Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  Together, she and John grunted the main rotor a quarter turn to get one of the remaining intact blades over the tail. Connie could feel the grind of the ruined bearings fighting every inch. Definitely a new swash plate, maybe the lifters as well.

  John rapped his knuckles briefly on the rotor head. Same thought, they’d be replacing both. From almost the first moment they hadn’t needed words to communicate.

  But the Vengeance couldn’t get a tow with the other blade pointing forward. Too much danger of it being caught by the headwind and kicked up into the lifting chopper.

  The low thud of Heavy One, the massive Chinook helicopter inbound to carry them home, told her they didn’t have enough time to unlatch the cut stub and fold it back in line with the tail and then do the same to the forward blade to move it into place for shipping. They needed twenty minutes and they had five. Maybe.

  John started swearing about the waste, as they both set to work with their saws.

  Viper circled wide to secure a safe perimeter around their craft, both drawing fire and answering it in a very definitive fashion. It felt good knowing that Major Beale’s husband, Major Henderson, and John’s best friend, Sergeant Tim Maloney, were close by watching over them. But the remaining fighters who’d been guarding the pass were on the move and time was running out.

  The third blade dropped free and fell aside, even as the four-point lifting harness dropped from the hovering Chinook.

  In moments, they had their damaged helicopter latched in and secure. They were airborne and headed back to base before Connie was even fully back in the cabin. She tossed a pair of thermite grenades out the door onto the stack of partial blades as they lifted clear. With a blaze of white fire and shooting sparks, the grenades cooked, then melted most of the blades and fused a patch of sand a dozen feet across into brittle glass.

  The machine hadn’t killed her this time.

  That didn’t mean it wouldn’t next time.

  Chapter 2

  Big John Wallace pulled off his helmet and scrubbed his fingers through his sweaty hair, reveling in the sensation. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Sergeant Connie Davis as they and their broken Black Hawk were lowered into their position at the air base. The moment they cleared possible enemy sight lines, she began stripping the equipment.

  Not her helmet, not the hot flight suit, not her harness. Always first things first by the book with Sergeant Connie Davis. Her minigun’s ammunition belt slotted back into its case, her last round hand-cleared from the minigun’s chamber, caught in the air, and stowed in the loose-round bag.

  Every move in U.S. Army official order. Every bit of maintenance done as if she were a walking, talking training manual. An attempt to alter any of her actions was met with page and paragraph quoted from memory. He’d stopped checking her on that, mostly. He hadn’t tripped her up yet, but he still had hopes.

  He’d flown with her on a couple of training missions, but Kee Smith was his usual gunner. Except now she was Kee Stevenson and off having her honeymoon. Go, Archie.

  Before Kee, John had thought no one would ever replace Crazy Tim, but even Tim bowed to Kee’s marksmanship. And Kee ranked damned cute. Not his type, but real easy on the eyes, assuming you didn’t tick her off and get a punch in one.

  Sergeant Connie Davis, on the other hand, while awesomely nice to look at… he had no idea what to think of her. The woman never laughed, never smiled. Built at the U.S. Army factory and shipped to the front with all parts in certified working order.

  Not his type at all. Sure she looked like the sitcom dream girl next door, the quiet, smart one. The Kate Jackson of the original Charlie’s Angels. Taller than the feisty elf that was Kee, but neither the long nor leggy of Major Beale. He was typically drawn to the latter, but there were two issues there. One, Major Beale had married Major Henderson, and two, she was also perhaps the scariest woman alive. A good person as a commanding officer, but lethal at any distance. It was a wonder Major Henderson had survived his courtship. Actually, considering what they’d been through, he almost hadn’t.

  Kee barely came up to Big John’s armpit, while the Major rose well past his shoulder. Connie stood tall enough to rest her head right on his shoulder. Her long hair would fall in its soft waves across…

  Connie stared at him square on from three feet away across the Black Hawk’s cargo bay.

  “Sir?” Her helmet was off and her cascade of brunette hair flowed around her face almost exactly as he’d just imagined it, looking as if she hadn’t spent the last six hours flying hot and sweaty under heavy gunfire. Her mirrored Ray-Bans were in place against the sharp light of the desert dawn.

  “Sergeant, not ‘sir.’” He responded automatically. He wasn’t a commissioned officer. He knew he sounded rude, inconsiderate. Though her eyes were covered, he knew they were a soft hazel and set wide across the bridge of her nose. He also knew that they were the only part of her that indicated someone was home.

  Meeting Connie Davis, you wanted to dismiss her as some cute Connie Homemaker. The girl next door brought to life right out of the television screen.

  But he’d run into the wrong end of her very keen mechanic’s mind more than once. Now she sat there, expressionless and unreadable, waiting for what he needed of her.

  Those eyes. Even through sunglasses they pinned his brain somewhere he couldn’t readily access. He cleared his throat to make it work. “Nice catch on the stutter.” He turned back to clear his own weapon.

  He barely heard her quiet reply of, “Thank you, Sergeant,” before she exited the chopper.

  He cleared the chamber round and stowed the belt. Time to get moving. Connie would probably complete the damage inspection by the time he’d made sure his weapon was cleared and locked. She’d probably have it analyzed and half repaired by the time he even had a chance to look it over.

  He was either going to kill the woman with his bare hands or… He had no idea what lay on the other side of the equation.

  And he didn’t want to know.

  Chapter 3

  Connie looked at the crews of Viper and Vengeance across the mess tent, then down at the tray in her hands. Burger, fries, salad, and a large bottle of some fruity electrolyte drink. Even an apple crisp in the corner. The Army fed you well when it could, even at a forward air base like Bati. All of it appearing so normal and homey in an Army-base sort of way.

  When she looked up, nothing normal at all.

  Bati was a town in northwest Pakistan where, as far as anyone other than the locals and a few government officials knew, this SOAR air base did not exist. A dozen helicopters secretly located in a country that appeared so unfriendly to America. The squatting rights never mentioned, all part of some arms deal.

  No choppers here, folks. And no Rangers or Delta Force operators being launched nightly into the battles raging across the Hindu Kush mountains of northeast Afghanistan. No, sir. No, ma’am. No base that showed up on any part of any world map except ones inside the Pentagon.

  The choppers hunkered down in an abandoned soccer stadium of sprawling concrete and flaking whitewash. The same whitewash swirled about in bright flurries along with the brownout dust clouds kicked up by the rotor’s downwash every time anyone fired up a chopper.

  The chow tent was equally foreign, even as she moved through it heading for where she knew she’d land. Where she always landed.

  The place felt cramped with the day staff fresh from their racks, eating breakfast, and the night fliers eating dinner before watching a movie or writing a letter home, then crashing out through the daytime. They jostled, crowded, rubbed shoulders. Most had their turf staked down and staked down hard.

  She headed away from the Rangers. All noise and bravado down at the far end, half of them moving out into the dawn light to eat on the soccer stadium tiers, plates in one fist and a tale of glory in the other. D-boys, the most dangerous fighters on the planet, were silent ghosts as always, appearing for food and then fading away as if they’d neve
r been there. The only people they spoke to between missions were the Rangers who were stupid enough to bait them—a sport no Ranger could resist despite decades of failure.

  The Chinook heavy-lifters, the masters of the giant twin-rotor helicopters, always took the corner at the front of the tent by the entrance flap. Shoulder to shoulder, each team snagged an extra chair to fit their five-man crews at a four-top. Closed circle.

  The pilots of the half dozen two-seater Little Birds had a long table where they sat in neat pairs across from each other, pilot and copilot, though who sat on which side varied. Perhaps the pattern was unconscious. Connie considered their alternation as she moved past but could find no particular sequencing of either a mathematical or a psychological nature. Four of the Black Hawk crews, the transport versions of the birds, intermixed at random tables.

  Then there were Viper and Vengeance. Supposedly her crew. The six members from the two DAP Hawks always ranged around a double table. DAPs were always a crew apart. Like police or nurses in the civilian world.

  The two Majors commanding the Direct Action Penetrators typically sat off by themselves at one of the back tables. On the rare occasions when they ate with their crew, another table was dragged in. But typically two copilots and four crew chiefs ate, shared, and joked together. Captain Stevenson had been out for three months on med leave, and Chief Warrant Clay Anderson had taken his seat both in the air and at the table. And though she’d taken Dusty James’s place on Viper when he’d taken a round, she’d never felt welcome in his seat at the table.

  She’d not taken it while Dusty was gone. That was proper, it was his seat and now he’d come back to fill it. Had the bullet that found him that night flown six inches differently, she would be the returning comrade now welcomed. Well, perhaps welcomed.

  There’d been no spot at all for a week, and she’d been assigned to a ground maintenance squad. They hadn’t put her in another bird because Kee Smith had upcoming marriage leave. Now Kee, the only person on the base she’d ever really spoken with, was gone. In two weeks she’d be back and Connie would be reassigned again.

  Should Connie take the seat that would only be hers for fourteen days? Would she know what to say if someone spoke to her? Everything she said always came out wrong.

  Even her moment with Staff Sergeant John Wallace this morning. Something she’d said had been wrong. She could see his face change, but though she studied it carefully, she couldn’t read it. Had he even meant the compliment, or had he been angry that she’d noticed the failing rotor blade before he had? She didn’t know anyone well enough to ask.

  He hulked at the table, perfectly at ease, with that big, welcoming laugh of his flowing across his friends as he told the story of their roll, holding his arms out and tipping them sideways, making everyone duck.

  Even when he retracted his arms, his broad shoulder intruded deep into the space where Kee always sat. Kee was small enough that it didn’t matter. And fierce enough that she didn’t care.

  But there was no room for Connie Davis.

  She turned for her usual table and sat with her back to the crew so that she wouldn’t have to watch yet another place she didn’t belong.

  Chapter 4

  “Two days, maybe three.”

  “You have until dark, about thirteen hours, to make her air-worthy.”

  Big John slapped a hand as big as both of Connie’s on the table. “Dammit, Major. You gotta be kidding me.”

  Major Emily Beale had signaled Connie to come over and sit at the table as the meal broke up. Now it was just the three of them, with the dirty dishes still rattling on John’s tray.

  “There is no damn way, Major!” Big John’s voice filled the chow tent, but the few people remaining didn’t even bother to turn and watch. John’s booming voice was more of a constant than a surprise.

  Connie considered the logistics of repairing the Black Hawk.

  The Chinook was supposed to deliver a new set of blades in about six hours. Even now she could hear the bird starting up for the three-hour run each way to go fetch a fresh set from the aircraft carrier. They’d need to replace several panels on the tail boom that had been beaten up by the dragging of the second broken blade. And the star-cracked plexi window on the copilot’s side. The rotor head was the real issue. Until they tore it open to see what had been wrenched…

  “Problem here?” Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson slid in next to Major Beale and kissed her solidly.

  It always made Connie blink. Their perfect ease about themselves and each other. They walked hand in hand from briefing to the flight line in thoughtless harmony, both absolute masters of their craft, two of the most accomplished and decorated helicopter pilots in the U.S. Army. They clearly wasted no time doubting themselves or each other. From a place of such confidence, they flew where merely earthbound mortals stumbled along under gravity’s force.

  “Major, you gotta talk some sense into your wife, sir.” John held his hands out like a supplicant. “We just flew a full mission and you know my bird took it hard, but she’s a good one and saw us through. Now Major Beale wants the Vengeance mission-ready in thirteen hours. It just ain’t gonna happen. No how, no way. Please talk some sense to her.”

  “Mission-ready? Did I say mission-ready?” Major Beale spoke, all bright innocence.

  John floundered at a loss for words, as if his pilot had just lied to him.

  Connie rolled the words back.

  “You said ‘air-worthy,’ ma’am.”

  John jerked around to face her and blinked hard. Once. Twice.

  Emily Beale merely nodded an acknowledgment with a gentle swoosh of her straight blond hair. As if she’d expected Connie to catch that.

  Connie had always thought herself unobserved. Time to upgrade her assessment, again, so as not to underestimate the Major’s capabilities.

  “Air. Worthy.”

  Connie could hear Big John roll it around on his tongue.

  There was a huge difference. Making her flyable was quite different from ready to fly into combat.

  Connie dropped the battered panels and cracked plexi from her mental list. She dropped the necessary checks of the backup systems. She dropped the two radios and the FLIR that had taken direct hits and needed replacement, alignment, and recertification. She juggled times and equipment layers. She put the FLIR back in but left off the fine recalibration. It meant working straight through the day, their night, but—

  “It’s possible.”

  “No!” John’s hand hammered down again on the table that groaned beneath the blow. But Connie could see his mind working even as his body protested. Could see the calculations in his unfocused gaze.

  “Wa-ell,” Major Henderson drawled in a horrid, fake Texas accent. “We could always give y’all another tow if ya can’t fix the Vengeance in time. You wouldn’t mind arriving at Kabul air base dangling from a Chinook’s underbelly like a limp piece of meat, would ya now? I know my wife, y’all’s commanding officer, couldn’t care no more than a snap of her fingers.”

  John finished his calculations as the Major finished his sentence. John nodded slowly, rearranging the details in his head. Connie could read it in the narrowing of his eyes, the firm set of his jaw.

  “Thirteen hours. We can do that.” He glanced her way.

  The light emphasis on “we” was one of the nicest compliments Connie had received since arriving at Bati. Not that she doubted her own skills. But she knew her mechanical ability bothered Sergeant Wallace and this was the first time he’d acknowledged it directly as an asset rather than an irritant.

  “Excellent.” Major Henderson rose easily to his feet and took his wife’s hand to help her up.

  As they walked away, he drawled once more, “It’s just a-knowin’ how to motivate them thar troops.”

  John looked from Connie to the departing couple. “Did he say something about Kabul?”

  Chapter 5

  They made it with twenty-eight minutes to spare.
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  John flexed his hand again, wincing at the pull across his barked knuckles and the long scrape that ran from wrist to elbow.

  Twenty-eight minutes. Enough for a shower and a shave. Time to stuff his gear in his duffel and grab something better than the energy bar he’d stuffed down midday. He strolled toward the chopper in the evening light with his kit on his back, a stack of salami sandwiches in his hand, and a cold Coke in one of his thigh pockets.

  Beale and Clay had pitched in where they could, but for the most part an officer’s usefulness on a repair was measured by their increasing distance from the job. Front-seaters knew how to fly but were trouble beyond that. Major Beale had West Pointed in, never even working as a back-ender other than in training.

  Every now and then a noncom made the jump to front seat like Clay, but no chief in his right mind would ever let them touch anything mission-critical again. Sure they thought they still knew, but they were wrong. Without constant study, no mere officer could keep up with all of the technology required to keep a Black Hawk humming.

  Even if Clay Anderson had stayed qualified, a DAP Hawk was a whole different bird beyond that. Newbies thought the mods designed by SOAR couldn’t be that drastic. But the Direct Action Penetrators were custom-built for SOAR and SOAR alone. Built from the ground up on a Black Hawk frame, but that and their name was about all that remained the same with the most common helicopter on the planet. There were whole layers of gear and electronics that no other helicopter had ever carried.

  John stood now at the entrance to the hangar and admired their handiwork as he bit off another chunk of his first sandwich.

  Fewer than twenty DAPs were spread across five battalions, among the rarest and definitely the most lethal weapons ever launched into the night sky. Also one of the most complex. Seventeen separate software systems, eight in the weapon systems alone, networked across four different media. And that was only if you didn’t count the beamed-in ground reference, the satellite imaging systems, or the new drone feeds they’d recently installed.