Sound of Her Warrior Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  That’s why they’d ducked into the vineyard in the first place, good cover. Into a vineyard—and straight into a trap.

  Tomas set a ground-eating pace through the woods that they could both maintain for hours with only minimal breaks. Once they were deep in the woods and several kilometers from the dead mortar team, they made quick work of cutting down some wild cherry branches and creating a small lean-to using the massive trunk of a fallen oak. It was several feet larger around than the Willamette oaks, it must be an English oak. She’d always wanted to go walking among the Cotswolds of England and see some of them. Now she was being hunted across the Moldovan countryside. It sure wasn’t the same.

  Inside their shelter, Tomas called up to Command during a satellite overflight. She couldn’t lipread a word because he held the radio so close to his mouth. Whatever their conversation was, it was short.

  Katrina focused on picking the small wild cherries off the roof of their bower for them to eat. Tart! But good.

  That’s when the fact of her deafness slammed home and stole her breath away. What if it wasn’t temporary? At first she hadn’t had time to think about it, then she’d shoved aside her fear by convincing herself it was just a TTS, a temporary threshold shift. But what if it wasn’t? What if—

  Tomas tapped her on the shoulder and she almost cried out in shock.

  He eyed her carefully, making a point to mouth his question slowly, You okay?

  So not. But she gave him a nod that was a total lie.

  He snapped his fingers close by her ears.

  She could only shake her head.

  In answer, Tomas reached out and pulled her against his chest. It was awkward; all of the gear on their vests kept it from being close and she had a fistful of cherries, but still she appreciated it. For a moment she lay her cheek against the cool metal of the emergency lifting ring on the front of his vest, and let herself be held.

  Making sense of that was no easier than making sense of her deafness.

  A woman in Delta Force did not let herself be held. She didn’t dare let herself be seen as weak, not for a millisecond. Women were too rare a breed in Special Operations and especially in the heavy-duty combat units.

  Beyond that, the last person on the planet she’d ever expect to have empathy was Sergeant Tomas Gallagher—the toughest damn bastard in anyone’s army. It was easy to remember his cold, hard voice. But she couldn’t reconcile that with the way he was taking care of her.

  He held her until she felt some sense of control come back. Not relief. Not hope. But at least the sense that somehow or other she’d get through this and that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t going to be alone in that effort.

  She sat up and patted his arm in thanks. It was a good arm, thick with muscle, honed with thousands of hours of training and hundreds of missions. She realized she needed to make herself stop patting him.

  Distraction needed.

  Katrina passed him a handful of the tart cherries after making clear he had to spit out the cherry pits—they were naturally laced with cyanide. Then she pointed at the sky, to where the satellite antenna had been aimed and made a questioning face.

  You can talk, Tomas admonished her. Soft-ly. He was over-accentuating his lip movement which helped. Tomas Gallagher being thoughtful was still a shock.

  She shrugged at her descent into sign language. Not being able to hear immersed her into a strange world of silence that she felt reluctant to break. Also, her own voice was wrong—foreign, muted to silence by whatever was happening in her ears. She could feel that she was speaking, but couldn’t hear it, neither volume nor tone.

  He tapped the lapel of his shirt, pointed again to the west, tapped his watch, and gave a thumbs up. Command had reported that their targets, a Russian general and a Moldovan one, were still expected to be in position at the time previously reported.

  Good news. The mission wasn’t blown yet despite the problems they’d encountered.

  He pointed upward, held up three fingers, then placed his hands palm to palm against his own cheek before closing his eyes.

  She didn’t get it.

  He began slapping his pockets but pencil and paper weren’t something you carried on a self-contained mission into a “friendly” foreign country. He looked around again, then spotted something.

  He held his hand palm up and moved it until he was almost touching her breast. He did it fast enough that she jolted back against the log.

  Tomas held up a hand in apology and, if she didn’t know better, she’d say he blushed.

  This time he moved his palm more slowly until it was suddenly filled with the bright light of a sunbeam that had found its way down through the forest canopy and into their hastily assembled hideout. It had been shining against her ribcage. He tapped his palm, then pointed upward.

  “Oh, the sun.”

  He nodded. This time the three fingers, a tap of his watch, and a sign to sleep made sense. Three hours to sunset when it would be time to move out; she should get some sleep.

  Tapping his own chest, he made the signal for lookout—a hand shading his eyes.

  She held up two fingers, then bent one in half.

  Oh, she could speak.

  “Hour and a half, then it’s my turn to watch.”

  He nodded and she settled herself more comfortably against the log. A Special Ops soldier could sleep anywhere: a roaring plane flight, inside a bunker during a firefight—didn’t matter. Their small shelter was cozy. It smelled of fresh cherries that matched the vivid taste on her tongue and crispy-dry oak leaves. And was very, very quiet.

  She sighed.

  Then she remembered what it had felt like to be held by Tomas. They were shoulder to shoulder. He had good shoulders.

  After a night and a day on the go, she was exhausted.

  She leaned her head onto his shoulder and felt him jolt in surprise. It was a long time before his arm settled as lightly as the sunlight on her shoulders. She didn’t stay awake long enough to feel whether or not his fingers wrapped around her arm.

  Chapter 5

  Katrina awoke with a start. It was soft twilight. She listened carefully, but didn’t hear a thing…because, shit, she was deaf. This was definitely going to take some getting used to.

  She was also warm and comfortable inside the curve of a man’s arm. Of Tomas Gallagher’s arm. For a moment she let herself revel in the feel of it, the security of being held, of lying against a man she trusted with her very life.

  Except they were both soldiers.

  As she pushed herself upright, he eased his arm off her shoulders.

  “You didn’t wake me for my half of the watch.”

  He shrugged.

  She thumped the side of a fist against his shoulder.

  He tapped his ear and then hers with a soft touch.

  Oh right, she couldn’t listen. “Sorry. I hope you didn’t mind me sleeping on you.”

  He clamped both hands around his own throat and pretended he was gagging.

  She clamped a hand over her mouth to suppress the laugh and wondered where the hell Sergeant Tomas Gallagher had gone. The man she knew had absolutely no sense of humor.

  “You’re being nice to me.”

  He shrugged and looked down to rummage through his kit for some energy bars. She didn’t take the one he offered.

  “Why?”

  He turned away but stopped when she rested a palm on his cheek. Without his sunglasses, his dark eyes bored into hers. She tried to say something, she truly did, but her throat was suddenly dry.

  “Why, Tomas?” finally creaked out of her throat.

  He rested one of his big hands over where hers still touched his cheek.

  The light was making it harder to see, but he might have said, I’m an idiot.

  A moment later he leaned forward and kissed her. It wasn’t some tentative little peck. It wasn’t a question either. It was a kiss that demanded attention. It was hard, fast, and deep. He grabbed either side of her armo
red vest by the armholes and hauled her into his lap.

  Tomas’ strength was overwhelming, pinning her against him. She knew that at the least hesitation on her part, he’d let her go, but no hesitation came from anywhere inside her.

  Surprise? Hell yeah!

  Hesitation? Hell no! Not from a kiss like the one he was delivering.

  In the same unit? Don’t give a shit!

  On a mission? The mission could wait just a goddamn minute—she was busy here. Busy having her rocketing heartrate pound against her chest, if not her ears.

  He let her go at last and some small bit of her sanity returned. She was straddling his lap, her arms locked around his neck. One of his hands had slipped down between her armor and butt.

  And he was grinning like the big bad wolf.

  “You’re not a bit sorry, are you?”

  He patted his free hand downward to remind her to watch her voice. His other hand was still occupied elsewhere. He shook his head.

  “Odd. Neither am I.”

  She couldn’t hear his groan, but she could feel it conducting through her fingertips. He said something that she couldn’t begin to follow, especially with the last of the light.

  Katrina could only shrug.

  He dug his fingers hard into her bottom one last time, pulling her tight against him, vest to vest.

  Yep! Her body was screaming for it too, but…

  “Mission time,” she kept it soft.

  He nodded and they tried to disentangle themselves. Somehow one of her pockets of .338 Lapua Magnum magazines got hooked on his spare 7.62mm magazines for the HK416 combat rifle he carried and it took them a moment to move apart.

  Once separated, she became terribly self conscious. They were on a mission. They were in the same squad. And Tomas Gallagher hated having a woman in The Unit—that much she was sure of. Except now she wasn’t.

  Had he been avoiding her for other reasons than she’d thought?

  Duh! So if why wasn’t the right question, the next question was…“How long?” She tapped his chest then hers to make it clear what she was asking.

  He held up a single finger.

  “One hour? One day?”

  He made a flipping motion.

  “Day One?”

  He nodded.

  “You wanted to kiss me since the first day I joined The Unit? Why?” Now “why” was the right question.

  He rolled his eyes at her. He tapped her on the chest and held up a single finger again.

  “Because I’m the only woman on the team?”

  No. He tapped her chest—directly on the sniper rifle magazines that had just tangled them up. Then on the MK21 before he tried a double thumbs up. You best. Very sexy, he mouthed carefully. He ran his hand down her vest’s side plates, over her ribs, waist, and hips to make his point.

  “Because I shoot well? That’s exactly what every woman wants to be admired for,” despite her words it did mean a lot.

  In answer he ran a knuckle over her cheek so gently that she couldn’t help closing her eyes.

  “Okay, not just because I shoot well.”

  He nodded with a grin. Then he dug out his night-vision goggles and clipped them onto his helmet.

  “You are a mystery to me, Mr. Tomas Gallagher.”

  He gave her a thumbs up and another one of those killer smiles once she had her own NVGs in place and turned on.

  Chapter 6

  Seven hours hard hiking to reach their target point and three more hours to investigate possible hides.

  Command had, of course, done their usual head game. That told them that the CIA was calling the shots on this one because they never did anything straightforward if they could do it bass-ackwards instead.

  Katrina decided that it was a good thing she’d been in the Army for long enough to know that they always did that. At least it made it so that she was only royally pissed rather than in a murderous rage when the truth came out.

  When Tomas reported that they were on site, Command informed them that it was the Moldovan general who was their target. He was the only person who’d been told about their mission at all. The fact that they’d been attacked by Russian Special Forces had served to confirm that he could be easily bought.

  The Moldovan prime minister himself had told his general that the secrecy of this operation was a matter of Moldovan National Security. Yet here that general was, meeting with a Russian general at a base just over the Moldovan border in Transnistria.

  Transnistria was a breakaway region of Moldova, aligned with the Russians rather than the US, NATO, and the EU. Only four other nations recognized it, though it had been a splinter nation since 1992. A splinter the Russians wanted to exploit. Re-annexing Moldova, just as they had the Crimea, would help secure the Russian frontier against an attack by land forces.

  Nobody in the West was in favor of that, except the purchased general. The prime minister of Moldova couldn’t be seen to act against his own military despite his general’s other war crimes, but it was time for a message to be sent.

  And apparently it was up to her and Tomas to send it.

  As part of the plan, she’d brought a second barrel and bolt for her rifle, and ammunition to match. In less than two minutes she’d changed from the far-reaching hammer of .338 Lapua to an odd cartridge only ever used in Russia, a 5.45x39mm. It fired only half the distance forcing them to find a location that was both well hidden and close to the meeting site.

  Tiraspol airport was technically non-operational, despite being the only airport in the splinter country and housing all five planes of their air force. No one was sure if they could fly, or survive taking off on the aged runway even if they did work.

  But helicopters could land here just fine.

  It was finding suitable cover that was the issue. They had to get close, preferably well under five hundred meters with such small caliber ammunition, and yet not be found after she took the shot.

  Tomas led her in. The airport was unlit except for a single streetlight near the entrance. The runway itself was open to the surrounding farmland, making it easy to walk onto the airfield. They lay in the unmown grass at one end of the runway and inspected the structures carefully.

  He tapped his radio, then pointed at the only decent building left standing.

  “Command says that’s where the meeting will be?”

  Tomas nodded.

  She studied it through her rifle’s night scope and shook her head. Not a chance from here.

  Tomas grinned and tapped his temple.

  Katrina gestured for him to lead on.

  Sticking to a dry drainage ditch behind the buildings, they crossed behind the old terminal and slipped up to the remains of the Transnistrian Air Force. Five Antonov transport planes, all with flat tires—none operational. A dozen helicopters, only two of which looked serviceable, and a pair of Yak two-seat trainers that must date back to World War II. One was clearly being scrapped for parts, but the other one looked serviceable. It was long, an olive-drab green, and had one of those humped glass canopies.

  She shook her head.

  He tapped the side of the plane.

  She shook her head again.

  Tomas pointed at the office building.

  Three hundred meters away, an ideal shot.

  “This is your idea of an exfiltration plan after we’re done here? An ancient airplane that may not fly? I’d like to survive this mission.”

  In answer, he leaned in and kissed her lightly. Apparently he wanted to survive it as well. How was she supposed to argue with how his lightest touch could make her feel?

  Chapter 7

  Katrina awaited her moment. She was slouched in the front seat of the Yak-18. It smelled of old pilot sweat, gasoline, and sausages. At the moment she was not appreciating her heightened awareness of her sense of smell since going deaf.

  Tomas—presently in the pilot’s seat behind her—had inspected and prepped the plane, encouraged at finding the gas tanks full. Then the
y’d nudged the tail around until she had a perfect shot through the partially open canopy. There would be no sign of where the shot had come from. No one would look in the middle of the airfield. And if someone did, Tomas was confident he could get the plane moving quickly.

  The meeting happened as planned. At noon, a brand-new Kamov Ka-62 Executive transport helicopter flew in and landed exactly where expected. It was met within minutes by two cars that had swept in through the front gate.

  Tomas knew that if he needed her attention, he could thump a fist on the side of the airframe from his position in the rear pilot’s seat well behind her. But for now, her attention was narrowing. It was Tomas’ job to make sure that she stayed safe. It was her job to erase the man who had set a trap for her and betrayed his prime minister.

  She couldn’t kill the Moldovan general outright, or they’d know there was a sniper on the field, but she had a plan.

  First to emerge were a half-dozen guards from either side. Then the two generals climbed out of their respective craft at the same moment and approached each other. A Transnistrian official, also resplendent in his uniform, accompanied the Moldovan. It was too perfect.

  The guards formed a wide circle facing outwards, thankfully none quite facing their aircraft—even with the flash suppressor, her shot would not be invisible.

  The windsock was rippling hard, ten mile-an-hour crosswind, gusting to twenty. Thankfully, she had fired a few thousand rounds of the 5.45mm ammunition at the Fort Bragg firing range to familiarize herself with its flight characteristics—the wind was going to drag this round a long way sideways in three hundred meters. It would make her shot look as if it was coming from well to the west of their current position if someone noticed the angle of attack.

  The two generals approached one another, with the Moldovan facing her but not yet blocked by the Russian.

  Three shots. If she was shooting as a Delta, she’d use four, but the Russians fought differently.