By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  He woke her twenty minutes before their appointed arrival time. Now, they were parked ten blocks from the Pence gate and waiting for the dashboard clock to creep to 2310.

  “Any idea what’s at Fort Belvoir?” Kara voice was still thick with sleep.

  “The only thing I know about it is that Fort Belvoir is the center for nearly all Army Intelligence operations.”

  “No shi—Oh shit!” Kara began muttering more curses under her breath.

  “What?”

  “Major Willard Wilson. If it’s that asshole who has interrupted my leave and taken me away from my family, I’m gonna cut him a new orifice, and it won’t be anywhere comfortable.”

  “Or…” Justin had a sudden thought and couldn’t decide which option he liked less. He started the engine and drove the last ten blocks, then pulled into the narrow lane that was barely labeled “Pence Gate, Fort Belvoir” at precisely 11:15 at night.

  “Or?” Kara asked as they eased up to the guard station.

  “The Activity would certainly be a part of Army Intelligence. Perhaps the guys we rescued in the Negev Desert are based here as well.”

  They glanced at each other and then looked back toward the gate. During their moment of inattention, Colonel Michael Gibson of Delta Force had materialized in the road before them where he was now lit brightly by the Toyota’s headlights.

  “Oh shit.” Their voices sounded in unison.

  Justin would have laughed if he could have, but his throat had gone completely dry.

  * * *

  “Get out of the vehicle.” Michael moved up to the window of the SUV. “Take anything that’s yours. The guard will turn the car in at Dulles International Airport.”

  Kara hadn’t unpacked so much as a cough drop, so she stepped to the back and shouldered her duffel.

  Justin came up beside her and pulled out his own.

  “You forgetting something, Justin?” It felt odd to say his name. She hadn’t realized how little she used it. But it only seemed fair to give him a clue.

  He looked down at her with that puzzled frown of his and then jolted as if she’d pinched his butt. He hustled to the back passenger door and pulled out his hat.

  “You’re makin’ me forget who I am, sweetheart.” He pulled it on and tugged it into place by the brim.

  “Need your hat on if I’m gonna get your name right, Cowboy. Now, we’re on Army soil. Time to clean up your act.”

  “Yes, ma’am, little lady.”

  “Sheesh. Texans! Really sad.”

  “Now don’t you be insulting Ma and how she went and raised—”

  “Will you two cut it out?” Michael had come up beside them. “Are your belongings now out of the vehicle?”

  Justin handed him the keys, which Michael pitched over to a waiting guard. In seconds, the Toyota was gone and Michael led them forward and guided them into a small but very substantial-looking guard shack.

  In moments every single one of their electronic devices had been unearthed—from their cell phones to her e-reader to Justin’s electric razor. Each underwent intense scrutiny. Which puzzled her for a moment until she recalled this was U.S. Army Intelligence’s main base.

  Between the Army’s nineteen agencies and the Department of Defense’s twenty-six—and those were only the ones that were listed, which did not include the Activity—this was probably the most paranoid eight square miles on the planet. The people who worked here would also be the ones with the most knowledge about what was going on in the world, which meant their paranoia was heavily fact-based.

  She glanced up at Justin as he waited patiently for the guards to finish inspecting his gear. Let’s get out of here, she wanted to say to him. Let’s get as far away as humanly possible. Let’s get on your horses—God help her—and disappear into your massive Texas ranch to where no one can find us. We’ll live off the land. Off grid all the way to where they can never find us.

  Justin must have felt her attention because he turned and offered her an encouraging smile.

  Some help that was.

  She huffed out her impatience and wondered if Fort Belvoir had a special paranoia pheromone that was released into the air to make everyone who came near—okay, she had to laugh—paranoid.

  The guards apparently dubbed her electric toothbrush nonlethal and released them into the wilds of the fort.

  Michael led them out of the shack and across a patch of neatly trimmed lawn and the parking lot.

  Kara guessed that no explanations were forthcoming while they were still out in “public.” She searched for a neutral topic to break the silence and to distract her own nerves.

  “So, where did you and the wife go for your leave? Did you get any leave?” Best she had at the moment.

  “We managed to go fishing for two days in Montana with some friends, Mark and Emily.” Michael continued moving smartly along. He was so smooth that she found herself staring. If she blinked, he just might disappear into the shadows never to be seen again.

  Michael and Claudia were with their friends Mark and Emily…? The founders of the 5D, Mark Henderson and Emily Beale! Two of the most celebrated names in SOAR. And Michael and his wife had gone fishing with them?

  Kara had rarely felt so young and out of place.

  She didn’t actually fly…like they did.

  She didn’t risk anything…like they did. Like Justin did.

  She’d been part of the 5D only a few months. And she, of all people, was the one they’d called to Fort Belvoir? Were they frickin’ nuts?

  Kara wasn’t used to this desire to run away. It didn’t sound like her. Usually she was the one champing at the bit—another goddamn cowboy metaphor to plague her ass. She’d always wanted the next level, but this time she was fairly sure that she wouldn’t like it when she found it.

  That she wanted to run away with a cowboy sounded even less like her. However, that she wanted to do it with Justin…that was…truth. Crap!

  “You better be worth it, Cowboy.”

  Justin grinned at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Well, she certainly hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

  * * *

  The low brick building had a nondescript entrance of glass and aluminum doors that reminded Justin of an insurance office. Inside, they slammed into a much more serious security wall than at the Pence Gate.

  “Empty your pockets into your duffel. You will be given a chit. Any items other than standard clothing will not be allowed.”

  Justin emptied his pockets, though Kara had to grumble about it first. When they pointed to his hat, Kara was the one who reacted.

  “It is part of his standard clothing.” She spoke up fast. “You take that from him, and it’s like pulling the bung on a keg; all his Texas starts leaking out. I know you don’t want to have a bunch of Texas dripping all over you.”

  Justin was amused. He glanced at a wall clock, still a few minutes to midnight. Hadn’t they just spent most of this afternoon getting all over each other? Made him smile to think how much they’d both enjoyed that.

  “It’s all right,” he managed and reached for it.

  “Nope, Cowboy. You take that off and I’m not going in with you.”

  He tried to puzzle out why Kara was suddenly making such a big deal about his hat or was she just sassing him? He couldn’t tell. But if she wanted him to keep it, he’d keep it.

  He tugged it back into place and turned to the two men operating the inspection station. It was now their problem.

  Rather than cutting up stiff, they looked to Colonel Gibson who had been waiting patiently beside them. As far as Justin could tell, Michael didn’t shift his stance or so much as blink, which was apparently enough to spook the two guards. It certainly was enough to unnerve Justin.

  Michael’s studied non-reaction left it entirely up to you to imprint
what he might be thinking on that deadpan visage. And with a Delta Force colonel, the imagination of consequences was never a good place to go.

  The guards waved Justin through an enclosed metal detector booth. When he stopped inside, it hit him with a blast of air that he knew would be swept up and sniffed by an explosives detector.

  Apparently none of the three of them were in any way objectionable. They were allowed to proceed through another set of doors that had a heavy bolt released by an armed guard inside.

  Justin remembered his first trip into the 160th SOAR’s compound on the back lot of Fort Campbell. He’d been as impressed as any greenhorn by the layers of security, a huge step up from the 10th Mountain. Now he wondered at how lax they’d been. He’d arrived there with a full draw of gear, lacking only a rifle and sidearm which he’d turned in to the armorer when he left the 10th Mountain. The Night Stalkers hadn’t checked anything beyond his orders matching their orders, and that his ID and thumbprint really were him. Here he was grateful not to be left strolling down the hall in his briefs.

  Michael led them down a corridor.

  “Hey, no security cameras.” Kara’s voice echoed down the wide concrete passage.

  Justin looked along the ceiling and then back behind them. Nothing.

  Michael simply waited for his question.

  “Oh”—Justin figured it out first—“if there was ever a group that would know—”

  “—that a security feed could be hijacked,” Kara cut him off, “it would be—”

  “—these folks.” He finally managed to get in the last word before she could say The Activity. He couldn’t let Kara go through life without a dose of her own interruption medicine.

  They stopped at a door that had no keypad, doorknob, or other means of entry. Michael didn’t knock; he simply stood and waited.

  The door slid aside.

  Justin had expected a small office. A couple of guys hunched over a conference table or an electronic map. The standard bastion of military mission planning.

  Instead, it was a large room, noisy with conversations. There must have been twenty people tucked into cubicles, all open toward a central table.

  It felt more like Justin had always imagined those software places to be. Instead of drab gray, there were bright colors. The prints on the walls were mostly of jets launching off carriers, tanks splashing through rivers and the like, but they weren’t military slogans and protocols of the day.

  The air smelled of coffee, sugar, and popcorn. There was an energy here that buzzed and hummed and made him feel more awake despite the long and busy hours since taking his mother to the airport that morning.

  “This room is fully secure.” Michael finally spoke for the first time since taking their car keys, his voice raised to be heard above the overlapping conversations going on around them.

  He indicated the circle of desks.

  “The Ring, as they call themselves, are specialists from two dozen security agencies, including the British SAS. This room is about sharing, not compartmentalizing information. There isn’t a person in here without top secret clearance. There are no sensitive compartmented information structures in this room.”

  “Whoa there.” Justin stopped and grabbed Kara’s arm to keep her in place.

  Again Michael stopped and waited for him to ask the question, though Justin could see he already knew what it was.

  “Are we even cleared to be in this room? To fly where we do, we both have top secret clearance, but what if someone starts talking about a special access program we aren’t authorized to—” He didn’t bother finishing.

  “That is why your arrival was so precisely timed. This room goes through a full security scrub every night at midnight. For the next two hours, the only files that will be opened or mentioned are those you are cleared for.”

  * * *

  Kara was damned glad that Justin was there close beside her. She’d thought this would be a grand adventure: their entry into the inner sanctum.

  Now she felt as if she were on the teetering edge of some rediscovered old subway excavation that had mystically opened in the middle of a New York sidewalk, and if she fell into the hole, no one would ever see her again. She’d just disappear beneath the city streets with no one the wiser.

  She’d thought to shake off Justin’s tightening grip on her arm; now she hoped he never let go.

  Michael led them, stumbling like automatons, into the center of The Ring—it definitely deserved the capitals. Twenty sets of eyes turned to look at them, blue ones with glasses, browns in soft faces, greens in hard faces. She felt as if she were riding a Coney Island Tilt-A-Whirl until she spotted a familiar face coming from beyond the circle of curiosity about what alien slime mold had just landed in their midst. Were they about to call the Ghostbusters?

  The recognizable face gave her a focus. At first a relief and then, once she identified its owner, a place to aim a chunk of the craziness that had built up inside her.

  “Major Willy Wilson.” She almost said, Did you lose another team? but recalled Justin standing beside her and managed to clamp down on her tongue before the thought slipped out that way. Instead she singled to right field with, “What does Willy need the 160th SOAR to fetch for him this time?”

  Tact. Kara Moretti practicing tact!

  Justin was a very bad influence.

  “From you, Brooklyn, I—” Wilson stopped with fists on hips as if ready to go to battle. Then he glanced aside as Michael loomed beside her, somehow growing taller and fiercer without moving an inch. “Ah…we can discuss that later.”

  At least his recovery was far lamer than hers. In comparison she hadn’t hit a home run, but it was at least a double.

  A man who had an entirely different manner stepped forward from close beside Wilson. There was a calmness about him that was a lot like…Justin’s.

  He and Justin were shaking hands like they’d known each other forever. The dude practically broke out in song.

  “Didn’t see your face behind your visor and mask last time, Captain Roberts. Just wanted to say thanks again for getting me and mine out. Hell of a piece of flying, brother.” Oh, The Activity guy Justin had rescued.

  “I want to thank you for being as good a driver as you are,” Justin tossed back as if they were playing backyard catch. “We’re most of the way to making that pickup a repeatable event without coming quite so close to bucking us all to the ground. Name is Justin.”

  “Blind luck, I assure you. Next time I’ll crash you for sure.”

  “Looking forward to it, Tom.”

  “If it gets any more macho in here,” Kara observed sotto voce to Michael, “I’m gonna have to scythe these dudes back down to size. What do you think? They past harvest time already—gone from male to stale?”

  Michael didn’t answer of course, but it did cut through all the glad-handing that was going on.

  “So, anyone care to tell us why the hell I’m here when I’m supposed to be on leave?”

  The big guy that Justin had addressed as Tom nodded approval. “Lady gets down to it. Good call, Michael.” He waved them to chairs around the central table.

  Kara took her time turning the chair, sitting in it, and turning back. It allowed her to scan the whole room.

  Most of The Ring returned to their work, but a couple kept their attention on the conversation. Kara guessed that they were the most likely elements to be involved, though no sign or signal identified one from another.

  It also allowed her time to assess the fact that she was Michael’s selection to be here. There were a lot of obvious reasons, such as being the AMC and RPA pilot on the mission. She wondered what the less obvious ones were.

  Once she turned to the table, Tom—not a chance that was his real name—nodded to her. “We extracted evidence that there is a Hamas terrorist cell embedded inside Ramon
Airbase—four members, all on the inside. We can’t tell the Israeli Defense Force or the U.S. Air Force, as they’d want to know how we know. Telling Mossad would have the same issue.”

  “Tell them anyway. We’d be doing them a favor.”

  Tom nodded again. “We considered that. But the fact that Hamas managed to place a cell inside the air base itself implies that there is a mole higher up—so four on the base and one outside who managed to get them in place. That’s why we were inside. The U.S. isn’t the only one with sleeper agents embedded throughout its country. The evidence we gathered uncovered a route to the mole that is being pursued by separate forces.”

  A look went around the table. There wasn’t time to read all of their expressions, but Michael, Justin, and Tom obviously agreed on the proper fate of such individuals. Wilson’s brief look was harder to interpret. Maybe he wanted the terrorists for questioning and then dismemberment.

  “So, you have terrorist Palestinian extremists camped out on a remote and key Israeli air base and we’re going in to extract them?”

  The silence around the table was deafening.

  She watched as Justin swallowed hard.

  “What?”

  “I just realized…” Justin wasn’t speaking to her. He was talking to Michael. “I’ve never seen handcuffs on a Delta’s combat gear. I’m thinking that Delta wasn’t exactly formed to make arrests.”

  Kara felt her own throat go dry. Deltas were said to be the best shooters in the world. Shooters, not policemen.

  “Sometimes we carry cuffs. Not often,” Michael said softly. “Not this time.”

  * * *

  Justin was glad he’d retained his hat after all. By slouching and tipping his head down, he could stare at the table and hide that all the blood had drained out of his face a quarter of an hour ago, and that none of it had decided to come back yet.

  A month ago he hadn’t believed in The Activity any more than he’d believed in the Wizard of Oz. Or that he’d already met the only woman for him.

  Now he was supposed to believe that they’d mapped out a complete mission to insert a strike team, eradicate the terrorist cell, and disappear with no one the wiser.