By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  It was a crazy mash-up of a ship. The Navy’s next-sized class down from the big aircraft carriers, she could carry twenty-five hundred personnel, thirty helos, a half-dozen Harrier jump jets, and a bellyful of amphibious assault craft and vehicles including trucks and tanks. The latter loaded and unloaded through a rear gate in the stern that opened into a massive well deck awash at sea level and reaching deep inside the ship. She was designed to deliver an entire Marine Expeditionary Unit to the beach, any beach in the world, fast.

  SOAR’s 5D had taken her over as a mobile platform to prowl the troubled oceans of the world. Now—including all of the 5D, the fifty U.S. Rangers, a handful of Delta Force operators, and the Navy people to run her—she boasted barely six hundred personnel and under a dozen helos. She was a dozen stories from keel to superstructure, so they practically rattled about inside the eight-hundred-foot ship. Her flattop deck stretched over two football fields long and most of one wide.

  The air boss signaled Justin to stand off the stern while the other helos came in from tonight’s training exercise.

  He and the Jane had only been aboard for a few months, and he’d already flown in dozens of live ops in addition to these training exercises. The 5D maintained a blistering op schedule even by the standards of the 10th Mountain Division where he’d been stationed before applying to SOAR. The heavy flight demands were fine with him; he liked the challenges.

  But there’d been one mission which he could only infer had actually happened. They’d all gone on leave for one week, one lousy week, and he’d missed something big. That still stuck in his craw. They’d lost the Little Bird helicopter named Maven. And then her pilot and the head Delta Force operator had gone missing for two weeks afterward.

  Next thing you knew, a brand-new helicopter had been delivered to take the lost gunship’s place. Then Captain Claudia Jean Casperson and Delta Colonel Michael Gibson were married and back on the ship—serving together no less.

  Marriages were another of the things he couldn’t get over about the 5D. Families normally didn’t happen in the same unit of the military. Hell, sex wasn’t supposed to happen in the military at all—as if that made one lick of sense. Come on, people, corral a clue. Why would a career guy want anything less than a soldier babe?

  But the 5D was a horse of a whole different color.

  Chief Warrant Lola Maloney, pilot of the Vengeance, was married to Tim, who’d recently made the jump from backseater to copilot. Her crew chief Connie was married to Big John who handled the other side gun on the DAP Hawk. Trisha, the Little Bird pilot, and another D-boy…

  It was just weird.

  Made a man wonder just how extreme these folks were that they could get away with such things.

  And that thought, as almost every other one over the last two months, led him back to Captain Kara Moretti. The babe was hot, no arguing with that. Just about blew his hat off when she’d strolled into the Peleliu briefing room that first time. They had joined the 5D the same day.

  But it was way more than that. Carmen, his starboard-side gunner, was hot in a San Francisco redhead sort of way. Funny, a great shot, a joy to look at, but that was all. Kara was short, feisty, pain-in-the-ass New York…and his brain switched off and his body switched on every single time she walked by. Or he heard her voice over the radio. Or he thought of her…

  The only celebration of their joining the same day had been a massive hostage rescue in the heart of Somalia twenty-four hours later. SOAR was never dull, that was for dang sure.

  The landing officer finally called Justin’s chopper forward and he settled down onto the stern of the Peleliu.

  Thoughts of Kara were so distracting, he almost landed with the rear unloading ramp of his Chinook hanging out over the sea. Man, the Rangers would have loved that. First they get to humiliate the OKK—which the boys had done a damn fine job of—and then their pilot exits them into the night ocean in full gear, probably killing the lot of them.

  He shuffled forward to where the landing officer indicated before letting the Jane settle onto the ship. He tried to make it look as if he’d just been settling slow, but the LO wasn’t buying that fifty-thousand-pound mosey for a second. Neither was Danny. Justin could feel the eye roll even worse than when he was singing.

  Once down on the right spot, the first thing he did was pull his helmet and scrub at his hair so that his head could breathe. Second thing he did was reach behind the seat and grab his cowboy hat. There were so many Yankees and West Coasters in SOAR that a man had to take a stance about something. He only ever wore a white straw Cooper Stetson in the heat, because there was nothing like a classic. In winter he wore a black felt High Point, but there wasn’t a whole lot of winter around the Horn of Africa or in the Mediterranean, so that one had stayed in his cabin so far.

  After unloading and cleaning up behind the Rangers, who never left anything quite the way it should be, his crew tackled the postflight lists together. Not his duty, but get it done and get them to their supper had always worked for him. Ma and Dad had always helped clean the stalls, as had every camper at their ranch.

  It was almost sunrise. The Peleliu and the 5D worked at night and slept during the day, so suppertime was fast approaching. SOAR’s motto wasn’t “Death Waits in the Dark” just for the sake of saying it. That’s when they flew and how they lived.

  As they worked over the postflight checklists and switched back to live ammunition, the sun gave a warm glow to the Mediterranean horizon. Nothing much to see here—a hundred kilometers offshore left Turkey below the horizon. Cyprus was a smudge to the west and Syria and Lebanon were low hints to the east. Most everything about was water, empty water.

  Unlike the big aircraft carriers, the Peleliu and her helicopter company wandered the seas alone. No destroyers, frigates, oilers, or other craft were about. The Landing Helicopter Assault carrier was always on the move. Since she wasn’t attached to a war, she was ignored by most and well able to defend herself.

  It was a matter of thirty minutes to get the Calamity Jane back to shipshape.

  Thanking the crew, something he made a point of after every flight, he headed up along the deck as they each dropped down into the bowels of the ship to await mess call.

  The Little Birds and DAP Hawks were already serviced and shrouded with nylon covers along the flattop deck of the Peleliu like so many cowpats. Shrouded so that no one would see them clearly by daylight. The grapes—purple-vested fuel handlers—were already pumping Jet A gas into the Calamity Jane. The reds were double-checking the ammunition, even though the SOAR crews hadn’t fired a single live round.

  As soon as they were done, the deck crews would shroud her, the biggest cowpat of all, at least three times the size of any of the other choppers. Though she wasn’t stealth, it made for a consistent presentation to unwelcome surveillance.

  The nature of the company’s aircraft was just one more weird thing about the 5D. Courtesy of the raid on bin Laden’s compound, Justin had discovered along with the rest of the world that there were stealth helicopters. That most didn’t know they were part of SOAR was just the way the Night Stalkers would want it.

  And if one crashed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that meant there were at least two on the raid.

  And if there were two… He just hadn’t expected ever to see one during his career, much less fly with a whole company of them. But here they were, carefully hidden from seeking eyes, their covers softly lit by the oncoming dawn that now was turning the sky gold and knocking the last of the stars out of the heavens. As one of the 5D’s pilots, he was left to wonder what he’d done right with his life to end up here.

  His sister, Bessie, had gone Air Force and flew an AC-130 Spooky gunship for them. Dad had done a tour with the Navy on a destroyer. That only left the Army for Justin, because a Roberts didn’t follow in anyone’s footsteps. Not even if they were kin.

  The ranch was h
is big brother’s job. Rafe had joined their parents in the horse ranch business. A place Justin had thought he’d end up himself, until shortly before the end of his first tour.

  He now flew the heavily modified Boeing MH-47G Special Operations version designed for and flown only by SOAR—the Percheron of the heavy-lifters. He truly appreciated the beautiful and noble craft.

  During that first tour he’d come to love the simpler CH-47 Chinook that he’d flown for the 10th Mountain Division. She wasn’t just any old helicopter, but rather served as the workhorse of the Army helifleet.

  Still, he’d thought to do his tour and head home…right until his world had been blown apart, literally.

  He did his best to shunt the memories aside, because they sure weren’t good ones. Often they kicked him into a tailspin of epic proportions.

  “Hey, Captain Roberts.”

  He must be losing his tracking skills to let Kara come up on him without him noticing. “Howdy yourself, Captain Moretti.” He should have expected it. She was always doing that to him, sliding in under his radar even when he was watching out for her rather than momentarily lost at sea.

  And this time it was predictable. All the commanders and lead pilots were headed toward the same room for debriefing. The Navy Lieutenant Commander of the Peleliu had established an office in the base of the communications superstructure that towered a half-dozen stories above the vast deck. Four tiers of flight ready rooms, command-control spaces, and flight control tower topped by great towers adorned like overladen Christmas trees with antennas, radomes, and other sensing equipment.

  “‘Howdy’?” She looked up at him sidelong from most of a foot down—though no man would be fool enough to call her petite, unless he was looking for a black eye.

  He could never tell when she was teasing or getting all…New York. Well, he had his pride and responded with a “Yep!”

  “Do people actually speak like that where you come from?”

  “A’ course! In Amarillo we speak like Americans, not Yankees.”

  “Gimme a frickin’ break, Cowboy. If all Americans sounded like you, the rest of the world would need translators so that the translators could understand them.”

  He reached for the heavy, soundproof door that led into the communications structure, like Pa had raised him, but she beat him to it as if it was some sort of a competition.

  The movement placed them so close that his nose was practically buried in the back of her hair. Closest together they’d been in two months aboard.

  SOAR’s customers, especially the edgy ones like Delta and SEAL, grew longer hair or beards to blend in with crowds. Only in the 5D did command allow quite so much imitation of their customers. His short hair was the exception rather than the rule.

  And Kara Moretti’s was a downright sin in the other direction. Most of the women let their hair grow down to their shoulders, which was nice to look at. He’d always had a weak spot for longer hair.

  But because Kara flew in a box and didn’t have to worry about harness restraints and other hair catchers, she’d let her dark brown hair, with just a hint of gold, flow down to the middle of her back. On a military woman it was stunning, evocative, and made him want to dive his hands into it.

  She smelled of…not New York. And for certain not hot helmets and battle sweat. Kara Moretti’s hair smelled of—she’d hate the allusion—his favorite mare’s mane after a long run on a cool fall day. All the promises of a filly now full grown and just filled with life.

  As he’d noted earlier, the woman was just killing him.

  They filed into Lieutenant Commander Boyd Ramis’s office. He’d taken over a flight-ready pilots’ waiting room and outfitted it with comfortable chairs and couches, a small conference table, and a desk that was less ostentatious than it might have been.

  Most merely waved at Ramis or nodded. Justin always made a point of saluting. Some might think he was sucking up, but after he saw how much the man appreciated it in his quiet way, Justin never missed. Ramis returned the salute sharply.

  Ramis might believe he was a forward-thinking, up-and-coming commander, but it was clear he had found his highest post and wouldn’t be progressing upward any further. He was the kind of commander who’d have your back but wasn’t the strongest leader.

  The four other women of SOAR had gathered around the coffee urn. A glance out the LCDR’s window revealed the sun just cracking the horizon over the flat line of the shining blue Mediterranean, so the coffee would be decaf. The Night Stalkers would all be asleep in a few hours.

  Justin knew from experience that even if it was decaf, the urn would still be filled with Navy mud that could corrode stainless steel faster than salt water. He’d thought he had an iron gut until his first time aboard a Navy ship. On that day he’d meant to take an orange juice from the small fridge, but then he got to thinking about the proper color for coffee being about the shade of Moretti’s hair and somehow ended up with a cup of the lethal sludge instead. He’d never made that mistake again.

  Lieutenant Barstowe, the commander of the Rangers, came over and thumped him on the back. “Nice job, Roberts.”

  “Thanks.” He wouldn’t mention that he’d almost unloaded the entire platoon into the ocean.

  “Next time I want to go for a swim, I’ll be sure to give you a call.”

  “Aw, shucks, Lieutenant. Just wanted to make sure y’all were on your toes.”

  Barstowe laughed and thumped him on the back again before taking a seat.

  Justin almost tripped over the senior Delta operator who had come up silently beside him. Colonel Michael Gibson was spooky that way. The man was so stealthy that you never knew where or when he’d be.

  Unless his wife was around.

  It was like he became more in focus when he sidled up beside the astonishing blond. It wasn’t that Claudia Jean Gibson was so beautiful, which she was, but it was the quietness that seemed to flow around her. The woman flew her tiny attack Little Bird helicopter that way: smooth, clean, quiet—with the precision of a scalpel and the effect of a tactical nuke. The woman was beyond lethal, which, Justin supposed, made her a good match for the D-boy colonel.

  He watched them move off and sit together on a bench below the window looking out over the shining ocean. Close, like they belonged together. Without them touching, speaking, or even looking at one another, you could feel that they were a unit.

  It was easy to imagine sitting like that with Kara, except not so much with the quiet part. She wasn’t a wild spark of a thing like the Boston redhead Trisha O’Malley, but the woman had no problem speaking her mind.

  Sitting like a unit with Kara Moretti…

  That thought sent a jolt up his body and not just through his groin.

  During the exercise, the woman had slipped inside his head. She’d given him exactly the route he needed, even taking into account the Jane’s much larger airframe. And he knew that the change in plan had been completely last second, but she’d had the insight that turned pitched battle to easy victory without one single hesitation.

  Justin had flown with a lot of Air Mission Commanders who couldn’t communicate an order half as clear, never mind strategize it to begin with. And the number who would have seen the trap and successfully reallocated resources on the fly he could count on a single hand—one with most of its fingers left in a fist.

  Women didn’t make Justin Roberts feel like a yokel, nor men either. But Kara Moretti most certainly did. No way he’d have seen what to do with five aircraft in the fifteen seconds she’d had to retarget the attack.

  Even feeling the fool, he wanted to get closer to her. Being near her was more important than… His mind was already lost. Either he should sit close by her, or he should step off the ship’s stern to soak his head in the ocean a while.

  To see if there was a spot near her, he turned slowly so that it wouldn’
t show quite where his attention was focused.

  Don’t mind me. Just casually scanning the debriefing room and sipping my coffee—Crap!—black because I forgot to put in cream and two sugars.

  * * *

  Kara watched Justin turn to face her with all the subtlety of a juggernaut, his white cowboy hat rotating with the rest of him like the top beam of a scanning radar. She wasn’t sure why, but she knew he was tracking in on her.

  LCDR Ramis’s office was fairly crowded with the five pilots, six including her, plus Connie, the best mechanic in all SOAR; Barstowe from the Rangers; Gibson and Trisha’s husband, Bill Bruce, from Delta; and Sly Stowell, the Navy’s hovercraft pilot. Even though he hadn’t been part of this exercise, Kara had learned that Sly’s advice was always good. A couple of Navy officers and Ramis rounded out the crowd, yet Kara still knew she was Justin’s search target.

  She ducked her head to pay attention to Lola and Trisha, who had taken seats to either side of her on the couch.

  “It was awesome. I popped over that ridge crest you pointed me at.” Trisha had hands in motion imitating angles of attack.

  Kara wondered how soon she’d be wearing the cranberry juice from the open bottle that Trisha was waving about like a baton.

  “…easing way back on the collective. I was almost dead silent as I rode the ground effect down the cliff face. When I got to just one rotor from their hidey-hole, I spun to face them and hit them with the floods. Billy was riding copilot and grabbed the PA. ‘Bang, you’re dead!’ he told ’em. Just that. That man is such a crack-up. You totally rocked it, Kara. You nailed their butts.”

  She glanced at Bill. If the D-boy ever put more than two words together, she hadn’t heard it. So not like Justin who always had a joke or a wry comment waiting. Bill was totally the strong, silent type. Also undeniably brave as he had not only married but also rode with Trisha.