Target of Mine: The Night Stalkers 5E (Titan World Book 2)

by M. L. Buchman

  Drake slapped a hand down on Jared’s shoulder, partly to stop the dual-shaking thing he was doing. A group of men and women lined the rails of the boat and looked down at the proceedings. The men were like miniature Jareds, a wide variety of types and all military tough, though none of them were as big as their boss. The women didn’t look any less dangerous.

  Nikita went up on her toes and actually kissed Jared, which shocked him into silence and thankfully made him finally let go of their shoulders.

  Sugar gave Nikita a sideways hug, “Knew there was hope for you, Swimmer Girl.”

  “Hey,” a voice called from up the pier.

  Drake turned to see Esly striding along it.

  “Do you have proper entry stamp for that boat?”

  Nikita and Zoe threw their arms around her and the three women hugged.

  All he got was a punch on the arm.

  “What’s it to you?” Jared growled.

  “Careful, Mr. American. You are now talking to the Roatán Island Chief Minister of Security.”

  Drake laughed. “Mercedez is well connected.”

  Esly joined his laugh. “Yes, she had the mayor create this job for the new ‘National Hero.’ My duties are to ensure that the Bay Islands, including Roatán, remain safe for tourism no matter what disaster is the mainland. So,” she turned to Jared and scowled at him. “Tell me if I should trust these people or no. They look like bad element to me.”

  Jared simply glowered, not able to hear the tease.

  “I wouldn’t trust them,” Nikita was the first to speak.

  “Not for a second,” Drake crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You wouldn’t believe the kinds of things these guys do,” Zoe chimed in cheerfully.

  Altman simply stood beside Zoe with his arms crossed as well.

  “Unless…” Drake trailed it out.

  Jared glared down at him.

  “Unless they were willing to help pitch in on the post-Storm Kyra cleanup.”

  Jared looked out over their heads and inspected the waterfront.

  Drake saw him register the damage the storm had done and the people struggling to put their town back together. Without appearing to notice what he was doing, he reached an arm around Sugar’s waist and pulled her tight against him.

  “And if I was?” But despite his grumble, there was no question he’d be joining in. His true emotions were always clear on Sugar’s face and Drake could see how proud she was of her man.

  Drake knew exactly how she felt as he hung on to Nikita.

  “Got room for four temporary Team Titan members?” Drake nodded at the others. “A couple of days’ hard work together and we would go a long way to getting these people back on their feet.”

  Drake didn’t need Sugar’s glowing smile to tell him he’d done it right.

  It was Nikita’s laugh that really mattered. The merry sound proved that over these last days they had finally broken the past’s hold on her life and now she’d be glad to work side by side with a military contractor, at least a good one like Titan.

  They’d fixed her past, but his future—their future—was still a huge question.

  Chapter Twenty

  Nikita leaned on the bow rail of Jared’s massive boat as it eased out of French Harbour.

  The town was still damaged, but it was no longer broken and she could feel the ache of every day of the hard work, deep and good in her muscles.

  Drake’s arm was warm around her waist. It was just the two of them, leaning against the rail watching the harbor slide away.

  Norma had left all of their clothes and gear at baggage claim at the Roatán airport before the cruise ship was finally cleared to continue its voyage. She’d done a fair job of covering how glad she was to have them off her boat.

  Jared was now delivering them to the seaside airport for the flight home.

  “I’ll miss this place.” The setting sun illuminated the tropical colors of the buildings—pink, pale blue, apricot—they all glowed in the warm evening. Most of the boats were back at the moorings and piers. There were even tourists venturing into town from whatever latest cruise ship had come in this morning.

  “We’ll be back,” Drake said softly.

  Nikita was torn with a ton of questions. We? That was the biggest one, but she didn’t know how to face it. She’d thought of little else as they worked side by side over these last days. It had been at the forefront of her mind when she’d collapsed into the luxurious bed aboard—because Jared definitely traveled in style—shaking with exhaustion. It was her first thought when she awoke.

  But she’d been afraid to give it a voice. Drake had been right: she couldn’t leave the SEALs. What she’d done to get there—the why no longer mattered—was as essential a part of her as breathing. The problem was, Drake Roman was an equally essential part.

  Unable to voice that question, she faced a simpler one. “When? How do you know we’ll be back?”

  “Because Esly said she’d track me down and kick my ass if we didn’t honeymoon here.”

  Nikita started to laugh at the first part of his statement, then nearly strangled on the second part when it registered. When she looked over at Drake, he was no longer watching the shore but was looking at her instead.

  He was right, there was no question. Not about marrying him and not about where to honeymoon. And now she finally knew what to do with that crazy La Perla lingerie body suit. As her sole concession to girldom, she’d wear it under her dress white uniform on her wedding day so that he could discover it when he undressed her on their wedding night.

  “When?” Nikita barely managed to repeat the question now that it meant so much more.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  All she could do was nod.

  “Then I think the day I qualify would be a good one. A double celebration.”

  “Qualify for what?”

  Drake looked out at the golden water for a long time before answering.

  “I spoke to Altman and to my commander. There’s a DEVGRU training course starting in a couple weeks. They both approved my transfer and application, but I told them it needed one more sign-off.”

  Now it was Nikita’s turn to stare out at the water, but she couldn’t see it past the blur in her eyes. She and Drake would be together for life. A husband-and-wife Navy SEAL team, the first one. With that future, none of the past could possibly matter.

  She turned and kissed him as the sun settled behind the distant mainland, casting red across the coming night sky. Red at night, sailors delight…

  “I’ll take that as a yes, too.”

  Nikita didn’t even bother with the nod this time.

  This time she knew exactly where the tears were coming from, and they were pure joy.

  About the Author

  M. L. Buchman has over 50 novels and 40 short stories in print. Military romantic suspense titles from his Night Stalker, Firehawks, and Delta Force series have been named Booklist “Top 10 Romance of the Year”: 2012, 2015 & 2016. His Delta Force series opener, Target Engaged, was a 2016 RWA RITA finalist. In addition to romance, he also writes thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction.

  In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world.

  He is now making his living as a full-time writer on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife and is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing and receive a free Starter Library by subscribing to his newsletter at www.mlbuchman.com.

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  Target Engaged (Delta Force #1)

  Carla Anderson rolled up to the looming, storm-fence gate on her brother’s midnight-b
lue Kawasaki Ninja 1000 motorcycle. The pounding of the engine against her sore butt emphasized every mile from Fort Carson in Pueblo, Colorado, home of the 4th Infantry and hopefully never again the home of Sergeant Carla Anderson. The bike was all she had left of Clay, other than a folded flag, and she was here to honor that.

  If this was the correct “here.”

  A small guard post stood by the gate into a broad, dusty compound. It looked deserted and she didn’t see even a camera.

  This was Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She knew that much. Two hundred and fifty square miles of military installation, not counting the addition of the neighboring Pope Army Airfield.

  She’d gotten her Airborne parachute training here and had never even known what was hidden in this remote corner. Bragg was exactly the sort of place where a tiny, elite unit of the US military could disappear—in plain sight.

  This back corner of the home of the 82nd Airborne was harder to find than it looked. What she could see of the compound through the fence definitely ranked “worst on base.”

  The setup was totally whacked.

  Standing outside the fence at the guard post she could see a large, squat building across the compound. The gray concrete building was incongruously cheerful with bright pink roses along the front walkway—the only landscaping visible anywhere. More recent buildings—in better condition only because they were newer—ranged off to the right. She could breach the old fence in a dozen different places just in the hundred-yard span she could see before it disappeared into a clump of scrub and low trees drooping in the June heat.

  Wholly indefensible.

  There was no way that this could be the headquarters of the top combat unit in any country’s military.

  Unless this really was their home, in which case the indefensible fence—inde-fence-ible?—was a complete sham designed to fool a sucker. She’d stick with the main gate.

  She peeled off her helmet and scrubbed at her long brown hair to get some air back into her scalp. Guys always went gaga over her hair, which was a useful distraction at times. She always wore it as long as her successive commanders allowed. Pushing the limits was one of her personal life policies.

  She couldn’t help herself. When there was a limit, Carla always had to see just how far it could be nudged. Surprisingly far was usually the answer. Her hair had been at earlobe length in Basic. By the time she joined her first forward combat team, it brushed her jaw. Now it was down on her shoulders. It was actually something of a pain in the ass at this length—another couple inches before it could reliably ponytail—but she did like having the longest hair in the entire unit.

  Carla called out a loud “Hello!” at the empty compound shimmering in the heat haze.

  No response.

  Using her boot in case the tall chain-link fence was electrified, she gave it a hard shake, making it rattle loudly in the dead air. Not even any birdsong in the oppressive midday heat.

  A rangy man in his late forties or early fifties, his hair half gone to gray, wandered around from behind a small shack as if he just happened to be there by chance. He was dressed like any off-duty soldier: worn khaki pants, a black T-shirt, and scuffed Army boots. He slouched to a stop and tipped his head to study her from behind his Ray-Bans. He needed a haircut and a shave. This was not a soldier out to make a good first impression.

  “Don’t y’all get hot in that gear?” He nodded to indicate her riding leathers without raking his eyes down her frame, which was both unusual and appreciated.

  “Only on warm days,” she answered him. It was June in North Carolina. The temperature had crossed ninety hours ago and the air was humid enough to swim in, but complaining never got you anywhere.

  “What do you need?”

  So much for the pleasantries. “Looking for Delta.”

  “Never heard of it,” the man replied with a negligent shrug. But something about how he did it told her she was in the right place.

  “Combat Applications Group?” Delta Force had many names, and they certainly lived to “apply combat” to a situation. No one on the planet did it better.

  His next shrug was eloquent.

  Delta Lesson One: Folks on the inside of the wire didn’t call it Delta Force. It was CAG or “The Unit.” She got it. Check. Still easier to think of it as Delta though.

  She pulled out her orders and held them up. “Received a set of these. Says to show up here today.”

  “Let me see that.”

  “Let me through the gate and you can look at it as long as you want.”

  “Sass!” He made it an accusation.

  “Nope. Just don’t want them getting damaged or lost maybe by accident.” She offered her blandest smile with that.

  “They’re that important to you, girlie?”

  “Yep!”

  He cracked what might have been the start of a grin, but it didn’t get far on that grim face. Then he opened the gate and she idled the bike forward, scuffing her boots through the dust.

  From this side she could see that the chain link was wholly intact. There was a five-meter swath of scorched earth inside the fence line. Through the heat haze, she could see both infrared and laser spy eyes down the length of the wire. And that was only the defenses she could see. So…a very not inde-fence-ible fence. Absolutely the right place.

  When she went to hold out the orders, he waved them aside.

  “Don’t you want to see them?” This had to be the right place. She was the first woman in history to walk through The Unit’s gates by order. A part of her wanted the man to acknowledge that. Any man. A Marine Corps marching band wouldn’t have been out of order.

  She wanted to stand again as she had on that very first day, raising her right hand. “I, Carla Anderson, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution…”

  She shoved that aside. The only man’s acknowledgment she’d ever cared about was her big brother’s, and he was gone.

  The man just turned away and spoke to her over his shoulder as he closed the gate behind her bike. “Go ahead and check in. You’re one of the last to arrive. We start in a couple hours”—as if it were a blasted dinner party. “And I already saw those orders when I signed them. Now put them away before someone else sees them and thinks you’re still a soldier.” He walked away.

  She watched the man’s retreating back. He’d signed her orders?

  That was the notoriously hard-ass Colonel Charlie Brighton?

  What the hell was the leader of the U.S. Army’s Tier One asset doing manning the gate? Duh…assessing new applicants.

  This place was whacked. Totally!

  There were only three Tier One assets in the entire U.S. military. There was Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group, DEVGRU, that the public thought was called SEAL Team Six—although it hadn’t been named that for thirty years now. There was the Air Force’s 24th STS—which pretty much no one on the outside had ever heard of. And there was the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta—whose very existence was still denied by the Pentagon despite four decades of operations, several books, and a couple of seriously off-the-mark movies that were still fun to watch because Chuck Norris kicked ass even under the stupidest of circumstances.

  Total Tier One women across all three teams? Zero.

  About to be? One. Staff Sergeant First Class Carla Anderson.

  Where did she need to go to check in? There was no signage. No drill sergeant hovering. No—

  Delta Lesson Number Two: You aren’t in the Army anymore, sister.

  No longer a soldier, as the Colonel had said, at least not while on The Unit’s side of the fence. On this side they weren’t regular Army; they were “other.”

  If that meant she had to take care of herself, well, that was a lesson she’d learned long ago. Against stereotype, her well-bred, East Coast white-guy dad was the drunk. Her dirt-poor half Tennessee Cherokee, half Colorado settler mom, who’d passed her dusky skin and dark hair on to her daughter, had been
a sober and serious woman. She’d also been a casualty of an Afghanistan dust-bowl IED while serving in the National Guard. Carla’s big brother Clay now lay beside Mom in Arlington National Cemetery. Dead from a training accident. Except your average training accident didn’t include a posthumous rank bump, a medal, and coming home in a sealed box reportedly with no face.

  Clay had flown helicopters in the Army’s 160th SOAR with the famous Majors Beale and Henderson. Well, famous in the world of people who’d flown with the Special Operations Aviation Regiment, or their little sisters who’d begged for stories of them whenever big brothers were home on leave. Otherwise totally invisible.

  Clay had clearly died on a black op that she’d never be told a word of, so she didn’t bother asking. Which was okay. He knew the risks, just as Mom had. Just as she herself had when she’d signed up the day of Clay’s funeral, four years ago. She’d been on the front lines ever since and so far lived to tell about it.

  Carla popped Clay’s Ninja—which is how she still thought of it, even after riding it for four years—back into first and rolled it slowly up to the building with the pink roses. As good a place to start as any.

  “Hey, check out this shit!”

  Sergeant First Class Kyle Reeves looked out the window of the mess hall at the guy’s call. Sergeant Ralph last-name-already-forgotten was 75th Rangers and too damn proud of it.

  Though…damn! Ralphie was onto something.

  Kyle would definitely check out this shit.

  Babe on a hot bike, looking like she knew how to handle it.

  Through the window, he inspected her lean length as she clambered off the machine. Army boots. So call her five-eight, a hundred and thirty, and every part that wasn’t amazing curves looked like serious muscle. Hair the color of lush, dark caramel brushed her shoulders but moved like the finest silk, her skin permanently the color of the darkest tan. Women in magazines didn’t look that hot. Those women always looked anorexic to him anyway, even the pinup babes displayed on Hesco barriers at forward operating bases up in the Hindu Kush where he’d done too much of the last couple years.