Target of One's Own

by M. L. Buchman

  Most of the dash’s center was taken up with a very simple display that showed compass heading and speed. Speed was critical. Going even one kph over the limit on any Road Sections of the course could have disastrous penalties of time and money.

  In front of the driver’s seat, she was facing a wholly daunting change from the typical car or dune buggy. The driver’s console had a large digital display for speed, but it also had dials for engine revs, gearing, oil pressure, temperature, transmission fluid pressure and temperature, vacuum pressure, voltage, even altitude and fuel/air mixture ratio. It took her most of the way through the city to get them locked in her head, including the ranges that meant okay versus “oh crap!”

  Christian had, of course, showed her how to start the car and shift—asking three separate times if she knew how to work a clutch. Looking studiously fascinated by his droll insults had been a challenge, but she’d managed.

  A rally car’s display was so much easier to interpret than flying her RPA. Each gauge was only single-layered—a dial or a number—without additional tactical overlays. The center of the steering wheel was covered in fingertip controls from wipers to engine responsiveness. Where she’d expected a stick shift, there was a towering lever that was a handbrake. The shifters were small paddles on the back of the steering wheel.

  They’d eased out of the garage onto the sun-scorched street, away from the staring construction workers, away from the dark garage with its shadowed corners. At the blue-and-red tree with its musicians, they turned right and started winding their way out of the city as the flute music shifted and changed to echo the rumbling of their two big engines. And then a long, slow mile behind the horse cart and the woman clutching her house plant. Hard to get a feel for an off-road vehicle on city streets.

  The suspension was abominably stiff; she could practically feel every tiny pebble they rolled over, every discarded flip-flop. Every grain of sand.

  The clutch was high and tight, just the way she liked. The paddle shifters on the back of the steering wheel let her shift gears without taking her hands off the wheel. It only felt clunky for the first few shifts. Even though she hadn’t gotten into third but once or twice as they’d crossed Dakar, she wondered what it would cost to retrofit them to her Mini Cooper at home.

  Then she pictured Luke climbing into her Mini. Now that would be a sight. Maybe next time they were both on base she’d try to talk him into trying it just for fun. His shoulders were so broad that they’d probably rub against hers. It would take nothing for him to reach out and rest his hand on her thigh as she drove along.

  She wanted someone who couldn’t stop touching her. Not for the sex, but just for the contact. If that made her a hopeless romantic, let it. Actually, she preferred the line from Romancing the Stone: “A hopeful romantic.”

  Of course not with Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman. But with another man it could be nice. As she’d cleaned up the disaster that was her personal life—mostly by joining the Army and burying the past—she’d started dreaming of what a good man might be like. She had definite ideas, but wasn’t having much luck locating a man who could fulfil them.

  She trailed the Citroën quietly in the wake of Luke driving Christian’s Renault until they passed beyond the north edge of the city. They rolled off the end of the last sandy road as it devolved into beach sand. To the south lay the grand sweep of Dakar’s peninsula. The few tall buildings of beachside resorts and the tiny financial district stood like a dust-fogged child’s game. The beach, which had been thick with fisherman skiffs, had emptied as they’d eased north around them, finally reaching an abrupt end to the city.

  Christian had Luke stop and she rolled up beside him. She’d wanted the sexy red Renault, but her persona had to take the lemon-yellow Citroën. It matched her clothes, her hair, her social media banners, even her Mini Cooper. Truth be told she was getting a little tired of that color in her life, but not enough to disappoint her fans.

  Something in her appearance had to change soon to keep her fans entertained. Usually she could plan before she was ready to change it, but this time it was apparently going to be a total surprise when it arrived.

  She could see through his rolled-down window that Christian was contemplating some way to switch over to her Citroën, but she cut him off.

  “You have the camera ready, Christian?”

  He held up his brand new Nikon Z7, now sporting a big zoom lens. It would shoot 4K video—about a hundred times what she needed for a couple of quick posts. His toy and all of its lenses cost more than her monthly salary. Almost more than her Army pay combined with the revenue from the few select ads she allowed on her site.

  Fine.

  She waited until they’d all donned helmets, though Christian had been hard pressed to find one small enough for her head…or big enough for Luke’s. Luke had let her tease him about that, so maybe he’d finally accepted her earlier apology.

  If not, tough!

  “How far can we go?” She laid on her sexy, let’s-go-jump-a-truck tone.

  Christian’s eyes went wide, and beyond him at the wheel, Luke’s narrowed. Ticked off by who knew what? Studying her? What? They really needed to talk about him using more words.

  Christian managed to choke out around a woman-eating smile, “Two hundred kilometers to Saint Louis. There are a few streams, but no rivers or roads. Only one or two tiny villages. We can go as far as you’d like, my darling Zoe.” Even his smooth French accent wasn’t going to get him where he was thinking this was going.

  Wearing his normal silence like a cloak, Luke continued leaning forward with his hands clutched around the wheel so that he could see her around Christian.

  Watching me a little too intently to pretend you don’t care. But that was the only clue she had for interpreting his thoughts. She could always tell what men were thinking—pretty simple equation actually: male thoughts about a woman equaled sex. The math was a lot easier than fuel loads and weapon ballistics for her Avenger drone.

  Luke was intriguingly enigmatic.

  To hell with him.

  She wasn’t Sofia, dating a married man no matter how pretty he was.

  “I’ve got one more question.”

  Christian and Luke both watched her in anticipation, awaiting sex for the former and something impossible to interpret for the latter.

  “Yes, my darling Zoe?”

  As if.

  She hammered down on the gas and popped the clutch.

  The Citroën leapt like a rabbit, spewing a rooster tail of sand all over the still-parked Renault. This was definitely no Huckfest truck. The Citroën was five hundred horsepower of a girl’s best friend.

  She hit third gear and the first beach berm at the same time, catching air on all four tires. Rather than bracing for the hard jar of the landing—a real beginner’s mistake—she let her body go loose with the floating sensation.

  Airy float…

  Airy float…

  Splat!

  The heavy suspension ate it up, smoothed out the ride.

  A street vehicle would have bottomed out or perhaps busted the suspension. In a Huckfest truck, that would have been a hard slap. But it didn’t even limit out the springs on the Citroën’s seat, never mind the suspension.

  Up into fourth, she flew over a washboard area as if she was only touching the very tops of the bumps and skipping the potholes entirely.

  Around a curve in the dunes, she slammed into a stream—axle deep and two car-lengths across. Water arced in a massive plume like she was parting the Red Sea. It felt as if she was. Escaping the darkness. If she could only race fast enough, maybe it would never catch her. Maybe she could fly beyond it as she did when linked to her RPA.

  Back into third to recover her speed, then fourth and fifth as she headed down for harder sand along the tide line.

  A flash of red in her mirror was the only warning she had before Luke took her on the high side with Christian cheering from the passenger seat—not that she c
ould hear him over both engines’ roar.

  That would definitely never do.

  She dropped back to fourth for more power, but every time she tried to get by him, Luke slid the Renault over, closing the gap with the waves. Up the beach was speed-robbing deep sand. The advantage lay down on the hard sand, but she couldn’t risk more than a couple inches of water or it would rob her as badly as the sand. A slap by a big wave could completely dislodge her—a dangerous proposition going a hundred kilometers an hour.

  Tired of the game, she poked twice at going past him on the low side.

  Both times he blocked her.

  Then she saw the beach swinging out toward the ocean, followed by a curve inland to make a new cove. It wasn’t much, but hopefully it was all she needed.

  Luke blocked her again.

  DeMille might have spit sand all over him once, but she wasn’t going to get away with that twice. She was good, but she wasn’t a SEAL. Girl had no idea what she was dealing with.

  This time she fell way back, then came racing toward him with an alarming suddenness. He could see her once again lift up a rooster tail of sand several times higher than her car.

  Rooster tail? Chicken tail. She was one of those fancy birds with bright feathers in constant need of tending and preening. Damned cute…and flighty—unpredictable from one second to the next.

  He didn’t understand how he’d missed the cute before. Because you like your women with breasts built to make a grown man weep. True, but then why couldn’t he erase the image of DeMille as she’d zipped herself into the yellow leather jacket and climbed into a racecar?

  Suddenly, the feel of how his palm had fit the curve of her lower back while running the steps at the African Renaissance Monument took on new meaning. It burned where it rested on the steering wheel. He’d felt every muscle, felt the softness and warmth of her skin through the thin moisture-wicking material, far more than he felt the heartbeat of the Renault’s engine.

  She was—

  Catching up fast.

  He squeezed over.

  “Make her eat surf,” Christian called from passenger seat. Whatever his other shortcomings, Christian was mad about racing. He kept giving Luke little tips. Some Luke knew from racing bikes, but others were new, unique to getting the most out of a world rally car.

  If Christian was fine with Luke putting his other car into the surf, then DeMille was in for a hell of a ride.

  Just as she pulled close behind his bumper, he veered down the sand toward the ocean.

  He checked the rearview to watch the splashdown.

  DeMille wasn’t there.

  “Where the—”

  Christian was shouting out in surprise, and looking the other way.

  DeMille hadn’t merely come around his other side. She shot high and hot across the beach and up into the soft sand. Even over his own engine, he could hear her take another gear.

  Then she lifted off. Where one cove had ended to bend into the next, the sand had built up high.

  Using it like a stunt ramp, she was airborne.

  Her massive catch-up speed hadn’t been about overtaking him at all. She’d been gathering speed specifically for this jump.

  He could only watch in awe.

  For a long second, she flew down the beach as if she was her damned drone brought to life. He half expected wings to slash out sideways. Hang time like he’d never seen.

  The car twisted slowly, leaning more and more to the right.

  If she hit like that, she was going to roll. Bad!

  “Merde!” Christian managed in a voice that made the same assessment.

  Moments before she hit, she turned the front wheels to a new alignment. Then revved the engine hard enough for it to cry out. But it also applied a twisting force that killed the sideways roll just before she touched down.

  The tires caught and bit at the perfect angle, jerking her brutally to the left before a brief fishtail that left her aimed straight down the next beach and well out in front. He couldn’t have done it better. And maybe not as well.

  “Holy mother—” this time Christian wasn’t staring at Zoe racing away to the right, but instead straight ahead.

  Luke looked, then jolted.

  He jammed down a gear for more power and cut the wheel hard. They were up on two wheels, riding the hairy edge of a roll themselves.

  One cove’s beach had swept outward—and the curve of the next had swept in.

  While Zoe was jumping the divide between them, he’d distractedly continued driving out the curve of the disappearing cove. He was now aimed straight for the ocean while the beach swung away in a new direction.

  They were slammed hard when they hit the water, but he managed to continue the turn as the deepening sea slowed them. Still he might have gone over if a wave hadn’t caught him halfway up his door and slammed him down onto all four wheels again. He sliced for the harder sand of the beach before the wave could drag him out to sea in the undertow.

  Four-wheel drive, a powerful engine, and perhaps more luck than he deserved—after watching Zoe when he should have been driving—were all that kept him from unexpectedly setting sail in a Renault racing car.

  Once clear of the water, he jammed to a halt on the beach.

  He and Christian looked at each other, then in unison turned to stare down the beach.

  Zoe’s car was a tiny spark of yellow sunshine far down the stretch of beige sand.

  “Tell me you got that on video,” Luke could only hold onto the wheel and squint against the brilliant sunlight.

  Christian’s voice sounded as if he’d just had amazing sex and hadn’t recovered yet.

  “I got it.”

  10

  Luke had tried, but though he’d caught up to her—eventually—no way had she let him pass. A few times she’d had to abandon the beach and race between the imposing baobab trees like slalom poles. Or perhaps like a pinball dodging between the massive gray pillars of the wide trunks with a major tilt penalty if she clipped one.

  Once or twice, while racing through the brush, Zoe found a dirt track, but those were usually so rutted that it was less hazardous going overland among the scattered thorn scrub. At least being in front, she only ate a little dust…the Renault in her rearview was coated rust-brown rather than lipstick-red. In the lead, she got to breathe ocean salt and fresh palm breezes when they jogged inland. On the occasions when she managed to reach sixth gear—often topping two hundred kph, over one-twenty miles an hour—even the morning’s heat couldn’t catch up with her.

  Christian obviously knew the route well and several times directed Luke to turn aside. Perhaps in hopes of passing her by in the process. But she’d flown hundreds of drone missions where her job was to go in first, often providing guidance to the manned aircraft behind her. She’d developed a sixth sense that had managed to anticipate each time Luke gave the slightest twitch out of her rearview mirrors.

  “Not getting by me that easily, Luke.”

  He too had answered her every move with a countermove—he couldn’t pass her, but neither could she lose him. He drove the same way he ran, with an unexpected smoothness of flow. As if his hand was forever placed at the small of her back, she could feel herself driving more cleanly with each moment they vied for the lead.

  Twice he got close enough beside her that she could see him watching her as much as where he was driving. It wasn’t a greedy look like Christian’s, wanting all that any man ever wanted from her. No, Luke’s assessing gaze wasn’t quite a smile but it spoke of the joy of the challenge. He was a warrior for SEAL Team 6, of course he was competitive.

  Well, she hadn’t become a Night Stalker by slouching along.

  Half the time she could have jumped a truck better than the Huckfesters she flew with. She and her father often took the trucks and dune buggies he’d built out onto the sand for testing. Her favorite times had been when he had a pair of them ready at the same time.

  Side-by-side family races had ranged
up and down the dunes.

  Lines of attack.

  Jostling for the best angle to take the big dune slopes.

  Backsliding in the sand from a misjudged climb.

  Punching through the flow of Oso Flaco Creek where it drained deeply across the beach.

  Bobbing and weaving to shake out the armature and run in the gearbox so that everything ran tight and smooth. By twelve, she could match most other racers on the dunes. By sixteen, no one could touch her—not even her dad.

  Those had been her favorite times growing up. She’d always been much more her father’s daughter than her mother’s even before—

  Nope! Not going there!

  Zoe jammed down a gear and almost ran Luke into the waves. She hadn’t even realized he was there, but he backed off fast to save himself. Too bad there was no one to save her.

  It was the last time Luke came close to seriously challenging her lead.

  She was ten car-lengths in the lead on a long sandy stretch of the beach when the first sign of Saint-Louis appeared. It was a magnificent ten-meter fishing boat pulled up onto the sand—right across her path. It was such a surprise that she almost slammed into it broadside. Thankfully a receding wave left her a low-side gap that she was able to slip through, ducking below the proudly jutting prow. Luke missed the timing as the next wave rolled in and had to take the longer route around the stern through the deeper sand—stretching her lead to fifteen lengths.

  The boat was like a canoe with pointed ends that someone had put on a torture rack until it was shockingly slender—almost elegant in how it stretched out to twice the length that seemed proper. A whole line of the long boats were perched upon the beach with their prows aimed out to sea. Dark bottomed, they had white upper sides. Each boat’s name—or maybe it was each family’s—had been painted down the length of the sides. The entire prow was elaborately decorated with orange, red, and blue images that might be blessings offered to the gods of fishing, or perhaps were simply each fisherman’s expression of art.