Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers)

by Buchman, M. L.

  Lola unfolded from her low squat to full height and stared down at the diminutive woman. Lola considered slamming Kee to the hardpan for sheer bad attitude or failure to respect rank. But that wouldn’t solve whatever was eating at her.

  “Personally, S—” She bit off the Sergeant’s rank before she could put that between them and managed to substitute the woman’s name. “Stevenson, I don’t know what the hell you have against me.” And she didn’t give a good goddamn either.

  But she did.

  A couple of red work-lights had been set to shine across the camp. They weren’t bright, but just strong enough so the crews could see what they were doing without totally destroying their night vision. The work-lights turned the white salt into a plain of blood, the perfect place to square off. It was past eleven o’clock at night, and they were to be airborne in ten more minutes. More than long enough to hash this out.

  Taking the approach she’d like to, busting the woman a good one in the face, wouldn’t do a damn thing to help build a team. Was this another Major Beale test? Had she put Kee up to this? No, the Sergeant’s dislike of Lola was genuine and deep.

  Stevenson’s straight finger jabbed Lola’s breastbone hard enough to really hurt.

  Lola grabbed Kee’s hand, barely fast enough. The woman was quick, but Lola was faster. She bent the wrist backward against a nerve point she found with her index finger. The woman showed no sign of the pain, which must be excruciating. Lola held it a moment longer to prove her point before tossing the hand free as if it were no threat, though the center of her chest still throbbed where she could feel a bruise forming.

  “You think I don’t see what you’re doing.” Kee was actually snarling. “Well, you’re wrong. I grew up on the street. I know your type. You leave Tim alone. He’s too good a man for the likes of you.”

  Leave Tim alone? They were friends. What more was she talking about?

  “You’re just like a girl I knew, black-widow chick named Shasta. Called men with a wave of her hips and then crushed any hope and life out of them. So I’ll only warn you once—stay the hell clear of Maloney, or a stray round just might find you some day when you least expect it.”

  Lola felt that blow harder than any physical jab. This was one of the Army’s top snipers, she could be a mile away when she pulled the trigger to end Lola’s life with no one the wiser.

  That she could have the woman court-martialed for the threat didn’t make it any less real.

  But that wasn’t the reaction Lola could feel boiling up inside her. A rage built from deep down. Deeper than the place that had driven her to the Army, from as deep as the misery of her childhood.

  Lola snagged a chunk of Kee’s hair, a dyed blond streak now devil-red beneath the worklights, and wrapped it in her fist, putting enough of a twist on it that she could keep the Sergeant still as she leaned in until their noses were inches apart.

  And her anger poured forth not as a shout, but rather as little more than a tight whisper.

  “What’s eating at you, Sergeant?” This time she used the title with all of the derision she could lay into it. “Isn’t what’s between Tim and me that’s eating you, which if you had a goddamn brain you’d see was just friendship. I like him. And that’s all.”

  Kee’s glare despite the pain in her scalp told Lola that the Sergeant didn’t believe a word of it. But there was more.

  “No.” Lola twisted harder, bringing tears to the Sergeant’s narrowed eyes as she leveraged the hank of hair harder.

  “What’s eating at you is that Major Beale thinks I can do the goddamn job. How long did it take you to prove yourself to her? How long did it take Connie? Bet I’ve got both your asses beat because I’m just that damned good. And that must just grind your soul.”

  A flicker in the woman’s eyes told her she’d struck home. Lola hadn’t even known what she’d been going to say before she started, but now she got it. The Major was treating Lola far better than she had started with Kee Stevenson or Connie Davis. If this was better, the Major must have put them through hell.

  Her anger drained away. She shoved Kee away, not using her hair as a lever to do so. The woman staggered aside but didn’t come back at her.

  Lola, who’d finally decided not to be the outsider, had become just that because for the first time in her life she’d really and truly cared about something. She’d committed to SOAR and to Major Emily Beale.

  And it didn’t feel any damn better than before when she hadn’t committed to anything.

  Chapter 18

  Lola kept an eye out on the nighttime desert streaking by close below. Low and fast, they flew into the night, racing back to Ravar. They were fully fueled by the Chinooks and, unlike the unfortunates of Operation Eagle Claw, had not overflown a single vehicle or through any sandstorms. Now something was bound to go wrong. Had to.

  The desert had been clean when they left. No sign of their stay in the heart of Iran other than Tim’s damn backgammon board.

  Crap!

  She’d been so pissed at Kee that she’d forgotten and left the playing pieces on the salt pan. For half a moment she considered turning back to get them, knowing such a thing was impossible, foolish, and dangerous combined. Someday, would a desert nomad pick up those six American quarters and wonder how they’d come to be there scattered among little bits of hardware? She hoped so. It would make up a little for their loss.

  God. Damn. Kee. Stevenson.

  There was nothing between her and Tim. That she knew for sure.

  And if she didn’t get her head back in the game, Major Beale would make her life even more hellish than it already was.

  Consciously she unfolded each finger from the cyclic control. Shook out each muscle. Calmed her thoughts and focused once more on the empty desert. One secret of being a top pilot: staying loose and flexible, always able to react, always ready to act.

  She thought about the woman seated just two feet behind her through a layer of Kevlar armor that wrapped around Lola’s seat.

  The second secret of a great pilot was never losing sight of your enemies.

  Ever.

  Kee Stevenson, you I’ve got on my radar!

  ***

  Lola was slipping along at twenty knots, going backwards.

  She’d picked up a visual on the D-boys barely two kilometers out from the rendezvous. As DAP Hawk pilots, she and Major Beale had the job of providing protective cover. Viper flew at the far side of the two Chinooks, making sure the road ahead stayed clear.

  So she and the Major let the D-boys go by and were now flying backwards behind them and their electric bicycles that were moving at almost thirty miles per hour.

  Lola swallowed hard. Only five of them. Two days ago they’d dropped off six men. There was no possibility of carrying a body on their rigs, so someone was still back there in the desert, and it was only safe to assume the worst.

  Letting the rotor wash wipe all tracks from the dirt road, she kept an eye down the road.

  And there, far down the narrow bit of path across the trackless waste, almost lost in the dark, rose a plume of dust. A plume that was coming on fast.

  A quick selection on the camera system that fed the image to her helmet visor, and she glanced directly behind. It showed the hovering Chinook, tail ramp down on the road, but nothing else touching the earth. The first of the five bikes shot aboard. There would be no mark that they’d been there, the road dusted clear by the DAP Hawk’s rotor downwash.

  And up ahead, the lone, distant plume shot ahead faster.

  “Major.” There was no way Beale could miss it in the hyper-awareness they all had at a moment like this.

  “Roger, keep on it.”

  That meant the Major was paying more attention to what was happening below and behind them with the recovery of the five surviving operators, and leaving Lola to focus on the onc
oming problem.

  She started to turn the chopper to port to expose the starboard-side gunner to the target. Connie’s minigun could be more tactical and selective than the forward weapons under Lola’s control.

  “No. Kee.”

  Lola dutifully began to slew the chopper the other way to turn Kee Stevenson face-on to the oncoming threats no matter how she felt about the woman. What was important now was the mission, and she’d trust Major Beale’s knowledge of her own crew.

  As they faced momentarily head-on down the road, Lola noticed a second dust plume through the darkness of the night. She loved these new cameras on the DAP Hawks. Far better than the old, green night-vision.

  The first plume resolved itself into a single vehicle, the second into a string of three or four. And they were gaining ground on the first vehicle, an aging Iranian van.

  “Any bets on D-boy six?”

  They hovered for three long seconds while the Major considered if the lead vehicle, which they could now see had a sole occupant, might be the missing Delta Force operator.

  Beale keyed her mike. “Letting one through the gate. Betting it’s Michael.”

  Michael who? But Lola was too busy to take the time to ask. Oh, right. The colonel with the scar on his jaw.

  “Roger that,” Viper answered. He flew on patrol ahead of the big Chinook but would now be swinging in to check out the vehicle they let roar by beneath them.

  Lola finished the swing to turn Kee toward the oncoming string of vehicles.

  “Keep it quiet,” the Major ordered.

  Lola felt a small mechanical sound transmitted through the back of her seat. She’d noticed the rifle case mounted there but hadn’t thought much about it. Kee must be opening it now.

  A sniper. Kee might be a bloody bitch, but Tim had said she was also one of the highest ranked sharpshooters in the Army, male or otherwise. Somehow Lola hadn’t connected that skill to the case behind her.

  Lola counted to five to give Kee time to get ready, then slid into a stable hover, high enough to not roil the dust and low enough to hopefully stay off any radar.

  That gave her an idea.

  With their lights out, the helicopters would still be invisible to approaching vehicles. And with their truck engines roaring, the quieted helicopters would be inaudible as well.

  “Hold,” Lola called over the intercom.

  Leaving a vehicle with a bullet through someone’s forehead wasn’t exactly the subtlest action when invading a foreign country you never wanted to admit to entering.

  Lola slid sideways until she was over the dusty desert rather than the paved road. She shoved the collective down with her left hand, cranking the throttle wide open as she did so, until she was ten feet above the road. She jerked the control back up and the rotor blades groaned. They stopped the chopper’s descent barely a foot above the dirt surface.

  Dust bloomed upward around them. An impenetrable wall rose thirty feet or more into the air.

  Now, between the oncoming vehicle and the D-boys rolling aboard the Chinook was a shield of invisibility hundreds of feet across. Even a brave driver wasn’t likely to go into a desert dust storm. Or to make it through if he tried. He’d be driving totally blind and could follow the road only by a guess. And best of all, in the dark of the night, he’d have no way to tell that it wasn’t a natural dust storm.

  She held the hover another ten seconds, expanding the cloud by pumping up more dust, before pulling back enough to rise through the center of her own maelstrom. She had to watch the instruments closely. For the moment, she was as blind as her adversaries.

  Sideslipping the chopper, she was soon in the clear. A line of vehicles approached the cloud from one side, the flight of choppers and D-boys hidden on the other side by dust and darkness. Then she spun to give Sergeant Kee the best possible view of the truck they’d let through.

  A glance toward the Chinooks revealed the lone driver flashing a thumbs-up, then roaring up the ramp of the hovering Chinook.

  The monstrous bird lumbered aloft even before it started closing the ramp.

  Lola twisted back to watch the dust cloud and continued to backpedal into the night. Vengeance was the trailing bird as the whole flight turned perpendicular to the road and aimed for the border.

  By the time they reached the first rise, still no one had come through the dust cloud.

  Just as they cleared the top to slip down the backside, one vehicle showed in the slowly dispersing cloud.

  Well off the road, mired, and rolled onto its side in the sand.

  Lola slid over the top of the rise and down the far side.

  They were gone.

  They’d never been there.

  They were the U.S. Army’s Night Stalkers.

  Lola had one clear thought as she turned to follow the others back to friendlier places.

  Flying with SOAR was a seriously cool thing for a girl to do.

  Chapter 19

  By the time they reached Bati, Tim was hammered-down tired. They hadn’t stopped at their outbound camp in southwestern Afghanistan as planned. The D-boys made it clear that wasn’t an option. No explanations, but no landings allowed. So they flew through the night and the morning into early afternoon.

  Once out of Iran, the first of three KC-135 Stratotankers fell in with them. Three midair refuelings and fourteen hours of flight at the end of four mostly sleepless days.

  After landing at Bati, Tim stumbled out of the Viper, felt the earth solid beneath him, and just stood. The ground buzzed through his boots because his foot nerves hadn’t yet figured out they were no longer on a vibrating helicopter.

  Major Henderson climbed out beside him and stumbled to a halt with a low curse.

  Tim rolled his own shoulders and cursed right along with the Major. He could hear his joints popping as he flexed and twisted to loosen his back and neck.

  The women in the next chopper over didn’t look all that much happier. Connie climbed down and, for the first time in his memory, didn’t start checking the helicopter first. She simply sat down on the dirt and hung her head, clearly too tired to even pull off her helmet. Kee stepped down to the earth, but then just lay over backward until she stretched prostrate on the cargo bay deck of the Vengeance.

  John gave Tim no wallop as he staggered by. He simply sagged to the ground beside his wife and began peeling off her helmet for her. When he finished, he dropped it in his lap, clearly too tired to realize he still wore his own.

  Tim managed to get his feet working. As he walked by, he tapped John on his helmet so that the man didn’t fall asleep while still wearing the thing.

  Lola still hadn’t opened her door. He stepped into the shadow cast by the weapons pylons, a cool relief. Seen through sunlight-adapted eyes, the helicopter’s interior was almost black. He blinked for a moment to help his eyes adjust, but it didn’t help. They’d arrived well into midday and the light was blinding despite his shades.

  A sudden image of Lola passed out in her seat, half choked on her seat belt, had him yanking open the door.

  She had her helmet off, had clearly scrubbed her fingers through her hair so it bloomed about her face in a lush brown halo mostly hiding her face. She was finishing the shutdown checklist. Captain Richardson was probably doing the same thing for Viper.

  She finished, cleared the checklist from the main screen on the dashboard, and shut down the main power.

  Tim stepped aside, back into the blinding sun, and held the door as she clambered down. Even in the bulk of a fire-retardant flight suit, with a layer of Kevlar armor slid into the special lining, her legs just went on forever.

  He stood, holding open the door and weaving. Not sure what to do next, his mind so muddled he couldn’t think. The midday heat hammered against his brain until salty sweat dripped down and stung his eyes before evaporating into the impossibly
dry air.

  She slipped off the FN SCAR carbine that they each wore while flying in case they were downed unexpectedly and snapped the rifle into the door clips.

  He still held the door, or rather the door was the only thing that holding him upright.

  In moments she shed her survival vest, tossing it back on her seat, then opened the front of her flight suit down to her panties.

  “Salope chien lacou.”

  It sounded light and musical and mysterious. He expected it was also foul. And he couldn’t agree more… whatever it meant. If he’d been less numb, or they didn’t have an audience of physically wrecked aviators, he’d just reach out and drag her against him. Officer or not, screw it. Some things would be worth getting in serious trouble for.

  She reached up and stretched.

  He could hear her joints popping.

  Then she twisted and turned with more energy than was decent after such a flight.

  He realized he was staring at what her motions were doing to that fine, T-shirt-clad torso of hers as it was revealed and hidden by the open flaps of her flight suit.

  Blinking hard, he looked away. And had to wonder how long he’d stood watching her. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Couldn’t be. But the others had drifted away. He could see John and Connie moving slowly far down the field, hard to tell who was helping support whom as they headed for the showers. The others were just plain gone.

  Lola appeared to realize the same thing at the same time. Her dark gaze turned on him.

  Think Tim. Do something. Anything. All he did was hang on the door.

  Chief Warrant Lola LaRue shook back her hair like a mane, exposing that magazine-ad face of hers and a slight, teasing smile, with just a hint of the dimple showing on one cheek.

  His body had some clear ideas, and he was too damned tired to argue.

  Somewhere between one heartbeat and the next he’d driven her back against the narrow panel between the pilot’s door and the chief gunner’s window. They were shadowed by the open door and the 30 mm cannon hanging from the weapons pylon. He drove his hands in the front of her flight suit and dragged her against him.