Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  She saw Gibson close the phone and shove it into a pocket.

  John released his hold, the nose cone didn’t give much. He leaned on the nose cone in stages, pressing downward but keeping his fingers beneath to catch it.

  Connie laced her fingers under the nose cone, focusing on the catch, letting John do the bending.

  The cover shifted to reveal a narrow gap along the upper edge. John slipped his fingers into the crack for leverage. If he slipped, it would pop back into place and sever his first two knuckles all the way across.

  Gibson moved forward, but she waved him back with a shake of her head. There wasn’t room for a third, not and be sure of their footing.

  John grunted as he leaned into it, heaving. He braced a foot on the undercarriage. She could practically hear his muscles groaning under the strain.

  Then it gave, ever so slightly. The half-dozen screws on the underside of the housing couldn’t take the immense pressure and torque and started working more like a hinge.

  It let go all at once. Heavier than she expected. It took both of them to the ground, but they stopped it before it hit the hangar floor.

  John stood, shifted, got his stance, and then cradled it half torn open.

  At his tight nod, she knew he had the nose cone’s weight, but she shouldn’t be too long about it.

  “John. The old bird. Not the Huey. Medevac, Korean War. You know, like in MASH.”

  “Angel of Mercy, the Bell H-13s.”

  “Right. This looks like those radios.” She poked around for a moment. “But I can’t figure out the green light. It’s still flashing.”

  “They. Always copying. Our circuits. Describe.” It was a grunt. This time Gibson did move up and help John ease the load. But there was no way Gibson could hold it by himself. No way for John to move forward and look.

  So she described it. Half homemade bread-board wiring, half circuit board. “There’s technology here I haven’t seen since my Dad’s Huey. The green light isn’t even an LED. It looks like a big, fat Christmas-tree light.”

  “I’d wire it like the Bell 212.”

  Connie cursed under her breath. “I never touched one of those.”

  “The detonation cap is hooked up how? Blue and red to the det cap, green to the frame?”

  “Yes.” She traced them but didn’t touch.

  “Bet the green is loose. Don’t wiggle it. Push it into the clamp on either end.”

  “Still blinking. Oh damn, John, it’s blinking faster. I don’t like this.” She wanted—so much. Somehow she could see so much of it, today, tomorrow, some time, a lot of time. But a blinding light washed across it. She’d wanted. A wash of glaring fire. But now it was too late.

  All was gone but the light of an explosion.

  The light of a burning helicopter tumbling out of the night sky.

  “Connie.”

  Someone was calling her.

  “Connie, goddamn it.”

  “Dad?” A whisper that didn’t even reach her own ears.

  “You aren’t going down the way your father did. You can fix this.”

  She grabbed for a breath.

  John.

  Connie managed to blink the nightmare from her eyes. Saw her hands were still steady on either end of the wire, even if she wasn’t.

  “You with me, girl?”

  “I’m with you, John.” And she was. He was right there. “I’m with you.”

  “Okay.” He blew out a breath hard. “Okay.”

  “The rest of you get the goddamn extra rockets downstairs. Twenty-minute timer on four C4 packs. Go.”

  Connie could feel it get just a little bit easier. John was there. He’d help. Twenty minutes, that was good. They’d either be ten minutes away and moving fast or they’d be in the center of the first nuclear cloud on Eastern Bloc soil since 1990.

  “Talk to me, Johnny.”

  ***

  Emily had almost stroked out when Connie froze with her hands deep inside the bomb.

  “Talk to me, but make it fast.” Connie’s voice was shaky, but it was there.

  That told Emily what she needed to know. If anyone could solve it, they would. If he hadn’t healed her with a word, he’d certainly helped her. Held her with his voice. They were a team. The two of them were far more capable together than either separately.

  Twenty minutes. That made John’s plan completely clear and he was right. Either they’d be clear or blown to hell. Time to really get moving.

  They’d set the excess explosives on the elevator and move them down to the lab, trigger them on a timer, and watch the whole place go up in the ADAS rearview.

  Emily got the others moving the last of the excess weapons onto the elevator. She considered stripping the weapons off the Hind.

  When she leaned down to inspect it, she saw the C4 already planted there. Standard issue. “Nice work, team,” she whispered but didn’t call out because she didn’t dare risk distracting them. Emily had four more in the pouch slung over her shoulder. On her next trip by, she snagged the control from John’s thigh pocket.

  So, there was a reason to smile tonight. Her crew was a step ahead. Right where you wanted them to be.

  They were still talking it through, John and Michael holding the nose cone in place, Connie now up to her elbows inside it.

  Emily ganged a pair of the C4 packs on the floor directly beneath the chopper. It should blow a big hole in the floor. Then the helicopter with all of its weaponry would fall through the hole, taking two, maybe three seconds to reach the lab level. The pack that Connie and John had placed would blow up the helicopter during its fall, so that it was really burning before it blew itself apart. Finally trigger the pile of weaponry in the lab to finish the job. Shouldn’t even be enough left behind to identify any U.S. military goods. Between their weapons and the Hind’s, it was going to be a very hot fire.

  Once the missiles were piled up in the lab, she slapped her last two bricks of C4 right in the middle and ganged them together. Emily quickly keyed in the numbers and set the three timers for twenty minutes.

  She pressed her stopwatch first, then started each of the three in turn. She’d take the extra second of advantage of her stopwatch being a beat ahead of the first explosion.

  Clay was holding two flashlights for the bomb crew. Emily grabbed Gerta and the spare D-boy by the shoulder, and between them they got the load sling rigged. She wanted to be ready to lift the bomb the second it was disarmed. They finished in time to hear John say:

  “Now, take that section of orange wire you just cut out and short it between the high side of the big, fat capacitor on the right and ground. There’s gonna be a hell of a spark.”

  Connie looked at John. But it wasn’t a question.

  It was an answer.

  One that Emily rarely witnessed, even among the most tightly knit flight crews.

  Perfect trust.

  Emily half expected the girl to mouth a good-bye of some sort, but her trust in John was too big for that.

  They nodded in unison, then Connie shoved the wire ends down into the bomb’s innards. A spark of actinic white flashed so brightly that Emily had to shield her eyes and look away.

  Wrong choice!

  But it wasn’t.

  They were still standing there.

  John was the first to laugh, pure relief echoing out into the night.

  Chapter 71

  Connie laughed as John and Michael let the nose cone fall free.

  They all whooped, loudly for a moment, then hushed. Then it built again. The normally reticent D-boys pounded each other on the back. Emily hugged her copilot.

  Gerta gave voice to a deep Russian belly laugh.

  Connie grabbed John even as he flexed his fingers to get the blood moving back into them. She dragged his face down and kissed him a good smack.

  He scooped her into his arms and swung her in a circle until it felt like she was flying.

  She heard the sharp, ripping sound right next to her
ear. A bullet flying through where her head had been a moment before, then a loud, “Thwack!” against the helicopter behind.

  John must have heard it too, because the next thing Connie knew, the air had been slammed from her body and she lay on the hangar floor beside the bomb, beneath John.

  A cry! Under the bomb cart, she could see someone crashing to the ground. Not even raising his hands to catch himself. A brutal slap against the concrete.

  John rose to one knee above her, his rifle lined over the top of the bomb, seeking a target.

  Behind him, Colonel Gibson stood upright, sniper rifle up, night scope casting a green glow across his features.

  Connie could hear each bullet come in. The sharp snap of near misses, the sudden tap of rounds that hit something hard, metal or concrete.

  Another cry. She couldn’t see who.

  She saw Gibson fire a quick double-tap. Then one more.

  She had her pistol out and was rising to kneel beside John, but she heard nothing.

  For a moment, she thought her hearing was gone. That had happened to her once in training. She’d never heard the instructor shout “Stand down!” signaling the end of the exercise because she’d been in full-on combat mode. Sound had become extraneous as she’d focused her mind on the practice of a hostage rescue raid. The instructor had not been pleased at the simulated round in his back.

  But no one else was moving or firing.

  Then she heard Major Beale’s voice, “Crap! Mark is going to be really pissed at me.”

  Chapter 72

  The D-boys were gone into the night. No question who had gotten the shooter. Colonel Gibson had drilled him twice in the heart, once in the forehead.

  A car had arrived unnoticed at the other side of the house. Someone coming back uninvited. Maybe a shift change. Who knew.

  It appeared he came alone, but the D-boys had gone to make sure.

  Connie wrapped the blanket around Clay. She’d have patted his face good-bye, if he’d had one. Two rounds, maybe three, to the back of the head had blown out the other side. Gerta folded the blanket closed. Between them they managed to lift his body into the back of the chopper.

  Then she returned to check on John and the Major. He’d cut a big flap out of the back of Emily Beale’s pants and her underwear.

  “Damn! I liked these pants.”

  “Shut up, Major!” Connie called out. “Quit whining.”

  Connie got back the bark of laughter she’d hoped for. It was hard, bitter, but it was a laugh. That’s what Connie wanted. Needed, because she could see John’s hands shaking. He was the best medic among them, but that someone had shot Major Beale was… wrong. The Major, always invulnerable, the proof that Vengeance would always triumph, had been shot. Blood was dripping down the backs of her legs and staining her pant legs with far too much red.

  The bullet had entered from the side. Thankfully passing through clean. It bled out of the entry and exit wounds, but not hideously. Not arterial. The bullets had been hollow-point. It was the only thing that explained what had happened to Clay. If it had hit the Major’s hip, the bullet would have mushroomed inside her and created a damage path that would leave nothing they could do for her. Instead, a purely meat shot had passed through both buttocks leaving four neat holes.

  As it was, John smeared antiseptic, then a dab of glue to seal each hole. Best they could do in the field. He tapped some cotton patches to keep it clean.

  Major Beale shifted slowly upright, testing her leg, her bandaged butt out in the wind.

  “We need to get out of here,” the Major called out.

  Connie nodded. Even shot up, the Major kept her sense about her. The timers were running. She glanced at them, they didn’t need to be stopped and reset. There was enough time to get gone. The two on the floor still showed twelve minutes.

  So fast. In the last eight minutes, they’d disarmed a nuclear bomb, Clay had died, the Major had been shot and bandaged, and the shooter had been taken down.

  Connie shied away from Clay’s death. They’d all be miserable soon. They’d all been in the services long enough to know the crushing doubt of why the bullet chose the man next to you and the deep guilt that had often made her wish she’d been the one to take the round. Even knowing the cycle wasn’t going to spare her. But the time wasn’t now. After the mission would be time enough for grief and guilt.

  Connie moved in. Pulling the Major’s arm over her shoulders to support the weak side where the bullet had drilled deeper into the muscle, Connie helped her hobble toward the chopper.

  “Can you fly?” The Major’s voice was low, low enough to be private from those around them.

  “I can get around an airfield. No more than that.”

  “Good. That’s more than John. I need a copilot.”

  “Why?” The question slipped out even though it made some sense. Maybe she’d need help on the pedals with a shot-up butt.

  “Because I’ve been a bit dizzy since I got shot in the head at the first airfield. Whacked it again pretty hard just now when I fell. Don’t alarm the others, but I need someone beside me in case it’s a concussion.”

  “You’re alarming me!” Connie tried to keep it light, but that didn’t work so well. She wasn’t even close to qualified to handle a DAP Hawk on a low-level flight across foreign soil. None of them were, other than the Major. And they were probably two hours of hard flying from safety.

  “You’ll do fine, Connie. You may be the most capable woman I’ve ever met.”

  Connie helped the Major up into her seat after she spread a blanket for her to sit on as an extra cushion.

  “After me, that is.”

  Chapter 73

  They clambered aboard the Black Hawk. Gibson stayed down to guide the sling over the bomb and hook on the attachment points. He climbed back up the fast rope more quickly than the most agile squirrel. As if the very devil was on his tail. Or a nuclear bomb.

  The Major called out, “Ten minutes.” And laid down the hammer.

  Connie sat in the left front seat. She could look back between the seats and see John’s back, his hands tight on the handles of the minigun. Colonel Gibson would be sitting directly behind her in Connie’s seat, also watching the side and rear.

  Gerta sat in the cargo bay with the other D-boy. Behind the cargo net lay Clay’s body, forgotten for now.

  Connie returned her attention forward, letting her hands ride lightly on the controls. Getting the feel for it. Even the most mundane action the Major did had something different about it. A nuance, a finesse that made Connie feel less and less competent with each passing moment. Then, as she recognized some of the techniques and she could pretend her hands were making the motions, she grew more confident. Not enough to fly, but enough to help.

  The count rolled down.

  All hell was going to break loose in Ukrainian airspace in about sixty more seconds.

  Fuel was going to be dicey. They’d burned their reserve getting here. If they got into a dogfight, they weren’t going to make the Polish border. Who was she kidding? If they got in a dogfight with her at the weapons controls, they were going to be dead.

  And if they kept moving at this speed, they weren’t going to make it there either. Burning fuel too fast as they pushed ahead just below redline on the turbines.

  But Connie didn’t complain. Until the explosives destroyed the underground factory, farther away was the only place she wanted to be.

  ***

  Connie glanced back inside the helicopter. The D-boy and Gerta were leaning their heads out into the brutal wind. John looked at the stern of the helicopter when she glanced back, clearly studying the ADAS view.

  She spun her control to display straight back.

  Connie saw the flash.

  “Stage one, the floor beneath the chopper,” the Major announced over the intercom.

  Even as she finished speaking, the flash bloomed higher.

  “Stage two, that should now be a flaming Hind Mi-24 fal
ling through the hole.”

  Then a blaze of light roiled upward obliterating the darkness, momentarily overloading the ADAS cameras.

  For a moment Connie feared there’d been another nuke that they’d missed and just triggered.

  “And that, ladies and gentlemen,” the Major sounded very pleased with herself, “is two hundred pounds of good American explosive and half that again of Russian helicopter. And that’s not counting the fuel in the chopper or the missiles. Hope you enjoy the flight. Tonight’s forecast is for smooth sailing and low turbulence. Because if we don’t have that, we’re going to run out of fuel and fall out of the sky with a nuclear weapon strapped to our belly.”

  They saw the occasional jet or helicopter flying high and fast toward the explosion. But not one of them noticed the DAP Hawk, blacked out and running silent in the other direction while carrying a nuclear weapon ten feet off the ground.

  Chapter 74

  Connie couldn’t remember the last hour of the flight. She knew that forevermore it would be a hazy time of high adrenaline and near panic. As they’d moved through the Ukraine wilderness, she slowly picked up more and more of the flying. Not good enough to do it on her own, but she was doing the heavy motions and Major Beale the finer tweaks.

  It felt like some maddening video game. At best-fuel cruise speed of one hundred and fifty knots, trees, houses, whole hills popped up in endless, mind-numbing succession. An unending slalom, every object requiring instant attention because at less than a hundred feet up, they were constantly less than a second from becoming a hole in the ground. One thing for sure, Connie knew she hadn’t been built to be a combat pilot. Ever.

  She’d tried speaking to the Major, but that distracted them both. Their communication was completely silent, transmitted from control stick to control stick, from woman to woman.

  Connie felt the trust grow with the flight. The Major was letting her do more and more, but was always there to correct before her missteps became too dangerous.

  The last fifty miles, Connie had also been holding hard to keep the Major from overcompensating on her corrections. A strong hand to steady the increasingly erratic shifts Connie could feel through the controls, see through the ADAS display.