By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  One rotor diameter. Kara still wasn’t used to how the helicopter pilots measured distance. If you were “one rotor” out, you wouldn’t be scraping yourself off a cliff wall. On the Little Bird it meant that Trish had hovered a half ton of weaponry a dozen meters from the bad guys with no warning. She’d bet that had really bruised some egos.

  Kara would have commented on it being such a wild maneuver, but had long since learned that in addition to being a certifiable lunatic and flying like a wild woman, Trisha might well be the most skilled pilot here. Even Lola Maloney, the chief pilot of the DAP Hawk Vengeance and leader of the 5D, gave Trisha respect.

  And friendship.

  Kara was only starting to learn just how tight-knit a group the women of SOAR constituted. The 160th regiment had five battalions of four companies each, and every single woman flying for the Night Stalkers was in the 5D. The first woman in, a Major Emily Beale, had retired when she had a child. And Kee Stevenson was on temporary assignment to do some training with the HRT. Apparently, being one of the nation’s top snipers, she was the one training the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, not the other way around.

  All of the women in the entire 160th were in this room. And here she was, one Kara Moretti, late of the 3rd Special Operations Squadron of the USAF 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon Air Force Base in bumfuck New Mexico.

  No pressure, girl.

  She’d been here two months and she still didn’t have her feet down. She’d been eye-in-the-sky on a hostage rescue on her second day in, and the same on a black-in-black op invading Azerbaijan a month later. A mission that no one had or ever would know about, except for the four others who had flown it.

  “How did it feel doing your first sortie as our AMC?” Lola asked her in the suddenly silent room.

  Kara startled.

  Somehow the debriefing had begun and she’d missed it. Everyone looked at her intently, even LCDR Ramis. Except Justin who was staring at her as if she was a total screwup…or maybe a lost circus clown who’d wandered away from Barnum and Bailey at Madison Square Garden and onto a Navy ship in the middle of operations.

  “Maybe you should tell me?” It wasn’t like her to be cautious, however it was the only way to mask her sudden nerves. She was mostly sure that the op had gone well, but only mostly.

  “We’ve all heard Trisha’s assessment.” Lola offered a bit of a laugh. When Trisha was excited, her voice tended to expand to fill any space she was in. “Claudia Jean?”

  “Captain Moretti offered clear instructions in a timely and accurate manner under difficult circumstances. It was neatly done.”

  Lola nodded. “Captain Roberts?”

  Justin was still staring down at Kara from where he stood across the room—concentrating fiercely on something.

  The silence stretched long enough to be awkward.

  “Yo, Roberts!” Kara snapped at him when she couldn’t take it any longer.

  “Uh.” He looked around quickly. “What?”

  Trisha snorted, but her expression was unreadable when Kara turned to look at her.

  “Chief Maloney asked for your opinion on Kara’s first op as Air Mission Commander,” Clint Barstowe offered helpfully from where he stood close beside Justin.

  Justin shook himself, almost losing his hat.

  Why a man who stood six-foot-two needed another six inches of hat was beyond her. It looked like a big, white, “shoot me here” target. Right in that thick head of his.

  “Beautiful.” Then Justin snapped to, his deep-blue eyes raking over Kara once more before he looked over at Lola.

  Trisha sent an elbow into Kara’s ribs hard enough to hurt for reasons she didn’t understand. Trisha widened her eyes as if that was supposed to communicate something.

  By the time Kara turned back, Justin had finally shifted his attention to Lola.

  “The timing and clarity of her direction really was as purty—”

  He actually said it purty!

  “—as could be. I was flying along, just breaking into final eyes on the target and she drew me a new map. Imaging showed up right on my visor, so as I didn’t even have to look aside. Simply told Clint, shifted my track, and it worked, slicker’n bat guano. Afterward, when I had a moment to inspect the area, I saw that she’d chosen the absolute optimal points for troop deployment. Now that’s what I call beautiful.”

  He almost convinced her that he was talking about her job as AMC, but his eyes slid sideways just enough to once more catch her gaze.

  Kara finally understood Trisha’s elbow. Mr. Too-Tall, Too-Handsome Texan had just called her “beautiful” in front of the entire top echelon of the USS Peleliu.

  Death was too good for what she was going to do to him.

  Chapter 3

  Justin tried to beat a hasty retreat from the debriefing room.

  Escape was definitely his best option.

  He’d simply never look at Kara Moretti again. Maybe he’d wear blinders around the ship like the ones he put on his brother’s horse team when he was hitching them up for the Tri-State Fair. Rafe was the only Roberts not to serve, because a horse had kicked his knee hard enough when he was a boy that it had given him a lifetime limp. At the moment, Justin sort of wished he was the one the horse had kicked.

  But Justin made the mistake of breaking his newfound law by glancing at Kara as he was tossing out his untouched, pitch black, and now dead cold coffee.

  She very subtly pointed behind her back out toward the sunlit flight deck. Everyone else was heading down the internal ship’s ladders to the mess on the 02 Deck in time for their meal. The vast open slab of the ship’s flight deck would be about as private as you could get.

  He considered ignoring her signal, but she’d just been approved as the 5D’s AMC by group consensus. If he made her angry enough, she just might fly him into a dead-end canyon at full speed.

  This time when he beat her to the door and held it for her, she simply scowled and walked through. In silence, she led him around the base of the communications superstructure and onto the narrow service walkway, all that perched between the superstructure and the thin rail that protected them from a five-story fall into the sea.

  He rounded the corner out of sight of the flight line, and she turned to face him like a cornered mountain lion. Actually, more like one on the attack.

  “What the hell, Roberts?”

  He considered many lines of response…and retreated into the truth.

  “Y’all make a man think of many things that are completely inappropriate, ma’am.”

  “Like what?”

  Like the way I can smell you on the breeze right now slipping off the warming day. “Some things are probably best kept between me and my horse.”

  “You two that close?” She rested her fists on her hips. But instead of scowling up at him, Kara had a cocky grin like she knew the answer to everything. Her humor was sharp, biting, but always made him laugh. And the smile she put back of it always held a surprising warmth. Even as ticked as she was with him at the moment, he could see that deep kindness shining through. He wondered if she knew that about herself—he suspected not, or she might be likely to beat it into submission.

  “You might say. I can tell her secrets and she promises not to tell anyone but another horse. Way I see it, that’s a safe enough bargain.”

  “And just what exactly are you keeping between you and your horse? What’s so goddamn inappropriate that I—”

  Justin wasn’t quite sure what came over him. Kara Moretti frustrated him worse than his brother, Rafe, which was sayin’ a handful. She knew precisely which buttons to push to make him twitch.

  Justin took off his hat, because that’s what you did before you kissed a lady.

  He caught her mid-word, which turned into a muffled “Mrgrf!” of surprise. He fully expected a slap—another good
reason to take off his hat and protect it from being knocked into the sea—and he’d absolutely earned it.

  But it didn’t come.

  She tasted even better than she smelled. Her lips were warm and soft. He’d half expected them to be made of as much steel as her spine and attitude. Instead they gave and molded to return his kiss.

  “Mrgrmmmph!” It seemed like a happier sound; he was fairly sure it was.

  When the blow came, it didn’t connect with his jaw.

  Instead, her fist hit the center of his chest and only just hard enough to knock them apart.

  “Shit, Roberts!” Kara cursed. “You can’t be doing something like that.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Warned you it was inappropriate.”

  “You kiss me and you call me ma’am? Crap! You really are from Texas.”

  “Born and bred.”

  “Like your horse who keeps secrets so well.”

  He nodded. “Much like. Except she’s a she and I’m not. There’s also the matter of a different number of legs, though I do hope that I kiss better than she does. She tends to slobber a bit.” Also, this conversation was not the least like any he’d ever had with a woman he’d just kissed. Whose lips still hovered close enough that he could feel the warmth of her words on his cheek.

  Kara took a step back and bumped against the rail.

  Justin forced himself to lean back against the gray steel of the superstructure still cool with the night. It brought some tiny bit of rationality back to him.

  He rubbed at his jaw. “Odd, I don’t feel a slap.”

  “You were expecting one?”

  “Must admit I was.”

  “And still you kissed me.”

  He slid his hat back on. “Seemed worth the risk. You taste sweet, Kara Moretti.”

  “Do not be saying shit like that.”

  “Give me a reason not to.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him for a long moment before tipping her head toward the rail she was leaning on. Her hair swung like a wave softer than those rolling by behind her.

  “You want a reason? Fine. I’ll give you two words. Hat. Ocean.”

  The woman did know how to make her point.

  Still, he didn’t have a palm print in red on the side of his face. Made it downright difficult to not be grinning as he looked down at her.

  * * *

  Men had stolen kisses from Kara before.

  When they were both six, her nearest cousin had claimed first rights…and his nose had bled all over his cannoli.

  Carlo di Stefano, now turned opera singer, had won her first real one at thirteen. Hadn’t earned the slap until he’d grabbed onto her breasts that had only recently put in an appearance.

  There’d been others, some welcomed, many rebuffed.

  And she had fully expected to be rebuffing Justin Roberts.

  Instead she’d barely resisted melting against him at the Peleliu’s port rail.

  “That will never do.”

  “What won’t?” He still leaned back against the communication structure’s gray steel, looking ever so much like he was a cowboy leaning up against a fence post in the middle of some Texas prairie rather than wearing a sand-colored T-shirt, Universal Camo ACU trousers, and tan Army boots.

  “You kissing me and me not…” She trailed off because it sounded stupid to say it after not doing it.

  “…slapping me so hard that I see stars for a week.”

  “Yeah, that.” She couldn’t help but smile. He read her far too easily.

  “Don’t be doing that!” Justin’s voice was suddenly sharp.

  “What, slapping you?”

  “Well, I appreciate you not giving me what I deserved. But stop that smiling thing you’re doing. It’s what has gone and got me in trouble in the first place.”

  Kara bit her lower lip and tried to look somewhere else to hide her smile. Behind her lay nothing but the calm Mediterranean; Turkey was out of sight over the horizon. A small cluster of fishermen worked the water out near the horizon with a net and a couple cranes. Even though she traveled alone, not many were foolish enough to approach a ship the size of the Peleliu uninvited.

  Fore and aft offered no view, just the narrow service walkway. Upward ranged several stories of communications structure, then a couple stories more of radio masts and radar.

  Straight ahead.

  Justin Roberts.

  He was far too handsome for his own good, or for hers.

  And he was proving himself eight kinds of a gentleman. Except for the kissing part, and even that, he’d warned her.

  In high school it would be, “Yo, Moretti. Get your cute tush over here, so’s I can check it out. ’Cause there ain’t no way it feels as good as it looks.” Army wasn’t always that different from high school. Though switching to SOAR had been a huge improvement. In two years of additional training and two more months of mission-qualified service, a couple of men had tried to befriend her, clearly hoping for more, but Justin had been the first to cross the line in any way.

  And he had apologized beforehand, which was about the most backward thing on the planet.

  She studied those sky-blue eyes. Masked from the morning light by his hat brim, they watched her closely.

  “You’re still doing it, Moretti,” he warned her in a deep voice.

  “Smiling at you?”

  “Yep! Not fair to do that to a man who’s just hopin’ to live through the next few minutes.”

  “You know, my papa always said I’ve got a naturally sunny disposition.”

  At that Justin laughed in her face. “You’ve got a naturally dangerous disposition.”

  “Then why did you kiss me?”

  At that his face quieted. After a long moment, his lips shifted into a lazy, self-contented smile. It looked damn good on him.

  “Must say, I did it because I wanted to. Have for some time.”

  If Kara was being honest, she’d have to admit that while she hadn’t felt that way, the chance to kiss him again registered pretty high on her to-do list.

  Kara didn’t like lists much; tended to attack them until everything was crossed off so she could throw the damn thing out rather than having it sitting on the corner of her desk scowling at her all the time.

  She pushed off the rail and took a slow step toward him across the narrow steel walkway.

  “You’re still smiling,” he noted.

  “I seem to be.” Without touching him, just the slightest breath of air separating their chests, she tipped her head back to look up at him.

  Still he didn’t lean down to kiss her, his eyebrows pulled together in fierce concentration as he looked at her.

  Sometimes men were so dense. She slid a single finger up along his jaw, could feel the roughness that said he hadn’t shaved since waking, and hooked him down to her with the slightest of pressures.

  His second kiss was as gentle as the first one. Slow, testing, luscious. Justin might look like some macho, gorgeous Army jerk, but his kiss was a caress that teased her into leaning closer, wanting more, until she’d have tumbled into his arms if his hands weren’t braced on her shoulders.

  When she moved to deepen the kiss, he eased her back.

  She could feel a heat soaring to her cheeks that she was glad her darker complexion would mostly hide. He wanted to kiss her, but he was stopping, which meant that she was just as awkward as—

  “Whoa, girl.” Justin let out a breath. “Just whoa. You could kill a man with a kiss like that.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t sound so darned pleased with the idea. Especially not when I’m the man.”

  Kara grinned up at him. Maybe it wouldn’t be too awful to spend some time with a Texas cowboy. At least long enough to take him out for a test drive.

  Chapter 4

/>   “So?”

  Trisha asked before Kara even had a chance to put down her dinner tray. Kara scanned the officers’ mess to see if it was too late to sit somewhere else, but the other women of SOAR had already shifted to make room for her.

  Her choice of seating was kinda all over the place. Most people had a spot and hung with their own. Kara moved around some and had only landed at the room’s center table with the SOAR women once or twice over the last two months.

  The 75th Rangers always took a cluster of tables on the side closest to the chow line; the ability to get speedy seconds and thirds was an essential element of their existence. She’d only sat with them a few times. It was odd to sit with a combat unit when you didn’t carry a gun for a living—it broke some invisible bond of theirs whenever she joined them. It also made them uncomfortable that her jokes were often raunchier than theirs. She’d grown up in Brooklyn. What did they expect?

  The Navy officers ranged across the front and the other side of the mess area. She spent most of her meals with them. Had more connection to them than the women of SOAR. She was never off ship for a mission, just like most of the Navy personnel. The ship was more intimately their home than anyone else’s. You could feel the stability of them. Also, one in six sailors were women. Sitting with them was more comfortable than with the Rangers, but she was still an outsider. Still Army.

  And no way was she sitting with the tiny cluster of Delta operators in their quiet back corner. Nobody even sat near them. Only Trisha and Claudia Jean, who had both married into Delta for God alone knew what reason, ever crossed over.

  She sighed and settled across from Trisha and next to Lola, hoping this wasn’t about what she thought it was about. They were such a tight group; another reason she hadn’t sat with them much.

  As a group they unnerved her, and they also filled a table. Until the recent departure of Kee Stevenson and her teenage daughter, Dilya, there hadn’t really been room to join them. Kee was also one of those force-of-nature types that Kara both admired and found a little scary. With her gone, the group looked a little less unnerving. A little.

  Connie Davis and Claudia Jean Gibson rarely spoke—scuttlebutt had them as the best mechanic and best Little Bird pilot in all SOAR—which only added to the risk factor of joining them. It was a gathering practically designed to terrify men and humble mere human females.