Together, they settled softly by the refueling truck.
She called over to the CSAR craft and the crew swarmed toward Vengeance.
Connie only had a moment with the Major before she was lifted out and onto a stretcher. They’d stripped off their helmets and looked at each other.
Emily’s face was white as paper, her eyes blinking constantly for focus and sweat running freely off her brow.
“We there?”
“We’re there, Major.”
She snaked out a hand, pulled Connie over by the lifting ring on the front of her vest. She kissed Connie on top of the head.
“You done good, Connie. You got us home.”
“No, you did, Major.” Then they took her away. “No, you did, Emily.” The name felt right even though there was no one to hear her. Emily Beale had gotten them home, shot up, and probably with a concussion, but she’d done it.
And Connie had sure helped. She’d “done good.” Having a woman she respected and liked as much as Emily Beale say that was quite something. Connie would be holding that close for a long time.
“Hey, y’all.”
Connie startled as the long, slender brunette from the CSAR team swung into the Major’s seat. Her smile was huge and bright. Perfect teeth in a magazine-ad face. No wonder Tim had been so gob-smacked by her. She was stunning.
“You gonna fly us home?”
“I, uh…” Connie stumbled on the words, knocked back a bit by all the cheerful energy that suddenly filled the seat of the quiet and thoughtful woman who just might be becoming her friend. “I can’t fly.”
“Not what the Major says. She says you did great. Willing to fly copilot for me, too?” She stuck out a hand, not waiting for an answer. Her hands were fine but her grip was Army strong. “Lola LaRue. I know. Couldn’t you just die? My daddy always joked that he’d hoped I’d grow up to be a stripper. Men are such jerks.”
Connie knew one man who wasn’t a jerk. Not by a long stretch.
“It’s gonna take them a good twenty minutes to fuel us up if you wanna go stretch your legs. I haven’t flown the DAP in a while, so I’m gonna check some things over if you want a break.”
Connie released the harness and stepped down, her legs nearly folding under her.
Colonel Gibson stood close by her, doing something to the satellite phone they’d used.
“Nice job, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir.” Connie wondered how much more undeserved praise she’d get over this before she could stop it. “What are you doing there?”
“Making a copy.” He slid an adapter into the phone and two green lights started blinking. When it stopped, he pulled off the adapter, unplugged a small USB drive, and handed her the phone.
“I’m sure Dr. Williams will want the full-res images on this.”
She slipped the phone into a pocket. “Who gets the copy?”
“The President did mention that it would be awful if a copy of these images fell into the hands of someone, perhaps the Polish Army, along with instructions to leak the images. It just might help our Ukrainian friend find his way to power. The President felt we would owe him that if we retrieved the bombs.”
Connie nodded. “The President is a good man.”
Gibson nodded. “I heard you say your father went down in the service.”
“Yes, sir. Sergeant Ron Davis, Screaming Eagles.”
“Well, you did him proud today.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Gibson moved a few steps away, then stopped abruptly and turned back to face her.
“When did your father die?”
“His chopper burned just over ten years ago.”
Colonel Gibson looked at her closely.
“Burned.” He left the word in the air between them.
“That’s what I was told. Crashed and burned, no remains.”
The Colonel looked off into the night for a long moment. In profile, the soft light from the refueling operation revealed a soldier old beyond his years. One who had fought too many battles, seen too many friends die.
Then he glanced around before indicating she should follow him into the darkness away from the others.
She could see John coming over, but she sent him a hand signal to stay back. Colonel Gibson was clearly not interested in a crowd, no matter how much she just wanted to curl up in John’s arms and let the shakes of nerves and adrenaline roll through her.
Gibson moved quietly and evenly. She idly wondered if dance was part of a Delta operator’s training. His motions were so smooth that the frozen grass barely moved.
Twenty paces from the chopper, they turned to watch the CSAR bird carrying Emily Beale lift off and head north into the night.
“Sergeant First Class Davis?”
She almost corrected him. She was sergeant, but not first class.
“Oh, yes. He was my father.”
“Request permission to shake your hand, Sergeant. I didn’t know. I should have seen it.”
Connie held out her hand but barely returned a proper handshake in her confusion.
“It is an honor and a privilege to fly with your father’s daughter.”
Her expression must have revealed her bewilderment.
Again he gazed off into the night for a moment before reaching some decision and refocusing his attention on her.
“I was on his last flight. We went down hard. And dirty. Where doesn’t matter, but it was very, very unfriendly.”
He looked up and over her shoulder, watching a different place. A different time.
“My squadmate was dead, along with the copilot. The pilot was out with a nasty head wound, and with my broken leg I wasn’t going anywhere too quickly. Your father hid us and walked out. Two days later, long after I assumed we were going to end up dead, a farmer’s truck rattled up and he waved us aboard.
“Your father got us out. What we didn’t know was that he was shot up worse than any of us. Dead from internal damage before we reached the border. He stayed alive long enough to save our lives, no matter what it cost him. Maybe he knew he was dead already and was simply too stubborn or dedicated to die until he got us out safe. He didn’t burn, ma’am. He went down standing tall.”
The Colonel refocused on her. He snapped a sharp salute.
“An honor and a privilege, ma’am.”
Connie numbly returned the salute.
He tossed the USB lightly in the palm of his hand. “I’d better go make sure this accidentally falls into the wrong hands.” Then, he moved away into the night with his light, dancer’s step.
Connie’s knees finally let go and she sat down on the frozen grass with a soft crunch.
John moseyed up and sat down beside her. Just a breath of night air between their shoulders. Quiet. The way he was sometimes. When he was happiest.
When he was with her.
Where was she happiest? Flying in her father’s footsteps? That had shifted tonight. Not when Colonel Gibson finally answered the long-lost question of how her father had died. That was good to know, good to finally put to rest, but seemed less important than she thought it would be when she had imagined discovering the truth a thousand times over the years.
No. The moment when it all had shifted had been standing in the hangar of a Ukrainian bomb factory. It had been in that moment. Facing death. With her fingers in the heart of a nuclear bomb. When the least mistake would bring the death she’d always expected. Make it all finally come true forever after.
But then she’d looked up and seen John’s face.
She’d seen another woman.
Another Connie.
She’d seen the one loved by a man. The one that someday would bear his children. And while she watched their grandchildren lie in his strong arms, Connie and Noreen would look at the fifty-year coin, now a hundred years old. The coin Connie still had buttoned in her pocket.
She had seen herself with a future. With John.
Clay might be gone. But she was alive.<
br />
Connie pushed to her feet and dusted her hands together, brushing the bits of grass to the ground.
“Yes, by the way.” And she strode off toward the chopper.
“Huh? Yes, what?” John stumbled to his feet and came after her.
“The answer is yes, I will marry you.”
She got three more strides, two more than she expected, before he grabbed her arm and spun her back to face him.
“You will?”
“Of course I will. I love you, John.”
His eyes rolled closed as he pulled her against his chest. That broad, marvelous chest.
She heard the pilot call that they were ready to go.
“And, John…”
“Yes?”
She got a step clear, partly turned away on her heel.
“I will bear your children.”
The stunned look that flowed over his face told her that her work here was done. It put a real bounce in her step as she returned to help fly the chopper home.
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About the Author
M.L. Buchman began writing novels on July 22, 1993, while on a plane from Korea to ride a bicycle across the Australian Outback. M.L. has been a substitute instructor for the University of Washington’s Certificate in Commercial Fiction program and spoken at dozens of conferences, including RWA national and BookExpo. Past lives include: renovating a fifty-foot sailboat, fifteen years in corporate computer-systems design, bicycling solo around the world, developing maps for a national franchise, and designing roof trusses, in roughly that order. M.L. and family live on an island in the Pacific Northwest in a solar-powered home of their own design.
“To Champion the Human Spirit, Celebrate the Power of Joy, and Revel in the Wonder of Love.”
M.L.’s website: www.mlbuchman.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
About the Author
Back Cover
Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) Page 29
