Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers)

by Buchman, M. L.

  Whatever she felt when he was around, down in that deep core somewhere unidentifiably near her heart, was scaring the shit out of her.

  But she didn’t release Tim’s hand as the litany of names continued. Didn’t want to. Wouldn’t simply because there lurked something that rooted her to the desert with fear.

  She was SOAR and would face her fears.

  They were SOAR. The 160th. The Night Stalkers.

  They’d flown through three of the most dangerous countries on the planet in the last thirty-six hours, and in the next few days they’d be flying back out. And if they didn’t make it and the mission was needed, someone else would try again until they succeeded. That was their legacy.

  “NSDQ.” Lola closed the circle of names with their motto.

  Night Stalkers Don’t Quit.

  Others answered in the dark, “NSDQ.”

  Lola knew she would never quit again. Not quit on herself. Not on others.

  But she couldn’t quite bring herself to look over at the man who still held her hand.

  Chapter 16

  Tim called Lola over after their second night at Desert One. Dawn was just breaking with its achingly beautiful light, and its threat of blistering heat and brutally dry air within the hour.

  One of the main problems with this part of any operation was staying sane. Boredom was killing her. There were only so many times you could check the dust seals on the aircraft. The entertainment of re-anchoring a camo net torn loose by the omnipresent wind waned after you’d done it enough times that you could do it in your sleep.

  But she just couldn’t settle, couldn’t sit down with any of the trashy novels they’d stowed away. Because while she was busy bitching about being bored in the middle of nowhere in the Iranian Lut Desert, six D-boys were still after something. Something nasty a hundred miles to the south.

  “Please God, Tim. Give me some damn thing to do.”

  He grinned like a fool. She didn’t need to see his mouth hidden behind his scarf. Everyone had some fabric wrapped over their mouth and nose to fend off the dust. Nor did she need to see his eyes safe behind the shades they each wore against the desert glare.

  It was simpler than that. Like he brightened somehow whenever she came around him. It wasn’t an effect she was used to having on anyone. Unless they were just trying to get between her legs. With Tim it might include that, but even if it did, it also included far more than that.

  They hadn’t touched since holding hands out at Desert One. Even if she’d wanted to, there was no damn privacy squatting night and day under the same camo net with four flight crews. Sitting watch duty high atop the back of the Chinooks was the only break any of them had from each other.

  But he’d been there for her.

  Some piece of her heart had ripped open that night, and it was a piece she wasn’t so comfortable with. She had a past. One she’d spent her entire adult life pretending didn’t exist. But even before she’d been born, men had stood here. American helicopter pilots fighting for what they believed in. Fighting for their lives. And some of them losing that battle.

  Lola just couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what was going on inside her. She’d always faked it. Didn’t know what she believed in for herself. Had been able to leave the thinking up to the Army. They were good at that. They liked giving you things to do. Keep you busy. That worked for her.

  Except now.

  Now she was bored out of her skull and thinking too damn much.

  “Save me, Tim. I’m begging you.” Even if he was the one her thoughts kept circling back to.

  He just kept grinning behind his mask.

  “Well, if you’re gonna beg.” He took an odd sideways step and looked down at the ground behind him.

  Nuts and washers. Aligned in a familiar pattern.

  Then her focus shifted and she saw it.

  Lola threw herself at Tim and hugged him tight. Gave him a good quick, hard kiss right through both their scarves.

  Carved into the salt, right down to the last painfully long triangle, was a backgammon board.

  ***

  “How?” Lola sat cross-legged on a small air mattress and stared down at the board. Tim had even etched a pretty scrollwork pattern into the salt surrounding the board. She rubbed a finger on the alternating dark brown and white points.

  “I got the chocolate candy packs from a bunch of people’s MREs. Rubbed it into the salt. Made a nice brown.”

  “Cool!” Good use of materials. No self-respecting Special Forces personnel would eat the candy in an MRE, especially not on an op. Guaranteed bad luck. Debates would occur whenever the MRE designers didn’t include candy in a particular menu, but shoved in an alternate treat. Does it rate as candy? Everyone agreed that a brownie could be eaten safely without hexing the mission. But what about pudding? Sometimes pudding came with a Candy III pack, so then it was safe, but what about as a stand-alone like Menu 23? The Chicken Pesto Pasta MRE was rarely packed on active missions because of that unresolved question.

  Instead of dice, Tim had six quarters.

  They talked about backgammon boards and stupid MRE menu designers through the first half of the game. Easy, safe topics.

  Tim tossed the six quarters up in the air, let them fall on the salt.

  Three came up heads.

  “That’s a three.” He gathered them and tossed again.

  Two more heads.

  “And a two. And I am…” He drew it out dramatically. “So screwed.”

  He was. It was about the worst roll he could have at the moment.

  Lola crowed as she gathered up the quarters and tossed them. “A four!” She gathered them up and gave them a good shake in cupped hands. “Oh baby. Bring mama another one, just another measly little four.” She tossed the quarters high enough that the ever-present wind scattered them a bit.

  “Yes!” She leaned over and fisted Tim’s shoulder hard enough to rock a lesser man over backwards. Tim just shrugged. She not only hammered two of his pieces, she also closed her home board. He wasn’t getting out of the trap any time soon.

  “So, you refuse to talk about your past.”

  Lola tried not to cringe. Hoped it didn’t show. Light and airy, that was the trick.

  “Don’t have one.” She regathered the quarters. Tim wouldn’t get to move until she was forced to unblock her home board, and that was going to be a while as she had a pair of serious strays to bring home.

  “Everyone’s got one.”

  “Nope,” she assured him as lightly as she could, and she concentrated on her one-two toss. “I was born in 2005.”

  Tim looked at her with a tilt of his head. “Not to be rude to the lady officer, but you look like you’ve long since passed through puberty. Very nicely I might add.”

  Then Lola swore she could see him blush between the scarf and his shades.

  Damn, he was cute. A guy hadn’t blushed around her… well, ever that she could think of.

  “I was flying a supply and maintenance bird for the 225th Engineers out of Camp Beau, Louisiana. Just an old Bell Kiowa hand-me-down from the 6th Cavalry. Poor chopper was so old it might have dated right back to the Civil War.”

  She tossed a four-six and a three-two before Tim spoke again.

  “You were there.” His voice almost softer than the wind sighing around the helicopters baking and pinging in the mid-morning heat.

  She nodded. No need to ask about “there.” During 2005 in Louisiana there would only ever be one “there.” Katrina.

  “So were we.”

  She looked up and was confronted by her twinned reflection in his mirrored shades. She looked a mess, worse than he did. They both wore shades and kerchief, were windblown and dirty. On Tim it looked rough and rugged, only making him even more handsome. Her hair looked as if it had been teased to twice any p
revious volume and cluttered about her head in a Medusan snarl. Guys got off so easy.

  Tim had been there. Flown there. That demanded an honesty she typically did her best to avoid. “I flew the shoreline and the shrimp boats. And oil rigs. I flew to an awful lot of oil rigs, or the remains of them.”

  “I’d just made it into SOAR.” Tim traced one of the chocolate-brown triangles of the board with the tip of his finger. She felt a shiver echo up her spine as he did so, as if it had been her body rather than the salt that he stroked so gently. “I was down at Fort Rucker for training when Hurricane Katrina slammed through. I flew out with Viper Henderson’s wingman, riding up and down the hoist for days pulling folks off of rooftops.”

  Lola could only nod. Flying support from first light to last, with little thought of sleep or maximum allowed flight-hour rules. First, pulling people out. Later dropping food and especially water after it was no longer safe to send down a crew chief.

  Never daring to come down close, to land. That would risk the bird being stormed by all of the desperate and the suffering. If a dozen people leaped aboard a machine designed to carry six, it could crash in a moment. Always lift them up with the long-line even if you could get close enough to hover. She’d had to let go of more than one long-line because four or five people would latch on to the wire and refuse to get off no matter what she said about the impossibility of her lifting so many.

  “It was how I got hooked on CSAR.” Lola finally found her voice, somehow speaking past the death of a city. “Guess my commander recommended me upward because the U.S. Army sent round a recruiter a couple of weeks later.” She shook the quarters in her cupped palms a few times.

  “No.” Lola listened to the memories among the tinkling of the coins. “That’s not quite right.”

  She tossed the coins against her palm a little more, gazing over Tim’s shoulder. Then her eyes focused on the two Majors. Deep in conference over a flight chart pinned to the ground by the weight of their FN SCAR rifles.

  “No. The recruiter had said a Captain Henderson had watched me flying rescue and thought the Army needed folks who could fly like me. The recruiter didn’t even blink about a woman flying a chopper for the Army. Though enough others did.”

  Viper Henderson indeed. Did he even remember that he’d changed her life? That he’d reached down into the lowly National Guard and elevated a Creole train wreck of a woman to become a SOAR pilot? Did he even know the flight he’d admired had been done by a woman? If so, would he have cared? She’d guess not.

  “I was born that day. This”—she pointed down— “this is where I belong.” She could feel the heavy weight of it. But also the truth of it. As if she’d slammed down the gauntlet for any who might dare challenge her. Her decision back at Bati that she wanted to fly with Major Beale had turned into a rock-deep core that anchored her in place for the first time in her life.

  She’d flown Army. And almost five years from the day she’d joined, the minimum time requirement, a SOAR recruiter had showed up on base. Actually off base. In a local bar. She’d never thought before how unlikely that circumstance.

  She glanced over at Henderson again. They’d followed her career. Followed her record. Made sure she ended up in SOAR’s ranks.

  “You belong here?” Tim asked half incredulous.

  “Yeah! Here!” She fisted her hands until the quarters were cutting in her palms.

  “Really?”

  She cocked her fist half back, ready to rearrange his jaw. And she’d been attracted to him for what reason? She wasn’t ready for the fury of betrayal that slammed into her as she realized Tim was just another misogynistic asshole.

  “You belong on a backgammon board?”

  ***

  Tim watched Lola look down startled and realize she’d pointed at the board when declaring where she belonged.

  He thought about the stiff punch she’d delivered to his shoulder and the one she’d been readying for his jaw.

  Back in his early days, he’d been on the receiving end of enough hard punches to know hers would have hurt. There’d been a time, back when he’d earned his Crazy Tim nickname, that he’d thought a big, messy bar fight was actually a good way to unwind after a tough mission and well worth the resultant time in lockup.

  “Funny,” Tim said, finally pointing his finger exactly mirroring her gesture. “I belong on a backgammon board too. Crazy fates, hunh. You and me both belonging right here. Cool. Now we have to fall for each other. Absolutely fated.”

  She pulled back her hand and continued to glare at him.

  He grinned back at her.

  “Well.” Tim turned so that his legs were stretched out to one side, leaned back on his elbows, and looked up at her. Even in shades and scarf the woman was bleeding magnificent. He wished to God he dared reach across the narrow gap and fool with her stunning hair, but she just might break his jaw. He figured it might be worth the risk, maybe he’d try it later.

  “Back when I was a young punk of a two-striper, I was just known as Corporal Maloney.”

  “Not odiferous?”

  Tim laughed that she remembered Big John’s tease, though he wished she hadn’t. He decided to ignore the comment. Maybe if he could distract her with the story, he could make her forget the game he was absolutely going to lose.

  Again Tim eyed Lola’s clenched fist.

  Her fighting form was excellent.

  Who was he kidding, her form was downright incredible! He resisted the urge to look down at that sleek, T-shirt-hugged torso of hers. He did his damnedest to suppress the memory of how awesome she’d looked yesterday standing on the salt pan in just that T-shirt and some of the skimpiest panties it had ever been his pleasure to observe. Plain white panties on Lola LaRue were far sexier than any thong he’d ever helped remove.

  “Not odiferous, just stupid. Picked a fight with an entire Marine squad one night. John says I declared I could whip the whole squad buck naked and using only one hand. Can’t say as I exactly remember that part.” He remembered it perfectly, but there was a level of stupid that the average guy didn’t want to admit to.

  Lola stretched out her legs in the other direction and lay on her side facing him across the board, her head propped up on one arm. The light pants and shirt flowed over her with sinuous perfection.

  Focus on the story, boy, unless you want to embarrass yourself.

  “I made a pretty good showing of it until the MPs showed up and tossed all of our butts in the brig. Same cell. Even Big John who’d stayed out of it. Man, was he pissed.” Actually, he’d sat back on the sidelines laughing his ass off.

  A shift in the breeze flapped the camouflage netting over the helicopters. They both looked around, but the anchors appeared to have finally been driven into the salt pan hard enough.

  “Anyway, there I am in the cell with these idiot Marines. And the Gunny came over. Big damn guy named Bear Garry with one black eye swelling shut. Rather than beating the crap out of me”—though John had been cheering the Gunnery Sergeant on—“he dubbed me the craziest damn flyboy he’d ever met. Big John, the helpful jerk, tagged me with ‘Crazy Tim’ and it stuck. Then old Bear taught me to play backgammon for the week we all spent cooling our heels for brawling. So I really do belong on a backgammon board in some ways.”

  Lola gave an appreciative laugh.

  He’d left behind his brawling that day, or at least most of it. He still didn’t know what he’d been trying to prove or disprove. Big John had called it “taking up his man space for such a short shrimp.” But Tim was only short compared with man-mountains like his best friend and Gunny Garry.

  Lola quieted. Went dead quiet as if thinking about something really major.

  The silence left him again admiring the sinuous woman stretched out before him. Damn, but her legs looked like they just went on forever.

  He knew the heat of raw l
ust was rocketing once more to his cheeks, but he couldn’t stop. God, he wanted this woman. Not like others. He enjoyed women and they enjoyed him, making for a neat mutual passage at arms.

  But Chief Warrant Lola LaRue, this woman sitting so at ease just within reach, this one he wanted unlike any other before. Wanted, hell. Needed! Had he even slept since she’d hit base? Certainly not since the moment she’d kissed him.

  He’d even enjoyed the hot fire that flamed forth in her nearly black eyes. The heat that burned torch-hot inside her. Her eyes had flared with joy the two times they’d kissed. And with fury as she declared where she belonged.

  He couldn’t help but wonder at what fire passion might place in those mesmerizing eyes. And could he be the man to place it there?

  “Yes!” she declared.

  Tim startled with the abrupt affirmative answer to his question. Then knew he hadn’t spoken aloud. So what in hell was she “yessing” about?

  “I bloody well, as sure as all-fired hell, do belong on this here backgammon board.”

  “Then drop your damned quarters and get back in the game.”

  She did, with a laugh. That starlight laugh. That’s what really killed him.

  Chapter 17

  “You ain’t shit.”

  Lola spun to face the snarl.

  The D-boys had called for pickup after three days and nights. For the last twenty minutes the flight crews had been scrambling about in the dark erasing any sign of their time perched in the desert plateau above Desert One. Anchor spikes pulled, camo nets folded, area swept for trash.

  Lola had been squatting to gather the fifteen nuts and washers and six quarters from Tim’s impromptu backgammon board. She’d wished she could chip the board out of the salt and take it with her, but maybe it was better this way. Now she’d always know it was here, could picture it here in the high Iranian desert.

  Sergeant Kee Stevenson stood close behind her.

  “I’ve got you in my goddamn sights, LaRue! Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing.”