She’d never let anyone see it. And now John had… There was no way to ever live this one down. Now she’d always be on the outside. She liked this crew. Like flying with Emily Beale. Liked being on a bird so well maintained. You could feel the difference.
But she’d never belong.
She heard him get up to leave.
She heaved out a breath against the cold that sounded far too much like a self-pitying sigh. That would never do.
A deep, slow, calming breath and she opened her eyes.
Then blinked.
Twice.
But what she saw didn’t change.
John stood not two steps from her, his hands tucked loosely in his jacket pockets. Even as she watched, he reached out to help her to her feet. A kind gesture. And with how her body was feeling after her internal war, he represented pretty much the only way she’d make it to her feet before she froze in place.
Carefully. Unsure. Not wanting to be cast off, she reached out.
He took her hand in his and pulled her to her feet as if she weighed nothing. The strength he demonstrated in such a simple gesture was a sharp contrast to how gently he held her hand. And then, as if moving on its own, his thumb slipped gently over her knuckles leaving a clear heat signature in its path.
His eyes. Dark, dark eyes, pulled her in.
Without thinking, without considering, she leaned in and kissed him lightly in thanks for sitting with her and holding her and, most of all, for not just walking away.
Even as she shifted back on her heels, the impact of the brush of their lips slammed into her.
“Interesting.” She said out loud the only thought that came to mind. But her body had other thoughts.
Without intending to, she leaned back in. This time his hand clamped tightly on hers. When she tilted her head back, the kiss deepened with a long, slow luxury. His lips were soft and tasted of winter and wood, his mouth gentle and downright luscious.
This time when she rocked back on her heels, she retrieved her hand as well. A bare breath of air separated them. John’s eyes inspected her like… She didn’t know. As if he’d stepped off a short helicopter flight to find himself on another planet.
All she could think about her own reaction was, “Really interesting.”
How lame was that?
But that made up the totality of what she could think before turning back toward the hangar.
Well, her body had ideas even if her brain didn’t. She could feel the smile making her cheeks hurt.
Chapter 15
Connie knew she’d been avoiding John. Even when they were standing only five feet apart, conferring closely with the technicians on the ADAS calibration requirement on the Vengeance, she still was avoiding him. Moving so that a vendor’s tech or a tool cart always ended up between them.
Once, when the space got too tight, she made an excuse to go over to Viper and check how they were dealing with a similar issue.
She wasn’t very good at being subtle, but she needed the distance and was doing her best. She could see that John wasn’t stupid and knew what she was doing. And bless the man, he wasn’t pushing her.
While staring at the readouts on the latest image overlap alignment test, Connie worked to unravel why she was avoiding John. First and foremost, Army Command Policy Regulation 600-20, especially Section 4-14 regarding fraternization. While the regulations didn’t technically prohibit any relationship between two enlisted, he was a staff sergeant, a rank above her and therefore her superior, even if not an officer per Army regulations.
Which was a total dodge. She was avoiding John because when she kissed him, her mind had blanked. She normally had a dozen streams running simultaneously. Regs, flight conditions, audible and tactile feedback on a helicopter’s condition, and a half-dozen others. She had learned that keeping complex music in the background of her mind helped her focus on other tasks.
Since “the kiss,” her mind had gone very, very one track. The feelings, especially tactile, of John’s gentle kiss and the desperate heat of her sudden desire for him had clearly shocked them both.
Yes, distance was far and away the best policy. As he crossed to Viper to check something with Tim, she headed back toward Vengeance.
“Sergeant Davis. Big John.” Major Beale called out to them just as they passed each other midway between the birds.
They snapped to attention in front of her, a little farther apart than standard rank and file. Connie felt stupid for doing that. This wasn’t goddamn grade school, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself.
“Follow me!” As the Major turned to lead them out of the hangar, Connie glanced at John. Had they been caught kissing at the fence? But that was three days ago. He just shrugged, clearly with no idea of what else they’d done wrong.
Once they were out in the cold sunlight, Major Beale eased her stride until they walked on either side of her.
“You two in a mood to scare the shit out of some newbies?”
“Sir?” Big John rumbled.
One step. Two. Three. And suddenly Connie got it. She felt her feet grind to a halt.
The Major had stopped and was smiling at her, clearly amused at what must be the look of horror on her features.
It took only a couple of beats more before she saw the same look she was feeling cross John’s features. He looked ill.
In near unison, they both swore.
Chapter 16
Connie could only rank the Major’s smile as wicked.
They were headed over to Grimm Hall so it could only be…
“You remember Assessment Week?”
“Shit, yes.” Connie responded before she caught herself. “Sir.”
“How do you feel about being on the other end of the stick?”
Connie reconsidered her initial reaction. First there was Packet Week where the complete Army records of every applicant to SOAR were checked and cross-checked until nothing remained hidden, not a bad report by a drill instructor, not a mission screwup, not a poor mark in fourth-grade multiplication tables. Packet Week trimmed half or more out of every applicant class to SOAR.
Then Assessment Week. Seven days of hell that often slashed the class by half again or more. She’d made it through, though to this day she still didn’t know how.
Day one, brutally physical. Even the best-trained Army jocks were hammered by the end of the first day. Endless PT. Enough physical training calisthenics to bury an entire platoon. Then the dunk test. How did you behave when flipped upside down in a simulated helicopter into a freezing-cold swimming pool while physically exhausted and wearing full gear and blackout goggles? Five different scenarios. That wiped out a fair number of applicants, right on the first day. Rescue divers helped you out twice. You didn’t get a third shot at it. Then still shivering from cold and muscle exhaustion, plan a full night mission.
Day two, psych tests. Mixed with more PT, of course. Six people drilling you for sixteen to eighteen hours. A long list of standardized questions that never ended. And the worst was, not a single word on how you were doing. Did you answer the question right? Did they ask that question because you didn’t do enough pushups yesterday? Or because you did them wrong? Or because you screwed up a key soccer match in high school?
The SEALs in their Hell Week training were rewarded when they were the best or dumped into the ocean when they weren’t. Even being sent back to lie in the freezing waves must be better than this. At least in the SEALs you knew you’d screwed up.
Not SOAR Assessment Week. Seven days of perfect deadpan. “Next,” was all the feedback you ever received.
Day three, this must be day three. Interviews. Seriously sleep deprived, punch-drunk on brutal testing and no idea of how you were doing. Now, a never-ending rotation of SOAR officers asking you any damn thing. Pushing when your thoughts were too slow to form. Driving in at the least sign of weakness.
It was the day she knew her dream had failed, that they’d never accept her into SOAR. Not that
year, not any year. She’d finished out the rest of the week just to prove she couldn’t be so easily beaten and they could all go to hell. Only after she was out the gate did she tuck her proverbial tail and run.
She’d received her transfer orders to Fort Campbell two days after the end of Assessment Week. With no one to share her good news with, she’d simply shown up, and they’d taken her in. Two years later and the shock still sat inside her somewhere blinking its eyes in surprise.
Connie looked at John, who had stopped with her.
His features were still crossed with a look of revulsion. She couldn’t blame him. That something as blandly named as “Assessment Week” could be so brutal wasn’t right. But to be on the other end of that. It was an interesting idea. John didn’t appear to think so.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” His voice held none of its usual depth or volume.
The Major just shook her head. The smile was easy on her fine features. “Sixteen in this class still. Packets knocked out twenty-three. PT, dunk, and psych took out another nine so far. They asked for help cutting the next layer of chaff.”
“Why us?” Sixteen of forty-eight remaining. Two-thirds gone. Usually about ten percent made it through. They’d probably lose eight to ten more, though there’d been classes where no one made it through despite the rigorous prescreen.
“First, we’ve found that actual teams have a performance standard based on real-world experience that the psychs can’t match. Second, in my case and yours, Sergeant Davis, women. Women at SOAR’s level of engagement are a new factor. There are very few of us so far. They want to gauge the readiness of the men in this group to deal with the female factor. And there’s a woman in this class. Maybe number five.”
Connie started walking again, a bit mechanically. She had to think to make her legs move properly, but she managed to move almost normally beside the Major. John fell in on her other side.
“Five? You said number five, sir? Women. You, me, Sergeant Kee, and who?”
“Another one passed Assessment about half a year after you did, Ms. LaRue. Chief Warrant Officer 2. Pilot. She’s still in training.”
Who would be crazy enough to put themselves through that?
Chapter 17
“It can’t be me.” The Major was staring through the dark side of a mirrored observing-room window as if she’d seen a ghost. The Major stood to Connie’s right and John to her left. This was the closest Connie had let him come to her in three days. Just a kiss. That’s all it had been. Repeating her mantra of the last three days still wasn’t making any dent in her desire to repeat the experience.
“What can’t?” Connie looked into the room, seeking the Major’s problem, but she saw nothing exceptional. Before them, on the far side of the one-way glass, sixteen glassy-eyed applicants stood in neat rows. They all wore Army sweats and coveralls. No insignia. No rank. Not during Assessment. All the same, enlisted and officer, gunner and master pilot.
“I know her.” The Major didn’t need to indicate who she meant. The only woman in the room was a head shorter than anyone else. A slip of girl with flaming red hair, ageless.
“How?”
The Major ran her long fingers deep into her straight blond hair, uncomfortable. Major Beale was never uncomfortable. “I—” She looked away, then turned her back on the room and faced Connie.
“I don’t know you, Sergeant Davis.”
“We’ve flown together for just two weeks and that—”
“Isn’t what I’m talking about.” The Major glanced over her shoulder as a captain began separating the applicants into groups of four, then she turned back to face Connie squarely.
“How far can I trust you, Davis? I don’t know yet.”
Connie could offer no answer. The only way she knew to create trust was to prove it was deserved. It couldn’t be asked for. It couldn’t be offered. It had to be proven and built. She was learning to trust Major Emily Beale the pilot, but she knew little or nothing of Emily Beale the woman. So what could the Major know of Connie Davis the woman?
And why? Did the Major want the woman to fail? Battle over an ex-lover? Or had they been grade-school playmates? What piece of the past did they share that the Major wasn’t able to stand in front of her?
Connie kept her thoughts to herself. She wasn’t going to queer the Assessment Week process either way.
The Major waited. Waited some more and then nodded.
“Right. Up to me. Okay. Here’s a piece of information you shouldn’t have. I can’t be the one to face her because I’d be too soft. And because Trish would feel safe having me as one of her interviewers. Assessment Week isn’t about safe. But—and do with this what you will—that soldier is what SOAR needs. Desperately.”
She waited for Connie’s acknowledgment. A brief nod was all she could offer. The Major loved SOAR as much as she loved her husband. She was a stand-up person. Absolute integrity. That was how the Major won the immense loyalty of people like John Wallace and Kee Stevenson. And Connie would bet that neither had been easy to convince.
They turned together and walked out of the observation room, down the short hall, and swung into the interview room. Connie, half a step behind, kept an eye on the woman. Of all of the recruits, she stood the straightest, no sign of the weariness that Connie knew would be wracking her very bones. The instant they entered the room, a genuine smile started to light up the woman’s face.
Then Major Emily Beale walked by within a foot of her without any hint of notice. The woman looked as if she’d been punched.
No one said SOAR’s Assessment Week was supposed to be easy.
Chapter 18
“Tell me about the last time you almost got your squad killed. What did you do wrong?” Connie watched as John drilled his question at the guy on the left of the line standing at parade rest. She and John sat behind a bare steel table facing them in a gray concrete room with no leavening decoration other than the U.S. flag.
Connie hadn’t known that day three was unscripted. She remembered the round robin of SOAR fliers who had pounded her with questions, she just hadn’t known they were making it up as they went along. It made sense. Yesterday had been the scripted psychological profile questions. Today was twenty hours of unscripted real-world tests.
The four applicants looked ragged. They’d probably been on their feet since midnight, and lunch was long gone with no break. Two were actually weaving with exhaustion and hunger. Three men—white, black, and Asian—and the one woman, Irish with red-orange hair and immensely blue eyes. A real mixed cadre.
“Answer, soldier!” John snapped out. His voice rang in the unpainted concrete room with its white T-hung ceiling and no windows. Four cameras lined up behind Connie, four cyclopean antagonists, one focused on each candidate. In the next room a psych board would be watching. The group assessment was to add the stress of performing in front of your potential future colleagues. She and John kept the questions negative, aggressive, and potentially embarrassing.
Mr. White Guy’s reply came out in a growl. And directed at John. Even when she asked the question, he always answered John as if she weren’t there. Connie didn’t wear any insignia. She could just be another psych tech for all the guy knew. Or a bird colonel. Either way, he was more and more aggressively not answering the questions she asked.
After three hours of it, she was ready to fail him without waiting for the end of the week. Not her call. And none were ever told during the week if they failed or not. They could quit or give up. But they never knew anything about their success or failure until they did or didn’t get the order to leave their unit and come to SOAR. By keeping the person who’d already failed in the process, it kept the other candidates from getting any gauge on their own progress.
If she had her way, this one would be getting the lowest grade. “Failed, not approved.” There would be no recourse after that. No way to reapply.
There was also “Failed with reason.” Those folks were given a chan
ce to work on an identified weak skill and reapply if they could face the process again. Then there was “Approved.” Ten to twenty percent of each applicant pool made it to that golden ring. Once there, very few dropped out in the six months to two years of training that followed before they were declared mission-qualified.
She cut off Mr. Misogynist halfway into his justification about a mistake he’d made of under-hydrating. Connie’d seen that in the desert heights of Afghanistan. A significant danger to the rest of the team. Dehydration clouded judgment and slowed reactions, endangering your squadmates. It also made your urine far more pungent and much more likely to give away your position during an extended hideout.
Connie drilled the same question at the other two guys, leaving him at a loss as to what to do with the rest of his story. The other two did better. At least they looked at both her and John when they answered. One principally answered her chest, despite the vest and jacket that hid most of her form, but maybe he’d been in-country too long and had forgotten what a woman looked like.
When your application passed Packets, you received an order to show up. If that meant getting your ass out of a Colombian jungle and flying through the night to get to Fort Campbell for Assessment Week, that’s what you did.
Or maybe he was just a jerk.
John turned for the woman to answer, but Connie cut her off and aimed her next question at Mr. Chest-Starer. She didn’t even give the woman the opportunity to answer most of the questions.
John had caught on quickly to what Connie was doing. Between them, they now let the woman answer about one question in five.
He sent Connie a look of sadness that she could just read through his poker face. He was too soft at heart, funny thing for such a top-notch soldier. The same generous heart that had held her out at the fence. She considered patting his thigh under the table but was afraid of being too forward, especially with a superior rank.
Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) Page 7