Love Behind the Lines

by M. L. Buchman

  Dinner was a strange and surreal affair. Manny’s role was pretending to be a foreign correspondent, a Canadian who had somehow finagled a visa into an area where no press were allowed. Except he knew nothing about being a reporter and his one trip to Canada had been a drunk weekend during the Stanley Cup hockey playoffs between the New York Rangers and the Montréal Canadiens.

  The bait they’d dangled to get Lesia to the meal had been vague hints that Manny was only posing as a Canadian reporter and was actually Alisa’s “big” contact. A next-tier intelligence coup that Lesia would be unable to resist. So unable to resist, that she’d brought the general along to share in the glory. Perhaps if she delivered both US agents, the unmentioned wife would become powerless and the beautiful Lesia would gain the Mrs. General prize.

  Throughout the meal, Alisa teased and flirted outrageously. Rather than playing footsie under the table, as would fit the events going on above the table, she kept a constant hard pressure of her leg wrapped about his. He could tell her nerves were stretched right near the breaking point, almost as badly as the woman he’d met three days ago—drunk and dressed as a man.

  But rather than showing it, she was magnificent. Sparkling, downright effervescent, and damned fun despite the crazy situation.

  Not surprisingly, the dinner topic that he and Vlad landed on was helicopters. As long as that was the topic, Manny could pretend to be a war correspondent who knew about helicopters from various embeds he’d done with forward teams.

  It took a while for Manny to realize that Vlad was out of the loop here. He was just under the impression that he was having a lively dinner with one of his mistress’ friends. And he definitely liked Alisa. So much so that Manny was forced to pay more and more attention to the mistress so that she didn’t become angry.

  Then Alisa let slip that Manny had flown helicopters himself.

  Military ones.

  What the hell? He didn’t catch on to what she could possibly be thinking until she nodded ever so slightly toward the general, at the same moment she kicked him sharply under the table.

  After that the conversation shifted. He and General Vlad Kozlov were suddenly best buddies and soon Manny was dancing around the edges of what technologic insights he could share without violating his own Top Secret clearance.

  And Lesia was, in his amateur-reporter opinion, no master spy. However, she was a very drunk one and was soon swept up in the chatter of their lively evening.

  10

  Alisa hung on for the wild and drunken ride to Kacha Airbase. It turned out that nothing would do, after a little coaxing and a few teasing suggestions on her own part, except for General Vlad Kozlov to show Manny the latest technology out of Russia. It had just arrived and he was very proud of having it under his local command.

  “I am only Ukrainian general that Russians keep,” he’d boasted. “They trust me very much. I am most important Ukrainian man in Crimea military.”

  Thankfully being a major general also earned him a driver, a silent and sober man able to escort them safely across the twenty-kilometer transit from the restaurant to the base. The general was certainly in no condition to drive. He and Manny were singing together in some terrible mixture of three languages.

  “It is beautiful machine. It will make Americans sick it so good,” the general slipped back and forth between Ukrainian and Russian making his speech broken and slurred. Lesia was even worse off.

  Alisa—she had to stay solidly in her Alisa mode just a while longer—wished she could drag Manny aside. First, she’d kiss him for being so magnificent at dinner. Truth be told, she couldn’t wait to jump him. She’d been scared to death, but Manny had been so calm and smooth that everything had worked…so far.

  That was the second thing she wanted to do: drag Manny aside and ask, “What the hell are we doing?” Any remnants of their original plan had been cleared off the table along with the tabak börek dumplings with broth and long before the arrival of the pennik apricot pie and the third bottle of Massandra wine—served with lots of vodka on the side.

  Of course Manny was too sotted to answer. More than once he’d groped Lesia’s breast instead of her own. It was ironic, considering how they’d met, that she was the only one still sober enough to care about such things.

  But before she could collect her thoughts more than to recognize that the hand on her knee and working its way up her skirt was not Manny’s, they arrived at the airbase.

  Reacting to steadfast refusal on Manny’s part, the general soon forced him into the pilot’s seat then sat beside him in the copilot’s seat. She and Lesia were placed close behind them at the engineering stations.

  “This,” Vlad slapped the top of the central console. “This is a Kamov Ka-35 Airborne Early Warning platform. With this, we can see ballistic missile, submarine launch, ship launch, American helicopter…” He nudged Manny with an elbow and apparently thought he was lowering his voice, though he wasn’t. “We can even see what our women would hide from us but is there for a man’s taking. Da? Da?”

  “Yes!” Manny agreed with a fist pump.

  The general tried to copy the gesture but was so drunk that he cracked his elbow hard on the door. Lesia had passed out in her seat.

  “Should we take it up for a test?” Manny asked in an oddly meek tone, then he turned and winked at her—very soberly.

  Take it up for a… Oh my god! Manny was brilliant. The newest Russian technology could take them out of Crimea…and it would be a major coup to deliver it to the American technicians for study. There wouldn’t even be any political fallout as it would look like the general and his mistress were defecting. If this worked, the Americans would also get everything Lesia and Vlad knew.

  Manny winked again and nodded toward the general.

  Oh!

  “Please, Vlad,” Alisa poured all the begging she could into her voice. She leaned forward between the pilots’ seats far enough to press a breast against his arm and pawed at his chest. “Please, Vlad. Let me see her fly!”

  “Zroby tse!” The general commanded with a broad wave of his arm that clipped Manny with a solid punch. “Do it! Da, go!” Then he shouted confidentially to Manny, “We shall show both these wenches many fine things tonight.”

  And Manny began cycling up the helicopter. As soon as the radios blinked to life, he spoke to the general.

  “You better tell the tower we’re taking it out. So they don’t shoot us down.” He said it like the funniest joke in the world and Vlad roared with laughter.

  “Yes! Yes! Good idea!”

  Then Alisa had another idea and once more held tightly onto the general’s arm, “Take us over the water. I want to see the moonlight on the Black Sea. It’s so romantic, Vlad. Tell them that, too.”

  And the general did.

  11

  “This is Lieutenant Manfred Malcolm. Are we a go?”

  “Roger that,” the Air Mission Commander called out. “We’re a go.”

  “This should be a quick one, if we can trust intel,” Manny called back, knowing exactly who had done the background research for the mission.

  “Damn straight you can, Mr. Lieutenant Manny!” Mila’s tone was teasing as she cut into the radio circuit. Her language had become as rough as his own. It sounded good on her, brash and full of life.

  He knew he could trust her. Over the last six months she’d proven herself every bit as sharp as she was beautiful.

  “And you make it quick. No three-day holiday in Crimea this time. We have wedding tomorrow. I may be single woman going up this aisle, but I will be married woman walking back down this aisle. That, or you will not be walking so good. Da?”

  “Whatever you say, Duchess.” He yanked up on the collective and shoved the cyclic forward to lay the hammer down hard. “On my way.”

  About the Author

  M. L. Buchman has over 50 nov
els and 30 short stories in print. His military romantic suspense books have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the year” and twice Booklist “Top 10 of the Year,” placing two titles on their “Top 101 Romances of the Last 10 Years” list. He has been nominated for the Reviewer’s Choice Award for “Top 10 Romantic Suspense of the Year” by RT Book Reviews and was a 2016 RWA RITA finalist. In addition to romance, he also writes thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction.

  In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world.

  He is now making his living as a full-time writer on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife. He is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing by subscribing to his newsletter at www.mlbuchman.com.

  If you enjoyed this story, you might also enjoy:

  Target of the Heart (excerpt) -a Night Stalkers 5E novel-

  Major Pete Napier hovered his MH-47G Chinook helicopter ten kilometers outside of Lhasa, Tibet and a mere two inches off the tundra. A mixed action team of Delta Force and The Activity—the slipperiest intel group on the planet—flung themselves aboard.

  The additional load sent an infinitesimal shift in the cyclic control in his right hand. The hydraulics to close the rear loading ramp hummed through the entire frame of the massive helicopter. By the time his crew chief could reach forward to slap an “all secure” signal against his shoulder, they were already ten feet up and fifty out. That was enough altitude. He kept the nose down as he clawed for speed in the thin air at eleven thousand feet.

  “Totally worth it,” one of the D-boys announced as soon as he was on the Chinook’s internal intercom.

  He’d have to remember to tell that to the two Black Hawks flying guard for him…when they were in a friendly country and could risk a radio transmission. This deep inside China—or rather Chinese-held territory as the CIA’s mission-briefing spook had insisted on calling it—radios attracted attention and were only used to avoid imminent death and destruction.

  “Great, now I just need to get us out of this alive.”

  “Do that, Pete. We’d appreciate it.”

  He wished to hell he had a stealth bird like the one that had gone into bin Laden’s compound. But the one that had crashed during that raid had been blown up. Where there was one, there were always two, but the second had gone back into hiding as thoroughly as if it had never existed. He hadn’t heard a word about it since.

  The Tibetan terrain was amazing, even if all he could see of it was the monochromatic green of night vision. And blackness. The largest city in Tibet lay a mere ten kilometers away and they were flying over barren wilderness. He could crash out here and no one would know for decades unless some yak herder stumbled upon them. Or were yaks in Mongolia? He was a corn-fed, white boy from Colorado, what did he know about Tibet? Most of the countries he’d flown into on black ops missions he’d only seen at night anyway.

  While moving very, very fast.

  Like now.

  The inside of his visor was painted with overlapping readouts. A pre-defined terrain map, the best that modern satellite imaging could build made the first layer. This wasn’t some crappy, on-line, look-at-a-picture-of-your-house display. Someone had a pile of dung outside their goat pen? He could see it, tell you how high it was, and probably say if they were pygmy goats or full-size LaManchas by the size of their shit-pellets if he zoomed in.

  On top of that were projected the forward-looking infrared camera images. The FLIR imaging gave him a real-time overlay, in case someone had put an addition onto their goat shed since the last satellite pass, or parked their tractor across his intended flight path.

  His nervous system was paying autonomic attention to that combined landscape. He also compensated for the thin air at altitude as he instinctively chose when to start his climb over said goat shed or his swerve around it.

  It was the third layer, the tactical display that had most of his attention. At least he and the two Black Hawks flying escort on him were finally on the move.

  To insert this deep into Tibet, without passing over Bhutan or Nepal, they’d had to add wingtanks on the Black Hawks’ hardpoints where he’d much rather have a couple banks of Hellfire missiles. Still, they had 20mm chain guns and the crew chiefs had miniguns which was some comfort.

  While the action team was busy infiltrating the capital city and gathering intelligence on the particularly brutal Chinese assistant administrator, he and his crews had been squatting out in the wilderness under a camouflage net designed to make his helo look like just another god-forsaken Himalayan lump of granite.

  Command had determined that it was better for the helos to wait on site through the day than risk flying out and back in. He and his crew had stood shifts on guard duty, but none of them had slept. They’d been flying together too long to have any new jokes, so they’d played a lot of cribbage. He’d long ago ruled no gambling on a mission, after a fistfight had broken out about a bluff hand that cost a Marine three hundred and forty-seven dollars. Marines hated losing to Army no matter how many times it happened. They’d had to sit on him for a long time before he calmed down.

  Tonight’s mission was part of an on-going campaign to discredit the Chinese “presence” in Tibet on the international stage—as if occupying the country the last sixty years didn’t count toward ruling, whether invited or not. As usual, there was a crucial vote coming up at the U.N.—that, as usual, the Chinese could be guaranteed to ignore. However, the ever-hopeful CIA was in a hurry to make sure that any damaging information that they could validate was disseminated as thoroughly as possible prior to the vote.

  Not his concern.

  His concern was, were they going to pass over some Chinese sentry post at their top speed of a hundred and ninety-six miles an hour? The sentries would then call down a couple Shenyang J-16 jet fighters that could hustle along at Mach 2 to fry his sorry ass. He knew there was a pair of them parked at Lhasa along with some older gear that would be just as effective against his three helos.

  “Don’t suppose you could get a move on, Pete?”

  “Eat shit, Nicolai!” He was a good man to have as a copilot. Pete knew he was holding on too tight, and Nicolai knew that a joke was the right way to ease the moment.

  He, Nicolai, and the four pilots in the two Black Hawks had a long way to go tonight and he’d never make it if he stayed so tight on the controls that he could barely maneuver. Pete eased off and felt his fingers tingle with the rush of returning blood. They dove down into gorges and followed them as long as they dared. They hugged cliff walls at every opportunity to decrease their radar profile. And they climbed.

  That was the true danger—they would be up near the helos’ limits when they crossed over the backbone of the Himalayas in their rush for India. The air was so rarefied that they burned fuel at a prodigious rate. Their reserve didn’t allow for any extended battles while crossing the border…not for any battle at all really.

  # # #

  It was pitch dark outside her helicopter when Captain Danielle Delacroix stamped on the left rudder pedal while giving the big Chinook right-directed control on the cyclic. It tipped her most of the way onto her side, but let her continue in a straight line. A Chinook’s rotors were sixty feet across—front to back they overlapped to make the spread a hundred feet long. By cross-controlling her bird to tip it, she managed to execute a straight line between two mock pylons only thirty feet apart. They were made of thin cloth so they wouldn’t down the helo if you sliced one—she was the only trainee to not have cut one yet.

  At her current angle of attack, she took up less than a half-rotor of width, just twenty-four feet. That left her nearly three feet to either side, sufficient as she was moving at under a hundred knots.

 
The training instructor sitting beside her in the copilot’s seat didn’t react as she swooped through the training course at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Only child of a single mother, she was used to providing her own feedback loops, so she didn’t expect anything else. Those who expected outside validation rarely survived the SOAR induction testing, never mind the two years of training that followed.

  As a loner kid, Danielle had learned that self-motivated congratulations and fun were much easier to come by than external ones. She’d spent innumerable hours deep in her mind as a pre-teen superheroine. At twenty-nine she was well on her way to becoming a real life one, though Helo-girl had never been a character she’d thought of in her youth.

  External validation or not, after two years of training with the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment she was ready for some action. At least she was convinced that she was. But the trainers of Fort Campbell, Kentucky had not signed off on anyone in her trainee class yet. Nor had they given any hint of when they might.

  She ducked ten tons of racing Chinook under a bridge and bounced into a near vertical climb to clear the power line on the far side. Like a ride on the toboggan at Terrassee Dufferin during Le Carnaval de Québec, only with five thousand horsepower at her fingertips. Using her Army signing bonus—the first money in her life that was truly hers—to attend Le Carnaval had been her one trip back to her birthplace since her mother took them to America when she was ten.

  To even apply to SOAR required five years of prior military rotorcraft experience. She had applied after seven years because of a chance encounter—or rather what she’d thought was a chance encounter at the time.

  Captain Justin Roberts had been a top Chinook pilot, the one who had convinced her to switch from her beloved Black Hawk and try out the massive twin-rotor craft. One flight and she’d been a goner, begging her commander until he gave in and let her cross over to the new platform. Justin had made the jump from the 10th Mountain Division to the 160th SOAR not long after that.