Night Is Mine

by M. L. Buchman

  “Hi, Emily.”

  She snapped a salute at Rear Admiral James Parker. “Hello, sir. Good to see you, sir.”

  He returned the salute a little less casually than the commander, but it wasn’t exactly singing with respect either.

  “You’ve certainly grown up since the last time I saw you.” He had the decency not to look down her front like most guys. She’d developed two responses. If they made no comment, rare, neither did she. If they leered and went for the lame joke, she bloodied their nose but good. Usually once or twice proved sufficient to drive the message into their thick skulls.

  As basic career advice, she decided not to bloody the admiral’s nose even if he did start staring at her chest. For one thing, flying a helicopter would be impossible from a stockade.

  “How long has it been, Captain?” The admiral’s slacks and shirt were as starched and pressed as the commander’s. The latter had returned his attention to his paperwork without as much as another glance in her direction.

  “Four years, sir. When we were operating cleanup during that Sri Lankan mess, sir.” That’s when he’d personally recommended her for the Air Medal for Valor for exceptional ingenuity under pressure.

  She’d been unable to fire into the rioting crowd, even when they shot at her. Against the rules to shoot up a bunch of civilians, no matter how unruly. So, she’d had her entire flight blast the crowd apart with the Hawks’ downdraft. Every time the crowd tried to reassemble, she led her four Hawks to a mere dozen feet above street level, down tight between the buildings, easy prey if the crowd had a single decent shooter among them, and they’d literally blown the rioters apart with rotor wind and dust until they gave up.

  “Sri Lanka. That’s right. You like flying the Hawk?”

  “Best bird in the sky, sir!”

  “At ease, soldier.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Was that enough permission to zip up the flight suit before the trickle of sweat between her breasts turned into an air-conditioned icicle?

  Her body answered with a clear, “No,” as instinct and years of training dropped her into parade rest, feet spread shoulder-wide and hands clasped behind her back, shoulders still back and chest out. The action pulled the flight suit wider open, but what was a girl to do? At least the green tee and shorts were regulation.

  “You like that cooking stuff, too?”

  “Always have, sir.”

  “I recall you were damn good at it.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She’d cooked for him more than once at her father’s house. She’d felt far more at home in the kitchen with her parents’ French chef than she had in the museum-quality rooms of her mother’s Architectural Digest house. Domicile. Work of residential art. And her mother had been much happier to have her uncomfortable daughter out from under foot and out of the public’s social eye.

  Emily learned to cook at Clarice’s knee, French toast by the time she was five, and soloed on her first apple tart at seven. It had been a complete mess, the crust singed almost to charcoal, but she still had a Polaroid of it on the bulletin board behind the door of her bedroom back in D.C. She’d considered being a chef until the first time her father took her along for a helicopter ride. One flight and her life had been set. From that moment on, she only cared about being best at one thing, chopper pilot.

  “Richard,” he turned to Captain Tully. “If you ever have a chance to try her rack of lamb with white truffle sauce, do. It’s exquisite.”

  The captain merely grunted without looking up from his paperwork.

  “Nice of you to remember, sir.” She filled the silence.

  The admiral slid down into one of the leather armchairs. Then he waved her toward the other one.

  She remained riveted to the steel plate. It was never good when a top officer wanted a lower rank to sit in his or her presence.

  By the sheer brute strength gained from years of hurking ten tons of armored chopper across the sky, Emily managed to wrench herself free of parade rest and sit in the chair. As she sat bolt upright on the edge of the seat, the front of the flight suit billowed outward. She grabbed at the zipper and hauled it up. So tight to her neck that her gag reflex tried to kick in, but her hands were already folded neatly in her lap, and she wasn’t going to do anything more to make herself look stupid. If possible.

  “I have a special assignment for you. Indefinite time period. Completely optional, no repercussions, though I hope that you’ll consider it seriously.”

  Meaning she had no choice whatsoever.

  Chapter 7

  Mark left the equipment check to his crew. It was a crappy call, but he was in no mood to make sure he hadn’t broken a forty-million-dollar helicopter with that landing. Truth be told, the way he was acting, they’d be in no mood to let him.

  As soon as he stepped on deck, he was ricocheted around by the deck crew like an old and unwanted billiard ball. The blue-jacketed chock-and-chain crew pushed him one way and pinned his bird to the deck despite the calm seas. White-vested safety guys shoved him the other and checked the chocks and looked for any fuel leaks. Two reds waited for him to move before they ran a quick inspection and dodged off to the shipboard munitions lift for resupply. The Hawk hadn’t yet been restocked after last night’s op at the cave.

  A couple grapes, in their flame retardant suits and purple vests, waved for him to stand clear, then pulled a hose free from a handy deck hatch and started pumping JP-5 fuel to top off his tanks.

  He finally found peace at the edge of the deck, just two steps from the sixty-foot drop to the Arabian Sea. Good thing the seas were calm today.

  He glared up at the carrier’s tower. Somewhere in there was Captain Emily Beale. If she was truly reassigned, he’d have to fill the seat on her bird. Bronson maybe. But the man was useless in combat. He’d have to reassign her bird to a carrier run until he figured out what the hell was going on.

  He should be back at the base, but he couldn’t let anyone else transport her. He knew it made no sense, but he didn’t trust Beale to anyone else. Sure, the two of them flew side by side into life-threatening danger as often as not, but she also ranked as the most precious cargo he’d ever carried.

  Knowing that the feeling made no sense made it no less true.

  He turned to face the ocean, back toward Afghanistan lost over the watery horizon. Back where they’d flown together, chasing each other across the heart of the Hindu Kush, a grin of delight plastered across his face. Glad to be flying beside her even when he was losing the race.

  What woman had last preoccupied his brain like Emily Beale? Okay, no one. Mary Taylor had filled his waking and sometimes his sleeping thoughts at sixteen. That she was two years older, a senior infinitely far out of his reach, hadn’t stopped him. And perseverance had eventually paid off there. When he was seventeen, Laura had given him a very memorable and educational night for his Junior Prom.

  Being in ROTC and a football wide receiver in college had offered him his pick of women, and he’d enjoyed every one. He’d been assigned for a couple of years to Italy, where he’d learned about the bountiful physical gifts of Italian women and their willingness to share them with a handsome American aviator. It still ranked as his first choice port-of-call for leave after his parents’ ranch.

  But none of them cluttered his brain like Emily Beale.

  Any contentment with his lifestyle evaporated the first time he’d ever seen her. He’d come up from 5th Battalion’s Fort Lewis HQ to fetch the latest newbie to graduate Fort Campbell training. Somehow a woman had made it through selection and training. The first ever, and he’d been saddled with her.

  And his world had changed. Even though she’d been dressed in civvies, carrying a bright red knapsack, with her wheat-blond hair caught back in a ponytail to look like any other returning tourist, he’d known at a glance that she was the one he was there to meet.

  They’d fallen into step in perfect harmony and flown that way ever since. He hadn’t spoken a single word to her
until they were back behind the gates of Fort Lewis because, for the first time in his life, he’d had no idea what to say to a beautiful woman.

  He’d had to be careful. If he didn’t want to be court-martialed and thrown out of the Army, he could never let her know how he felt. So he’d decided, as they walked side by side that first time, that in her presence he would always be pure military, pure regulation.

  He wouldn’t even compliment her, in case it was taken wrong. That had turned out to be a fantastic way to motivate her to excel, but it was merely a side benefit of his attempts to remain sane in her presence.

  And she’d ruined him. He could work up some anger over that. Not at her, but at the circumstances that made their life. He couldn’t have her. And, when he’d tried to lose himself between the generous breasts of a particularly willing Tuscan damsel on leave last month, he’d failed miserably at forgetting the slip of a blonde who could outfly every pilot in SOAR.

  He stood there, in the soft breeze of the aircraft carrier’s forward motion, finally admitting it.

  She definitely ranked as the best pilot he’d ever flown with.

  And when Captain Emily Beale flew ten tons of armored attack helicopter into battle, it was absolutely the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

  Chapter 8

  “Personal chef to who?” You’re going mad, Emily. There’s no other explanation. You aren’t here sitting in a cozy armchair in the captain’s office aboard the nation’s newest aircraft carrier. You are locked in a rubber room in a cozy white jacket with very long sleeves.

  “The First Lady saw that CNN clip yesterday,” Admiral James Parker explained. “Katherine Matthews was quite taken with you and insists that you are the only person she’ll have.”

  “But I’m a combat pilot.” The words choked out of her no matter how she tried to keep her voice steady. Her awful croak dragged the captain’s attention back from his pile of papers.

  “Here now, James.” Captain Tully shoved his paperwork into a folder, sealed it, and tossed it into the carved oak outbox on his desk. “You never said anything about taking one of Henderson’s best and turning her into that, that woman’s nursemaid.”

  Listen to the captain. “One of Henderson’s best.” That gave her a bit of heart. Surprised her actually, but Emily restricted herself to a brief raising of eyebrows before regaining control. Major Henderson specialized in making her life a living hell. Never good enough. In two months and over forty sorties, he’d never acknowledged a job well done but the once. He’d merely assigned her a harder mission the next time. She’d have to be surprised later, after she’d passed out from sitting at attention in a flight suit with a firm choke hold on her trachea.

  Admiral Parker cleared his throat and didn’t comment on Captain Tully’s opinion of the First Lady. The military liked the President well enough; he’d done spectacularly well in cleaning up the Myanmar mess, very few troops required, no lives lost. That earned him a lot of credit with the Armed Forces. Much nicer to go home alive and in one piece; not a man or woman in the Army who wouldn’t agree with that. Of course, the high mountains of Northern Afghanistan were causing him a severe headache as they had three presidents before him.

  But while they might like him, they didn’t much trust such a young president, and especially not his equally young and very showy wife. The latter sentiment Emily agreed with wholeheartedly, though for rather different reasons than your average soldier.

  She’d never liked the First Lady, not even before they’d met.

  Model at fifteen, Vogue cover one year later. At twenty-one, a psychology and marketing double-major at the renowned Wharton School of business in Philadelphia.

  Too statuesque, too redheaded, and far too full of herself. Actually, the last point might make her a good combat pilot. She possessed the level of arrogance that only the very best air jocks cultivated. The knowledge that all of her actions were absolutely correct because they had to be, every time.

  Of course, if the First Lady screwed up, there’d just be an irritated diplomat and her husband could call on the U.S. Armed Forces to clear up any little misunderstandings. If Emily messed up, people wound up very suddenly dead. Maybe she and the First Lady weren’t all that different. Well, except for the statuesque and redheaded bits. Slender and blond didn’t really play on the same field. Emily’s height was far too emphasized by her lean physique. The First Lady was all in proper proportion and Emily didn’t like her. Especially not married to the man she’d snared.

  “The reason I didn’t laugh off this request is very classified.” The admiral dug into his pocket and pulled out a thumb drive with “Top Secret. Eyes only.” emblazoned across it. As if that wasn’t a walking advertisement of the worst kind saying, “Steal me.”

  “Captain, may I?”

  It always amused her that she and Captain Tully held the same rank, but she commanded a squad of four for the Army while he commanded a ship of four thousand for the Navy. Today she wished she were a newly minted second lieutenant and none of these people had ever heard of her.

  At a wave of the captain’s hand, the admiral plugged the drive into the communication and conference gear that covered part of one wall and turned on the main screen.

  The “Top Secret” thing was worrisome; she’d rather not see it. Her attempts to swallow nearly choked her against the too-tight zipper. She managed to ease it down a little while the two men focused on the screen, but she still couldn’t breathe. She needed an oxygen bottle or perhaps a stiff drink to maintain mental operations at this altitude. Who knew that air five levels above a carrier deck had such a low oxygen content? The First Lady wanted her? To cook? It was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard in all her years of Army flying.

  At the prompt, Admiral Parker typed in a ten-digit password and then, after a moment of searching, found the print authentication pad and laid his thumb on it.

  Emily now knew for certain she didn’t want to see whatever this was.

  ***

  Emily gasped aloud as the first image after the “Classified Documents” warning flashed up on the captain’s screen, then clamped her jaw shut to silence herself. Of all the faces she could possibly see, the Wicked Witch of the West Wing was the last she wanted to. Ever.

  But that wasn’t what had evoked her surprise.

  The woman on the screen wasn’t the First Lady Katherine Matthews that the world knew all too well. Cameras loved Katherine. She showed up front and center on the news so often that editorial cartoons joked about President Katherine.

  But the one woman on the planet who didn’t have to worry about how she looked on camera had been betrayed. The flowing red hair, intense Hollywood smile, and perfect complexion weren’t in evidence at all.

  The smile was missing. The glistening green eyes were closed. The red hair a snarl rather than a flounce. And the complexion was marred by a dozen bloody abrasions and cuts against a pallor gone from ivory to alabaster.

  The admiral spoke, though Emily couldn’t turn to look at him. It was the first time the woman had ever looked less than perfect.

  “The window of the First Lady’s limousine was shattered last week. We do not, I repeat, not have the attacker in custody. Apparently someone fired a spread of chipped porcelain. A shotgun blast would have done less damage, probably little more than scuff the paint job.”

  The next shot was a lipstick-red limousine that appeared to have the rear passenger window rolled down. The next, a close-up of the floodlit interior of the car, which glittered with a thousand glass fragments. A technician had drawn yellow arrows on the image to indicate flecks of shining white.

  “High-grade porcelain, apparently from a smashed spark plug.” Sure enough, the brand, model, and plant of manufacture were listed below.

  “Even at a fairly low rate of impact, even the speed of a hand toss, it will cause safety glass to perform its function and fragment. Because the windows of the First Lady’s personal limousine are not standard safety gl
ass, the shattering dispersed the shards with surprising violence. The FBI theorizes that the very thing that injured the First Lady may have saved her life.”

  “Not making much sense with that last one, James.” The captain had focused his full attention on the matter at hand.

  Still inspecting the image, Emily blurted out, “The first blast created such a response…” Emily caught herself and glanced for permission to continue after she’d already begun. Not one of her safer habits.

  The admiral nodded his assent.

  “…that the attacker was too surprised and never fired the second shot.” Emily considered the weapon itself. “Air gun probably, so it was fairly quiet. Sound and visual somehow masked so that the Secret Service couldn’t locate the attacker. But an air gun with that kind of a load is only good at close range. Close enough that the explosive destruction of the window would have surprised him. Or her. The shooter stood down in the crowd, not a sniper up in a window. That takes guts or a suicidal intent.”

  Admiral Parker nodded for her to continue.

  But she had nothing else to say. They should have caught the assailant. An air gun with porcelain shards within ten or fifteen feet of the vehicle. Enough filming crews that at least one camera should have had the right angle.

  “Unless the Secret Service either knows who did it…”

  “They don’t. And counter-terrorism is also drawing a blank. Only the typical crazies who claim they did everything that happens called in, all missing many facts that they would have known if they’d been responsible.” The admiral sounded certain. “Or…”

  “Or the assailant is above suspicion. Perhaps inside the Secret Service even. Then he’d know exactly what the Service was and wasn’t monitoring.”