Target Lock On Love

by M. L. Buchman

  “Aw crap,” he slapped at his gear and shrugged. “Got no spares, lady. Good luck with that.”

  There was something about the way Mick was looking at her, just a little too carefully bland. She fisted his ribs, hard. And her hand came away feeling as if she’d just punched him in the bugaboo. Mick “The Mighty Dozer” Quinn was a hard-muscled man.

  Whatever it did to her hand, she’d hit him hard enough to knock loose a chuckle as well. Just wait until she got him down on the glacier. He was going to pay.

  # # #

  Mick managed a little sleep, but it was only an hour flight to Mount Hayes at the helo’s top speed. It was a flight that he wasn’t in the pilot’s seat for and that was like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  Also, Patty O’Donoghue had fallen asleep on his shoulder which was much, much more difficult to ignore. And it wasn’t the tickling against his cheek from the bright orange pom-pom on her hat that was so distracting. She slept there like she belonged and it felt just that way.

  Sofia smiled at him from the far end of the cargo bay in a kindly fashion. He still wasn’t comfortable with what she’d said last night about his feelings for Patty. Patty was…Patty. They weren’t lovers. And they weren’t supposed to become lovers.

  But Sofia had said something about the way they looked at each other. From Patty he’d seen nothing but her typical range of a hundred different emotions racing across her features.

  And he’d looked at her how? In some way that Sofia could see and he couldn’t.

  He hadn’t unraveled the puzzle by the time Caspar the Ghost tapped his wrist and held up five fingers.

  Mick nudged Patty with a shrug of his shoulder. She blinked at him like a sleepy-eyed cat, once, twice, then wide awake. Rather than surprise or embarrassment, she stroked a hand where her head had been.

  “You’ve a very comfortable shoulder, Mr. Quinn.”

  “Welcome to it anytime, Boston.” And that thought went in all sorts of interesting directions, most of them involving a half dozen fewer layers of clothes and a warm bed.

  He and Patty? He didn’t have time to think anything else as they began their final gear checks. As jump buddies, Patty tugged on various parts of his gear and straps, and checked the positions of the parachute release handle and the cutaway in case the main chute fouled and he had to go for the reserve. The dance of her gloved hands over his harness produced visceral shocks like a stream of static electricity—not painful, just surprising as could be.

  When he did the same for her, the sensation didn’t go away. The harness strap just above her breasts had his imagination on overload about a shape wholly hidden by all her gear. Her brilliant blue eyes didn’t watch his hands, but rather his face.

  He almost asked what she was thinking.

  But he’d either get back some goofball response, or she’d actually tell him, which he wasn’t ready for. And if she asked him in turn, there wasn’t a chance that he could come up with a coherent response.

  Maybe she didn’t have an answer either. The increasing roundness of her eyes staring at him from so close made that seem more and more likely. Mick actually took comfort from that; at least that way they’d both be in uncharted territory.

  “One minute,” Caspar shouted and Two-ton opened the big side door.

  The blast of cold slammed into the helo and swirled around the cargo bay.

  “Holy shit!” Patty left her heavy knit hat on. It had a gold upper half, orange lower half, red ear flaps darker than her hair, and a red-and-orange pom-pom on top. It made her look like a crazed leprechaun or diminutive Alutiiq goddess…too damned cute either way. She yanked a jump helmet over it. He buckled it under her chin as she pulled down goggles. She did the same for him, but there was no time to appreciate the sensations. Besides, it was freezing.

  Caspar and Two-ton knelt side by side with their backs to the cargo door. The two big PJs saluted them and then tumbled backwards out the door. That opened up enough space for he and Patty to move into place.

  A peek out showed the PJs popping their chutes. Both had good openings on their mains.

  They turned their backs to the door and shot salutes to Major Napier; McCabe had stayed back at base to oversee the operation from the ground.

  After Mick let go but before he tumbled backward, he spotted Sofia. Her eyes were wide, perhaps in fear. Perhaps in shock at the severity of the cold.

  He sent her an encouraging thumbs up.

  If she returned the gesture, he didn’t have time to see it. Gravity snatched him and he tumbled into the sky.

  # # #

  Patty didn’t have time to wonder at Mick’s final signal to Sofia. In seconds she was colder than after an icy Grand Banks wave swept the length of her Gloucester herring boat. They were falling from fifteen thousand feet at over a hundred miles an hour.

  The wind chill was horrendous.

  And the view was incredible.

  It was dawn at Mount Hayes, the sun a bright, deep-red orb rising over the spiky rock-and-ice shrouded peaks of the Eastern Alaska Range. The impossibly rugged mountainscape sprawled in every direction except north. In that direction, the steep slopes tumbled down into a broad river valley where the Tanana River flowed west before the far side of the valley climbed anew up another section of the range to the north. Every peak was lit like a brilliant ruddy torch by the low-slanting sunlight. The valleys still huddled in darkness.

  It was impossible to get a visual feel of the distance to the drop zone, everything directly below her was stark white. She pulled her cord while still above Mount Hayes and after the briefest moment—when every parachutist was left to wonder if they had a failed chute—she was jerked hard by the harness.

  The deafening wind roar, so loud that she only became aware of it by its sudden absence, made the twenty-mile-an-hour descent rate beneath the deployed chute sound like perfect silence.

  A glance up, no line twists, the chute had deployed properly. Down, the two PJs were directly below, still circling in to a landing. To the side, Mick floating along a hundred meters over and fifty below her.

  “Always gotta be first, don’t you?” she shouted over.

  “Just keeping you in your place,” Mick hollered back, his voice a faint whisper on the wind. Then she heard him on the radio. “Calling Mayday test on Mount Hayes, can you give us a visual?”

  There was a pause.

  “You’re here! Thank God!” By the high tone of the radio operator in Anchorage, apparently the victim was female. “What took you so long? I’m freezing to death and my leg isn’t working right. Hurry please!...” And the operator kept transmitting from the mock victim’s radio in a constant stream, totally blocking the radio frequency for anyone else to use. Radios were one-way-at-a-time devices and when the other party didn’t shut up, there was nothing you could do.

  Patty offered a few choice words that no one else could hear. It drove home a lesson that she already knew—civilians and radio communication were a mix that should never be allowed.

  Unable to do anything else, they flew in to land beside the PJs.

  Feet touchdown, roll to calf, thigh, hip, twist onto back and shoulder, and end up rolling to sit and face the collapsing chute. Patty was pretty damn pleased she remembered how to do it right. Of course the calculated roll had also turned her completely white by tumbling through the foot or so of loose powdered snow.

  The stillness in the high mountain basin was as powerful an impact as the massive wind roar of the jump. She could hear every slick nylon ripple of the collapsing chute, even the paracord sliding through her thick gloves was loud enough to stand out in the silence as she gathered it in.

  She could hear Mick’s breath, caught between heavy gasps in the thin air and a euphoric laugh at the wonder of the experience. Patty noticed that she was doing exactly the same.

  The operator pla
yacting the stranded climber had finally shut up which added to the silence.

  “Nice attempt, calling the victim on the radio, Mick,” Caspar said as he strode up, his chute already packed. “And yeah, that babble stream is a fairly typical response. When they do that, jump up two-tenths in frequency. We do that so that we can still communicate with each other. I got a partial directional on the transmitter as we came down. Somewhere east of us.”

  “Heads up!” Two-ton called out and pointed westward.

  Their four packs of gear came down under a single chute, landing well up a ridge in the opposite direction to the distress call.

  “Typical McCabe,” Caspar commented without much chagrin. “Rope up and let’s go.”

  And that’s how their day began, Caspar, Mick, herself, and Two-ton each spaced a dozen yards apart down a common rope line. All walking away from the casualty toward their gear.

  “Shouldn’t two of us go to the victim?” Patty called out to the lead PJ.

  Caspar shook his head and kept plodding along. “Never split up the rescue team if you can help it. Also, if we don’t have that gear by nightfall, we’ll be the ones who need rescuing.”

  “It’s hard walking away from even a fake victim.”

  “Yep,” was Caspar’s answer, but he didn’t slow.

  Attempts to reach the radio link returned only brief and unintelligible responses. They finally received a clean response, and then Caspar lied that they were on their way.

  She supposed that was what you had to tell a victim—and not that you were walking in the opposite direction—but it still didn’t feel right.

  It took a breathless hour to reach the base of the ridge where their gear had snagged. Unlike most pilots, Night Stalkers spent little time at higher altitudes. Mission profiles were typically below two hundred feet rather than up at thirteen thousand. High flying aircraft were pressurized down to seven thousand feet anyway, but Night Stalkers didn’t even have that adaptation. Despite water and aspirin, a steady high-altitude headache thrummed away in the background of Patty’s thoughts leaving her feeling muddy and weak.

  But she wasn’t the only one taking twenty steps then pausing for a rest. Mick was doing the same. She’d wager the PJs could move along faster, but they made a point about the team moving and acting as one.

  Patty stared up at the steep, craggy pitch. Blocks of ice tumbled off jagged rocks. High up, their four packs were strapped together and the parachute had wrapped around a particularly large block.

  “Which of you two has more ice and snow experience?”

  Mick held up his hand.

  “Okay,” Caspar said. “You’re with me. Patty, go help Two-ton fetch the packs. He’s good at this. Man moves like two tons of feathers.”

  Patty stared at him aghast and then looked back up the cliff. Mick was the one with the experience…which is why Caspar had chosen her. Training mission. Right.

  Mick was close beside her. For just a moment she let herself lean against him and gather strength.

  “I won’t need any bugaboos for this, will I?”

  His chuckle warmed her as much as their contact.

  “Not for this, no,” then his face darkened as he stared up at the terrain. “You be damn careful up there, Patty. Do exactly what he says.”

  “Yeah, roger that.”

  Coming back dead wasn’t on her mission profile today, but she hadn’t liked that look on Mick’s face.

  Two-ton handed her a second ice axe and then unsnapped the safety rope that had connected her to Mick and snapped his own in its place.

  “You’ve got first pitch.” It was the first words she’d ever heard him say. Rather than being gruff, he spoke with a simple confidence that of course she could do this.

  Patty scanned the steep ridge face again and picked out a route that would keep clear of the worst of the ice. She indicated her planned route with the point of her ice axe.

  Two-ton nodded and, resisting the urge to look back at Mick once more, she led off.

  # # #

  Mick had trouble keeping his eyes off Two-ton in his yellow parka and Patty in her red one as they crawled upward. A two hundred foot high ice-and-rock field wasn’t much of an issue. One at twelve thousand feet atop an Alaska mountain in October was a whole different matter.

  “Got it bad, brother,” Caspar dragged Mick’s attention back down from the climbers.

  Mick shrugged. It was the only answer he had.

  Caspar started leading him across the glacier, climbing the steep ice field on a slant. Mick followed. He was ten minutes out, just looking back to spot Patty’s red parka—still in the lead up the ice face—when he heard a soft cry.

  He turned in time to see Caspar go shooting by him.

  “What the—”

  The rope snapped tight on Mick’s harness and flipped him off his feet. Some piece of training must have remained lodged deep in his subconscious. Even as he tumbled to land face down in the snow, he had his ice axe braced high against his shoulder, with his free hand clamped over the head of the axe.

  With a twist he managed to roll face down in the snow which jammed the point of his ice axe into the flying hillside. He spun from head first to feet first as the pick dug in. Then he lifted his hips so that all of his weight was driven down onto his crampon-clad feet and the point of the axe by his shoulder. But he didn’t lift so high that the rope bearing Caspar’s weight could flip him onto his back again.

  He scraped to a stop and simply stayed there with adrenaline surging through him.

  Caspar, the thought punched through.

  Caspar had fallen.

  Mick had to—

  “You gonna lie there all day, Mick?” Caspar spoke from about a foot away.

  “You’re—” then Mick knew. “Training fall. Got it. You secure?” He asked the question out of protocol, ignoring the fact that Caspar was standing rock stable beside close him.

  “Secure,” Caspar reported dutifully. “Long furrow, but not too bad.”

  Mick eased up and stared at the path his body had plowed through the snow. He had been slow on the arrest. Because he’d…been watching Patty instead of his climbing partner. He knew better. Trust your team, even when they weren’t roped to you. Well, he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  “Interesting problem, isn’t it?” Caspar started coiling the line the ran between them.

  “What?” Mick rolled over until he was sitting in the snow.

  “Women. Never figured ‘em out myself. My ex- had a few words to say about that, I can tell you.”

  Mick looked up at the red parka. Patty was at a dead stop about three-quarters of the way up. They were far enough away that he couldn’t be sure, but she appeared to be looking at him.

  Well, that worked, because he sure couldn’t stop looking at her.

  # # #

  “What’s up with him?” Patty asked Two-ton, though she learned that the man rarely responded to her questions unless they were about technique.

  She waited as if she expected an answer, because she certainly couldn’t move at the moment.

  Her attention had stayed on the climb.

  Two-ton wouldn’t accept less. He’d shown her how to pick a foothold in ice. How to give just the slightest bounce to test each placement of foot, hand, or axe—it stressed the position just a little and if she paid attention, she could feel if it was weak.

  Twice he’d led her back down over a tricky passage to show her the challenges of a descent. Twice she’d had to ascend by new routes.

  It was astonishing how much information he imparted with every soft-spoken suggestion. They could have reached the packs and returned by the time they were three-quarters of the way there, but it was totally worth it.

  Then she’d stopped to rest a moment and look around.

  At
that instant, Caspar’s parka-yellow figure tumbled down the slope. Mick’s orange had shot off his feet. They’d fallen fifty yards before Mick did some kind of strange flip and twist that jerked him to halt.

  The slam against his harness must have been brutal as he stopped Caspar.

  “They’re in trouble!” she’d shouted. “We have to go help!”

  All Two-ton had done was hold up a finger indicating she should wait.

  Caspar-yellow climbed back up the slope to an unmoving Mick-orange.

  He’s hurt! But this time she managed to keep the cry inside her own head.

  Then Mick rolled over to sit beside Caspar. After a long minute, they began walking up the slope of the glacier again.

  “God damn them!”

  Two-ton offered his first smile of the whole day then waved her to continue upward.

  She glared up at the packs still fifty feet above them and set off.

  No way she was going to look again. For one thing her nerves couldn’t take it.

  When she reached the packs, it was pure chance that she just happened to see Caspar and Mick glissading down the slope on their butts, using the tips of their ice axes like rudders. Boys! She turned to tie a lowering rope onto the packs.

  Hell with her nerves.

  Her heart couldn’t take it.

  # # #

  Mick had thought to keep the pace slow to favor Patty, but he needn’t have bothered. The hard work of slogging through the snow at altitude slowed him down plenty as well. He might have gone faster, but the PJs set up a slow but steady pace. Breaks were few, conversation light, but neither were they exhausting themselves.

  Back at their landing site, they had to poke around to find where they’d stashed their parachutes. A high, thin cloud cover had moved in and flattened the light, the deep furrow of their out-bound path through the knee-deep snow was almost invisible on their return journey.

  He gathered in loops of the rope until he and Patty were walking closely together and could speak slowly between deep breaths.

  “Of course, I’m doing okay, Meathead,” which told him she really was doing fine. “You’re not the only fine Special Ops soldier on this mountain.”