Flight to Fight

by M. L. Buchman

  Flight to Fight

  a Night Stalkers romance story

  by M. L. Buchman

  1

  Sergeant Lee Ames had been cornered and didn’t appreciate it in the slightest. Night Stalkers were not supposed to be cornered; they were supposed to rule the night. He’d been flying for three months now with the most kick-ass helicopter company aloft. And in three months of almost nightly missions based off the U.S.S. Peleliu he’d been cornered a total of once—tonight. Lee didn’t care for it.

  He wasn’t “supposed” to be in the Sinai any more than the person he was here to extract. The Egyptian government would be very unhappy if they knew a helicopter of the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment was parked in a dry wadi less than five hundred meters from the Suez Canal. His Little Bird might be the smallest helo in the military, but because it was an AH-6M assault bird, it was also heavily armed and absolutely lethal.

  He checked his watch. 22:37. Three minutes later than the last time he’d looked, which did nothing to calm him down. Normally he was fine with waiting; patience was one of the deep skills learned during a decade in the Army. Hurry-up-and-wait was only the first-level talent, one possessed by every grunt who’d ever served. By the time he’d hit his third tour, he had the second-level down; waiting as tactic—a battlefield choice of inaction versus action.

  The Night Stalkers had taught him the top-tier skill: waiting is. Waiting wasn’t something you endured or used. A non-judgmental time of primal consciousness. It was that time during which there simply was no proper action, so you waited. And when the time was over, you stopped waiting. In Special Operations waiting had become a simple state of being in between moments of action at a level most people couldn’t imagine, never mind sustain. There was a reason U.S. Special Operations were at the top of the world’s military pyramid.

  Except right now the person he was supposed to be exfiltrating was two hours late. Captain Kara Moretti—watching from her drone circling six miles above—had told him to stay put as long as possible.

  Waiting is he sighed, wholly unconvinced.

  He’d assumed that a few hours before dawn, he’d have to leave whether or not his extraction subject had arrived. However, a firefight had broken out nearby and was now raging on the flat desert surface of the Sinai above his hiding place. Which might explain his contact’s delay, but was definitely going to trap him here for a while.

  About an hour after he’d landed, he’d heard the distinctive crack of a supersonic bullet ripping through the air a half dozen meters above his helo. Then he’d heard the rumble-boom of artillery to the west. The Suez Canal ran half a kilometer to the west.

  Lee had left his helo and crawled up the west side of the wadi—so familiar from the Arizona arroyos he’d played in as a kid that he had a weird déjà vu moment. The dry river bed was deep enough that his helicopter rested almost twenty feet below ground level, though only wide enough to leave a few yards to either side of his main rotor blades. He lay on his belly with his night-vision goggles just peeking above the sandy rim of the dry wash. Unlike the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, a careful scan east revealed nothing but the boundless wasteland of the Sinai Desert. Not even a saguaro cactus reaching its arms up to the star-filled night.

  To the west rose the high berm of the Suez Canal, with its dredgings of yellow sand piled up several stories high. Bright flashes from a battle flickered over the berm. He could see the upper structures of the ship moving along the canal. Gunfire lashed out from atop the berm and was returned hard from a ship he could see only by its superstructure.

  At least he wasn’t the target. But if he took flight and exposed himself above the wadi, he would be fast enough. For now, he and his helicopter were trapped here.

  ISIS? One faction of the Egyptian government fighting another? Or an attack on a specific ship?

  Didn’t matter. It wasn’t in his mission profile. His profile had been arrive, wait, extract, and do not, under any circumstances, be seen. That was the Night Stalkers’ specialty.

  Except no one had told him that his clandestine rendezvous point was going to end up in the middle of a battle. Even though it wasn’t in the mission brief he knew that revealing a piece of heavy U.S. military equipment and involving it in any local conflict would be disastrous.

  He turned, as he had a hundred times during the last hour that the fight had raged, to check in all directions to make sure he was alone.

  This time he wasn’t.

  A heavily-burdened lone figure was moving stealthily up the wadi; from rock to hump of sand. The figure’s long thawb robe would have blended perfectly into the night if it hadn’t been for Lee’s night-vision goggles.

  Sliding quietly down the slip face of the wadi’s side wall, Lee came up behind the person when they were still fifty meters from his helo.

  “Tawaqaf!” he said quietly in Arabic. Then clicked off the safety on his FN-SCAR rifle to reinforce the command to stop.

  The figure froze. Either too well-trained or too panicked to turn.

  “On your knees,” he continued in Arabic. The man settled awkwardly, but didn’t protest even though it would drastically limit his ability to attack or run.

  Lee made a quick scan, but there appeared to be only the two of them in the steep-walled dry river bed.

  “What are you carrying?”

  “Golden potatoes,” his captive said in a muffled voice.

  It took Lee a moment to recognize first that it was said in English and second that it was the pass phrase for the person he was supposed to be extracting.

  “Stay still,” he ordered. Exchanging his rifle for his Glock handgun, he moved up close behind and began frisking the person.

  Through the linen thawb, Lee could feel neither knife or handgun at ankles, calves, or thighs. No ring of explosives at the slender waist. And just as his hand cupped what was not a shoulder holster but undoubtedly a woman’s breast, a small face rose from over the kneeling woman’s shoulder and looked up at him.

  In a tiny, scared voice, the girl mumbled, “Baba?”

  2

  Lee managed to finish checking both the woman and the child. They were clean.

  “Apologies. I was not expecting a woman,” he continued in Arabic as he backed away and kept his sidearm loose in his grip.

  Nor had he been expecting a small girl to ask for her father.

  “I understand,” the woman said in perfect English as she rose awkwardly and turned.

  Lee resisted the urge to step forward and help her to her feet. This was not the situation he’d been counting on and he wanted to maintain a clear field of fire for the moment.

  “I was told…” he shook his head and switched to English. “I was told to expect…” A person. He’d assumed male, but that had never actually been stated. Had it even been known?

  There was only so much that he could see through his night-vision goggles. All colors were green, painted in shades based on varying degrees of heat. He pushed them up and blinked hard to adapt his eyes to the darkness.

  “Close your eyes for a moment.”

  He flicked on a small flashlight. Both woman and child were traditionally dressed. Their robes were dirty as if they’d spent a lot of time crawling. They were both Egyptian dark in complexion. The girl blinking at him still had a baby’s round face framed by a tangle of brown hair.

  The woman’s hair was a lush cascade of mahogany that spilled over her shoulders. If she’d had a niqāb, the scarf was long gone. Her shapely face had a broad openness that belonged on television.

  She squinted one eye open at him and he realized he was staring, but e
ven in her current state of disarray she was well worth a second look. He swung the flashlight rapidly downward and caught the dark red stains on the little girl’s hem and the still bright stain on the woman’s arm.

  “Come,” he stepped forward and took her opposite arm, the one that held the child, and guided her toward the helo. He could feel her stagger beneath his grasp as if she’d collapse in the next step.

  He knew he shouldn’t burden himself, all his training said to keep his hands free, but he scooped the girl into the crook of his own arm and supported the woman back to the helo. The girl clung to his neck as he bounced her on his hip the way he’d seen his sister do with Lee’s niece.

  “Where are you hurt?” There was no room in his Little Bird to minister to her. The small two-seat cockpit was a tight fit. The rear seat was filled with ammunition cans for the mini-guns mounted to either side. Lee guided her to sit on a nearby rock.

  “Am I hurt?” the woman asked with mild curiosity that his medical training had said was a bad sign.

  “Excuse me. But I’m going to have to touch you again.”

  First, he checked the child. She didn’t complain even though he made a point of pressing everywhere and moving her limbs. Then, so that she wouldn’t run off, he placed her between the woman’s knees and hoped she’d stay.

  “What are your names?” Lee asked in a light sing-song voice hoping to soothe the child as he began checking over the woman.

  “I’m Donya,” she hissed sharply when he probed her ribcage and the girl whimpered in response.

  Great! It couldn’t have been her arm, could it? He checked the rest of her, but it was definitely her left side. The sleeve of her robe was only stained from being pressed hard against her wounded side. He could feel the wetness in the cloth through the thin gloves he’d pulled on.

  “Donya Nakhla.”

  Startled he looked back at her face, blinding her with his headlamp. He immediately looked down again. She certainly did belong on television. How many hours had he watched Donya Nakhla’s insightful reporting while he was learning Arabic? It had been a tough learn for an Air Force brat from Arizona and watching her had certainly eased the path.

  “What’s your daughter’s name?” he asked to distract them both—her from her pain and him from…her. He slipped on his NVGs and scanned the wadi once to make sure they were still alone.

  Then he replaced it with a small headlamp, flicked it to its narrowest beam and turned it on. Her whole side was a bright red. He shouldn’t even be touching an Arab woman, much less pull up her robe up around her high enough to expose, well, everything. He hadn’t felt a bra. Did she even wear anything beneath the robe? She must, but it was best not to find out what.

  The fighting, which had fallen off for the last few minutes was rejoined with renewed vigor over to the west. The muted hammer of .50cal and the higher pop of NATO 7.62mm rounds sawed back and forth through the darkness.

  “Here,” he pulled the NVGs over Donya’s head. “Can you see through them?”

  “Everything is green.” Still alert. No slurring in her voice. Good signs.

  “Keep a watch all around us. If someone comes, they’ll shine bright green in your view.”

  “What should I do if I see someone?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Oh. Yes.” And now he was worried again.

  “Your daughter’s name?” Because of course a woman as stunning as Donya Nakhla was married. Where was her husband, the man who should have kept her from being bloodied? Then he thought it through and decided it would be kinder if he didn’t ask. He pulled out his K-bar knife and eased the red-stained fabric away from her side. Rather than removing her robe, he’d make a side slit to inspect her through and hope it was enough.

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked up at her face again, careful not to flash his light in her NVGs. She sounded coherent, mostly. Was she fading in and out or…

  She was attentive enough to stroke the little girl’s hair where she lay upon Donya’s lap, nearly asleep.

  Time to stop the bleeding. He found a small tear, inserted his blade in the hole and sliced the side of the robe, pulling it open gently. A thin linen shirt beneath that, also heavily red. He slit that as well. Blood was smeared everywhere from the side of her breast down to her hip.

  “This will be a little cold,” he warned and rinsed the area with a squeeze bottle of water. Actually, the desert was so hot, even at night, that the water was nearly body temperature anyway.

  Then he spotted the long slice.

  “You were stabbed?”

  “Oh. Yes of course. That was it.” Her voice sounded stable, smooth and sophisticated, whatever trauma her mind and body were dealing with.

  Under different conditions, he’d do his damnedest to sidle up to a woman who sounded like that and looked the way she did, and reported the way she did. He’d earned himself more than a small crush during training. A lot of the guys in class with him had the same reaction, but he liked to think he was the least crass about it.

  At the moment, he fished for the glue in his med-kit and hoped it was the right thing to do; he was no corpsman.

  “I had forgotten that I was stabbed.”

  “You forgot?”

  “Yes. It has been a busy evening.”

  To his non-professional eye, it was strictly a surface wound. There was a long slice along her skin, just missing the side of her breast and running over the tops of the ribs. He pulled out a Quik-clot bandage and smoothed it over her wound as gently as he could. He managed to tape it in place without touching her too inappropriately, but it wouldn’t stay without a full wrap around her rib cage. He tried to figure out how to do that without pulling up her robe, and was again at a loss.

  Instead, he placed her arm tight against her side, then used a four-inch Israeli Emergency Bandage to wrap around her torso and hold her arm in place.

  She was still scanning the wadi. Something wasn’t matching.

  Didn’t know her daughter’s name, had forgotten she’d been stabbed, but was alert and answering his questions.

  He’d done all he could. The sounds of distant gunfire rattled in the distance.

  “Can we depart yet?” She kept that perfect voice of hers soft and smooth. Her English was American, but with an utterly charming lilt of the Arabic overlaid in the rhythms of it.

  He gently took the goggles back from her and pulled them on himself after dousing and removing his headlamp. A quick scan showed that the sounds of battle above still hadn’t drawn any attention down into their hideaway.

  He radioed the question back to Captain Moretti’s drone for relay. Nope.

  “Not yet,” he sat beside Donya on the rock.

  3

  “What’s your daughter’s name?” Lee tried to make the question sound innocent, but was still unable to gauge the woman’s well-being.

  “She’s not my daughter. That’s why I don’t know,” the girl was now asleep in Donya’s lap. She tried to bend down over the girl, but hissed sharply and sat back up slowly. Once she had her breath back, she continued, “She is too young to have learned her own name yet as well.”

  “Where are her parents?”

  “They were shot down in their own living room, as punishment for hiding me with their daughter. I owe them a life debt, but I didn’t know their names either. I waited until nightfall before leaving, but I couldn’t leave the girl behind as none had come to claim her even after her parents’ bodies had been dragged away.”

  The words were horrible, but the anger in Donya’s voice was so thick that it he could feel it slicing through her. Unsure what else to do, Lee wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  She leaned her face into his shoulder and he could feel the tears that ran down her face dampen his sleeve, though no sobs shook her body. There was no more questioning h
er bravery than her deep-rooted anger. He’d had bad tours, landed in the hospital more than once from nightmare battles. He knew about the bad days being even worse than you’d ever thought possible.

  So, he simply let her cry; let her purge.

  When she at last recovered, she made no move to sit upright, but kept her head against his shoulder.

  Each time he turned to look past her to scan for possible intruders, his face ran into her hair. He was holding an injured woman with a child that wasn’t hers deep in hostile territory and hoping that he wasn’t about to create an international incident. And all he could think about was how incredible it felt to hold her and how exotic her smell was. Her hair was like some unknown spice, a smell as rare as the Sonoran Desert after a hard rainfall that made the saguaro cactus bloom for a single magic day.

  As a distraction, he asked about just what had been her day.

  Caught in the middle of a riot.

  A protest against the current military government, suppressed with unblinking brutality. Chaos, she’d seen dozens die when troops had stormed her news station’s office under cover of the protests. A reputable, if vocal station, that would have an entirely new staff supplied by the government for tomorrow’s broadcasts. As far as she knew, she was the only survivor. Her hiding place beneath the brightly lit anchor desk so obvious that no one had looked there.

  “That is what is happening up there,” he could feel her head against his shoulder nodding toward the Suez. “Using the canal, the government already had gunboats in place before the riot started. They staged the riot to clear out unwelcome elements of the populace. Everyone who flocked to the protest was arrested or shot. At least that must have been their plan. But someone else was waiting for them.” She nodded toward the sound of sporadic gunfire that was slowly moving farther and farther away.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I was able to confirm that it wasn’t the local protesters before I was spotted and stabbed. I collapsed and pretended death so they did not shoot me. Perhaps it is militias pushing out from Syria or Gaza. I don’t think it’s the Israelis because there are no jets or tanks. If this military government stands, it will be as much luck as control.”