I Own the Dawn

by M. L. Buchman

  She retrieved their weapons and settled in to wait.

  55

  “So I collected the spent rounds to avoid any evidence, covered ourselves with wheat, and waited out the daylight.” Kee knelt beside Archie and watched John redo his bandaging. Archie lay still on the dirt floor of the hut, but his color was good under the flashlight’s beam. It had been a long, brutal walk back, but they’d managed. She’d had to rig a rope from their three rifle straps to get him over the wall.

  Beale wanted to come fetch them when they radioed in, but Archie had mumbled that he’d rather walk. They didn’t dare the risk of flying so close to the still humming airbase.

  “This is one ugly field dressing, Smith.” But there was good humor in it. Good enough, it had kept the blood in and the arm immobile.

  The saline drip feeding into his arm would help more. John poured antiseptic over the wounds and began rewrapping it.

  Kee kept to herself how she’d spent those fourteen hours of daylight hiding in the ditch. Holding Archie’s hand as they lay in the middle of a hostile airbase they’d just attacked. Because it looked to be an accident, only a few patrols had come near them. And the only soldier to glance into the dry irrigation ditch in the middle of the airfield didn’t see them lying there beneath the wheat and dust. In between, she’d fought off the hysteria of fear that she might have to go through life without Archie.

  Their childhoods had been so different. Yet they’d both ended up in the same ditch, skin shaded to the same color with layers of desert dust that still clung to them.

  Now, kneeling on the dirt floor of the hut, Kee looked down at the unconscious Archie and wondered how slow she’d been to see him clearly. How many times had the man said he’d loved her? She hadn’t kept count at first, then she’d tried to but failed. Her mind couldn’t stay in a keeping-tally-sheet mode when they were together.

  Kee now truly understood how strong a woman Emily Beale was. Her man was down, and still she’d flown. She caught the major watching her. Yes, her man was hit and she’d still done the job.

  A brief nod. A nod and a smile—that warm smile. Not the one she’d offered Dilya, nor the sappy sweet one she sometimes aimed at her husband. It was the warm smile of a friend. Of an equal. They were all in this and Kee had proven her place on the team.

  “Well,” Big John tucked in the tail-end of the bandage. “That was one heck of a thump you set off. It shook the walls here, we were showered in decades of dust and crap.” John wasn’t joking. He, the major, and Dilya were gray with bits of an ancient Uzbekistan hut still, though they had obviously washed their faces and hands.

  Kee held the hand on Archie’s uninjured side and watched him breathe. Dilya leaned against Kee’s back, with her chin resting on Kee’s shoulder. The girl’s arms clasped loosely around her neck, as they both looked down at him.

  “I gave him another half dose of the painkiller,” Big John told her. “If he’s too wakeful, we’ll hit him with more.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Kee watched him sleeping. She had never so enjoyed watching a man sleep. Though this wasn’t the contented nap after sex, it was another side of the same man. Calm. At peace with himself. At peace with his choices.

  And he’d made it clear, she was one of his choices.

  “Kee.”

  “Yes, Emily?”

  John startled and looked at her then the major.

  “Could you two translate for me? John, go to the helo. Bring back a portable stretcher and all of the Uzbekistani som from the bug-out bag.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yes, we’re going to buy a truck.”

  It had taken work, but Kee managed to translate Emily’s messages through Dilya to the family.

  “Best for you if you don’t mention you saw us. Sorry about the truck.” And Kee sketched a map in the dirt floor showing where to find it. Maybe they could salvage it. If not, there’d been two thousand dollars worth of som, enough for a new truck or at least a couple of years’ income.

  The man, still flexing his injured hand, though John had reset the dislocated fingers, moved slowly to retrieve his shattered gun. They all watched him closely, but he held it sideways and gave it to the major to take away. She nodded solemnly as she took it.

  They took their final leave and turned for the helicopter when she noticed that Dilya no longer shadowed her side. She trotted back to the main house, now lit by a single candle. Her throat closed in panic.

  Panic of what?

  Her eyes stung as she imagined Dilya choosing to stay with her own people. A family who spoke her language.

  Dilya knelt before the smallest child, a girl of barely five. The child looked back at her wide-eyed, her features could well have been Dilya’s half a lifetime ago. Were they kin or merely the same race? There was no way to ever know.

  Dilya reached inside her coat and pulled out Archie’s cat. She held it close for a long moment, then slipped it into the little girl’s hands.

  “Sebiya.” Dilya told the girl her cat’s name.

  “Young girl. Little sister.” Kee translated in her head as she faded back into the night, to give Dilya the privacy of her gift.

  When Dilya joined her a moment later outside the door, Kee made certain to give her a tight hug and a kiss on the head. They ran hand in hand to catch up with the others.

  Near midnight, they were aloft, twenty feet above the ground, and moving fast. Major Beale flew alone while Kee and Big John sat at the Miniguns.

  At the border, they picked up an escort of Major Henderson and the Chinook. Henderson had limped home, loaded into Clay’s bird, and turned right back around to be there waiting for them. He’d been flying twenty of the last thirty hours and had five more to go.

  Kee glanced forward, wondering whether to ask permission to sit with Archie. Right when she was deciding not to push her new friendship, Emily turned and mouthed one word at her.

  Go.

  She went.

  56

  Kee peeled her helmet and moved to check the three parkas wrapped over and around Archie. He was still all tucked in and sleeping.

  Dilyana sat bundled in her parka against the cold desert night with her two hands wrapped around Archie’s good hand, the only exposed part of him other than his face. The bandage had showed no additional sign of bleeding after they moved him, so they’d decided it was safe to cover it and keep him warm rather than keep it exposed so that they could monitor the wound.

  Kee slipped in behind her, so that Dilyana ended up sitting in her lap. She wrapped one arm around the girl’s waist and rested her other hand over Dilya and Archie’s. “The Kee did win?” Dilya had to shout for Kee to hear her.

  “Yes. The Kee did win.”

  “Good?”

  Kee knew the question behind the words. Had she killed the men who had killed Dilya’s parents? Against all chance she had. Killed them, and saved the future existence of the SCO and the Uzbekistan nation with no one the wiser. But Dilya wouldn’t know about or understand that. Wouldn’t understand the two women who had died alone. Or the effect their love would have years later on the choices made by their two men.

  In that photo, once again safely tucked in Kee’s pocket, they had been in love. Been happy together. The four of them, they’d had family and been happy. Then torn apart. And now dead.

  She nodded. The word “good” no longer right, but she’d done the job.

  Dilya watched her face for a long moment, then she too nodded. Sad and quiet. She leaned her head against Kee’s shoulder.

  Maybe the girl somehow understood. The price had been paid, but that price ran terribly high.

  Now they had to think ahead. What to do with the girl? No parents. No way to find any other family. She was as much an orphan as Kee. As alone in the world.

  Except she wasn’t.

  Kee had only thought of herself as alone.

  She glanced forward. Big John watched intently over his gun despite the flying escort to either
side. Kee could see Emily’s shoulder as her commanding officer flew them home, alone in the cockpit, but with her husband flying close by her side.

  Home.

  Kee had called the Army home for a long time. Before that, she had never used the word, it only served to make her uncomfortable. But in the armed services it was one of those standard greeting questions. Where’ve you served? What units? Where’s home? Replying the Army to the last, offered with a wry laugh, got you past that hurdle.

  But home meant more now. It included this crew. It included Emily and Big John. And it included Archie and a girl who’d never had the chance to be young.

  “Dilyana?”

  The girl lifted her head and faced her.

  “If Dilyana want, have Kee for mother, Archie for father.”

  The girl’s eyes went wide, then she wrapped her arms so tightly around Kee’s neck she could barely breathe. And, apparently not trusting words, nodded her head fiercely against Kee’s shoulder.

  Kee felt the slightest squeeze on her hand, where she still held Archie’s.

  She squeezed back, hoping it was more than a reflex response. His hold grew stronger—she hadn’t imagined it.

  Looking over, she met his half-lidded gaze. “Hey there, Helen.”

  “Hey yourself, Magic Man.”

  His gaze traveled for a moment to the girl snuggled against her. Then returned to hers.

  “Did I hear correctly?”

  “What?”

  His smile broadened, started in that funny way of his. Finally blooming into that lopsided grin that swept her away.

  “Did you just propose to me?”

  Kee blinked—hard. Had she? She’d offered herself as stepmother and Archie as stepfather to a girl who had accepted.

  A promise had been made.

  She’d pictured them each caring for Dilyana and raising her, but she hadn’t pictured it as family. As man and woman. As husband and wife.

  Archie had already made his choice clear. He’d chosen her.

  Now it was up to her to make her choice. Maybe she hadn’t meant to propose to him. But now that she had, the picture came in loud and clear, five by five.

  “Damn straight, Night Stalker! And, no, you don’t get a choice. Your answer is yes.”

  He held her hand more tightly as he headed back to sleep.

  “Good. That’s my Kee.”

  “I love you, Archie.”

  He nodded vaguely as the drugs took him back under. Damn the man, he’d better remember that she’d finally said it. For the first time in her life had said the words.

  Then Kee smiled and kissed Dilya on top of the head. Kee would have plenty of opportunity to remind him. After all, she now knew exactly how to describe how he made her heart feel. How he made her feel.

  Loved.

  57

  Kee spun the wheel easily and the sailboat swung its bow up into the wind. As they lost all headway, Archie let the anchor loose. It plunged down into the crystalline waters with a splash. They drifted back until he snubbed it off, setting the anchor in the sandy bottom and stopping the boat’s drift.

  In moments they had the sails furled, each working down either side of the boom in silence, and the boat rested easily off the beach.

  The beach. That same beach they had run on a lifetime ago. Surely Kee had been a different person her last time here.

  “How’s your shoulder?” Kee inspected the scars, the ugly jags made by the bullet as well as the neat surgical lines. They stood out white against the fine tan he’d cultivated on medical leave. Wearing nothing but swim trunks revealed the serious work he’d done to keep fit. The Roman gods who’d ruled over these cliffs and sea couldn’t have looked this good.

  “Will you stop asking me that?” But Archie rolled the shoulder easily, revealing good muscle definition around the joint replacement. He’d never be a hundred percent, not enough to fly forward combat again, but he’d worked through the pain of physical therapy and it wouldn’t be a disability in any other situation.

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

  He closed his eyes and faced into the wind, so that it rippled his hair back. The man was so damn handsome, Kee still kept being surprised every time she woke next to him or saw the diamond ring she mostly wore strung with her dogtags.

  His hand slid around her waist and pulled her in close. “I’m going to take the majors’ offer.”

  “Good.” It was right. Hard to think of Archie not in the copilot’s seat, but moving into the AMC role. But no one could be better than her Archie. An Air Mission Commander planned and ran multi-aircraft missions. The 5th Battalion C Company needed one. They needed his strategic genius combined with his intimate knowledge of the team. It also took him far enough out of the chain of command for the Army to look the other way. It was perfect.

  “It will also let me give Dilya more security.” He didn’t finish that sentence, no SOAR flier would. Dilya would still have a parent if Kee was ever shot down. He, at least, would be on the ground or safe in the background aboard a command helicopter. Their girl would never be without a parent again.

  “Assuming,” Kee drawled out, “your parents let us have her back after this.” Steve and Calledbetty had been ecstatic at the chance to spoil the girl rotten while Kee and Archie took a delayed honeymoon.

  She leaned in and kissed Archie on the scar.

  He pulled her around until they were tucked together, the deck rolling gently beneath their feet.

  “I have this crazy idea.”

  “Hmm…” Kee laid her ear against his chest to listen to his heart as he spoke.

  “There’s this grassy hilltop I know about. It’s a bit of ways. But if we run…”

  She looked up into the sky blue eyes that always inspected her with such wonder. With such love.

  “Seems I remember a place like that.” She considered how her body was humming already from holding her husband close. Her husband—what a crazy and wonderful word.

  “There’s also a nice bed much closer by.” She tapped a bare foot on the decking.

  In an easy motion, belying any injury, he swept her into his arms and headed for the hatchway.

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  I Own the Dawn

  * * *

  Keep reading for an exciting excerpt from:

  Night Stalkers #3: Wait Until Dark

  The Night Stalkers #3 (excerpt)

  If you enjoyed that, dive into…

  Wait Until Dark (excerpt)

  Sergeant Connie Davis felt the metallic stutter before she heard it. It broke the rhythm of the music that usually floated in the background of her thoughts when flying.

  She began counting seconds… four, five. Again.

  A third time to be sure.

  “Major?” she called on the Black Hawk helicopter’s intercom.

  “What!” Major Emily Beale’s voice made it damn clear that whatever Connie wanted had better be more important than the firefight going on all around them.

  The copilot and the other crew chief, Staff Sergeant John Wallace, kept their silence. It surprised Connie that she’d heard it before Big John. He was the most amazing mechanic she’d ever met.

  “We have,” Connie estimated quickly, “about five minutes until lift failure. We’re losing a main blade.” And without that, ten thousand pounds of US Army helicopter and her four crew members were going to fall out of the sky far too fast.

  “You sure?”

  Connie leaned out the left-side gunner’s window to unleash another spate of fire from her Minigun on the bunkered-in machine gun nest that was giving them such trouble tonight. A hailstorm of spent brass spewed out the window as she pounded sixty-eight rounds a second of tracer-laden hell down on the aggressors. More raw power than the cannons in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

  For the three long seconds that the nest was in her range, the trace
r-green fire whipped and coiled across the sky like a nightmare snake. In three seconds she hurled two kilos of lead. Four-and-a-half pounds didn’t sound like much until it was pumped along as three thousand separate pieces moving at three times the speed of sound. She raked her flying buzz saw back and forth twice over the enemies’ position in the time they were in view.

  “She’s right. Maybe ten minutes if you ride it soft,” Big John chimed in. He might not have caught the problem, but as soon as she pointed it out he’d found the vibration rippling through the frame of the highly modified MH-60L DAP Hawk helicopter, had counted the seconds, and he knew. The DAP—the Direct Action Penetrator, an exclusive design for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (airborne)—was the most powerful gunship flown by any military, and this one was badly broken.

  It was her first time in full combat with John. But already he was a man she’d learned to admire during training flights. A man she had real trouble not noticing. She kept finding herself watching him when he wasn’t aware. Big John Wallace fully deserved his nickname. He was six-four, mountain-strong, with skin the rich luster of good earth. He was definitely the largest and perhaps the most handsome man she’d flown with in six years aloft. He also was a crew chief who loved his helicopter like a child and that was the most captivating piece of him. He was a mechanic to the center of his being—a feeling she understood well.

  That she was a step ahead of him would have been satisfying in any less hazardous situation. One look out the window was enough to wipe any thought of a smile entirely out of her mind.

  Even at night, the Hindu Kush mountains of northeast Afghanistan looked ugly. And tonight’s mission had taken their flight in deep, way past five minutes to safety, or ten. Base lay forty-five minutes away, with four good blades, and the area around that base was at least marginally friendlier than the people shooting at them now.