Target of the Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  But even inside the heavily protected boundaries of the NTTR, their birds were flown exclusively at night and were always under wraps by daybreak, inside hangars or beneath camouflage nets.

  For a whole month Pete had managed not to touch Danielle Delacroix even once. They sat two feet apart in the cockpit every night and co-led the pre-mission briefings and the post-mission debriefings. They were perfectly cordial…and it was goddamn killing him.

  He was actually glad to see the Colonel so that he could insist that Delacroix be transferred to any outfit, so long as it wasn’t his, because he couldn’t keep his hands off her much longer. He’d thought not touching Kim Waverly in high school had been a torture. Not dragging Danielle Delacroix into the nearest dark corner was agony.

  He’d clearly hurt her when he clamped down the “steel barricades,” but he’d had no idea how to explain or apologize. His reasons should be obvious.

  And just to make him feel like a total shit, she’d responded by doing her damnedest to be the best flier and the best Number Two a commander could ask for.

  “Got a surprise for you, Pete,” he’d forgotten Colonel McDermott was even aboard.

  “Great, just what I need.” Pete and Danielle had gone through the startup procedures for tonight’s flight with the smooth synchronicity born of fifty missions in thirty days. The pace had been exhausting for the crew, but it had left them with no doubt that they could handle whatever came their way.

  “Typical time for a new company to hit effective-for-deployment status is—”

  “Six months outside, three months inside.” Outside being anyone who wasn’t inside SOAR.

  “And the record was seven weeks for Major Mark Henderson of the 5D.”

  Three more weeks. He could beat that.

  “Thought I’d do a mid-training eval, see if you’re even close,” McDermott continued over the intercom as they finally began winding up the engines. “Can’t wait to see what you folks can do.”

  The 5E team was so small that Pete had decided to be the Air Mission Commander from the copilot’s seat of the Chinook. Danielle had proven that she was good enough to handle most of the flight tasks herself. That left him free to manage the strategic AMC role of directing the company in combat situations and still assist her as needed.

  Dammit! If he pushed Delacroix off to a new assignment, he’d need two people to replace her. And that would shove him out of the copilot’s seat. He didn’t want to stop flying just because the woman beside him was so goddamn attractive.

  Pay attention to your commander, Napier. Worry about the woman later.

  “Engine Number One at a twenty-five percent rated compression,” Danielle spoke.

  “Roger. Engine Number Two start,” he kept an eye on the oil pressure and thought about McDermott flying all the way to Nevada merely to “see what you folks can do.” He had twenty-five companies totaling over two hundred craft and twenty-five hundred personnel. SEAL, Delta Force, The Activity, and Ranger commanders would be begging for every spare minute of his time. People like him never just “dropped in.”

  Pete didn’t want to do it, but he glanced over at Danielle. She was watching him. Her visor was still up so Pete could see that same fine eyebrow arch upward ever so expressively, just as it had that first flight back at Fort Campbell.

  McDermott wasn’t here to observe a training flight, he was here for a certification test. And that meant that McDermott needed the 5E to be ready—now.

  “Hundred percent Rotor Rotations Per Minute on One and Two,” Danielle announced. Her subtle emphasis let him know that she agreed with his assessment that they were a hundred percent ready for it.

  “Oil pressure stable. Generator One and Two on,” he threw the switches. Bring it on McDermott!

  “Roger, APU Gen switch off.”

  Pete knew one other thing he was going to have to change in his plans. If McDermott needed the 5E to be ready now—for that must be why he was here—there was no way in hell Pete could afford to lose Captain Delacroix.

  It didn’t matter that having her remain so close at hand was going to cause him an insane amount of frustration. It was the best choice for the company.

  He wasn’t ready for how pleased he was that the choice had been taken out of his hands and she’d be forced to stay.

  # # #

  Danielle kept her thoughts to herself as she’d done since that first night in the hangar.

  Finished with the Engine Startup Checklist, she buzzed through the Engine Ground Operation, Before Taxi, and Taxiing Check checklists.

  She taxied forward from the hangar and out beneath the Nevada sky sparkling with the first stars and the last hint of gold at the desert horizon.

  Despite the warm Nevada evening, she felt a shiver run up her spine; so strong it almost drove tears from her eyes—except she’d learned long ago to never show the tears. Never let them see you were afraid or hurt, never let her mother see how much every failure wounded. Cover it with a laugh—only inside her head, but still a laugh.

  She’d been planning to ask for a transfer the next time she saw Colonel McDermott. Despite sitting in her dream helicopter doing what she loved, because she could feel the pain her presence was causing Pete. A month of flying together had done nothing to relieve the unbearable tension that had arisen between them.

  Except when they flew. The way that man could fly…she couldn’t get enough of it. And that perfect synchronicity in the air only fed her other, non-regulation thoughts, which didn’t help matters in the slightest.

  Most people who flew a Chinook thought that simply because it was such a massive bird, it needed a strong hand. The anti-torque foot pedals were indeed muscle builders. Some days after particularly long and stressful flights, she wondered if she was developing leg muscles like the Hulk. They’d certainly been weary enough to feel that way.

  But the collective wanted a merely firm hand and the cyclic wanted its guiding French heroine to possess the light touch of a Juliette Binoche in Chocolat, not a kick-ass Carole Bouquet in Bond’s For Your Eyes Only.

  Pete understood the Chinook. His touch was as light and perfectly controlled as that single fingertip of his that she could still feel catching her hair and tucking it back behind her ear though the gesture was a month gone and there hadn’t been so much as a tap on the shoulder since.

  She couldn’t blame Pete for standing back. It was his integrity that had slammed the door between them.

  But it was a door she didn’t want closed, even if they weren’t supposed to open it. Danielle had considered approaching Connie Davis and asking how she and Sergeant John Wallace had managed to be married and to serve together.

  But Connie was almost as terrifying as Pete. She lived and breathed the helicopters until Danielle wondered if the woman even saw her husband, though he was always beside her. And then Danielle would see the couple sitting quietly together over a meal, conversation whispered back and forth between them in a manner so intimate that it was impossible to imagine them as separate…and even more uncomfortable to interrupt.

  That’s what Danielle wanted. To feel that merveilleux connection.

  Instead, she’d become convinced that the best thing she could do was leave the 5E and grant Pete his freedom from being so close beside her.

  The Before Hover, Hover Check, and Before Takeoff checklists done, she lifted them into the night sky and turned toward the night’s target range. The mission brief had been for a simple anti-tank op—

  She twisted to the left and focused through the data on her visor to look at Pete.

  He must have noticed her motion—or their thoughts had been so linked that he looked across at the same moment. In unison, they turned to look at McDermott and then back at each other.

  The Colonel would not be aboard for a “simple anti-tank op.”

  Without a word, they
both turned their attention back to their flight and their tactical display.

  Tonight’s flight was going to be about much more.

  What would it be like to make love to a man with whom you were in such perfect sync? And why must she have that thought every time they were together?

  Rather than risk even an encrypted transmission to the other helos in the flight—for the radio’s energy output might give away their position even if their message was hidden—she performed a maneuver that she’d developed a few weeks ago.

  Danielle spun the Chinook in a sharp three-sixty, like a spinning top, without slowing or veering from her flight path. It was a neat trick of maintaining speed and direction flying sideways, backwards, sideways, and finally forward again and had taken her several tries before her first success.

  “What the hell?” McDermott hadn’t been prepared, but she could feel Pete riding on the controls with her.

  “We call it l’étude regarde,” Danielle told him.

  “Étude? That’s Chopin or Beethoven or one of those guys.”

  “An étude is a musical composition developed specifically to practice a difficult technical skill. This purpose of this exercise is to look in all directions very quickly.”

  “But your helmet—”

  “Does not,” she was interrupting a Colonel, “tell everyone else in your group that tonight’s flight is a trap and they must keep their eyes open.”

  “Did I say it was a trap?” The Colonel offered no hint of fake-innocence in his voice; he made it a cold, hard statement. As a commander of the 160th, she’d expect him to have perfect control like that.

  “Get real, Cass,” Pete spoke up.

  The Colonel’s harrumph didn’t sound pleased.

  “L’étude regarde is also useful if a rear camera is shot out and can no longer show on our helmet’s display. That is why I originally developed it.”

  “You? Of course you. That’s why I put you and Pete together. Knew you’d be a damned fine team. I want that trick submitted to the trainers by sundown tomorrow.”

  “Already done, sir,” she informed him. And there went any chance of her transferring away from Pete.

  # # #

  The attack came as Pete was setting up the final tactical strike against the tank company out in the middle of the NTTR. His attention was mostly involved with the targeting information, and the occasional attack incoming from the tanks. Their shots weren’t very accurate courtesy of the stealth modifications, but they knew the 5E was out there somewhere and were firing simulated rounds at even the slightest hint.

  He had Danielle do a quick reveal with the Chinook by nosing briefly up out of a canyon. It drew a series of shots from the six tanks. That in turn distracted the tanks from the double-pincer of two Little Birds attacking from one side and the Black Hawk from the other, while skimming only a few feet above the thorny brush of the Nevada desert.

  But Pete had kept watching for the attack that hadn’t materialized yet.

  “Two o’clock high,” Danielle’s voice was a whisper against his ear. He’d been watching for it, but she’d spotted it first.

  And then it was gone.

  Once their sensors had a signal, it shouldn’t be able to disappear again like that. Unless…

  “We’re not the only stealth craft here.”

  Danielle slammed the controls backward on the Chinook, diving backward into the canyon that they had departed only moments before.

  A slice of laser light, passing mere feet beyond their rotor tips, simulated an attack through the heart of the dust cloud they had just left behind.

  “All craft,” he risked the radio. “Dance.”

  “Dance?” McDermott asked over the intercom.

  “Shut up, Cass,” Pete was enjoying himself. He shouldn’t be. He’d just been attacked, insulted his commanding officer, and decided that he couldn’t afford to lose the woman who was driving his libido nuts. But he was feeling beyond good.

  The 5E broke off their attack on the tanks, switching to their favorite dance moves. It would make them almost impossible to follow, especially as each bird’s movement was different.

  The two Little Birds’—now named Leeloo and Linda—pilots were fans of hip-hop and country respectively. The Black Hawk Beatrix’s favored rock and roll. And Danielle flew the Carrie-Anne to Gregorian chant as far as he could tell.

  They’d named all of the birds for action heroines—Pete completely suspected Danielle’s hand behind it though he hadn’t been able to prove anything—with the first letter matching the helo type.

  Little Birds Leeloo and Linda from, respectively, The Fifth Element and Linda Hamilton in Terminator Two.

  The Black Hawk was Beatrix after Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, a very hot heroine he had to admit.

  And the Chinook was named for the best kick-ass helicopter-flying heroine of them all, Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity in The Matrix.

  “This is Linda,” the Mighty Dozer’s Little Bird broke radio silence. “Partial hit. Sim systems state that all weapons are offline. Patty is labeled as copilot down, which is ticking her off no end.” Pete could hear her griping in the background; the system had switched off her microphone since she was technically dead.

  “Roger, Linda. Get sideways and high. Give me some eyes on these people.”

  “Roger, Carrie-Anne.”

  “You have three birds on the attack.”

  Pete didn’t recognize the voice, but they were on the 5E’s encrypted frequency.

  “Identify,” he snapped back as Danielle dragged the Carrie-Anne sideways along a cliff face.

  The voice proceeded to list their enemy’s locations with no self-ID.

  Beatrix called in, “Can confirm two of the three. One in sights.”

  “Take it out,” Pete ordered.

  “Direct hit,” the unknown voice continued. Female, he finally had time to register the speaker as female.

  The opposing “struck” helicopter turned on its running lights and headed out of the conflict. It was a stealth Little Bird. The other two craft turned out to be a second Little Bird and a stealth DAP Hawk just like their own.

  It took twenty minutes—an impossibly long time in an aerial combat—during which they raced, dove, and dodged over the nighttime, nightmare landscape of the NTTR.

  The terrain was a brutal enemy as well, providing protection and hiding places to both teams.

  Danielle tucked under an overhanging cliff, her rotors spinning within meters of rock, but was able to surprise one of the opposing Little Birds.

  The unknown voice interposed with data when it could grab some, which had proven to be reliable info when it came.

  The DAP Hawks met time after time, their sophisticated targeting and attack avoidance systems making for such an equal contest that it was only after the 5E “killed” the other Little Bird that they were able to gang up on the opposing DAP Hawk and “kill” it.

  By the time they were done, Pete was wrung out with the strain of coordinating the engagement. He’d led flights innumerable times, but it had never been his company. His people. It made all the difference in the world.

  It cost them the partial loss of Linda and the complete loss of Leeloo but they’d managed to defeat all three of the attacking craft.

  While the final rounds of the aerial battle had been on-going, Danielle had used the distraction to work her way around behind the six M1 Abrams tanks.

  The instant the last of the opponent rotorcraft was declared dead, Pete squawked, “Opening note!” over the radio. After all, their first objective in this crazy dance had been the tank company.

  Danielle punched on the full landing lights that should blind the tanks’ night vision even as they spun their turrets to get an angle on the Chinook. But Danielle had slipped the Carrie-Anne into a gap between the second and t
hird tanks so low that if they shot the helicopter, their shell was likely to pass right through the Chinook and hit one of the other tanks in the line.

  When they tried to bring their smaller top-mounted M2 Browning and M240 machine guns to bear, Danielle’s crew chiefs killed them with simulated hits from their vastly more powerful M134 miniguns.

  While the tank operators were trying to unravel all the hell that the Carrie-Anne was unleashing on their heads, the Black Hawk Beatrix unleashed simulated Hellfire tank-buster missiles from their other side. The non-weaponized rockets struck each tank with a loud klonk that he could hear on the Chinook’s external pickups. It must have really rattled the tank crews.

  The war game computers declared all six tanks simultaneously disabled or destroyed.

  “Back to Tonopah Airport,” McDermott ordered. He sounded very pleased. As he damn well should have.

  Pete however was still pissed at losing one helicopter and another damaged. Losing a person upset him, even if it was just a simulation; losing three was unacceptable. If only he’d somehow been better. Been able to…but he couldn’t think of what he might have done differently; and neither had Danielle or she would have suggested it.

  Pete found the thought a bit surprising. He was used to being the smartest man in the flight, always a step ahead. Danielle kept him moving, on his toes. He liked that more than he’d have thought; like missing a part of himself that he’d never noticed until someone pointed it out.

  Danielle was that part; their flight operations simply fit together. He couldn’t even tell anymore who had an idea first in a battle—their back and forth dynamic was that tight.

  Cass had found him a great ally in his Second Officer.

  Cass McDermott had also found him a good foe for this test; these people had been fantastic. That the 5E had won at all should be a victory even with the simulated losses.

  “You just won the Kobayashi Maru,” Danielle whispered over the intercom.