Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers)

by Buchman, M. L.

  Now, in the full light of day, the sunlight was blinding, even through sunglasses. “Bright enough to burn a black man.” Yeah, well, not quite how her father had said it, but he could make Deep South white trash look good by comparison. Never made sense that he’d married a mixed-breed Creole. She’d been parts French, African slave, Choctaw, and who knew what else. Dead before Lola was five. Knowing her father, the woman had to have been dead inside long before that to survive him as long as she did.

  Lola shook it off and headed for some shade. Most of the crew were squatting in the shadow of one of the Chinooks. A filigree net of sand-and-earth tones fluttered above, hopefully hiding them from casual inspection.

  Don’t mind us. We’re just a lump of nothing interesting squatting in the middle of a blazing salt pan. A blazing salt pan about ten miles from the Iranian border.

  Lola swung by the chopper’s rear ramp. Dinner had been set out. A box of mixed MREs and a case of water bottles. Meals-Ready-to-Eat were not all that different from one another, no matter what they said. She grabbed whatever came to hand.

  A glance forward into the big cargo bay showed that the D-boys had packed in some serious gear. Six guys, packs bigger than should be humanly possible. And a range of armament. They couldn’t be taking all of this with them. They must be ready to make selections at the last minute as needed. That was their problem. Her problem, as the DAP Hawk weapons platform, was to make sure the Chinooks got them there and that they got them back out.

  She dropped down near Tim and Big John. “I can feel the salt sucking all the moisture right out of my skin.”

  Big John nodded slow and easy. “Long way from a hot shower.”

  “Ugh!” Tim ripped the top off his MRE and started pulling out the bits and pieces. “Don’t even say the word ‘hot.’ Just hearing it is killing me.”

  “Heat doesn’t bother me none.” Born and raised in New Orleans made heat easy. “Dry. Not used to the dry.” She sliced open her own MRE with her field knife. She’d grabbed Mediterranean Chicken, could have been worse. She pulled out the packets, considered the flameless heater and decided she’d rather eat the meal cold. It left the sauces a little glutinous even in this heat, but that was better than hot.

  They all sat in a row, backs to the wind to guard against the dust, as they opened packets, spread cheese on crackers, munched on corn bread. Hers didn’t have any hot sauce. Stupid. The little bottle of Tabasco should be in every one of the twenty-four different meals.

  She dumped the carbo-electro powder packet into her water bottle and gave it a shake. Definitely going to be needing that.

  “Where you from, Chief Warrant?” Big John worked his way through Meatballs with Marinara and Garlic Mashed Potatoes, then started on a second meal of Sloppy Joe with Peanut Butter (Chunky) and Jelly Sandwich.

  “You’re gonna get fat eating all that,” Tim mumbled around a mouthful of Nuggets (Turkey).

  John, for all his size, didn’t have an ounce of fat anywhere. He ignored Tim as if he’d never spoken.

  “Can’t quite place your accent, Chief.”

  “Call me Lola.” She’d done her best to not have an accent at all. “You’re from Oklahoma.”

  “John,” he acknowledged in return. “Muskogee bred and buttered.”

  Big John was easy to talk to, but not comfortable like Tim. They’d only had their after-breakfast backgammon game a few times, but she already wished she’d thought to bring a board. A little backgammon, a little quiet time to just shoot the breeze after a long damn flight. A single haul that put her at her rated daily limit of eight flight hours. Of course, when the shit was going down, it was less of a rule and more of a really strong suggestion. Only shit going down today was her own stupidity. Not again.

  “Didn’t answer the question there, long lady.”

  And she didn’t intend to.

  “But you wear it on your helmet. Why’s that?”

  She glanced toward the Vengeance where she’d left it on her seat.

  “Hunh. Guess I do. Never thought about it that way.”

  “Where?” Tim shuffled a bit forward so that he could see her around John.

  “She’s a Cajun lady, our copilot is.”

  “No, Sergeant… sorry, John. Creole, yes. Cajun, no.”

  “Which means what?” Tim had shuffled further forward and turned sideways to the rising wind to partly face her. A blast of dust and sand washed over his meal. He’d have to get another and start over. She thought about pointing it out to him, but some wicked part of her thought better of it. Let him find out the hard way.

  “Cajun is all fashion and style. Also, it implies Acadian heritage. As far as I can find out, my mama was a lot of things, but none of them Acadian.”

  “In other words,” John observed, “something nobody cares about who isn’t one of you.”

  Lola considered, had always insisted she wasn’t Cajun because… She had no idea and shrugged in response. Time to let that one go except if she was ever dumb enough to be back in New Orleans.

  “What about your dad?”

  “Dead.”

  “Oh, sorry. Didn’t know.” Tim looked chagrined. Like it really pained him.

  “He was run over by a beer truck while lying drunk in a tavern parking lot. No loss to the world, trust me.”

  They sat in silence while she finished her Fruit (Dried) which she liked way better than the Fruit (Wet Pack).

  “Who named these things anyway?” She pointed at Tim’s Cookies (Patriotic). A safe and common enough topic of speculation among those who lived on them from time to time.

  “Still must have been pretty awful when he died.”

  “Hey, that’s way more than he deserved.” Which was completely true. “New topic. C’mon.”

  “How old were you when—”

  “Same old topic, Tim. Something new.”

  “Okay. Where did you learn to play backgammon?”

  “Mama Raci. She took me in when I needed someplace to be. Ran a kitchen in a house in Storyville.” Didn’t know why she said any of that. Could only hope that they didn’t get what that implied.

  The blank looks said she’d dodged that bullet.

  “Nice old lady. Nice to me, anyway.” When it had really mattered. Actually a nasty old bitch to the girls who worked there earning their keep by the hour. To this day, she still didn’t know why Mama Raci had given her a place to work and sleep. Available only so long as she never missed a day of school or a single homework assignment. Tough old biddy, and Lola did her best not to grimace over the pain of her loss.

  Tim was clearly itching to know more about a past she’d left as far behind her as possible.

  Lola was busy trying to find an excuse to brush off a man who made her a little crazy in a good way and more than a little hot in ways the temperature couldn’t explain.

  “How did you learn backgammon?”

  That brought a roar of laughter from Big John. Tim simply smiled as if he were trying to be some sweet and innocent child instead of a gorgeous chunk of U.S. Army warrior.

  “This here pipsqueak…” John clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to hurt.

  Tim shrugged it off.

  “Got his nickname playing backgammon.”

  “Circle up,” Mark Henderson shouted out.

  “Story for a later time,” Big John offered in a smaller voice, though not much smaller.

  “A much later time.” Though Tim didn’t look as chagrined as his tone indicated. Perhaps even a little proud.

  Everyone shuffled to their feet, and Lola made sure Big John stayed between her and Tim. When Connie joined John, she didn’t complain about the extra distance.

  She was liking Tim far too much.

  Chapter 14

  Some people were still eating as they circled up on the Major. Tim rememb
ered the last of his meal in his hands and took a big bite of one of his crackers. Chewed it a couple of times thinking about Lola. She was smooth, slick, like the way she flew. Sliding out from under questions.

  He had to give her a break, she was new. But he’d thought they’d built some connection. And… he coughed.

  Then inhaled.

  And got a lungful of dirt just as the Major started speaking. He tried to suppress the reaction but couldn’t. He hacked up a tiny cloud of dust and spewed out half-chewed chunks of cheese-coated crackers now turned brown with desert dirt.

  John’s thump on his back drove him to his knees. The Major ground to a halt and turned to watch. Everyone did, but Tim couldn’t stop.

  Lola handed him her water. “Small sips.”

  He hacked up another chunk of cracker and desert sand.

  His instinct was to knock back the water, but he did what she said and the small sips worked. Softened the cracker, eased the dust-dry coating on his tongue and throat.

  He hacked again and got the last of the cracker out, right between Lola’s knees where she knelt before him. Attractive. Real attractive, Tim Maloney. Sure know how to impress a girl.

  But she didn’t look grossed out. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was on the verge of laughing. As if she’d covered his meal in dirt herself, which was impossible.

  “You two done?” Clearly Major Henderson was done, so Tim had better be.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” His throat was sore and ticklish, but he managed to swallow hard and stop the next cough.

  The Major was being downright serious. Well, they hadn’t come here for the fun of it. Tim spit one last time to clear his mouth, looked like the spit dried before it hit the salt pan.

  “Okay. Who knows what lies about six hundred klicks northwest of here?”

  Everyone turned to face northwest. A dozen kilometers of salt pan and then the Iranian border. The only place on the whole planet that was more godforsaken than this was—

  “Desert One.” Lola got there a beat before he did. And the Major was just nodding.

  Tim looked at those around him, and they all looked a little sick.

  You couldn’t be SOAR and not know every detail of Operation Eagle Claw. It was the birth of SOAR, or at least the event that had led to its birth. It was also one of the most public disasters in the history of the U.S. military. It had reshaped foreign policy and toppled a U.S. president.

  The failed rescue attempt of the Iranian hostages in 1980.

  Tim tried to make his voice light. “Bad juju there, Major. Let’s stay way clear.”

  The Major stared at him levelly, the gaze steady through those mirrored shades he never removed. Scuttlebutt had it that he didn’t even remove them when making love to his wife.

  “By tomorrow sunrise,” Major Mark Henderson said in a flat monotone of absolute authority, “we’ll be parked two thousand meters west of Desert One.”

  Chapter 15

  They were at the drop-off.

  No one had slept through the heat of the day, a doze was all Lola had managed. She knew none of the others on her crew were any better off. She and Major Beale had traded off the flying every hour so they’d be as fresh as possible.

  A half-dozen kilometers northwest of Ravar, Iran, at one in the morning. Viper and Vengeance, the two DAP Hawks, stayed high. Well, forty feet off the ground, about where they’d been flying since crossing the border.

  One of the Chinooks hovered nearby, her main purpose backup and the massive bladder of fuel sitting on her cargo deck. The days of a flock of C-130 tanker planes flying into the center of Iran undetected were long gone. The nation, which in 1980 had been without radar except at a few airports, was now one of the nine nations able to launch a satellite into space. The Chinook carried enough Jet A for four refuelings of the little fleet, and her guns were manned and not to be underestimated. Wrench, Captain Archie Stevenson, sat on that Chinook as the Air Mission Commander.

  The other Chinook swung down, skimming an empty road in a low-speed pass. Her rear ramp lowered and the six D-boys spilled off it without the bird ever touching down.

  Bicycles. Lola zoomed in the view projected inside her helmet, but they were gone so fast into the night she couldn’t tell more. They’d been mounted on electric bicycles. High-speed electric bikes. Small and lightweight, easy to hide and probably silent, they were moving at least twenty miles per hour and still accelerating as they moved out of sight.

  Before they were gone, the choppers headed out to Desert One. There to wait until called for, at the very earliest, two days from now. Or rather two nights.

  ***

  And now they were here.

  Lola glanced back at the shallow valley among the dunes. The choppers hidden by their camouflage, guards in place.

  Eight of them, most of the two DAP crews and Archie, stood atop the low bluff at the edge of camp. Captain Richardson had hung back at the camp with the Chinook crews and the Deltas.

  Fifteen minutes walking across the low dunes, the desert so silent it made your ears ring and echo. The soft slide of sand underfoot the only indication that members of the U.S. military walked the Iranian night.

  They climbed a final bluff barely outlined by the starlit night, and Desert One lay before them.

  Lola looked right and left. She’d never met better nor flown with better. But how many would be standing six months from now, or a year? How many would a CSAR pilot come for? For how many would it be too late?

  She was getting pretty morose, but the locale lent itself to that.

  The moonlight revealed each true to their form. Connie leaning back against Big John for comfort. Kee holding hands with Archie but still standing a little apart, the woman always strong and independent and still riding Lola’s ass. It ticked her off, but she was coming to respect the contradictory woman despite that, the kick-butt soldier combined with the loving stepmother of an orphaned native kid.

  Emily and Mark stood close, an arm loose around each other’s hips. Tim had planted himself close to Lola’s right, both hands jammed into pockets, looking down toward the empty plain below.

  In 1980, the new Iran under their new Ayatollah took fifty-three Americans hostage. Operation Eagle Claw was an elaborate and poorly coordinated rescue effort of immense bravery that flew eight Sea Stallion helicopters and six C-130 tanker and cargo planes below radar and into history. A mash-up team of Navy, Air Force, Rangers, and Deltas made the effort.

  A sandstorm tore their equipment apart. A busload of natives showed up at the remote landing strip by pure chance just as the aircraft landed at midnight. And then, on takeoff, a chopper lost in its own brownout of dust rammed a refueling plane. The inferno cost eight lives, seven helicopters, and one of the refueling planes. It also created an international political disaster of epic proportions that had cost President Carter any chance of reelection.

  SOAR had been founded months later by a couple of fliers determined to never let such a travesty happen again. And it hadn’t. The 160th, one of the smallest and most specialized regiments in the U.S. Army, had become feared the world over by those few adversaries unlucky enough to know about them and still be living.

  “Dad said it was like waking up in hell.” Henderson’s voice was rough, though not loud.

  Lola glanced over at him, as did the others, including his wife.

  There was the answer. With all of the desert in Iran to hide out in, why here. They’d want to be far away from the Deltas so they didn’t attract undue attention there. The planners must have also wanted somewhere well known, and Desert One was among the most carefully mapped sections of Iran in SOAR history.

  And Henderson’s father had been here.

  “Dad was Special Forces for the Navy. Not a SEAL yet, that came later. He came as a shooter. After too many helicopters broke down in the sand
storm and they declared a no-go on the mission, he said they climbed aboard the C-130, dumped their gear, and just lay down on the fuel bladder. Settling in to sleep the whole way home.”

  Lola could see the layout. Each fuel plane with a couple of choppers pulled close for fueling. A bus of hostages parked nearby under guard. Deep, deep darkness of a moonless night.

  “He woke up in the center of an inferno. Someone grabbed his collar and practically threw him from the fire. He said that the pillar of fire that lit the night would call anyone within a hundred miles to come see.

  “They abandoned the plane. They abandoned the six choppers without waiting to destroy them. The Iranians got four of them running that we know of. They abandoned the bodies of eight of their comrades. They fled for their lives in utter defeat, fled from themselves without Iran having to raise a single finger.”

  Henderson turned to face them. As if somehow he could see them each clearly despite the darkness.

  Lola could feel when his gaze was upon her. A probing assessment of whether or not she deserved to be a part of such a legacy. Of whether she had the tenacity and drive to repay the past with committed action in the future.

  This was hallowed ground, the birthplace of SOAR.

  “Michael Grimm.” Lola spoke to fight the dark, making her voice clear and strong. “Bob Johnson.”

  “Randy Cochran.” Tim picked up the note. He took her hand in the dark and squeezed it tightly. The surge of it shot through her. Knowing she was a part of something bigger, more important. Along with that surge came a heat upon her cheeks that she was glad the night hid.

  Others continued, listing the founders of SOAR. A catalog of those who’d looked at defeat not as failure, but rather as the need for a stronger, more capable future.

  Glad for the privacy because something else was opening up inside her. Not just her pride in flying alongside these people. No just knowing that she maybe, just maybe, was good enough to belong here. There was something inside her every time her orbit swung her too close to Tim Maloney. Something she didn’t know, nor want to know.