Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers)

by Buchman, M. L.

  He slid one arm around her slender waist and dug the other into the lush cascade of softly curling hair he’d been dying to toy with since the first time he’d seen her. It had been another time, another mission; an unknown woman standing on the wind-blown ship’s deck in the wintery Baltic Sea. Even at a distance, she’d captivated him. Though she was a little taller, their bodies shaped and molded closer together more perfectly with each passing moment.

  An energy coursed through her that drove his body’s attention into overdrive. Every nerve ending vibrated where they touched.

  And her kiss! Rocket fire and the scorching heat of his family’s chicken fricassee. Lola LaRue tasted like fire and heaven.

  She started sliding back and forth against him. First a slow gyration side to side, building rapidly until she shifted out of his arms. Their last point of contact, her teeth dragging across his lower lip.

  Grabbing one of his hands, she gave it a sharp tug and pulled him from where he had been plastered against the chopper. In a moment she stood cheek to cheek with him, one hand on his right arm, their clasped hands pointing toward the Viper. He slid his arm back around her waist, blown away by the perfect way she fit there, and pulled their bodies together with a sharp tug.

  She threw her head back with a laugh that reminded him of starlight, and with a kick and step, they were sliding ahead in an impromptu tango. Five steps, slow-slow-fast-fast-slow, he spun her into a twirl and pulled her back.

  Their bodies slammed together, and again the starlight-sparkling laugh.

  This time the kiss was quick and fast, with just the slightest linger.

  When she moved away this time, he was powerless to stop her. As she danced downfield between the choppers, her hips sliding side to side in a way designed to make a grown man go blind, he heard her voice whispering back to him.

  “I was right. You are sweet.”

  All he could do was watch her go.

  He looked down at his feet. So light a moment ago, they weren’t going anywhere now.

  Yep! No doubt about it. He’d been absolutely right when he’d assessed their first meeting.

  He was totally screwed.

  Chapter 9

  Major Emily Beale sat with Mark and Colonel Michael Gibson of Delta Force, her usual breakfast partners. But she wasn’t really paying attention. The two of them were, as so often happened, trading fish stories. One a Montana boy and the other Colorado born and bred. High mountain streams, lakes that were a three-day horse ride in, pan-fried versus grilled on a green maple twig directly over the fire.

  Mark had taught her to fish, and for a city girl, she’d discovered camping suited her very nicely. But she’d rather lie on the bank nearby and read a good book while Mark strode hip-deep into freezing water.

  She let them talk, let her body eat, paying some attention to her steak and eggs, but mostly she watched her crew halfway across the tent. Taking her chance to assess their attitudes unobserved.

  Archie and Big John were busy entertaining Dilya. And the little girl, who had bloomed over the last year, teased them right back. Clearly smart, she was consuming culture and schooling like water. Kee sat beside her chatting with Connie.

  Kee lacked the playful streak that was such a surprise in Archie, but she and Dilya had something special. Some understanding and feeling that went deeper than anything Emily had ever imagined. Made her yearn for a child of her own.

  Without turning, she reached out a hand. Without pausing in his story about a remote California lake of golden trout originally stocked by Chuck Yeager and an illegal Air Force mission he’d arranged, Mark slipped his hand into hers and held it tightly.

  Not yet. But someday. Today she had other concerns.

  Her first cue was Kee’s sudden stiffening.

  Emily didn’t have to see her face to feel the scowl.

  Silhouetted by the brightening daylight, Chief Warrant LaRue stood in the entry of the tent. Emily didn’t need the woman’s careful nod in her direction to know the answer.

  The woman who had flown with such a desperate need to please was gone. LaRue no longer stood stoop-shouldered as she’d been out on the track just a few minutes ago.

  The woman about to enter the chow tent now was a tall and confident woman. Emily would bet safe money that if she could see LaRue’s face, it would be flushed. She wanted to take them back aloft right now to see how it translated into her flying.

  Whatever LaRue had decided, it had also put a dance in her step as she moved toward the chow line. A number of the Rangers tracked her across the tent, she was hard not to watch.

  As Emily returned her attention to her food, another shadow darkened the entry.

  No mistaking the powerfully shouldered silhouette. Tim Maloney also stopped when just a step inside. It was a common event, waiting for your eyes to adapt from the bright sun to the dim tent.

  But the morning wasn’t that bright yet.

  He scanned the room, nodded slowly to Big John, but still didn’t move. Took a step toward the chow line, but stopped again. Then he turned slowly, not just his head, but his whole body turning as he tracked…

  Emily looked over her shoulder and saw Lola LaRue crossing from the chow line back to the crew’s table with a laden tray.

  When Emily looked back at the entry, Tim was gone.

  She bit her lower lip. Hoped she wouldn’t have to warn Mark. Tim was on his crew now.

  And she hoped for Tim’s sake that a cold shower would be enough.

  Five get you ten, it wouldn’t be.

  Chapter 10

  Tonight’s mission started differently.

  Lola could feel the old Lola, the one who had been starstruck around Major Emily Beale, start to slide over her during the briefing. That shield of awe that there was so much that could be attained, even if it would never be attained by Lola.

  Then she shook it off. Did her best to toss old Lola out of the briefing tent. She’d done near enough a thousand flights, she had skills. Had cracked over five thousand hours not counting simulator time, a huge mark in a chopper pilot’s life. Tonight she’d bring them. Bring them hard. And maybe Major Beale would start learning to trust her new copilot. Hell of a high bar to live up to, girl.

  Screw that, gel. Y’all be bedder dan dat. Mama Raci’s thick-accented voice sounded clear and grouchy from out of her past. Maybe it was time she listened to the old woman.

  The briefing tent held fewer flight crews than usual. Must be a light night. Viper Henderson was up at the front with Captain Archibald Stevenson, Sergeant Kee’s significant other.

  Lola wanted to ask Tim what was going on. But he hadn’t shown at breakfast after last night’s flight. No backgammon. No pleasant chat after everyone else drifted off. Probably just hit his rack and passed out.

  Now it was evening before a night’s work and he still looked fairly ragged, as if he hadn’t woken up yet. He’d barely acknowledged her cheery “good morning” over dinner. He’d sat down past Connie, invisible beyond the wall of Big John. Others looked at him in surprise. Readjusting for his failure to occupy his usual spot. And he ate quietly, not chatting with Connie or Kee, who sat across from him, even though he’d apparently sought them out.

  In Lola’s opinion, it at least had the advantage of distracting Kee from her usual pissed-off-at-the-world-but-especially-Chief-Warrant-LaRue attitude. Instead, she’d spent her energy worrying about Tim while still appearing tough as hell.

  The briefing tent tonight held the two DAP Hawk crews and two five-man teams for the monstrous Chinook choppers. The Delta colonel also sat there. Back row. Quiet. Looking impossibly powerful.

  A shadow slipped in and perched on a chair beside Kee. A small shadow in a white hajib, the native over-smock that covered the girl from shoulder to knees. White pants and incongruous red, blue, and yellow sneakers below that. Without even turning,
Kee wrapped an arm around the girl who snuggled in. A gentle side Lola never would have guessed existed.

  No one else reacted. No one acknowledged the girl, but neither did they dismiss her. Somehow this kid was just a fixture on the military base.

  “Tonight”—Captain Archie Stevenson pulled up a map on the projector—“we’re on the move. Tonight we’re going here.” The Air Mission Commander ran his pointer south over the trackless desert southwest of Lashkar Gah.

  That would be fine, if it weren’t in the incredibly lethal Helmand Province. Everyone—French, NATO, British, and U.S.—had lost choppers there. Though there was nothing except dunes and sandstorms that far south.

  “Continuing to here. Camped by first light.”

  Another place with absolutely nothing.

  “We’ll be staging a single mission from a temporary base in Western Afghanistan. That information is, by the way, classified ‘secret.’”

  Nothing there except—Lola took a deep breath—the Iranian border.

  “Flight in one hour. Minimum duration two days each way, two to seven days in-country. Dilya, you’ll have to stay here with Base Clerk Reynolds. We’ll be gone about a week.” Briefed in the same tone as any soldier.

  Kee squeezed the girl tighter, but Dilya nodded her head matter-of-factly. Showed she was a trooper and used to the routine.

  “Dismissed.”

  Chapter 11

  An hour later, Lola was finishing the preflight check on the Vengeance. Kee and Connie were stowing gear, and the Major was already in her seat making sure the mission route was keyed into the onboard nav displays.

  Nearby she could see Tim and Big John prepping their bird. Captain Richardson mirroring her own flight checks. Major Henderson was down the way a bit talking to the Chinook pilot. She could see them loading gear into the back of the monstrous helicopter. Instead of the forty-odd troops the bird could carry, there were a half-dozen guys and a lot of gear.

  No. She’d been wrong.

  There weren’t a half-dozen guys. The group was working together in absolute silence and perfect synchronicity. Definitely not just guys, they were Delta Force. The Colonel hadn’t been sitting in the back of the room for his health. The Chinook was taking them somewhere very nasty. Somewhere nasty enough to shift some serious assets across two thousand kilometers of hostile territory.

  Two Chinooks, two DAP Hawks, six D-boys. Nothing else. This was about the nastiest crew the U.S. military forces could field. If this group couldn’t get it done, no one on the planet stood a chance.

  She turned to see Tim watching the Chinook as well. A long, assessing gaze. He saw it too, so it wasn’t just her imagination.

  He turned to her, and across the full rotor width that separated their birds, she read his thoughts clearly. They were headed into some shit.

  Lola thought of that impulsive kiss and the heat that still rippled through her body from it. He hadn’t done any of the expected grab or fondle. He’d just held her like she was the most precious thing on the planet in that moment. And then he’d proved that all that strength didn’t keep him from busting out some smooth moves.

  She shot him a saucy smile.

  ***

  Tim did his best to smile back.

  Honestly, he did.

  Apparently it worked because Lola spun lightly on her heel and went back to her preflight inspection.

  That’s Chief Warrant 2 LaRue to you, flyboy. Sergeants just didn’t get it on with gorgeous female officers. Though somehow Sergeant Kee Smith and then-Lieutenant, now Captain Archie Stevenson had hooked up. He’d never be comfortable asking an officer how they did it. Maybe he could ask Kee.

  Who was he kidding?

  First, Kee hated LaRue for some reason. Second, he knew he was just dreaming anyway. The Major had given her some news on their walk that had been something to be ecstatic about, and so Lola had smacked him a good one in celebration. Joy had just radiated out of the woman like a shining sun. That was it. Nothing more.

  Big John slapped him hard on the shoulder. Then held on and shook him back and forth like a leaf. At least his marriage made sense, two sergeants. Two people who loved their machines as if they were their own children.

  “You set, John?” Tim asked just to have something to say.

  “Yep! Viper’s ready for flight. You?”

  “Stowed and locked down.”

  John shook him again, a bit more gently.

  “You got it bad, don’t you, buddy boy?”

  Tim shook his head in denial, then realized he was still watching LaRue as she climbed into the copilot’s seat and pulled those long legs of hers inside the craft.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” He slapped aside John’s hand and went to check his weapons for a third time, just to have something to do.

  Almost out of earshot, but not quite, he heard John’s soft, “Uh-huh.”

  Chapter 12

  Lola was wiped out as she came down upon the agreed coordinates. The dark still lay upon the desert. They’d chosen a lonely spot, flat and free of any sand dunes. She’d thumped the chopper down harder than she’d expected. Lola could taste why in the night air, salt. Rather than soft sand, they were on a hard salt pan. That and she’d been sloppy with fatigue.

  As the turbines wound down, she could feel the last tiny bits of energy draining out of her until they both ground to a halt in unison and she couldn’t move. She’d been so full of energy just eight hours, three midair refuelings, and two thousand kilometers ago.

  She’d gotten them down, not clean, but she got them down. She tried flexing her fingers from where they’d been curled around the controls, and pain rocketed up her arms. They joined the complaint and finally her shoulders admitted they’d be happier if she just let go and wept.

  She’d been first down and the other birds landed around her. Viper close to starboard. To her port side, one of the Chinooks settled so smooth and soft that it pissed her off even more. Too much grace in such an ungainly monster.

  Another ten seconds and the other big twin-rotor Chinook settled down to the other side of Henderson’s Hawk. Looming above her bird and twice as long, not counting the long blades that looked like an ungainly afterthought. Four birds in a row.

  In moments two Delta operators were perched atop the Chinooks, one looking south and west, the other north and east.

  She finished the shutdown, pulled off her helmet, and just lay back in her seat, as much as the thing allowed. Too damn tired to move. To breathe.

  For the whole flight, Major Beale hadn’t said one damn word. With the fact that Kee wasn’t speaking to her and Connie apparently never spoke, they’d flown dead silent for more than eight hours.

  Well, she’d shown she could fly. She’d stayed dead on profile. She’d nailed the midair refuels on her first try, all three times.

  Her muscles ached. Not from holding on so tight, just from not having a moment’s break.

  She felt the slight motion in the bird as Kee, then Connie, stepped off.

  Lola kept her eyes closed, waiting for the Major to step down. To get away before Lola said something really, really inappropriate. It was just plain cruel to leave a pilot at the controls for eight solid hours. It took—

  “Next time…” Beale’s voice was quiet beside her.

  Lola rolled her head against the seat back and opened one scratchy, aching eye to look at the Major in the dim light of the instrument panel.

  “Next time, ask for help when you’re tired. There are two of us here for a reason. You don’t have to do it all yourself.”

  Lola closed her one open eye and rolled her head back to center. Just too plain tired.

  Of course. It wasn’t Major Beale testing Lola with a brutally long and painful flight. Instead another goddamn lesson. A chopper flew by teamwork. Lola knew that. Should kn
ow that. Wouldn’t forget it again, that was for damn sure.

  Mama Raci had taught her to trust no mon but she self. Hard to break that despite a half-dozen years in the service. Time to blast that old tape out of her brain with some serious explosives.

  Merde! She had been a total teet peeshwank. Mama Raci had called Lola a “small runt” for all of her teenage life, long after she towered over the old woman. She’d called Lola that right up until the day she joined the Air National Guard. The change had been jarring. The loss of the demeaning nickname a far greater marker of the achievement than the swearing-in ceremony.

  Lola climbed down to help rig the camouflage nets over the choppers. She had to bite her tongue near to bleeding to stop the groans from her aching muscles.

  Chapter 13

  When the sun came up, it was as if someone was attacking Lola with a sky-sized hammer. In minutes the chill air of the desert was replaced by air that burnt her lungs to breathe. A parching wind arose and drove the fine dust and sand in billowing waves across their site.

  Everyone started shedding vests and flight suits. All facing away from the wind.

  Lola didn’t care that she had nothing but a T-shirt and panties on under the flight suit. She stripped first and then dug out loose white slacks and a long-sleeved shirt. Guys were down to their boxers or tighty-whities just as fast. Sunglasses and a bandanna over her face so that she could breathe completed the outfit. She tried dampening it, but the air dried the bandanna faster than she could wet it.

  The dawn light had revealed that they were parked in the middle of a salt plain that had probably been a lake in a former life. Low, dry hills stretched into the distance. Not a blot of green anywhere to the horizon.

  Tactically good. First, no could slip up on them here. Second, it was the largest district in Afghanistan and the least populated, with 8,000 people in 22,000 square kilometers. Easy to see why, there was nothing here but sand and salt. The nearest track of any kind was over ten klicks away. The nearest thing that could be called a road was more like fifty.