Target Lock On Love

by M. L. Buchman

  Utilitarian two-story buildings, in depressingly blockish Russian style, were scattered about the narrow valley looking more like a child’s spilled toys than a military operation. As they flew deeper into the cove, they had to veer to avoid a submarine’s conning tower.

  It gave Mick a jolt until he realized that the angle was wrong. It was an abandoned sub, run up on a sandbar, and tilted over at a crazed angle. If it was daylight, he’d bet it was covered in rust and bird poop, but there were some details that nighttime light amplification equipment simply didn’t reveal.

  Their night-vision gear did reveal the many missing windows in the sides of the buildings. Either a departing slash of vandalism by the workers and soldiers who had spent years confined on these desolate shores, or a raging typhoon. Perhaps both.

  The overgrown grounds were scattered with heavy machinery, decaying trucks, and old submarine engines. The detritus of a small military population abruptly vacated stretched far and wide. There was no Congressional oversight committee which defined base closures with phased transition calendars. Here, someone had said “Get out. Now! Last boat leaves in an hour.” And they had gotten.

  Altman guided them to a small airfield, that and the inlet with its rotting dock were the only two accesses to the old base. No roads crossed the volcanic fields and rugged ridges to this remote location. Along the edge of the airfield there was a line of rusted out hangars that must have been used for protecting any visiting transport aircraft from the ice and snow.

  There was no snow on the ground at sea level, yet. But it was the start of October in Kamchatka and he’d wager it would be here soon.

  He just hoped that he and Patty were gone before it arrived. He’d had enough of ice and snow for a while.

  They made short work of the hangar doors. They were jammed partway open, but a haul line attached to the Chinook and a good sharp yank ripped them off the building. Danielle dragged them off to one side before landing her big twin-rotor aircraft.

  Their three helicopters and the very sad remains of an Antonov An-26 twin-prop transport plane filled the hangar. They would now be invisible to any casual flyover. Safely out of sight, their next priority was refueling the helos from the fuel bladder in the back of the Carrie-Anne. It took a hundred and twenty-five gallons out of the four thousand available for the Linda and made Mick feel much calmer. After they topped up the other two birds—which drank half of the remaining fuel at a gulp—they were ready to depart for a return flight to Attu on three minutes notice if they had to.

  For a moment, he stood outside the hangar and looked up.

  It was midnight and the stars were burning brightly in a pitch black sky. With the nearest man-made light at least a hundred miles away, the Milky Way was a sparkling white streak across the sky like Mick had never seen. A fishing boat always had running lights and a helicopter always returned to base at night—if they were overseas in a war zone it was a very brightly lit base for security reasons. Even camping out had a campfire, here they didn’t dare to light one.

  Patty slid up beside him. He knew it was her just from her footsteps rustling against the dry grass punching up through the pavement.

  “Hey, Gloucester.” Mick reached out an arm and Patty leaned in against him. “Here. I stole this for you.” He pulled the orange-and-gold knit hat with ear flaps and a pom-pom out of his pocket and tugged it down over her head.

  “You stole from the PJs?” Patty sounded both terribly pleased and a bit horrified.

  “No, just from the quartermaster. And I might have asked rather than stolen it.”

  “That was really sweet of you, Mick. Are you sure you’re the Mick Quinn I’ve been flying with all this time? Considerate? Thoughtful? Sexy? Doesn’t sound like you, does it?”

  Mick had always thought sexy is what women were, not men. Like beautiful versus handsome. Before she could continue her rolling dialog he kissed her on a fuzzy temple and whispered, “Look up.”

  “Whoa!” Patty’s voice was soft and he could feel her head tracking skyward until the back of it rested against his shoulder and the pom-pom stuck in his ear.

  At least there was something in this universe that could silence Patty O’Donoghue’s words.

  “Man oh man, if you ever wanted a lesson in how insignificant all our little worries are. Damn!”

  Okay, not so much with the robbed-of-speech. In the dark, bundled up like two Michelin tire people, he leaned in to take advantage of her head on his shoulder.

  The kiss she offered was sweetly tender, but it didn’t stay that way for long. Patty attacked him as if they were lying together naked rather than exposed only from chin to forehead. A hand reached back to grab his butt and squeeze hard.

  With the arm around her shoulders, he kept her turned sideways to him so that he could slip his other hand down her front. And even though he couldn’t feel her shape through all the layers, he could certainly recall how her breasts felt as he stroked his gloved hand over them.

  Her own hand, the one not still clamped on his butt, had been on his chest. Now it was moving downward and in a moment they were going to be having sex while fully clothed in the middle of a defunct Russian military base.

  Mick tested the thought and decided that he was okay with that.

  Patty must have agreed, because her breast was pressing against his hand as hard as she was pressing into their kiss.

  “Ahem…”

  They both froze at the sound of a woman clearing her throat from less than ten feet away.

  “Perhaps this is not the appropriate moment,” Nikita the DEVGRU SEAL. “But I should inform you that we do have devices called night-vision goggles. Perhaps you have heard of them. They allow us to see quite clearly what is happening, even in deep darkness. Especially when bodies are producing significant heat in relation to their backgrounds. I should also mention that everyone else already has theirs.”

  “I think,” Patty said to him drily, “since that’s far and away the most words she’s ever spoken at any one time, perhaps we should believe her.”

  “We could always test that theory,” Mick whispered into her ear and began moving his hand again, the one that had been frozen in place halfway between breast and waist.

  Patty punched him right in the gut to stop him.

  “Cut that out, you two.” Napier’s voice sounded out of the darkness. He sounded amused rather than pissed, which meant any courts-martial weren’t going to happen tonight.

  He and Patty let go of each other.

  “Meeting time.” Nikita handed each of them a set of night-vision goggles and then led them into the back of the even darker hangar.

  # # #

  The crew was gathered around in a loose circle. Two SEALs, four DAP Hawk crew, five from the Chinook, and Mick and herself.

  “Lucky thirteen again,” she remarked.

  “Absotively!” Mick responded cheerily.

  “Hey, that’s my word.”

  Napier didn’t make a sound that she could tell, but Patty’s attention was drawn his way somehow. In the green world of night vision, with an NVG rig covering half his face, he managed to look both stern and disgusted at their interruptions.

  “Well, it is, Major,” Patty refused to be cowed. “Where do I file a complaint? Made up word. One of. Theft with full knowledge, nefarious intent, and malice aforethought. I’ll come up with sundry other charges later.” In retrospect, thinking of courts-martial, the last bit she sort of wished she hadn’t said.

  Napier shifted to face Mick. Patty couldn’t read the next expression, but Mick nodded in reply. She’d have to remember to ask later…or maybe she didn’t want to know. If Napier had been asking Mick if he was sure that he wanted to be with a lunatic like Patty, and then Mick had confirmed his choice, that meant…

  His choice? That sounded way more permanent than a tumble in a tent and a gr
ope on a Russian runway. It was way too close to that “loving him” thought she’d had the other night in what must have been a delusional moment. Nope. Decision made. No way in hell was Patty going to ask either man what they were talking about without actually talking.

  Instead, she’d ask Danielle.

  But if she didn’t like that answer either, then she’d be—not to put too fine a point on it—totally fucked. And then—

  “Who here knows fishing boats?” Altman’s quiet voice sliced off her thoughts.

  “Fishing boats?” Patty blinked in surprise and aimed her NVGs at him.

  “I do,” Mick spoke up.

  “No you don’t, Quinn.” She turned back to Altman. “He knows crabbing boats. Way not the same thing. I know fishing boats—sixth generation Gloucesterman.”

  “I thought you were a woman. Imagine my surpri—” Mick’s voice upticked sharply when she landed her elbow in his gut.

  “But I thought we were here to look at drones,” she refused to react to Mick’s happy chuckle. Next time she’d bait him up and feed him to the sharks.

  “Sport fishing. Dad charters out of Key West,” Jason “Mozart” Gould, the Chinook’s ramp gunner, spoke up.

  Patty scoffed at him, but not too hard. She liked Jason. Besides, Patty herself had tagged him for his vague resemblance to Tom Hulce in Animal House, who had gone on to play Mozart in Amadeus. When she’d explained her reasoning, it had been declared psychotically convolutional. But it had stuck and she was pretty proud of that even if he had refused to take up the piano no matter how often she asked him to. Maybe if she asked him to try the harpsichord…

  “Next question is who here speaks Russian?” Altman cut back in.

  “Russian fishing boats?” Patty said with as much disgust as possible. She didn’t speak a damned word of it.

  Nikita and Connie raised their hands. And Mick.

  “Since when do you speak Russian?”

  “Since Uncle Borya jumped ship in Kodiak and married Aunt Verna when I was a little boy. Verna and I learned Russian faster than he learned English, proper fisheryman Russian that would have had Mama soaping out my mouth if she’d understood a word. He still has an accent as deep as his hooks still reach. That side of the family longlines tuna, so I do know fishing as well.”

  How much didn’t she know about Mick? After two-plus years flying together, he shouldn’t be able to surprise her…yet he constantly did. Well, it wasn’t right that he knew a language that she didn’t.

  “That does it. From now on sex is only in Russian until I learn it.” Then she looked slowly around the circle.

  Everyone was looking right at her.

  “Please tell me that I didn’t say that out loud.” And she desperately hoped that her face didn’t grow brighter in infrared with all of the heat rushing to her cheeks.

  “You’re glowing there, Gloucester.”

  “Eat tuna guts, Quinn. I’ve changed my mind; no more sex for you. Ever!” He didn’t look worried; Quinn was a smart man. She couldn’t wait to jump him and receive her first Russian lesson. Time to bite the bullet. She turned to face Major Napier. A deep breath to calm her nerves.

  “Wait! No!” Mick held up his hands to protest as if he could read her mind. Probably could. And the fact that he was probably right didn’t stop her.

  “Care to explain why you haven’t court-martialed us yet? I’m tired of walking on goddamn pins and needles around my commanding officer, sir.”

  “Gotta admit, Pete,” Commander Altman spoke up. “I been wondering the same thing myself. Your unit. I figure you know what you’re doing. But I am finding myself a bit curious. Why is it? You can tell by their goofy smiles they’ve earned it. Didn’t take night vision to pick up on what a blind man could see.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Napier repeated calmly. “I’m not willing to explain my reasons. That’s an end to it.”

  Patty opened her mouth, then closed it again. You didn’t argue with a commanding officer, even when he wasn’t making sense. Especially when he wasn’t making sense. Was it some part of West Point training that taught them to play their cards close and confuse the crap out of their people? Based on experience, she’d have to say yes to that.

  “At first light, you two and Jason will join Altman, Nikita, and Connie on a small fishing expedition. If your boat is stopped, you—” Napier aimed a gloved finger at her chest as if he was going to stab her with it, “—will keep your mouth shut. You will be the idiot girl on the boat who is too mentally deficient to speak.”

  “Yes, sir,” she managed it without sounding too surly.

  “First light is in six hours,” Napier continued. “I suggest that you spend at least five of it asleep. Dismissed.” Then Napier ended the conversation by turning on his heel and walking away.

  “Fishing?” Patty turned to Altman because her frustration still needed a target. “You can’t fish for drones.”

  “Oh, but you can.” His grin looked positively evil. Of course, being six-foot-four and one of the best warriors in the entire US military made him all the more daunting.

  “Humph!” was all she offered him.

  “What was that, Chief Warrant?”

  “Humph, sir!”

  He beamed at her and strode away.

  Patty headed over to the Linda to fetch her bedroll.

  “You feeling okay?” Mick was right at her elbow.

  “Sure, why?”

  “You didn’t keep needling Altman.”

  “I’ve got some survival instincts, Quinn.”

  They lay down pads and sleeping bags side by side on the concrete near the Linda. They crawled in fast and still mostly clothed. She pulled the bag over her head until some semblance of warmth accumulated inside; the Russian night was bitter. She wanted to talk to Mick…and she didn’t. There was definitely something going on here, and she’d wager it was good, if life would just ease its foot off the old gas pedal long enough for her to catch a breath. After two years in Spec Ops, she knew that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

  Her hesitancy came from the same place it did before: the question what if this was real?

  And the only reason she wasn’t tackling it was…cowardice. Patty didn’t believe in cowardice. People believed in God or government or that cottage cheese wasn’t totally disgusting as a diet food. She believed in facing her problems head on.

  She stuck her head out of her sleeping bag. The cold slapped her despite the stolen wool hat. Damn! More evidence that Mick was decent and thoughtful. More proof that she really was gone on the man. She was totally charmed and Patty O’Donoghue didn’t get charmed by people, especially not by men people.

  “You gotta cut that out, Mick. You’re spoiling me.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Mick?”

  His breathing didn’t shift. It was exactly like when she’d been listening to it back in Anchorage two nights ago, unable to sleep next to him despite her exhaustion. He’d been zonked out, leaving her wide awake, because he made her feel so damn…happy.

  Shit!

  Chapter 10

  “If this is a typical Russian fishing boat, I feel bad for the Russian fisherymen. Let me tell you, I wouldn’t want to go out fisherying in this.”

  Mick couldn’t agree with Patty more. When they’d flown in last night and he’d spotted the craft, he’d assumed it was a wreck left to sink beside the rotten dock when the base was abandoned. Now that he was aboard her, he saw no reason to revise that initial assessment, except that she was actually afloat and showed recent usage. She was sixty feet of sad.

  He. Russians called their boats by the male gender.

  He was clinker-built, with overlapping boards stuffed with caulk to keep her—him—sealed. Fifty feet long, fifteen wide on the beam, he had a wheel
house forward and a terribly cluttered main deck. The crane, winches, and net labeled him as a purse seiner. Which Patty was right about; he’d have a hard time running this rig. The condition labeled the boat as old and very, very tired.

  “Boat needs a name. Can’t go out on a boat without a name. Terrible luck,” Patty declared.

  Mick edged down the dock, stepping carefully over several missing boards until he could see the stern. A name had once been painted there, but it had long since peeled away leaving only a suggestion of letters and no hints at all of former glory.

  “Call it, Gloucester,” he shouted over to where she glared down at the boat.

  “I hereby dub thee…” Patty looked up at the sky and he followed where she tracked.

  The stars were gone and the air was gray with the dawn and then she turned to the volcano towering above the base. Mount Shiveluch rose eleven thousand feet in a cone of ash-covered snow. A cloud of thick smoke, gray with ash, punched up twice the height of the mountain.

  “…Graynose,” Patty declared.

  “Graynose?” No one else got the reference.

  But Mick did, “You are so from Gloucester.”

  “I keep telling everyone that,” Patty complained.

  Mick didn’t bother pointing out that if she didn’t protest about being called “Boston” so much, she’d have long ago won the war on what she wanted to be called.

  “The Bluenose,” Mick explained for everyone else’s benefit when it was clear that Patty considered doing so to be beneath her dignity. How the woman thought she could wear dignity and a bright orange hat with a pom-pom he didn’t know. “It was the greatest of the Grand Banks fishing sailboats.”

  “Graynose because this is fucking Russia after all and everything is so goddamn gray,” Patty just had to get her two cents in about how clever she was. Which was true, so it worked on her rather than coming across as bragging.