Night Is Mine

by M. L. Buchman

  An RPG passed between them, somehow missing the spinning rotor blades as it passed close enough for either of them to reach out and touch. A rocket-propelled grenade would be death for all of them. It blew when it hit the slope hundreds of feet below, but she didn’t flinch. Kept the rope steady ten feet off the cliff.

  He finished and turned to face her. She knew he’d be assessing her as well as the tactical situation. It had been clear enough in the briefing that he didn’t trust her, but she’d been assigned anyway. That meant Henderson did trust her. Well, she wouldn’t let him down.

  A spate of fire chased the D-boy back for a long three seconds, rattling like buckets of hail across her windshield. When it eased for a moment, he nodded his head once and leapt.

  She held steady against her own downdraft swirling between the cliff walls. If he missed, he’d smack rock in three hundred feet and fall a thousand more before stopping.

  “John?” Emily didn’t dare break her concentration long enough to look down.

  “We’ve got him.”

  She pushed her left pedal to get the tail rotor clear of the wall. Then backed up on the cyclic control and, raising the nose ever so slightly, slid backwards out of the defile. A dozen more rounds hammered against her windshield. Small arms mostly, but one big crack appeared from a heavier weapon finally brought to bear. Hopefully the Hawk’s bulk shielded the D-boy, because she couldn’t do anything for him dangling below her.

  Then Mark Henderson roared by, almost close enough to enmesh their main rotors. He pulled his bird near vertical, giving his gunners the best line on the ridge. A stream of minigun fire burned into the baddies. In moments, the fusillade that had pounded her Hawk cut off, concentrating on the more hazardous target now close at hand. Mark gave them a quick round of rockets, and the distinct hammer of the 30 mm cannon could be heard echoing off the canyon walls.

  Damn but the man was a joy to fly with. She could always count on Mark Henderson in the air. Always. And that wasn’t something you could say of most men, or many at all really. Now if only he didn’t insist on chapping her ass every single second they were on the ground.

  She kept easing back, watching the rotors to make sure she didn’t catch a tree and send them all plunging to their deaths. Once she was clear, a tongue of flame roared out of the defile right where they’d been hovering ten seconds earlier. The concussion knocked her chopper farther back.

  “Damn, did we lose him?”

  “Nope, he’s on tight,” Big John called. “Looks like he’s pocketing something. Remote detonator maybe. Guessing he stayed behind to set the mines.”

  Dangling by one hand a thousand feet in the air, the D-boy had triggered the mines he’d left behind to destroy the cave. She leaned into the controls, backpedaling for all she was worth, the helicopter’s nose pointed to the sky to give the rotors maximum rearward power. She ran the turbine engines right past redline. They roared in response as she was rammed down hard enough in her seat to hit the stops on the shock absorber.

  A second blast proved her guess right: Michael’s explosives triggered a massive ammo dump inside the mountain. The cliff face blew outward, spattering her bird with a pounding rattle of fist-sized rocks, and a whole section of the mountainside headed down for the valley.

  They dragged the rope up with its human load and hauled ass back to base.

  Chapter 4

  “Nice flight, Captain.”

  Mark couldn’t help himself. He radioed as they circled down together over the soccer stadium. He’d always been so careful not to compliment her. Keeping Emily Beale convinced she wasn’t as good as he needed her to be had honed her skills even in two short months. At least that’s what he hoped motivated him.

  Maybe he was just being petty… But no. She’d beaten him across the valley in identical birds and still he’d complimented her. Though there wasn’t enough money on Earth to make him ask her how she’d found the extra bit of speed.

  “Thank you, Major.”

  Nice flight? He’d almost choked when she crawled into that defile under a rain of fire. One lucky shot, one moment of lost control, and she’d have eaten the cliff wall.

  Any pilot good enough to make SOAR flew cool under fire. Sitting back at camp they might barf their guts out, but not in flight. And not Emily Beale. He’d never seen her with the shakes, the squeams, not even working out the kinks of a stiff neck from holding too tight.

  Captain Emily Beale. Ms. Cool-as-could-be.

  Would he have flown into that defile? Probably. If he’d thought of it. Would he have considered it long enough to think of it? Probably not. He’d have dismissed it out of hand as impossible. And probably left the Delta operator to pay the price for lack of any solution.

  What was he supposed to do with this woman?

  Even as they landed on the field, she settled her bird clean and square to the worn soccer field lines, hopped down at ease, and chatted for a minute with the D-boy she’d plucked off the cliff. He actually shook her hand and smiled before moving off toward the prisoners. More than most got from the silent ghosts of Delta Force.

  A bunch of the flyboys and ground crew gathered around her. The news of the mission’s success had swept through the base, and the story of the defile had already been spread by one of the Little Bird pilots. Mark could see it sweeping through the crowd.

  And Beale, calm as could be, completely unaware of the men’s stares, stripped her flight suit halfway down, tied the empty arms around her slim hips, and turned to inspect her bird. Peppered with hundreds of holes, one of the main rotor blades so chewed up it would need replacing, and a slow stream of black hydraulic fluid dribbled down the side of the engine housing. She climbed up with the crew chief to see where the damage originated, and thirty pairs of eyes followed her.

  Hard to blame the guys. Five hundred miles from nowhere and only one woman in sight. A real stunner, too. But that wasn’t the real reason they stared. She’d flown into a place no sane person would go to bring her action team out. For doing that, for protecting the team at any cost, there wasn’t a man here who wouldn’t throw himself in front of a bullet to save her, not even if she looked like a heifer.

  Did she know that she’d mesmerized an entire base of the toughest warriors on the planet with that single act, never mind the dozens before it?

  Did she have any idea that she’d done the same to him?

  ***

  “What the hell is this, Captain?”

  Emily rolled off her cot and hit the ground, slapping for the gun that wasn’t on her hip.

  Major Mark Henderson loomed over the other side of her cot and glared down at her.

  All she wore was a braless tank tee and her underwear. But he didn’t look to be in any mood to give a damn how she was dressed or undressed.

  “What the hell is what, sir?”

  As she stood, he shoved out a set of orders.

  Captain Emily Beale is hereby reassigned. Report aboard Carrier America II soonest for immediate departure.

  Admiral James Parker

  She read them twice more, but they made no more sense than the first time.

  “Did you put in for a transfer?” The major appeared close to complete apoplexy. It was only the second time she could recall seeing any emotion on his face, the first just yesterday when he’d actually smiled at her. The juxtaposition of the two, both directed her way, wouldn’t reconcile in her brain, making her feel as exposed as, well, as if she was standing in front of The Viper wearing only her underwear.

  “Never, sir.”

  “You don’t know what this is about?”

  “Sir, no, sir.”

  “Shit!” The major snatched back the sheet and glared at the order again as if there’d be any change.

  “Get your damned gear together. We leave in five minutes.”

  As he reached the door, he hesitated but didn’t look back.

  “And put on some goddamn clothes.”

  Next time she’d sleep in b
loody dress blues.

  ***

  Mark shoved Beale into the copilot seat, forcing his normal copilot into the rear. In the five minutes she’d been packing and saying good-bye to her crew, he’d only grown more frustrated.

  Communications had confirmed the order. The only answer he’d received from the carrier was, “All speed.” There was something he couldn’t ignore.

  He laid down the hammer and flew in far too foul a temper to speak. Beale tried once or twice to say something, but he couldn’t make himself hear the words. After an hour and a half of desert, followed by sixty miles of ocean, he scared up the carrier group.

  He answered the Mini Boss in Primary Flight and swung wide to land on the aft-deck helicopter landing pad marked with a large white circle. He slammed down so hard that the shock absorbers actually bounced ten tons of helicopter back into air.

  “Shit!” He cursed as they thudded back down.

  “Captain Emily Beale, report to Captain Tully,” came in over Pri-Fly's air control frequency before the chopper had even settled. Whatever was going on had to be damned hot.

  A crew escort in orange opened Emily’s door. She was gone before Mark even had a chance to finish the shutdown.

  He hadn’t been able to look at her for the whole flight because every time he did, he saw the most enticing woman he’d ever met in the least amount of clothes he’d ever been fortunate enough to witness on her.

  He was her commander.

  He had no right to think of her that way.

  Had no right to so hate the idea of losing her from his squad, from his life.

  Mark punched the cockpit door window hard enough to really hurt.

  Chapter 5

  The Hawk still rock ‘n’ rolled on her shocks. Emily had never seen Major Henderson miss a landing. She’d seen him land as hard when there was reason, imminent engine failure from being shot too many times perhaps, but this one he’d just buggered. That was new. The silence on the intercom from the two crew chiefs and the copilot in the rear was deafening. Apparently they’d never seen The Viper make a flying mistake before either.

  What was his problem anyway? She was the one being shipped out with no notice. Without her crew. Being sent away for who knew how long. Being away from Mark Henderson would almost be a relief.

  She’d grown used to the way he was always hounding her to be better. As if she’d never measure up to a male flyer. That wasn’t the problem.

  The first-ever verbal compliment wasn’t the problem either. He’d only ever praised her with guy-speak. Silence. Nothing to correct, so nothing to say. There was no way she’d tell him how proud that single “nice flight” made her.

  The real problem was how his smile had weaseled its way into her brain, making sleep almost impossible. And when she’d finally slept, she’d dreamed of those soft, gray eyes. A little distance would be a good thing. But not reassigned.

  A fully kitted swabbie appeared out of the heat haze in full, flame-retardant flight-deck suit, including helmet and orange vest, and yanked open her door.

  She peeled her helmet, dumped her SARVSO survival-and-gear vest, and cracked her flight suit down the front to her gym shorts. It was even hotter on the carrier deck than inside the Hawk. Couldn’t fry an egg on the deck: you’d burn it too fast. The heat pounded through her boot soles the instant they touched. She’d best get moving before the rubber melted and glued her to the spot. How could there be so much water and so much heat in the same place? The carrier and its battle group lurked a hundred miles off the coast, and the desert base was over twice that in the other direction.

  The swabbie waited without even mincing from one searing foot to the other. Did the Navy give special training so he didn’t just melt on the spot? Could he teach her? She was dying in shorts, T-shirt, and the wide-open flight suit.

  He led her away from her helicopter across the searing deck.

  During the flight, she’d tried to ask Major Henderson what was going on. She’d seen him on the radio. All he’d done was growl. Repeating that she hadn’t requested any transfer or reassignment had elicited a true snarl. The trip proved tortuous, worse than trying to sneak past an antiaircraft battery, and she was glad to be out of the tiny cockpit packed solid with Henderson’s anger.

  Well, to hell with him. She hadn’t done anything, whether or not he believed her.

  As the swabbie led her up the first ladder of the carrier’s six-story command and control tower, she started thinking about what lay ahead of her rather than behind. Going to see the carrier’s captain would be bad enough, but the admiral in charge of the carrier group would be right by his elbow.

  Rear Admiral James Parker had shared her father’s dinner table often enough that she’d have counted him a friend, if she wasn’t a mere Army captain busy screwing up her career on national television. That had to be what got her sent down.

  SOAR had been born in secrecy. They’d entered the public eye when they’d shown their strengths in Grenada and their weaknesses in Mogadishu. But they still tried to remain as low profile as possible. Of the eight choppers on the takedown of bin Laden, the news had only mentioned three. And not a word about SOAR. In thirty years they’d run thousands of missions that no one heard about or ever would. SOAR helicopters provided Special Forces operators with the world’s best nighttime transport and protection.

  The Night Stalkers shunned news as much as the Navy SEALs, and she’d hit front and center on CNN. Was that the problem? What idiot in command had even authorized the interview?

  She hadn’t considered that.

  The moment she did, she knew the answer. Her mother would see it as a step up the social ladder. If she couldn’t be in the same room as her daughter for five minutes in a row without them fighting, at least she could garner a nice social-circle boost out of Emily’s unique position. And her mother had the ears of senators, newsmen, and dozens of others. A CNN piece that had nothing to do with flying or secret operations would be an easy sell for her.

  “Damn!”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing.” She waved the swabbie on and trudged behind, the doomed woman being led to the gallows.

  Her mother hadn’t been trying to raise her own social status. Helen Cartwright Magnuson Beale had her sights set on a different primary mission: how to best prepare her daughter for Operation Marriage. Easy. Get her a near-enough-naked spot on CNN prime-time news. She’d probably, no, she’d certainly been in the editing room.

  That’s why there was nothing about flying, not one shot in her uniform or flight gear, though they’d taken enough footage of that too. That would hurt her daughter’s marriage prospects.

  She’d surely sold it as a “good PR piece” but, as was typical for Helen Beale, every statement had two meanings, except when it had three. Good PR for the Army and the news station, and good PR for getting her difficult daughter a husband of sufficient stature. One who would force her to stop “that foolish flying” and taking “those unnecessary risks.”

  The swabbie guided her toward the captain’s office on the fifth floor of the carrier’s tower as if Emily didn’t know the way. She could trip him down a ladder or two and go hide in the bilge until the whole mess blew over. A lot of places to hide on a boat a quarter-mile long, near enough a football field wide, and a dozen decks deep.

  But if she hid the rest of her life, she’d never have a chance to strangle her mother. And she’d thought that poor laptop had shown the worst of the problem.

  When she’d gotten back to the tent after the meeting with Henderson and Michael, she’d found that her crew had dug a pit in the sand directly where it had landed and were waiting for her arrival to bury the machine’s remains, with full honors. Most of the guys had even put on their service uniforms.

  She’d cast the first handful of dirt, Big Bad John, in a big deep voice that would have sounded good on a preacher, had offered comforting words to a soldier who had served its country well but fallen while honorably perfo
rming its duty. Archie had even found a tiny American flag and presented it to her in proper triangle-folded form smaller than a silver dollar. She’d have to tell the boys they’d done good. If she saw them again.

  But the problem hadn’t stopped there. It had taken on a life of its own. And now she had to face the backlash.

  She and the swabbie climbed the twenty-jillionth ladder-steep stair, entered a steel corridor that looked no different than the last couple dozen, and stood before a wooden door like any other except for the nameplate. “Captain.” Not even “Rick Tully.” Just his rank.

  Getting a firm grip on her mother’s throat wasn’t going to happen any time soon, so she’d better shuffle the thought aside and concentrate. There was music to face right here, and she’d bet it was closer to gangster rap than string quartet.

  Chapter 6

  The swabbie delivered two sharp knocks on the captain’s door, gaining Emily a call to enter. He swung open the door, dropped to a parade rest so lazy that it bordered on insolent, and shut the door behind her as soon as she’d passed in.

  The air-conditioned chill of the office hammered against her sweat-soaked chest through the open flight suit. A quick glance down as she slammed to attention precisely three steps into the room revealed that, well, way too much was revealed.

  Too late to do anything about it.

  She snapped a salute as if she were in Class-As with a spit shine on her shoes that she could see to brush her hair in. Not scuffed boots that hadn’t seen a cloth in a month, sun-faded flight suit that was once flight-crew brown but now more of a dull tan except where it sported circles of oil-stain black, and helmet hair waving and weaving down past her sweat-stained collar.

  “Captain Emily Beale reporting, sir.”

  Captain Tully’s lazy salute emphasized how disheveled she appeared, hardly worthy of a serious effort. Of course he sat comfortably in his office with its large oak desk, leather office chairs, and perfectly starched and creased khakis made so by some poor schmuck of a one-tour orderly. The place even smelled of lemon polish. Her own office measured one bucket seat wide, exactly as long as hip to pedal, and reeked of jet fuel, cordite from spent ammunition, and sweat.