Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  Chapter 12

  At the beginning of day three at Fort Campbell, Connie pulled on the new helmet. It felt wrong, odd. She’d had her current helmet for four years. There had been various technology upgrades, but it had still been her helmet.

  The ADAS helmet had been custom fit, just like her first, but felt wrong. She knew the feeling would wear off, but right now it was as distracting as a new pair of boots after wearing the old ones slipper soft. The fit was okay, but the weight was about a third less and in different places. It wanted to tip her head forward just a little. Have to watch out for that during high-gee maneuvers or when slamming through an air turbulence pocket.

  Then the technician turned on the system and she forgot everything else.

  Yes, she stood beside her Hawk, still parked in the middle of Hangar 14. But that’s not what filled her vision.

  Her point of view centered inside the Hawk, but the hull of the Hawk was invisible. Instead of leaning out gunner windows or cargo bay doors to see, she had a completely clear field of view. People walked around her in the soft grays of infrared outlines. The hangar walls were some distance in the background—eleven and a half meters to the south, her readout informed her. The resolution was astonishing. She could pick out the technicians she and John had been working with the last two days as easily as if they stood beside her and not on the other side of a ten-thousand-pound Hawk.

  As she turned her head, the helmet registered the shift in orientation. The north wall of the hangar stood forty-eight meters from the center of the Hawk. The cameras perched around the craft fed their view across the inside of her visor. She could focus on the reality before her by looking through her visor or on the projected view by focusing on the inside surface of her visor. A quick blink and she managed to see both at once, the colored concrete and steel-walled hangar world through the polycarbonate of her visor and the gray-toned infrared view from the helicopter’s new cameras projected across the visor’s inside surface.

  Standing on the hangar floor was a little disorienting. Clearly the helmet was set up to project the view angle as if she were in her normal seat and viewing much more remote objects while the helicopter was in flight. But knowing that, it wasn’t difficult to compensate. A further turn and she could see herself, looking away from the craft. Boots, insulated camo pants, jacket, and globular helmet where her head should be.

  It was strange seeing herself like that. She didn’t think about such things. Mirrors merely reflected, but now she was viewing a real-time, thermal image of herself. She raised an arm and watched herself do so in the same instant. On those rare occasions when ground crew were offering hand signals, she’d be able to see them clearly without half hanging out of bay doors.

  Then she turned to the stern and she actually cried out.

  Their “six” was clear. In any aircraft, a major problem was seeing what was sneaking up behind you. The back end of the helicopter was always in the way of viewing your six o’clock position. The pilot had to skew the chopper’s body sideways again and again so the crew chiefs could keep an eye on what was behind, in addition to anything the radar revealed.

  Now, because the cameras were mounted on the outside of the helicopter, she could see all around even if she were inside the chopper, everything except a thin wedge where the tail rotor sliced across the image. But there were times you wanted to check the condition of your own rotor, a trick completely impossible in a speeding chopper, right up until this moment.

  The “Advanced Distributed Aperture System” (the vendor’s techs insisted on calling it by its full name every time) consisted of nine distributed cameras in five mountings, all feeding a carefully interlaced view onto her visor.

  She and John had been saying ADAS as a word, but the right word was “miracle.” When she looked down, Connie’s screen blanked. That made perfect sense. She was now asking the equipment to look straight down at the hangar floor and it showed her blank concrete, 2.2 meters below the Hawk’s center. But in flight, she would see a landing zone or an underslung load.

  John, also helmeted, stood a dozen feet to the side, apparently frozen in place as she was… except that his head wasn’t moving.

  She blinked to shift her field of focus.

  His attention appeared riveted at a blank wall.

  Then she did the triangulation in her head. If he were in his seat and looking through the ADAS, he’d be staring at…

  Her! He’d been close by her side for three days, hovering inches away as they joined in the installation and training. So close that his rich, earthy essence had been a constant awareness even in the moments when he wasn’t nearby. But he wasn’t inspecting the equipment. He was watching—

  Connie tore off her helmet and threw it aside. Only the quick grab of a tech kept it from bouncing and rolling across the concrete.

  She slammed back into the harsh reality of Hangar 14.

  The tech was trying to ask her what was wrong. All the noise of a dozen people working on two helicopters that had been buffered by her helmet now hammered against her, overshadowed by her own harsh breathing.

  For three days she’d fit in. At least a little.

  Emily Beale, once again standing back to observe the progress, slowly tipped her head a little to the side and watched her. Another inspector. Some question on the Major’s features. A question without a good answer, as if she’d just bitten down on a lemon.

  Connie didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  John remained as he had been before, riveted. Staring at what she’d do next from his helmet world. Inspecting her like she was a goddamn bug on a platter. Like she was an oddity to be observed and would never fit in. The only one she’d ever fooled was herself.

  She saw a door and headed for it. By the time she hit the push bar, she was at a run. The outdoor cold slapped her hard, but she was numb inside and couldn’t feel it other than as icy knives in her chest. On the far side of the door she kicked into a sprint.

  Connie ran across tarmac and taxiway. She ran over the field and crossed the narrow two-lane road named Nightstalker Way. Ran until she slammed against the perimeter fence where it faced the trees and rolling terrain that surrounded this side of Fort Campbell.

  Breathe.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  And she had no idea why.

  Chapter 13

  John found Connie plastered against the perimeter fence like spaghetti thrown against a wall. Or a cartoon cutout. But this was no cartoon.

  Her hands were clenched into the wire as if holding on for life. Maybe they were. Her face pressed against the wire. Her breath billowed in cloudy gasps into the cold morning air. Nothing beyond the fence except low hills and trees.

  Night Stalkers were as steady on the ground as in the air. They prided themselves on their smooth and steady attitude. Same way they flew.

  Let the Rangers brag to each other, pretend whatever battle they were about to para-jump into juiced them up. Maybe it did, or maybe that was just a fear reaction. Let the Delta operators crawl aboard a chopper dragging the bodies of friends back across the thin line of safety after a mission gone to hell.

  SOAR provided the stabilizing touchstone to both.

  John had seen this before. Reality slammed into you at the strangest of times. All that cool caught up with you, and the steel-hard casing every SOAR flier kept wrapped around their inner core blew out sideways when least expected. Never in combat. Too busy staying alive. Always when it was quiet. Then some little trigger set off the storm.

  After the blowout, he’d helped buddies crawl out of benders that left a trail of shattered relationships, wrecked cars, and empty whiskey bottles. Others imploded, becoming little more than walking corpses. He’d seen one walk into a spinning tail rotor because he simply didn’t notice what was happening in the world outside his head. Only John’s quick tackle had saved that one from turning the loss of an arm into the loss of a head. He rubbed a hand across his face, still able to feel the spray o
f hot blood there.

  John fought against his instincts to rush forward and pull Connie into his arms, to comfort her, to keep her safe from whatever had set her off. He’d never pull an Army buddy into a hug, it wouldn’t be right to make her an exception. Even though he desperately wanted to.

  And he’d bet that with Sergeant Connie Davis, it wasn’t the right choice.

  Instead, he scuffed his boots through the tall, winter-dead grass to announce his presence, crunching on the thin crust of snow that remained between the stalks. Arriving at the fence, about a meter away from where Connie still stood motionless, he leaned his back against the chain link and then slid down until he sat on the ground. He dropped the coat he’d grabbed for her on the ground between them.

  Damn! Kentucky was cold. He blew on his hands and wished he’d thought of gloves as well. A year in the desert lay just seventy-two hours behind him. And the winter weather, though crystal blue, hadn’t warmed up enough to erase the couple inches of snow that had greeted their arrival. The only scent on the air was the sharp crackle and bite of cold.

  For a while, he just sat and watched the air base. A monstrous C-5 burned skyward from Campbell Army Airfield, probably loaded with a couple hundred troops or a half-dozen Army vehicles desperately needed somewhere else in the world. A Chinook wound up her rotors, then lifted out of the SOAR compound. The U.S. Army was going about its business.

  He kept Connie in his peripheral vision.

  Her breathing finally eased.

  John saw her flinch as she pulled back from the fence and spotted him there. Looking up, he saw the bright red crisscross of the fence’s wire pattern across her cheek, her skin pale from within, bright red with the cold on the outside.

  He turned back to the airfield and waited. That was half the secret when the seal blew on a Night Stalker’s shell—give them a little time.

  Connie took a sharp step away from the fence, as if to leave him as quickly as possible. Then her knees buckled and she slammed back into the fence and slid to the ground close enough that he could smell her.

  Warmth, not the feel but the flavor. And sweet, like dark chocolate or rich clover honey from the farm. Comfort. She seasoned the air about her with comfort. And salt. A leisurely glance at her profile revealed that her cheeks were dry, even if her eyes weren’t. That was good. Tears were hard to deal with. A grown man breaks down and weeps, you thump him on the back and hand him a shot of tequila. A woman cries and what the hell is a guy supposed to do?

  He considered handing the coat to her before she froze, but he didn’t know what might set her jackrabbiting off again.

  “I remember this time…” John decided the silence had gone on long enough. “We were sitting on our backsides during Green Platoon training. The Drills were on a rampage, busting down the newbies. And we were their eyes in the sky, except they’d rounded everyone up and were haranguing them for being sloppy enough to be caught. That the drill instructors had top-grade night-vision gear wasn’t something you complained about being unfair. Not unless you wanted to run in place with full pack and gear and rifle held high for an extra couple hours.”

  He shifted against the cold wire of the fence before it could etch his back through his coat as it had Connie’s cheek. The lines were fading now, but her color was still all wonky. She hadn’t yet reached for the jacket partly wrapped around one of her ankles.

  “So, we’re sitting on our bird, killing time and waiting for the Drills to chase their captives through more sucky swamps. Crazy Tim came up with this whacked idea. I have no idea why I always listen to him. ‘Hey John, you remember what it was like during our Green Platoon?’ Man, did I ever.” He shuddered. The SEALs’ notorious Hell Week had nothing on Green Platoon followed by Ranger School. “Constant downpour for four weeks.

  “These guys had it easy compared to Tim and me. The day wasn’t all that much warmer than this, but it was dry. Not a drop of rain in three weeks. Well, we happened to have a water bag stowed in our gear, left over from a firefighting run the month before. We’d rigged the Drill’s observer chair in front of it in the bird, so we hadn’t bothered to dig it out. The water bag wasn’t hurting anybody sitting in the back of the cargo bay.”

  He pointed up at the clear blue sky. “We dumped eight hundred gallons of freezing lake water on the heads of eighty grunts and eight drill sergeants. Man, did the Drills chew our behinds. Like with so many of Tim’s plans, we hadn’t thought about that part of it beforehand. Maybe Tim does and just doesn’t tell me.” John shrugged. That actually sounded like Tim. Damn the consequences if the joke was a good one.

  “Later, one of the DIs told us how much they’d actually loved it. They’d stood up under much worse, but the kids had no idea what had hammered them.” He let his laugh roll forth.

  He didn’t check on Connie. He just let her be a silent partner. When their world blew apart, soldiers weren’t apt to find laughter, but at least they’d feel welcome or…

  “I don’t care.”

  John spun to face her as if she’d slapped him hard. Why had he even tried to—

  “I can’t want to care.”

  Was she talking to herself? What the hell?

  She turned to face him, agony across her features. “I don’t want to care, John. It hurts too much. Here.” She slammed a fist against the center of her chest and held it there. As powerful as her smile had been, now the pain etched upon her features battered him.

  How had he ever thought her a heartless automaton?

  “It kills me. Each time a little more. Right here.” She thumped the fist again for emphasis.

  Hard enough to make him wince in empathetic pain.

  “Everything I care about is dead. I can’t bring it back. I’d give anything if I could. I’ve given my life already. If it would help, I’d give my death as well. Can you understand that?”

  He looked away. He did. How in hell had she fired a round right into his weak spot? Damn! He looked up at the sky and blinked hard. He knew what it meant to want what you couldn’t have. Why the hell did she think he was in SOAR?

  A glance showed that she’d turned to face the air base and the sky, her fist still in place over her heart, now clenched there by her other hand as she crouched on the dead grass and snow. Her shot in the dark hadn’t been aimed at him. She’d aimed it at herself.

  “I miss him so much.” Her voice broke.

  That explained it. She’d had a man and lost him. Another soldier? Or worse, the civilian spouse who couldn’t survive being with a soldier. Some worthless dog he’d love to pound into a pulp if he ever met him.

  That gave him a focus. Let him shove his own pain aside, back where it belonged, because whatever was going on here, it wasn’t about him.

  “My dad was the best man who ever flew.” She hung her head and shuddered after wrenching the words out from the core of her soul.

  He watched as she went fetal, arms wrapped tight around knees pulled in close. She didn’t weep. But a shudder, then another, pulsed through her, so strong he thought she might break.

  This time he didn’t think or hesitate. Reaching out, he gathered her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her.

  The shakes slammed through her.

  Sometimes he found it hard to keep his hold on her. Some titanic battle was being fought. A battle for control. A battle against memories?

  What the hell did he know? He just held her, held her tight until the shakes no longer started from deep, deep inside her, pounding their way through her body until he feared she’d shatter like a piece of fine crystal hurled against the wall.

  Chapter 14

  At length Connie relaxed enough to come to her senses. For a moment, or maybe John imagined it, she just curled against him. Perhaps comforted. Perhaps simply exhausted.

  She pushed back, pushing off his shoulder, and sat up.

  The chill air slapped his chest, which had been Connie-warm a moment before. She moved aside and collapsed against the fence.
Spotting the jacket, she dragged it on with rock-steady hands that had been shaking with the battle moments before. She sat back with her hands jammed down in the pockets.

  Once again just two soldiers staring out at an Army base and freezing their damn asses off.

  Then she rested a hand on his arm. A slender, warm hand that he could feel right through the heavy cloth.

  “It was you, John.” Her voice was hoarse with tension. “I saw you looking at me. Looking at me as if I could somehow be someone I’m not. I thought it was because you were somehow rejecting me even as a fellow SOAR. But when you came out here, I finally understood I was wrong.” She squeezed his arm for a moment, then withdrew her hand before continuing.

  “I like you, John. I’ve never respected a man so much since my father. But my heart died that day. I have nothing to give. You almost make me wish I did, but I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  John considered saying he didn’t care, but that was more about him not having had sex in too long. He half suspected that if he asked, right now, in this moment, she’d assent. She might be willing, but her heart wouldn’t be there. And it wasn’t what he wanted from her.

  Didn’t want sex from Sergeant Connie Davis? He tipped his head forward, then smacked it back against the fence with only minor pain and no more clarity. No, he definitely wanted sex with Sergeant Connie Davis. He hadn’t before, but she’d shown him new parts of herself. The killer smile and the killing pain. But not just sex. He wanted…

  She’d also just spoken more words to him than she had in the entire prior three months of serving in the same company.

  He wanted… to know more about her. He knew it was a cop-out, but it was as close as he could go for now. Though he’d rather not freeze to death in the process.

  ***

  Connie closed her eyes as she leaned against the fence. Hammered. Only word she could come up with. Hammered down hard. She hated the battle. Had fought it since the day her father hadn’t come back. Ever. Thirteen years old and fighting the dark.