The Ides of Matt 2017

by M. L. Buchman

  Ahead lay a five-meter strip of rough dirt thick with tractor tire tracks. Beyond it lay a field of thin brown stalks chopped off at one meter high. It was a no-man’s land in which they’d be completely exposed. Past several hundred meters of stalks, a line of trees.

  Tomas tapped her arm and pointed to the right.

  Katrina had to scoot forward to see around him. A large red combine was parked in the middle of the field, at the edge of the tall stubble. Beyond it stood sunflowers—acres of sunflowers. Their heads were dried to a gray-brown and the combine would soon be harvesting them. Except the cab was empty and the door hung open. The machine still vibrated and smoke swirled up out of its exhaust stack. The farmer had abandoned his vehicle when the shelling had started.

  “I hate working with foreign military.”

  Tomas nodded his agreement.

  That’s what must have happened. Moldova was way down the list on the international index of governmental corruption—their score was in the bottom third and falling fast. You could buy the entire parliament for the price of a Super Bowl commercial. Throw in a signed football and you could probably buy the military as well. The US must have dutifully informed someone of their planned operation on Moldovan soil, who had then reported it directly to the Russians who coveted Moldovan territory. Or perhaps she and Tomas were still alive because some faction of the local military had decided to take care of the problem themselves—it wasn’t like the Russians to miss quite so many times.

  Well, killing a pair of Delta Force operators wasn’t all that easy either.

  “Where are they?” she asked Tomas quietly. There were two scenarios: the people firing the mortar could see their position, or the mortar crew were hunkered down, out of sight, but had a spotter who could. Either way she and Tomas had to find them.

  Tomas pulled out a small radio scanner. In moments he had a lock on the enemy’s frequency. She could see by the indicator light that they were real talkers, either locals or overconfident Russians. He hooked up a small DF loop and began rotating it to get their direction.

  She tried to remember how she’d been lying on the ground when she’d seen the incoming round. It had come from…the line of trees to the west.

  Tomas pointed in two places: one toward the trees, one…in the direction of the combine.

  Katrina slid the caps off the ends of her rifle’s scope. She tapped Tomas’ shoulder. He turned to her and she made as if to press her hand flat against the ground, then repeated the motion on his shoulder.

  He lay flat, braced his elbows wide so that he was steadier than the Rock of Gibraltar. Then he rested his head on his folded hands, but turned toward her rather than the combine. Dark eyes. She could feel his dark eyes watching her despite the lenses he wore. They have always watched her, the sole woman on their squad. Every time she turned, Tomas’ eyes were tracking her.

  Ignoring that, she unfolded the bipod on the front of her weapon and rested it against the small of his back. The combine was parked a thousand meters away and upslope from them so she needed the extra height to brace her weapon. She lined up with a break in the vines and began inspecting the combine at high magnification.

  The main harvester bar was set a meter high and she could see its cutters still working. The high cab was indeed empty. The unloading pipe was swung back out of the way. The…

  She swung back to inspect the cab. It was empty. But through the double layer of glass, windshield and side window, she could just make out a man standing behind the cab. It was an almost impossible shot, especially for a single shooter. She would have to break the windshield, then the side window, and then might have a chance of hitting the target if he hadn’t already moved. Two shots minimum, probably three.

  Tracking upward, seeking any way in, she spotted just what she needed. Between the top of the cab and some other piece of gear, a pair of binoculars inspected the vineyard. She flipped off the safety, glanced at the grapevines to estimate the wind—it was so strange not to hear it rustling the leaves—and compensated for the bullet’s fall and a thousand meters of windage.

  The MK21 had a silencer, but there was always some noise. Now, for her, it was truly silent as it kicked her in the shoulder. A half second later, the binoculars were gone. Between the combine’s tires she could see a body plummet onto the field. She worked the bolt and fed another round into the downed spotter just to be sure, not that a .338 Lapua Magnum round would have left much of his head. Even at over a half-mile out, the body twitched from the massive kinetic impact of the bullet. No question that the spotter for the mortar team was permanently out of commission.

  There was a whiff of burnt gunpowder as she chambered another round.

  She glanced at Tomas and nodded that it was done, but froze halfway through.

  He was smiling at her. It was gone the moment she’d caught him at it, but she knew she’d seen it. Tomas didn’t smile at anybody for any reason.

  No. That wasn’t right. She’d seen his smile before—never directed at her, of course—but she’d seen it. But his face, when he smiled, made it possible to imagine Tomas speaking to her in a warm and gentle tone. That was too strange for words so she kept her silence.

  Chapter Four

  Clearing out the mortar team didn’t take long. Idiot One sprang up to go check on the shooter. Idiot Two raced away in plain view and earned himself a shot in the back though he was closer to a mile away by the time Tomas pointed him out.

  Katrina busted up the mortar tube and defused the remaining ammo while Tomas hid the bodies. He showed her the spotter’s arm tattoo—a black bat hovering over a blue circle meant to represent the Earth. It was a Spetsnaz tat, Russian Special Forces. So, their enemies this morning were one Russian and two locals, because a Spetsnaz would never run from a fight. Spetsnaz. It was a surprise that she and Tomas survived. Definitely time to go.

  Her feet were now steady enough that she probably could have navigated on her own, but Tomas showed no inclination to let go of his grip on her upper arm and she wasn’t complaining.

  There was a steadiness to him. Not merely his gait, but his reliability. His grip never varied, except to tighten briefly when she stumbled on a particularly gnarly root. He scanned ahead as they moved through the woods.

  Last night’s insertion into Moldova had been screwed up in a bazillion different ways. The mortar attack counted as a bazillion-and-one.

  First, the transport helo had a mechanical failure. A team of mechanics had raced to fix it deep into the night. So, their launch window at dusk had, well, gone out the window. They’d finally hit the ground in eastern Moldova at two a.m. But their ride had long since given up and vanished into the darkness. No option left but to cover the ground on foot, dressed in full US military gear, with much of the transit in broad daylight.

  That’s why they’d ducked into the vineyard in the first place, good cover. Into a vineyard—and straight into a trap.

  Tomas set a ground-eating pace through the woods that they could both maintain for hours with only minimal breaks. Once they were deep in the woods and several kilometers from the dead mortar team, they made quick work of cutting down some wild cherry branches and creating a small lean-to using the massive trunk of a fallen oak. It was several feet larger around than the Willamette oaks, it must be an English oak. She’d always wanted to go walking among the Cotswolds of England and see some of them. Now she was being hunted across the Moldovan countryside. It sure wasn’t the same.

  Inside their shelter, Tomas called up to Command during a satellite overflight. She couldn’t lipread a word because he held the radio so close to his mouth. Whatever their conversation was, it was short.

  Katrina focused on picking the small wild cherries off the roof of their bower for them to eat. Tart! But good.

  That’s when the fact of her deafness slammed home and stole her breath away. What if it wasn’t temporary? At first she hadn’t had time to think about it, then she’d shoved aside her fear by convincing
herself it was just a TTS, a temporary threshold shift. But what if it wasn’t? What if—

  Tomas tapped her on the shoulder and she almost cried out in shock.

  He eyed her carefully, making a point to mouth his question slowly, You okay?

  So not. But she gave him a nod that was a total lie.

  He snapped his fingers close by her ears.

  She could only shake her head.

  In answer, Tomas reached out and pulled her against his chest. It was awkward; all of the gear on their vests kept it from being close and she had a fistful of cherries, but still she appreciated it. For a moment she lay her cheek against the cool metal of the emergency lifting ring on the front of his vest, and let herself be held.

  Making sense of that was no easier than making sense of her deafness.

  A woman in Delta Force did not let herself be held. She didn’t dare let herself be seen as weak, not for a millisecond. Women were too rare a breed in Special Operations and especially in the heavy-duty combat units.

  Beyond that, the last person on the planet she’d ever expect to have empathy was Sergeant Tomas Gallagher—the toughest damn bastard in anyone’s army. It was easy to remember his cold, hard voice. But she couldn’t reconcile that with the way he was taking care of her.

  He held her until she felt some sense of control come back. Not relief. Not hope. But at least the sense that somehow or other she’d get through this and that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t going to be alone in that effort.

  She sat up and patted his arm in thanks. It was a good arm, thick with muscle, honed with thousands of hours of training and hundreds of missions. She realized she needed to make herself stop patting him.

  Distraction needed.

  Katrina passed him a handful of the tart cherries after making clear he had to spit out the cherry pits—they were naturally laced with cyanide. Then she pointed at the sky, to where the satellite antenna had been aimed and made a questioning face.

  You can talk, Tomas admonished her. Soft-ly. He was over-accentuating his lip movement which helped. Tomas Gallagher being thoughtful was still a shock.

  She shrugged at her descent into sign language. Not being able to hear immersed her into a strange world of silence that she felt reluctant to break. Also, her own voice was wrong—foreign, muted to silence by whatever was happening in her ears. She could feel that she was speaking, but couldn’t hear it, neither volume nor tone.

  He tapped the lapel of his shirt, pointed again to the west, tapped his watch, and gave a thumbs up. Command had reported that their targets, a Russian general and a Moldovan one, were still expected to be in position at the time previously reported.

  Good news. The mission wasn’t blown yet despite the problems they’d encountered.

  He pointed upward, held up three fingers, then placed his hands palm to palm against his own cheek before closing his eyes.

  She didn’t get it.

  He began slapping his pockets but pencil and paper weren’t something you carried on a self-contained mission into a “friendly” foreign country. He looked around again, then spotted something.

  He held his hand palm up and moved it until he was almost touching her breast. He did it fast enough that she jolted back against the log.

  Tomas held up a hand in apology and, if she didn’t know better, she’d say he blushed.

  This time he moved his palm more slowly until it was suddenly filled with the bright light of a sunbeam that had found its way down through the forest canopy and into their hastily assembled hideout. It had been shining against her ribcage. He tapped his palm, then pointed upward.

  “Oh, the sun.”

  He nodded. This time the three fingers, a tap of his watch, and a sign to sleep made sense. Three hours to sunset when it would be time to move out; she should get some sleep.

  Tapping his own chest, he made the signal for lookout—a hand shading his eyes.

  She held up two fingers, then bent one in half.

  Oh, she could speak.

  “Hour and a half, then it’s my turn to watch.”

  He nodded and she settled herself more comfortably against the log. A Special Ops soldier could sleep anywhere: a roaring plane flight, inside a bunker during a firefight—didn’t matter. Their small shelter was cozy. It smelled of fresh cherries that matched the vivid taste on her tongue and crispy-dry oak leaves. And was very, very quiet.

  She sighed.

  Then she remembered what it had felt like to be held by Tomas. They were shoulder to shoulder. He had good shoulders.

  After a night and a day on the go, she was exhausted.

  She leaned her head onto his shoulder and felt him jolt in surprise. It was a long time before his arm settled as lightly as the sunlight on her shoulders. She didn’t stay awake long enough to feel whether or not his fingers wrapped around her arm.

  Chapter Five

  Katrina awoke with a start. It was soft twilight. She listened carefully, but didn’t hear a thing…because, shit, she was deaf. This was definitely going to take some getting used to.

  She was also warm and comfortable inside the curve of a man’s arm. Of Tomas Gallagher’s arm. For a moment she let herself revel in the feel of it, the security of being held, of lying against a man she trusted with her very life.

  Except they were both soldiers.

  As she pushed herself upright, he eased his arm off her shoulders.

  “You didn’t wake me for my half of the watch.”

  He shrugged.

  She thumped the side of a fist against his shoulder.

  He tapped his ear and then hers with a soft touch.

  Oh right, she couldn’t listen. “Sorry. I hope you didn’t mind me sleeping on you.”

  He clamped both hands around his own throat and pretended he was gagging.

  She clamped a hand over her mouth to suppress the laugh and wondered where the hell Sergeant Tomas Gallagher had gone. The man she knew had absolutely no sense of humor.

  “You’re being nice to me.”

  He shrugged and looked down to rummage through his kit for some energy bars. She didn’t take the one he offered.

  “Why?”

  He turned away but stopped when she rested a palm on his cheek. Without his sunglasses, his dark eyes bored into hers. She tried to say something, she truly did, but her throat was suddenly dry.

  “Why, Tomas?” finally creaked out of her throat.

  He rested one of his big hands over where hers still touched his cheek.

  The light was making it harder to see, but he might have said, I’m an idiot.

  A moment later he leaned forward and kissed her. It wasn’t some tentative little peck. It wasn’t a question either. It was a kiss that demanded attention. It was hard, fast, and deep. He grabbed either side of her armored vest by the armholes and hauled her into his lap.

  Tomas’ strength was overwhelming, pinning her against him. She knew that at the least hesitation on her part, he’d let her go, but no hesitation came from anywhere inside her.

  Surprise? Hell yeah!

  Hesitation? Hell no! Not from a kiss like the one he was delivering.

  In the same unit? Don’t give a shit!

  On a mission? The mission could wait just a goddamn minute—she was busy here. Busy having her rocketing heartrate pound against her chest, if not her ears.

  He let her go at last and some small bit of her sanity returned. She was straddling his lap, her arms locked around his neck. One of his hands had slipped down between her armor and butt.

  And he was grinning like the big bad wolf.

  “You’re not a bit sorry, are you?”

  He patted his free hand downward to remind her to watch her voice. His other hand was still occupied elsewhere. He shook his head.

  “Odd. Neither am I.”

  She couldn’t hear his groan, but she could feel it conducting through her fingertips. He said something that she couldn’t begin to follow, especially with the last of the l
ight.

  Katrina could only shrug.

  He dug his fingers hard into her bottom one last time, pulling her tight against him, vest to vest.

  Yep! Her body was screaming for it too, but…

  “Mission time,” she kept it soft.

  He nodded and they tried to disentangle themselves. Somehow one of her pockets of .338 Lapua Magnum magazines got hooked on his spare 7.62mm magazines for the HK416 combat rifle he carried and it took them a moment to move apart.

  Once separated, she became terribly self conscious. They were on a mission. They were in the same squad. And Tomas Gallagher hated having a woman in The Unit—that much she was sure of. Except now she wasn’t.

  Had he been avoiding her for other reasons than she’d thought?

  Duh! So if why wasn’t the right question, the next question was…“How long?” She tapped his chest then hers to make it clear what she was asking.

  He held up a single finger.

  “One hour? One day?”

  He made a flipping motion.

  “Day One?”

  He nodded.

  “You wanted to kiss me since the first day I joined The Unit? Why?” Now “why” was the right question.

  He rolled his eyes at her. He tapped her on the chest and held up a single finger again.

  “Because I’m the only woman on the team?”

  No. He tapped her chest—directly on the sniper rifle magazines that had just tangled them up. Then on the MK21 before he tried a double thumbs up. You best. Very sexy, he mouthed carefully. He ran his hand down her vest’s side plates, over her ribs, waist, and hips to make his point.

  “Because I shoot well? That’s exactly what every woman wants to be admired for,” despite her words it did mean a lot.

  In answer he ran a knuckle over her cheek so gently that she couldn’t help closing her eyes.

  “Okay, not just because I shoot well.”

  He nodded with a grin. Then he dug out his night-vision goggles and clipped them onto his helmet.

  “You are a mystery to me, Mr. Tomas Gallagher.”