROTC class and eventually ended up sitting in this box in the Mediterranean.

  Good little Instinct! She gave it a mental pat on the head and then shoved it aside. She was busy now.

  “So, talk.” Kara gave it the full Brooklyn tawk, spun around her pilot’s chair, and dropped into it. At her nod, Justin took the copilot’s seat.

  The Major dragged over a stool from the workbench; Michael remained standing.

  “I can’t tell you who I work for and, no, pestering me isn’t going to—”

  “Well then, I guess we’re done here.” Kara made to stand up. “C’mon, Justin.”

  Michael watched her blandly, but she ignored him.

  “Goddamn it!” Wilson cursed. “Will you sit still for a goddamn second, Moretti?”

  She held out her hands as if intending no offense and dropped back into her seat. Kara had no intention of leaving, not when there was clearly something intense going on here.

  “I’m—”

  “—with The Activity,” Kara cut him off. She had no idea where that shot in the dark came from, but now that she’d said it, it made perfect sense.

  Wilson’s blink of surprise was the only confirmation she needed.

  “The Activity” was just one of the many nicknames for the former U.S. Army Intelligence Support Activity, which had been supposedly disbanded in 1989 and gone through a dozen incarnations since as it was vastly increased in size.

  “Centra Spike, Gray Fox, Cemetery Wind…I’m guessing that you won’t be telling me your outfit’s cur
rent name.”

  “How the fuck?” Wilson exploded.

  Justin was smiling, so Kara nodded to him.

  “Clue one.” Justin slouched down farther in the copilot’s armchair beside her as if he’d been here a hundred times before. He crossed his booted feet just as if he were wearing cowboy boots out on the range.

  She considered being ticked, but then decided that she’d rather have Justin sitting so close in the copilot’s seat than Major Wilson. Bring it on, Cowboy.

  “You won’t identify your unit, not even in this location.”

  “Two,” Kara joined in, “arrogant beyond belief.”

  “Three—” Justin continued without hesitation.

  She was really starting to appreciate more about him than just the way he looked and the way he kissed.

  “—you didn’t even blink entering this container, which is one of the most secure areas aboard the Peleliu.”

  “Four, rude too.”

  His growing scowl was awesome.

  “Five”—Justin made it sound as if the two of them had been tag-teaming idiots forever instead of this being their first run together—“you went directly for her, the 5D’s RPA pilot. That points to something very clandestine.”

  “Six—” Kara hadn’t thought of that one, but it was a good point.

  Justin was proving that he had a brain despite being from the wrong side of the Hudson River—by about twenty-five hundred kilometers.

  “—Colonel Michael Gibson,” Kara continued, “knows exactly who you are, and I know that The Activity’s primary mandate is actionable intelligence for Tier 1 assets. Which includes: Delta, DEVGRU, and the Air Force’s 24th STS. Now, while the Colonel here might be the number one Tier 1 asset warrior there is, I’m not any of those. Yet you came to me. So can we cut through your Upper West Side ego and get on with it?”

  Major Willard Wilson turned to look a question at Michael, but it was clear that he hadn’t said anything beyond greeting good old Willy.

  “And seven.” Kara wanted to crow with triumph as the last piece clicked into place. “You’re a support guy. Admin. Logistics and liaison for a field team. Probably washed out and couldn’t make the grade.”

  “It spares the action teams from having to deal with nut jobs like you.” But his tone said her last guess had hit too close to home.

  They shared a grin for the first time.

  “Could get to like you, Major Willard.” Fat chance in hell, Kara told herself.

  “You won’t find me banking on that any time soon, Captain Moretti.”

  “Hey”—she turned to Justin—“he’s not as dumb as he looks.”

  * * *

  Justin didn’t try answering; he was still trying to catch his breath.

  Lord above. The Activity?

  Meeting one of them made it feel normal that there were a half-dozen stealth helicopters parked on the deck close above his head. Or that he was sitting inside Kara Moretti’s top secret domain.

  These guys made the CIA’s Special Activities Division look like they were using billboards to advertise their most clandestine operations. The Activity were the ultimate spooks of the military intelligence community. The CIA and NSA specialized in regional and national intel. The Activity pinpointed individual cell phones and could tell you the layout of bin Laden’s compound before you went busting in the front door.

  Saddam Hussein had been captured by U.S. Rangers. Some people knew that Delta had led the Rangers there and then faded out of sight. Only rumor said that The Activity came up with the final two possible hideouts in the first place. But it was the kind of rumor that made perfect sense.

  They were an intelligence outfit and their action arms were the very best in the world: Delta and DEVGRU, still popularly known by the name they hadn’t borne in over twenty years, SEAL Team Six.

  “We…”

  Justin could see that Kara was gearing up to go at Wilson again before he even had a chance to start, which wasn’t going to achieve anything. You could only humiliate a man so much before it became personal.

  He didn’t want to kick her; it would be far too obvious. His hand had come to rest naturally on the joystick controller built into the chair arm. A tap showed that it was linked to the one on Kara’s chair. He wiggled it hard enough to get her attention.

  She glanced over at him, huffed out a sigh, and then nodded ever so slightly, keeping her mouth shut as Wilson continued, apparently unaware of the barely averted broadside.

  “…have assets on the ground in the Negev Desert. We have lost communications with them. You are the closest asset available with the resources to locate and extract them.”

  “The Negev?”

  Major Wilson nodded.

  “The Activity,” Justin said slowly and carefully, “has lost track of ground reconnaissance personnel in the Israeli desert.” He didn’t know why he had to repeat it to make it real. Because it was too unreal?

  Kara rolled her eyes at him. “If The Activity is spying on Israel, it means that we’re checking out whether to do some shit against our main ally in the region. They gotta be into something seriously bad.”

  Justin reached the same conclusion, but it just didn’t strike him as…mannerly. No matter how many Taliban, al-Qaeda, and IS bullies he’d helped take down, he could never get over what they did to each other and the populace around them. He’d helped rescue a dozen hostages out of the Somali desert, some of whom had been there for years. Years of their lives lost to some fanatics who Delta Force had made sure were no longer walking on God’s green earth.

  “So we’re going to unleash Delta against our allies now. Between you, me, and the steel walls, what in the world did they do to deserve that?”

  “That,” Wilson said solemnly, “is what we’ll find out after you get our assets’ butts back out of there.”

  Chapter 7

  “Three nights.” Kara rubbed at her temples and slumped lower in her armchair pilot’s seat. “Three straight nights we’ve been running at the desert without a peep.”

  Her Gray Eagle had swept ever-increasing circles over the vast wilderness of the Negev. Overlaps, grids, high-altitude flights hunting for any sign of a U.S. military signal.

  The first night she’d only monitored on the radio frequency that Wilson had provided her.

  Justin had tried to help, but he only knew choppers. Might as well have sat her down in the cockpit of Calamity Jane and said, “Go!” Even if he’d been a jet jockey, it wouldn’t have helped much. The RPA was too different an animal.

  When she’d looked to Wilson, he simply shook his head.

  Michael had raised his hands as if fending her off. “I use your data. I’m no pilot.”

  She hadn’t asked. The next night, when they all gathered for the next flight, she’d had Sergeant Santiago Marquez flying beside her. Wilson hadn’t said a word.

  Okay, a bit less of a jerk than she’d first thought. A bit.

  She kept Justin close, giving him the traffic control sensors to watch. She didn’t want any nasty surprise of an Israeli Defense Force F-16 or AH-64 Apache weapons helicopter crawling up her behind unexpectedly.

  With the extra help, she expanded to a full spectrum of military radio frequencies on the second night.

  On night three, she’d opened to the civilian frequencies with no better luck.

  Kara looked at Wilson. “You think these guys are still alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think this because…”

  “Because they wouldn’t go down without a squawk of some sort to let us know.”

  “Even if—”

  “Even if they were under live fire,” Wilson insisted. “They’re hunkered down hard. They should be squirting a signal of some sort on the hour, every hour of darkness.”

  “But they’re not.�
�

  He dropped back onto his stool. “No, they’re not.”

  Kara’s scream of frustration was loud enough to hurt even her own ears inside the GCS coffin.

  * * *

  Justin winced; too late to cover his ears. There had to be some way to help Kara find these guys. He’d felt clumsy at the controls. The cameras on the Gray Eagle were its main weapon and were far more advanced that anything the Calamity Jane boasted. He hadn’t even recognized some of the settings. After two more nights watching Santiago manipulate the cameras, Justin had a bit more of a clue and was even more impressed.

  So, time to try using his brain as an alternative resource.

  “These guys are the best recon folks out there, right?”

  “Yes.” Wilson considered for a few moments, then sighed and continued. “The Activity fields two primary types. Knob-turners, the very best signal intercept guys in the business and human intelligence, on-the-ground guys. They collect the information needed by the action team snipers: Delta and DEVGRU. The Activity doesn’t recruit the best shooters, but rather the best scouts and spotters.

  “Put three of these guys in a room and you wouldn’t believe the shit they’ve done. You put a half dozen of them together and it’s freaky what they come up with. They develop their own training regimens, because we can’t match what these guys already have. We pass on what prior teams have learned and then let them run with it.”

  Justin tried to think about that. Such training was designed to shift skills from the conscious to the autonomic subconscious.

  When his mother was training a new roper or barrel racer, she made them do the most basic exercises hundreds, even thousands of times. Teens would come in with their hands blistered despite their gloves because they’d spent so many hours casting a lariat at a fence post.

  These guys would be like that. Survival wasn’t something they had to think about; it would become autonomic, just like making sure a final status message got out.