He moved like no Night Stalker she’d ever met, trainee or instructor. He moved with power and grace…and like a German Shepherd war dog ready to bite someone’s head off.
# # #
Pete tramped past the rookies as if they weren’t there, not even looking directly at them.
A few reacted, most didn’t.
Someone sent a Frisbee winging by just feet in front of his nose. He considered pulling out his sidearm and shooting it out of the air. Instead he slapped it and left it where it rattled to a stop against the concrete pavement of the landing apron. The field was suddenly silent except for the distant roar of a C-130 taking off down the main Fort Campbell runway.
One of them, the one standing off to the side, had spotted him even as he rounded the hangar as if he’d been waiting for Pete’s arrival.
Pete assessed the situation as he moved past them. One Black Hawk helicopter, squat and heavily armed with training rounds. One massive twin-rotor Chinook heavy-transport assault helo. Two Little Birds, both mission-enhanced as attack craft rather than for delivery or extraction. It was an odd mix, as were the puppy-panting hopefuls.
Pete continued to the Black Hawk, jerked open the massive side door. As it slid toward the rear of the helo, an oven-blast of trapped solar heat rolled over him. The remote Himalayas that he’d escaped just twenty-seven hours ago kept looking better and better.
While they waited or worried or whatever, he stripped down to his skivvies then dug out and donned his flightsuit that still reeked of too many hours spent squatting on the Tibetan soil with its foreign smells and dangerous feel. He grabbed his helmet and chucked the rest of the mess behind the rear cargo net.
When he turned back he noticed that the loner still watched him. Cool behind dark shades despite the failing light, narrow face, well-defined features…and dark brunette hair down to his shoulders.
Shit!
Her shoulders.
And it fell in one of those slightly disarrayed cascades women never understood was a hundred times sexier than the fanciest hairdo. Or maybe they did.
He scanned the others. The redhead, also clearly female, also watched him closely, though she had a wide and saucy grin. He must be even more exhausted than he’d thought, to miss them.
Women. Two.
He knew the 160th’s 5th Battalion D Company had women, both crew chiefs and pilots, and he wouldn’t wish that hell on anyone. He’d lost good fliers, ones he thought were good men, to rape charges because they couldn’t keep their dick in their pants, fraternization courts-martial, or simply falling in goddamn love and losing their edge as they worried more about “home and family” than the person trying to shoot them out of the sky. Good men turned into “lovesick bull calves” like whatever that old movie was.
Now he was probably going to get his ass hauled in by one of them because he’d changed clothes right out in the open. Well, to hell with them. And he’d kept his underwear on, hadn’t he? He was too tired to be sure. Or to care.
Thank god this assignment was only temporary.
“You! Specialty?” he snapped out as he moved over to the loner. There was always one in every group.
“Civility, sir,” she answered with a light French accent and a deadpan tone that almost made him smile. That was pretty unexpected given his current frame of mind. But it wasn’t your average soldier who could tell a superior officer he was being an ass so graciously.
“Civil Sybil? Woman of many personalities?”
# # #
Danielle could feel the cusp before her. She’d earned a hundred “tags” over the last nine years, but none had stuck, though they sometime took months to shed. She could feel “Sybil” hovering in the air, but she had no interest in being tagged with a nickname implying multiple personality disorder. Very not superhero.
Specialty? She’d flown in all three birds. The Little Bird as a copilot just so she could viscerally know what they could do. She liked the tactile knowledge, had ultimately run it through the obstacle course without killing herself or her pilot. She was technically still qualified to Readiness Level 1 on the Black Hawk, but not to SOAR standards. She done the yearly requisite basics to still be qualified to fly one around—more out of stubbornness than need—but she’d never be dumb enough to take one into battle.
Her training and reflexes had been honed to a single craft.
She pointed at the big Chinook. That was the monster helicopter of the Army, and SOAR’s MH-47Gs were equipped like no others in the entire American fleet. Much to her own surprise, SOAR had taught her that the big beast was more than her favorite craft, it was her baby.
The man eyed her skeptically. He wore no rank, had offered no salute. He looked haggard and frustrated and she considered offering him a moment of sympathy. Then his piercing brown eyes focused on her.
“What was the hesitation?”
“Sybil aside,” she did her best to drive that tag off the map, “I have a specialty, I am Basic Mission Qualified in the Chinook. But I am also still rated RL1 and served as a pilot-in-command in the Black Hawk with the 10th Mountain. I also have thirty hours in the Little Bird in which I’d rank myself as a Readiness Level 3 at best.” RL3 was flight school-level skilled, nothing practical for the real world.
He squinted at her in disbelief; she couldn’t tell if it was of the mock or macho-chauvinist variety. It felt as if she was back at the three questions stage of fending off unwanted men.
“Nobody flies all three. Hell, I don’t fly all three.”
She held up three fingers for emphasis and resisted the urge to lower all but the middle one. Granted it was pretty damn unusual—pilots spent their entire career in just one platform—but she was as she’d said, and to hell with him whoever he was.
“Wait, you said you were Basic Mission Qualified?”
“We all were. Eighteen months ago.”
The guy slapped at his pockets looking for something. She finally pointed at the sheet of paper clutched in his hand.
He sighed then read it carefully.
“Not rookies.”
“We’ve all had two years of every hell the Instructor Pilots could put us through and six one-month tours overseas.”
“One-month tours? That’s whacked.” He shook his head, like a wet dog trying to clear his ears.
How was she supposed to judge what was whacked and what was normal for SOAR?
“Three platforms, huh?” he eyed her more carefully, head to foot and back. “Cerberus perhaps?”
She had to duck her head for a moment to not laugh in his face. Probably not a good move if he was her training pilot for the night. And image of the guy as the three-headed puppy dog guarding the gates of Hell felt totally appropriate; especially for calling her the Hell Hound.
“This is not the Three Dog Night. I prefer the three sister-Fates.” Danielle lowered her tone and added some volume, “Beware mortal for I am Atropos and I shall sever thy thread ere it is fully spun.”
“Caution, for I am Clotho,” he replied without so much as an eyeblink. “Without me there is no spun thread for you to cut nor your sister to measure.” He moved off toward the others without further comment.
She’d had strange discussions before with different commanders. Never had she spouted Ancient Greek myths at one, and he didn’t look like the sort to reply in kind as easily as most guys did with football scores. Danielle followed in his wake.
“Who else here has flown in all three platforms?”
No one responded.
“Two?”
Rafe’s hand went up—at least some familiarity was a standard part of SOAR training and Rafe had done well enough in the Little Bird—but the taciturn commander could read the tentativeness as clearly as Danielle could. Had he asked “Basic Mission Qualified in two platforms” Rafe’s hand would still be down as would hers.
The two new crew chiefs also raised their hands—with decidedly more confidence than Rafe’s—which was almost more unusual than a pilot who had flown all three.
“Well, you know your birds, go to them.”
Rafe and Julian headed for the Black Hawk.
The Mighty Quinn and M&M headed for the two Little Birds.
The man looked at her, “You called it, Atropos. Get thee to thy Chinook.”
She heard the Shakespearean line of Hamlet to his Ophelia of “Get thee to a nunnery”—a nunnery in Elizabethan times being a whorehouse.
“With the God Zeus himself as my copilot?” She wanted to stuff his arrogance back down his throat.
The smile didn’t touch his lips, but it might have lurked briefly near his eyes. “What misbegotten idea makes you think that I’m not the pilot in command?”
“Because, despite what the others think, my sixth sense says that our training is not yet complete.”
“You and Spiderman?”
“Spiderwoman.” Spiderman had rocking superpowers; there had already been a Supergirl and a Catwoman, it was about time for a new heroine. She offered him a curt nod and her best smile before heading over to the Chinook.
# # #
Pete watched the slight woman head for the massive helicopter. Even the bulk of the flightsuit couldn’t beef her up. She stood several inches shorter than his six feet. Call it five-eight. Her boot size was small and her hands had looked fine and delicate as she held up the three fingers. But he’d also been able to easily see the one-finger salute she’d been considering. He liked spunk, especially when he was being an asshole and deserved it. She also had an education, though it remained to be seen if she had brains to go with it.
Then she had dug up that laser bright smile. He’d figured her as over-educated and dour. Getting a smile for a comic book reference was the last thing he’d expected. And one that shifted her face from merely beautiful to…
He sure as hell wasn’t going to follow that thought no matter how exhausted he was.
Pete let the crew chiefs sort themselves out. McDermott’s two “ringers” were easy to spot even if they hadn’t raised their hands. Since they both claimed multiple platforms, he sent the big guy to the Chinook and the other—crap, another woman—to keep an eye on the rookies aboard the Black Hawk. He wanted to assess the group’s strengths and weaknesses.
SOAR crews flew out at the edge. Special Operations depended on them for extreme results, whether flying undetected into the heart of Tibet or racing the Pakistani jets after landing in bin Laden’s compound. The isolation of training was about to be broken for these folks.
“Move it out,” he ordered.
“Yes sir, oh mighty laird of the clans,” the redhead offered in a bright Irish brogue that rang distinctly of one of those New England cities.
He let it go, let them get a head start, then strolled among the aircraft as they went over them. There wouldn’t be anything to find, SOAR had the best mechanics in the business, but no crew flew an aircraft they hadn’t preflighted themselves no matter a ground mechanic’s signature on an airworthiness certificate.
They soon had their flashlights out as the sunset had finished turning blue sky into red. The occasional transport jet flashed into the sky along one of the runways, but otherwise the area was quiet. Only the Night Stalkers were based on this side of Fort Campbell.
Without asking names, he began mentally tagging them.
He’d be joining Spiderwoman, two of the crew chiefs, and the big guy ringer on the MH-47G Chinook.
The pair of pilots in the Black Hawk could have been twins if one wasn’t six inches taller and the other one black. He considered “Pete” and “Repete” but didn’t want the confusion with his own name, so he went with “3PO” and “R2.” Another crew chief and the female ringer landed there.
That left two MH-6M Little Birds with a pilot and copilot each.
One of the Little Bird pilots practically vibrated with energy, a good match for the fast and agile craft. “Bunny.” The copilot attracted no name in particular, a tall gawky nerd. Pete tagged him with “Geek” for now.
The second Little Bird pilot was the one he’d expected to head for the heavy Chinook; Pete dubbed him “Dozer” for his powerful build. The redheaded woman was his copilot.
“Got a name, Mister?” she asked when she spotted him watching her preflight her helo.
“I do, Boston.”
“I’m from Gloucester.”
“Right,” he moved on, leaving “Boston” cursing his back. At least she had the good sense from her years in the service to do so silently.
When he reached the Chinook, the feel was different. The two trainee crew chiefs were moving sharp and silent over the craft chasing after the circles of light cast by their flashlights. The ringer showed all the signs of extreme competence, but it wasn’t the big guy the trainees were reacting to. The crew chiefs moved as if in fear of something.
He couldn’t put his finger on it until the loner brunette pilot circled around the nose of the craft. She wasn’t up in her cockpit; she was doing her own walk-around, a habit that he wholly approved of. The crew chiefs were afraid of…her? No. Of not being up to her standard? Actually, yeah. He could see by the way she was inspecting the craft that she missed nothing and every man-jack of her crew knew it.
Unexpected in a newly trained SOAR pilot; he liked it. Despite his preferences for male-only combat crews, he liked her.
The Chinook MH-47G was a monster. It could lift fifteen tons of gear or a platoon of troops and deliver it fifteen thousand feet up. The rear cargo ramp was wide enough for a Humvee to load aboard and the main bay could hold two of them at once. It flew with two pilots and three crew chiefs who manned the cargo bay gun positions.
The helicopter should have dwarfed this woman, but instead it made her seem larger.
Pete moved up into the cockpit and settled into the copilot’s seat, for she had been absolutely right. The training might be done, but the final test wasn’t.
That was tonight’s mission. Find their limits and then push past them.
Chapter 3
By the time the aircraft were all spun up and ready to go, the sunset had wound down and the four helos were nothing but green, white, and red running lights on the concrete apron in front of the Fort Campbell hangars.
“Everyone sleep well today?” Pete wished he had, but he’d never been one for snoozing off on a transport plane. Even with earplugs they were too bloody loud. Of course, he’d taken two hundred and fifty bucks off the other grunts stuck aboard the flight in a quick round of poker, so he wasn’t complaining. He didn’t release the mike switch for them to answer.
“We have a flight tonight. If your altitude crosses above two hundred feet, you will automatically fail and be returned to your unit.” Not true, but it didn’t hurt to scare them a bit. “If you cross over one-fifty you will want to pass every other aspect of this test perfectly—none of the criteria for that will be explained beforehand.”
He could feel the indrawn breath around him. That’s right, people. Graduation exam time. That’s what had been on the orders from Colonel McDermott; though he’d still have to corner Cass as to why he’d dragged Pete half-around the planet to run the test.
“The planned flight level for this test is fifty feet. The Chinook is taller and gets an allowance to sixty feet.”
He paused, expected a huff of complaint from the woman beside him. The Chinook wasn’t merely ten feet taller. It was also long, wide, and heavy. That much craft needed space to maneuver and he wasn’t giving it to her.
But she sat immobile behind her helmet’s closed visor, left hand resting on the collective beside her seat and the right on the cyclic between her knees as if she was a machine merely ready to be turned on.
And there was a dumb image. He was
not turned on by beautiful women who flew massive helicopters. It simply wouldn’t do.
…as if she was a machine ready to start.
“Anyone who wanders more than three rotor diameters from the Chinook, do us all a favor and simply quit now.” The Chinook’s rotor was sixty feet across; the front and rear rotors overlapping for a total diameter of a hundred feet. He’d give them that much. Three hundred feet sounded like a lot, until you were following the terrain at a hundred and fifty miles an hour in a ten-ton chunk of steel.
Pete knew that when all combined, these were stricter requirements than any mission they’d flown in the last two years—stricter than what was in the orders as well, but they didn’t need to know that. It had been five years and he could still feel the fear in his gut from that last day of training, not that he’d showed it any more than the woman sitting next to him was. See how she was doing by the end of the flight.
“First stop is,” he read off a set of coordinates quickly and by his tone made it clear he wouldn’t be repeating them. “Little Birds will have seven minutes to refuel.” The Little Birds could travel only half the distance of their two big brothers. They were short strike craft that were going to be pushing their limits tonight.
The Sister-Fate Spiderman—Spiderwoman, crap!—had punched the coordinates into the navigation console as he read them. He stared at the terrain map she pulled up and managed not to laugh.
“Which is a swamp in central Mississippi.” It was not going to be a pleasant refueling site. The Little Birds would have to hover in place for the entire seven minutes, shifting their controls to compensate for the growing fuel load as their tanks were refilled. And do it without ticking off or killing the waiting ground crew.
“Now, move it!”
He had to give them credit. If anyone hesitated, he couldn’t see it.
# # #
Danielle had seen his type before. Arrogant and, only through the courtesy of modern military command training, not quite displaying what an asshole he was. Clearly the Equal Opportunity training of Army Regulation 600-20 and Command Training Guidance course on Sensitivity had been even more of a burden on him than it had on her.
Target of the Heart Page 3