Her Heart and the Friend Command

by M. L. Buchman

  Her Heart and the “Friend” Command

  a Delta Force romance

  M. L. Buchman

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

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  About the Author

  Also by M. L. Buchman

  1

  “Today’s the day, Sergey.”

  He watched her as she lashed on her fatigues, boots, vest, and helmet. His eyes tracked every motion as she stood over her pack in the safehouse bedroom. A grand word for a faded concrete cube, peeling whitewash, and a steel cot that might have once been comfortable, but certainly wasn’t anymore. A tiny window let in the last of the day’s red light and the occasional whirl of the bitter dust that southern Afghanistan used for soil.

  “You’d make me feel crazy self-conscious, Sergey, if you weren’t a dog.” Her fifty-five pound Malinois war dog popped to his feet as she knelt beside him to strap on his own Kevlar vest. Normally he’d be kenneled rather than curled up at the foot of her bunk but, since the US military had sent her to a forward operating base in Afghanistan hell, such amenities were non-existent. She far preferred having her big furry boy asleep at her feet. They both did.

  “Of course, Delta Force never is anywhere normal, are we?” She slipped the vest over his head and smoothed it down his back. Flipping the chest strap between his front legs, she buckled it into the belly of the harness. One more strap farther back and he was fully geared up. She double-checked the feed from the flip-up camera on his back and tested the infrared nightlight. Both showed up clearly on her wrist screen and her night-vision goggles. All set for a little nightwork. The small window filled with the last red of the sunset meant they’d be on the move soon.

  Delta Force. We. That was such a cool sound. She’d made it. Sideways, but she’d made it into the most elite fighting force anyway. Even Delta needed MWDs—military war dogs, though she preferred multi-pawed wagging detectors—and dogs for Special Operations needed their Spec Ops handlers. Dogs for the regular forces could transfer from one handler to the next, but it took a very special person to manage a dog trained to Delta standards.

  “You are so handsome in your vest, aren’t you?” She rubbed his ears then brushed her hands down his legs, an automatic gesture in which she checked for everything from burrs in the fur to the condition of underlying muscle and bone.

  “Where do I sign up for such treatment, Minnow?”

  She sighed. Of course no world was perfect.

  Elizabeth Minot—the nickname had been inevitable despite her family pronouncing it My-not—didn’t bother to look up at the male voice; didn’t need to turn to know what he looked like.

  Garret Conway would have shoved aside the aging drape that served as the room’s door with a military disregard for gender. He’d be slouching against one of the jambs, arms crossed over his chest as he glared down at the two of them with his dark brown eyes. He wasn’t much taller than she was, Delta selection didn’t favor tall and strong, but rather the driven and powerful. Dark hair worn long, a trim beard that eased the hard lines of his face.

  So instead, she continued talking to Sergey as she finished checking him over. Pads of his paws…tail. As always, she tweaked the tip for good luck which earned her a doggie smile. All good.

  “Maybe if the nasty sergeant promised to love me for a Kong dog toy and a crunchy biscuit, I’d deign to talk to him.” Like she’d give the arrogant bastard the time of day. He’d been an utter twit of a boy back in the blue-collar core of Baltimore—the Dundalk neighborhood being the only thing they had in common. And just because he’d grown up into a seriously handsome soldier didn’t make him any less of an SOB. She knew his dark side all too well and it was just one of the trials that the Powers That Be had placed across her path, landing her on his team after she’d rarely thought of him for a decade.

  The fates were off at a bar crawl somewhere laughing their asses off for saddling her with him as the squad leader of her first-ever deployment with Delta. It had been a rude shock when she’d arrived this morning.

  Master Sergeant Garret Conway was going to be a problem.

  “Do you think he’d like a dog toy?” She asked Sergey. To make her point, Liza bounced Sergey’s Kong toy on the wooden floor of the safehouse they were squatting in.

  The hard rubber, shaped like a five-inch marshmallow man, ricocheted in an unexpected direction, sending Sergey pouncing, missing, and pouncing again as his attack sent it off in another direction. A frantic scuffle ensued—which included a brief strike beneath the sad excuse for a bunk—before Sergey sat back, the triumphant winner of the tussle. He smiled up at her proudly with the adoration clear in his eyes. He gave her the Kong and she traded it for a doggie treat from her pouch.

  The Kong and treat were why MWDs worked so hard. They didn’t care about explosives. They just knew that when they sniffed out the explosives, they got the toy then the treat.

  She fished out another treat and held it out to the squad’s leader—that’s how she’d think of him. Not friend—never was. Not even acquaintance from Baltimore. He’d just be Master Sergeant Conway, her Delta Force squad leader.

  “Want one?” Though why she was teasing him, she didn’t know.

  Garret managed to take the small treat without touching her fingers. He eyed her as he bounced it in his palm. He’d been the lean and dangerous kid in high school and she could still see it in his narrowed eyes though he’d certainly filled out since then. Nobody had messed with Garret—nobody dared. He’d always had a circle of wannabes, but he hadn’t needed them. It was more as if he was a one-man center of dark power and the others had merely been drawn like night moths. No matter where she went in the school, it had always seemed that he was there in the background watching. He missed nothing.

  Occasionally, if she’d wanted to track someone down, she’d ask him. That was about the only time they ever spoke, but he always knew. She knew almost nothing about him. His dad was a stevedore down at the port—the kind who drank too much when he got home. Her dad was a machinist who didn’t. It bothered her that she couldn’t remember more about him.

  Garret had always had a hot girl under his arm at every school dance or block party. He’d never been picky on the last count: athlete, cheerleader, from another school (a big social crime that only he could get away with), slut… Never mattered as long as she was built. Liza once again blessed her lean figure that had served her so well in track and field, and in the Army. Surviving her three brothers had developed her strength early and she’d never let that advantage go.

  When her dad had slipped a German Shepard pup under the tree for her fifth Christmas, she’d found her calling. The two of them had played and run together until a car had killed him when she was seventeen. By then he was slow, mostly deaf, and blind in one eye.

  She’d been walking him home from the vet who had given the worst pronouncement of all—cancer, with only days to live. She often wondered if Rex had known what he was doing when h
e’d stepped off the curb before she released him. It had been instantaneous, merciful, and utterly horrifying. When she’d looked up from Rex’s suddenly lax form into Garret Conway’s eyes, she didn’t know whether to thank him or try to kill him.

  Liza still didn’t.

  Garret continued to watch her as he fooled with the treat. Then—with no more words than he’d offered on that horrible day while he’d put Rex in her lap in the back seat and driven her back to the vet to arrange for cremation—he held the treat out for Sergey.

  Sergey’s sharp snarl had him jerking his hand back.

  “What the hell?”

  “I haven’t told him that you’re a friend. He’s very careful.”

  “So tell him, Minnow.” Half the high school had gone to “Little Fish.” At least he’d never done that.

  Tell Sergey that Garret was a friend? Not in a thousand years. But the dog only knew the one word. She had no way to explain “asshole from my past but don’t attack him” to a dog. There was friend and there was attack.

  Finally, she simply said, “Down.”

  Sergey lay down immediately, but continued glaring at Garret. Good dog.

  2

  Garret didn’t know which of the two looked more dangerous: the tall slip of a blonde or her damn dog. It was clear that neither was glad to see him.

  Of all the possible soldiers command could have sent his way, why did it have to be her? Had someone seen the shared high school in their past and decided they were doing him a favor? No. They’d looked at skills and decided she was the best fit for the job based on skills and availability—meaning she’d already been in the dustbowl rather than having to be shipped in from the States.

  He didn’t doubt that for a second. She’d always been one of those overachiever types. A top student and the school’s star decathlete. After watching her win seven-of-ten events in a decathlon, easily winning the overall event freshman year, he’d tried out for the team. That’s when he’d discovered what an amazing athlete she truly was. The coach had kicked him loose after three events: not the first cut, but almost. Thank god she hadn’t been around that day to see his humiliation.

  The next year, he’d made it through all of the events before being cut. He’d finally made the team the year she went All-State—the football team. He was fast and knew how to take a hit—but it wasn’t enough to shine among the guys who’d caught their first pass as they were leaving the womb. He’d graduated second string and hadn’t liked it.

  Minnow was the gold standard of women. It sucked that he’d never been able to speak to her. The beautiful, popular, star athlete shone with a brightness that made his life feel even darker and dirtier than it was.

  He tossed the dog treat down in front of the Malinois. Sergey didn’t even track it to the floor—his attention remained riveted on Garret’s face, and not in a good way. His muscles remained bunched and ready for action.

  “We’ve got some chow in the other room,” he said to Minnow. “Briefing in ten. Out the door in twenty.” Then he turned his back on them and walked back to join the rest of the team.

  “It’s okay,” he heard her speak softly to the dog.

  There was a sharp snap of jaws that took all of Garret’s training not to react to. Then he heard the quick crunch as Sergey ate the treat he must have snapped up.

  The hut’s other room was just as disgusting as the sole bedroom he’d given Minnow and her dog. Their safehouse was little more than the smallest of three huts inside a massive ring of HESCO barriers and piles of sandbags. A dozen years of occupancy by a rotating stream of NATO forces hadn’t been kind to it. A small firepit, a table covered in his team’s gear, wooden pegs driven into cracks in the concrete from which their rifles dangled on their straps. Regular forces were standing security outside, so at least they didn’t have to think about that. The other four Unit operators were too quiet and had clearly heard everything.

  “Mutt and Jeff,” Maxwell and Jaffe, the nickname inevitable as they were two jokers like a comedy routine, ping-ponging remarks back and forth. They could go all day if he let them. One tall and at least a little thoughtful, the other short and quick-witted. They were also both crack shots.

  “Both of you load up long.”

  No need to tell them twice. They opened hard-shell cases and began assembling their preferred sniper rifles. Predictably Mutt favored an old-school Accuracy International AWM and Jeff ran with a hot-rod Remington M2010 that he’d hand-modified—only a true sniper tinkered with a ten thousand dollar rifle. Both were barreled for the .300 Win Mag cartridges, so that they could swap ammo if needed.

  “BB,” Burton and Baxter on the other hand, could be addressed interchangeably. As different and distinct as Mutt and Jeff were, the BB boys weren’t. Both explosive and electronic techs, they were generally quiet but had a habit of finishing each other’s sentences. No sign of a sense of humor, it was just something they did. One from Oregon, the other from Idaho and despite three years together he wasn’t sure which one. They’d both kicked their pasts to the curb, which sounded good to him—as if he couldn’t feel the past and her dog watching him through the doorway at his back.

  It still felt strange to be in charge of the team. Chris had just recently opted out after his wife Azadah came down with an incurable condition, becoming mother of his first child. Since when did hard-core Delta operators turn all mushy? The answer: since he’d fallen in love with an Afghan refugee during the team’s three-month deployment in Lashkar Gah and taken her home. Just because she’d helped them take down some of the top “most wanted” in southern Afghanistan was no reason to fall in love with her. At least not that he could see.

  What had been crazy was that none of them had noticed her while she’d been working as their cook and charwoman—except Chris. Yet when Garret had seen her at the wedding in upstate New York, she was so stunning it was hard to believe. High-born, fallen on hard times during all of the wars, fluent in several languages (including a soft English), she had somehow shifted from being invisible to being impossible to look away from. The woman had glowed and Chris, the lucky asshole, had never looked so happy in the six years he and Garret had served together.

  But Garret wasn’t going to have any of that. He’d finally found himself in The Unit, as Delta called them themselves. No way was he leaving except if they carried him out and that was something no operator really thought about.

  It felt even stranger being in charge with Liza aboard. He couldn’t imagine that Minnow would be any less than an amazing asset—he just wasn’t sure how he was going to survive it.

  3

  There hadn’t been time to really meet the others when she’d slipped into Wesh, Afghanistan along with the pre-dawn light. The Unit had been returning from a long patrol and had crashed into their bedrolls. Even less talkative than normal for Unit operators; which was saying something. They’d obviously been pushing hard.

  Unsure what to do or how to behave—and totally unnerved at finding Garret Conway in command—Liza had taken his gesture toward the back room as banishment and hunkered down. In the middle of the night she’d decided that there was no way he’d get the best of her and ruin her first chance with The Unit.

  So, she entered the main room as confidently as she could.

  Sergey was her envoy. She kept him on a tight lead, which was completely for show as she could command him much more accurately and quickly with gestures and voice commands.

  She greeted each one the same way, “If you’d hold out your hand for Sergey to get your scent.” As each one did, she’d clearly say, “Friend.” Each time Sergey would look up at her to make sure, then take a sniff and accept a pat on the head.

  “Don’t know what your problem is, Conway,” tall-and-lean Mutt tickled Sergey’s ears. “Looks like a sweetheart to me.”

  “Just a big old mushball, aren’t you?” Jeff, Mutt’s short-and-solid sidekick, gave her dog a neck rub.

  “I don’t know…” Baxter wa
s more interested in checking out the vest with light and camera than the animal wearing it.

  “…looks ready for a Spec Ops mission to me,” Burton finished. Both were middle-build and Nordic blond. It would be hard not to get them mixed up except that Burton paid some attention to Sergey before checking out the dog’s military vest himself. He looked to Sergey rather than her for permission before he reached out to toy with the camera—a gesture Liza appreciated.

  The infrared and daylight camera was center-mounted on his back with a flip mount so that it could fold forward or back in case Sergey needed to squeeze in or out of a small space. It also had an infrared light to really illuminate the darkness when needed. A Lexan faceplate protected the lens. The antenna mounted close beside it was a flexible whip rather than a knockdown.

  Then they both inspected the feed to the screen on Liza’s wrist.

  “Very cool!” Baxter noted.

  “Thanks!” Burton rubbed Sergey’s head in appreciation for his patience.

  She had the feeling that she was invisible to the men, as she often did when Sergey was beside her. No complaints from her. Let them focus on the dog, she didn’t need their praise, only his.

  Then she turned to Garret…no, Conway. Everyone else called him Conway and so would she. Once more he slouched against a wall, sporking his way through an MRE—Meal-Ready-to-Eat—straight out of the bag. Shredded BBQ Beef, with black beans and notoriously soggy tortillas, for breakfast.

  She stopped Sergey two steps from Conway. Sergey didn’t strain on the leash, but she could feel his tension vibrating up its length. Or maybe her tension vibrating down it.