Hotshot

by Mann, Catherine

  “Skinny dipping sounds great, but we’ve already seen each other’s tattoos.”

  She shimmied out of her skirt, a fresh hint of color flashing on her hip and reminding him he hadn’t been with her the entire time at the tattoo parlor.

  Blowing him a kiss, she sprinted toward the water. “All of our tattoos? That’s what you think, Hotshot.”

  Turn the page for a preview of

  the next Dark Ops Novel by Catherine Mann

  RENEGADE

  Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

  TONOPAH TEST RANGE, NEVADA: PRESENT DAY

  For Tech Sergeant Mason “Smooth” Randolph a great flight was a lot like great sex.

  Both brought the same rush, sense of soaring, and driving need to make it last as long as absolutely possible. On the flip side, a bad flight was every bit as crappy as bad sex. Both could quickly become awkward, embarrassing, and downright dangerous.

  As Mason planted his boots on the vibrating deck of an experimental cargo plane, his adrenaline-saturated gut told him that today’s ultra-secret mission had the potential to rank up there with the worst sex ever.

  The top-notch engines whispered a seductive tune, mingling with the blast of wind gusting through the cargo door being cranked open. Whoever came up with the idea to drop supplies out of the back of a fast-moving aircraft must not have stood where he was standing now. Of course for that matter, nobody had stood in his boots on this sort of flight. That was the whole purpose of his job in the air force’s highly classified test squadron.

  He did things no one had tried before.

  On today’s mission, he would offload packed pallets from a test-model hypersonic cargo jet, a jet that could go Mach 6, far outpacing the mere supersonic speed of Mach 1. The deck of this new baby gleamed, high tech and totally pristine, without the oil and musty smell that accumulated over the course of many successful missions.

  The metal warmed beneath his boots as the craft ate up miles faster than the pilot up front—Vapor—could plow through a buffet. If the plane completed testing as hoped, future fliers could travel from the U.S. to any point on earth in under four hours. Entire deployments could be set up and ready to roll in the matter of a single day, rather than the weeks-long buildups of the past.

  No doubt, the price tag on this sleek-winged sucker was huge, but for forward thinking strategists, it saved the expense many times over by shortening deployments. Of course, money had never meant dick to him.

  However, he did care about all those marriages collapsing under the strain of long separations.

  Radio talk from the two pilots up front echoed in his headset as he checked his safety belt one last time, then raised his hand to hover over the control panel. His empty ring finger itched inside his glove. Yeah, this test in particular struck a personal note for him. It was too late for him since his own marriage had already gone down the tubes, but maybe he could save some of his military brethren from suffering the same kick in the ass he’d endured six years ago.

  Without slowing, the cargo door cranked the rest of the way open, settling into place with an ominous thunk. Wind swirled inside, the suction increasing with the yawning gap. No more time to consider how the drop shouldn’t even be possible. Not too long ago, going to the moon hadn’t seemed possible. It took test pilots, pioneers. All the same, this was going to be spotty.

  Mason tightened his parachute straps just in case and keyed his microphone in his oxygen mask to speak to the pilots in the cockpit. “Doors open. Ramp clear.”

  “Copy.” From the flight deck, pilot Vince “Vapor” Deluca acknowledged. “Thirty seconds to release.”

  Mason scanned the cargo pallets resting on rollers built into the floor. Everything appeared just as he’d prepped for this final run before next week’s big show for select military leaders from ally nations around the world. Pallets were packed, evenly balanced, and lined up, ready to roll straight out over the Nevada desert. Muscles contracted inside him as the pilot continued the countdown over headset.

  “Jester two-one,” Vapor continued, “is fifteen seconds from release.”

  Mason focused on the bundle at the front of the pallet. A void of dark sky waited only a few feet away, ready to suck up the offload. He mentally reviewed the steps as if he could somehow secure the outcome. A small parachute would rifle forward, air speed filling it with enough power to drag out the pallet. That chute would tear away, sending the pallet into a free fall until the larger parachute deployed.

  “Five,” Vapor counted down, “four, three, two, one.”

  A green light flashed over the door.

  The bundle shot its mini-chute into the air behind the door. As it caught the supersonic air, the first pallet began to move, rolling, rolling, and out. One gone. The second rattled down the tracks, picture perfect, and then the next in synchronized magnificence as the mammoth load whipped out at a blurring speed.

  Mason’s gut started to ease. Next week’s shindig for their visiting military dignitaries could be a huge win for the home team and move this plane into the inventory. A flop, however, could mean death to their government funding, an abrupt end to the whole project. He keyed up his mic.

  The last pallet bucked off the tracks.

  Oh shit. The load slammed onto its side with hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds of force. The cargo net ripped, flapping and snapping through the air. Gear exploded loose, catapulting every-fucking-where. He ducked as a piece of shattered pallet flew over his head.

  “Smooth?” Vapor’s voice filled the headset. “Report up.”

  Mason grappled for the button to respond while sidestepping a loose crate cartwheeling his way. The mesh net whipped around his leg and jerked him toward the open back. His feet shot out from under him.

  “Smooth, damn it, radio up—”

  His mic went silent. The cord rattled useless and unplugged. His helmeted head whacked the deck, sparking a fresh batch of stars to his view of the night sky.

  He slapped his hands along the metal grating, grappling for something, anything to slow the drag toward the back. Would the safety harness hooked to the wall hold? Under normal circumstances, sure. These weren’t normal circumstances. Everything was a first-ever test at unheard of speed.

  He vise gripped the edge of a seat. The pallet dragged at his leg. He kept his eyes focused ahead, squeezing down panic, hoping, praying Vapor or Hotwire would come back to check. His arms screamed in their sockets and his legs burned from being stretched by the weight of the pallet teetering on the edge of the back hatch.

  Don’t give up. Hang on.

  The bulkhead opening filled with a shadow. Thank God. The copilot—Hotwire—roared into view, his mouth moving as he shouted words swallowed up by the vortex of wind.

  Mason’s fingers slipped. The weight, the force, the speed, it was all too much. “Oh, shit.”

  He pulled his arms in tight as the pallet raked him along the metal floor like a hunk of cheddar against a grater. Ah damn, what about his safety harness? The strap around his waist pulled taut. An image of his body ripped in half came to mind, a snapshot that would forever stay in safety manuals to warn others of the hazards of fucking up. Not that he knew what he’d done wrong. That would be for others to decide after they buried the two halves of him in a wooden box.

  Hotwire hooked his own safety belt on the run and reached. So close. Not close enough.

  Mason’s harness popped free from around his waist. Whoomp. The air sucked at him like a vacuum. He flew out of the back of the plane at hypersonic speed only to stop short when he slammed against the pallet, his leg still lashed by mesh. Pain detonated throughout him. Then his stomach plummeted faster than his body.

  Happy Fucking New Year.

  Instincts on overdrive, he wrapped his arms around the pallet. The pressure on his body eased as the pallet continued a free fall downward into the inky night. His flight suit whipped against him. Images of his ex-wife flashed though his head along with regret. A shiver
iced through his veins. Was he dying?

  No. The wind and altitude caused the cold. Think, damn it. Don’t surrender to the whole-life-review death march.

  Either he could do nothing and pray that when the larger chute opened it didn’t batter him to death against the pallet. Or he could free his leg from the netting, kick away from the pallet, and use his own parachute, provided it hadn’t been damaged during the haul out the back of the plane.

  His options sucked ass, but at least he was still alive to fight. Getting clear of the damaged pallet seemed wisest. Determination fueled his freezing limbs. Vertigo threatened to overtake him as he kicked to untangle his boot from the netting. He jerked, pulled, and strained until, yes, his leg came free.

  “Argh!” Mason grunted, muscles burning.

  He shoved away just as the large chute deployed. His body plummeted, pinwheeling. The pallet was jerked to a stall by the chute, tearing apart in a shower of wood and supplies. Good God, he would have been drawn and quartered.

  He reined himself in, struggling to control the fall while gauging his surroundings but the solitary void was combined with an eerie silence. How much farther until he landed? If he pulled the cord too soon, he could float forever with no sense of direction, ending up lost deep in the desert.

  Screw it. Better too early than waiting too long and shattering every bone in his body by not using his parachute soon enough. He reached down, feeling along his waist until he found the handle.

  He yanked. Cords whistled past and overhead. Nylon rippled upward until . . . whoomp.

  Air filled the chute and yanked him. Hard. The rapid stall knocked the wind out of him and, damn it to hell, crushed his left nut under the leg strap.

  He shook his head to clear his thoughts, no time to piss and moan. He grabbed a riser and hefted into a one arm pull up to ease pressure on the strap. Ahh, better, much better. Pain eased. His brain revved.

  Now, how did that “You just fucked up bad and are now floating towards the earth” checklist go?

  Canopy. His eyes adjusting to the dark, he checked the canopy and no rips, no tears, not even the dreaded “Mae West” where a line looped over the chute for a double bubble effect.

  Visor. Little chance of landing in a tree here so he pulled the visor up.

  Mask. He stripped his oxygen mask off his face, unhooked the connectors on his chest and pitched it away into the abyss.

  Seat kit. Strapped to his butt, it contained a raft. Not much call for that in the desert. He opened the connector and ditched the raft, too.

  LPUs. Life preserver units. He thumbed the horse collar LPU around his neck and down his chest, pulled the inflate tabs and a high-pressure bottle inflated the floatie. It might cushion the landing and save a few broken ribs. Although there was no telling what he might have already busted back in the plane. Thank goodness for the adrenaline numbing his system.

  What next? Oh yeah. Steer. Damn, he was punch drunk. He reached up for the risers and grappled until he wrapped his fingers around the steering handles.

  The next step? Prepare. Yeah, he was so prepared to smack into the ground he could barely see. He scanned below as best he could, checking out the sand, sand, sand, and occasional bundle of desert scrub. Okay, dude. Final step.

  Land. He put his eyes on the horizon and bent his knees slightly, ready to perform the perfect PLF, parachute landing fall. The ground roared up to meet him. He prepped for . . . the . . . impact.

  Balls of the feet.

  Side of the leg and butt.

  Side of the arm and shoulder.

  Complete.

  Mason lay on the gritty sand, stunned. No harm in lying still for a few and rejoicing in the fact he would live to fly and make love again. There wasn’t any need to rush out of here just yet. He wasn’t in enemy territory.

  Although he didn’t have a clue exactly what piece of the Nevada desert he currently occupied, his tracking device would bring help. Rescue would show up in an hour or so. Maybe by then he could stand up without whimpering like a baby.

  He shrugged free of his parachute and LPU one miserable groan at a time. Already he could feel the bruises rising to the surface. He would probably resemble a Smurf by morning, but at least he still had all his limbs, and no bones rattled around inside him that he could tell.

  His teeth chattered, though. From the freezing cold of a winter desert night or from shock? Either way he needed to get moving. He pushed to his feet, stumbling for a second before the horizon stopped bobbling.

  A siren wailed in the distance.

  Already? Perhaps this flight experience wouldn’t suck so much after all. Even bad sex could be rescued with a satisfying ending.

  He blinked to clear his eyesight. Twin beams of light stretched ahead of a Ford F-150, blinding him as the vehicle approached. He shielded his eyes with one hand and waved his other arm. Ouch. Fuck.

  A loudspeaker squeaked and crackled to life. “Get back down on the ground. Lay flat on your stomach,” a tinny voice ordered. “If you move at all, you will be shot.”

  Shot? What the hell? Had he landed on some survivalist kook’s farm?

  But that wouldn’t explain the siren. He must have drifted into restricted territory, not surprising since they flew many of their secret test missions in secured areas. The truck screeched to halt and someone wearing cammo stepped out. A flashlight held at shoulder level kept him from seeing the face, but he could discern an M4 carbine at hip level well enough.

  He shouted, “Don’t shoot. I’m not armed, and I’m not resisting.”

  “Stay on the ground,” the voice behind the light barked.

  A female voice?

  Okay, so much for his PC rating today. He’d assumed the security cop was a male, not that it made any difference one way or the other. He respected the power of that M4.

  Mason flattened his belly to the packed desert floor, arms extended over his head. A knee plowed deep in the small of his back. If he didn’t have a bruised kidney before, he sure did now.

  A cold muzzle pressed against his skull. All right, then. The knee didn’t hurt so much after all.

  “Hands behind your back, nice and slow.” The lady cop’s husky voice heated his neck. “So, flyboy, do you want to tell me what you’re doing out here in Area 51?”

  Jill Walczak had a secret. But she was used to keeping them in her current job as one of the highly classified civilian security forces contracted to patrol the perimeter of Area 51, anonymous guards known simply as “cammo dudes.” With a serial killer on the loose trying to stir up the alien conspiracy nuts, she couldn’t afford to relax her guard for even a second.

  “Flyboy? Nothing to say?” Keeping her M4 against his head, she carefully set her flashlight aside so it illuminated his face. “Okay, then. We’ll chitchat in a minute after we take care of business. I’m not telling you another time after this. Put your hands behind your back. Slowly. Grunt if you hear me.”

  “Got it,” he growled, his discarded parachute ruffling and snapping in the night wind.

  One broad hand in a flight glove slid along the parched earth and tucked against his lower spine. His other hand started to move, inching a little too close to the flashlight for her peace of mind.

  “Touch that flashlight, and I’ll shoot you in the wrist.”

  His fingers froze.

  Then he started moving his arm again, slowly, not so much as a flinch or suspicious move. Thus far he was the perfect detainee. She hoped he would stay that way.

  Quickly, she set aside her weapon, locked the handcuffs around his wrists, and regained control of her M4. She was toned and trained these days, but she knew better than to underestimate the hard-muscled man in her custody. She was alone out here in the desert tonight, and she’d driven deeper into Area 51 than was normally acceptable, all because of an anonymous tip.

  Was the parachuting flyboy her “something spectacular and lethal on the horizon” that would lead her to the “Killer Alien”? Four bodies—one man
and three women—had shown up around Area 51 and nearby Nellis Air Force Base, all murdered in the past year, all in a manner to make it appear extraterrestrial linked.

  She shivered. Desert winter nights were damn cold and desolate. But her chill settled deeper in her bones as she thought of how her friend had died.

  Jill inched off her captive and scooped up her flashlight, wind kicking sand up until it stung her face. “The time for grunts has passed. Tell me what you’re doing in Dream-land.”

  The flyboy kept his face down, nose to the gritty ground. “I work as a loadmaster and flight engineer in the U.S. Air Force. A cargo drop went to hell, and I got sucked out the back of the plane. The heavy wind tonight must have drifted me over into the box.”

  The box. At least this aviator spoke the flyboy lingo for Area 51.

  The man cleared his throat. “Hey, do you mind if I turn my face to the side?” His muffled voice rumbled low in the night air. “I’d rather not talk through a mouthful of sand.”

  “Fair enough. But just your face.” She did not intend to end up like those four murdered souls, sliced like a science experiment. And around their dead bodies the killer had left an eerily undisturbed sand circle. “Slowly. Then I’ll need your name.”

  She shifted her flashlight to his mug again. The more she kept the beam on him, the less visibility he would have in the dark to see her or attempt an escape. She swiped the piercing shaft of light over his face. The chill of darker thoughts eased.

  Move over Hugh Jackman.

  The flyboy blinked fast, his green eyes glinting as she studied him more closely. Recognition tickled the back of her brain. She looked closer, taking in the smoothly handsome face. A tuft of dark hair twisted by a cowlick ramped in front as if refusing to submit to the military cut.

  Yeah, she’d seen him around, all right.

  The people working top secret jobs in this region shared certain facilities as budget savers. It wasn’t uncommon to pass someone in the mess hall multiple times and have no knowledge of the other person’s job or even name . . . until now. “Who are you?”