He was begging. And for a man of his stature and training, that must have taken a lot. To say “no” would be a slap in the face. No other way to interpret it. She could show him the President’s awful letter, the one that was ruining her life and almost certainly her career. And what would that achieve? More suspicion, more loss of trust. Tell him about Katherine? It was still laughable, based on not a scrap of proof other than some bits of porcelain on the wrong side of a window. She rifled Katherine’s office but found no model-airplane radio controller.
Could she take Frank Adams alone into her confidence? Her father and Mark were all she could manage. Frank might feel it his duty to report what was going on. And that would escalate to… Also, Peter had not chosen to confide in his closest protector.
Black-in-black operations didn’t allow for such questions. It was either known or not. And the known side of the equation didn’t allow for gray areas. Gray belonged on the outside, so she kept her peace.
The trap was closing over her head, and there was not a single thing she could do about it except wait. And hope her agility let her dodge the final blow as unbattered as she’d escaped the sparring ring.
“I don’t like it either, Frank. And I’m sorry. I have no choice.”
Chapter 52
Mark knew Emily was only trying to distract him with the suggestion, but it was hard to complain. He hadn’t flown in a week, not since the night Emily had been blinded and he’d come running to the States. He could feel his night-flying skills slipping away, losing that biting edge honed by constant practice.
A couple of judicious phone calls and a little begging on his part had convinced his uncle to lend SOAR two Black Hawks, and a pair of copilots and crew chiefs. His uncle had bought the line about Mark having some leave and being in D.C. to check on his temporarily reassigned Captain Beale. At least he hoped his uncle had. Either way, he’d released the birds.
Mark had left the Secret Service HQ as Marky Herman, Mr. Useless. Three cabs and two clothing changes later, he arrived at the Anacostia Naval Support Facility hangar as Major Mark Henderson of the 160th SOAR(A), which was doing wonders for his ego. No one trained for the night like the 160th, not even the Marines who flew for the President. The basic SOAR test loop lasted eight hours and included three landings. Each landing hundreds of miles apart, all over rough terrain. The entire flight had to be flown NOE, nap of the Earth, below two hundred feet.
Each landing had to be approached below radar, typically ten to twenty feet off the deck, and hit within thirty seconds of the plan. When you could do three different loops in three consecutive nights in the rain without climbing over two hundred feet or missing a mark by more than thirty seconds, only then were you considered fit for any real training.
He’d looked up Beale’s record; the woman was inhuman. Two years in SOAR and she’d nailed it first time out. She’d missed the time mark a total of four times, the best record in the outfit other than his, and her timings were tighter. But it took a lot of continual practice to be able to do that. Even more without a SOAR-trained copilot. Tonight was going to be interesting.
They sat down to map a course, crossing deep into the Blue Ridge Mountains in West Virginia, then south. NOE over the heavily forested rolling terrain would keep them sharp.
Mark looked at the map. Too easy. He could feel it. He and Beale were the best, and that wasn’t false modesty. Needed to up the stakes for it to be a real test.
As casually as he could muster, he said, “Let’s keep it interesting. How about one fifty?”
“What’s that?” One of the Marine copilots looked up at him. “We don’t usually push the choppers that fast for a training run.”
Emily looked at Mark for a long moment and just as casually offered, “Eighty,” while tying one of her boots.
Now the other copilot looked up. “What the…? Is SOAR having a mosey contest or something? I thought you guys were supposed to be hot.”
Mark ignored him and concentrated on Beale. The woman was completely nuts. He liked that about her.
“Eighty it is.”
“Eighty what is?” The Marines asked in unison.
“I’ll explain on the way. Clock starts in five minutes. We’re first out. She’s five minutes behind so that we don’t follow each other.”
Troops counted on SOAR’s precision to deliver and retrieve. This loop had to be short. The birds his uncle had offered didn’t have midair refueling probes or auxiliary fuel tanks. The crew chief positions each had a .50-caliber machine gun protruding from the gunner’s window between the pilot and cargo doors. But they were locked down and held no ammo, so they were really light. Even traveling light, the Hawk couldn’t go more than 368 miles without a refueling stop, so the limit was 340 with a ten-minute fuel safety margin.
Six hours to fly an eight-hundred mile loop from Anacostia to Anacostia. First leg: three hundred miles to Pope Field at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Second leg: 250 to Fort Story in Virginia Beach, and then a short two hundred miles home.
He offered Beale a sassy salute, and she returned it in kind. They climbed into their birds, which the copilots already had humming.
“What’s the big deal?” Jerry, his U.S. Marine copilot, buckled up. “Anyone here could hit those marks. Especially only going eighty.”
Mark knew it was evil to smile at the boy’s naiveté, but he’d only flown with other Marines so that could be forgiven.
“Well, two points. First…” Mark started a timer and pulled up on the collective. They lifted a dozen feet and began heading for the Potomac. “Assume that you’re flying under live fire. You don’t want to dawdle up to a hot LZ. You run the last dozen miles to the landing zone at redline. With your wheels less than ten feet up and hard evasive maneuvers.”
“What’s the second?” Terry’s voice sounded from where he’d strapped into the crew chief’s chair. He was little less cocky than his fellow Marine.
“Well, what’s our current altitude?”
“Fifty feet.”
“No, to the top of the rotor. Anything you show as visible to enemy fire must be accounted for.”
“Okay, sixty-five feet then.”
“Good,” Mark engaged the FLIR, the forward-looking infrared radar, and flipped down his NVGs, the night vision goggles turning the night world a bright green. He tipped the Black Hawk’s nose down and cranked up on the collective. In moments they were moving a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
“That’s good because the operational ceiling for this entire flight is eighty feet.” He heard two very satisfying yelps as he bounced ten feet up and moments later ten feet back down to clear the Hains Point golf course. Then laid into a sixty-degree turn and headed southwest.
***
Mark watched the sky to the north. Jerry and Terry were sitting on the tarmac, their butts hitting the ground within three steps of exiting the craft. The ground crews at Pope Field had the Hawk already half full of fuel. It felt good to be at Joint Special Operations Command. Not as good as Fort Campbell, but familiar ground for sure. At least here they’d really top off the tanks. He’d landed on goddamn fumes because the Marines thought seventy gallons low wasn’t worth topping off. His crew weren’t the only ones glad to have it made it to JSOC.
He checked Beale’s timer again. She’d radioed her start, five minutes after his to the second, and he’d marked it.
Still no sign of her. Nothing. Only silence. Not a peep on the radio. She’d be flying dark. Dark, but late. Oh, this was going to be so satisfying. He could lord this over her for days.
He’d hit just eleven seconds ahead of the agreed time, well within the thirty-second time slot.
The northern sky was still empty. He flipped down his NVGs so that he could spot her even without her running lights, as if she were in a combat zone. Still no sign.
The center of her mark was only forty-five seconds out. Unless she cracked the horizon in the next eleven seconds, she wouldn’t be able to land within th
e thirty-second maximum.
He started beating a Eurythmics drum solo on the Black Hawk’s dash. Thirty seconds to go. The window was open for one minute. He really laid in as the northern horizon stayed clear. He filled in a backbeat, biddy biddy dah, biddy dah, biddy dah.
Except he wasn’t hitting the backbeat.
He spun and looked out the open cargo door. Beale was landing from the south, and she was coming in hot and low. Popping up to clear her gear over a parked Humvee, veering sharply at the fence line, slicing over to the landing.
Crew were ducking and running as her Black Hawk hammered sideways across the field within inches of sparking her rotor off the tarmac before she leveled out. She jerked it to a halt five feet up and floated ten tons of bird down like a snowflake in the exact center of the landing circle.
He punched the timer and swore.
Only six seconds after the mark.
***
“Hey, Mark, you out there?” Emily had flown the first leg silent, the way a Night Stalker always flew. But the temptation was too great.
“Just five minutes ahead of you, Beale. Right where I’ll always be.” His voice came like a whisper in her ear.
“And eleven seconds early. Just like a guy.”
Her copilot had pretty well checked out, but the crew chief still had enough of a grip to snort with laughter. It turned to a shout as she cleared a line of oak trees. Power lines stretched across her path. She drove the collective down and skimmed beneath with a half dozen feet to spare, then swung right to clear a cow who thought pastures were for grazing. Four feet to the left, and they’d have both been hamburger. Not good.
“Well, at least we always make it to the finish.” He had to grunt out the last word as he pulled some high-g maneuver. Maybe he’d found a cow, too. He must be in his final run, should be by the clock.
“That’s just rude. Not taking your wingman all the way with you.”
“Never had any complaints,” he shot back.
Damn, she wished she could see him. It was so rare to see a master fly. Combat or training left little opportunity; she could feel the smile in his voice and knew he was in top form. Damn, she wished she could feel him, too. She’d bet good money he’d never had complaints.
Ten minutes to go.
“Don’t let it go to your head.” She cranked the throttle to just a few percent below redline and dropped her wheels down to ten feet. As she slewed right to clear a barn, she had to watch out that she didn’t turn too hard and dig a blade tip into the manure spreader parked in the yard or the stinking pile beside it.
“I can fly all night, Beale. How about you?”
“I don’t just fly. I soar.”
That bought her some silence. Had she really flirted with a man before? A few times. With one she wanted so much? Not even close. She jerked back on the cyclic to pop over a truck parked out in the middle of nowhere. Lot of infrared heat in the cab showing up a glowing green in her night-vision gear. No question what was happening there.
“So, Mark. I was thinking—” Oh brother, was she thinking. At least her body was thinking. Very loud.
“Give me a clue.”
“Can’t! Guys never have one.”
“But we have other nice weapons.” His voice was a deep, smooth caress that raised goose bumps of anticipation.
Mark’s weapons, she knew from experience, were very nice.
“Been admiring your arsenal in the mirror, have you?”
She popped up a bit at a road intersection to make sure she cleared the stop signs at the corners.
“Certainly been admiring yours. Makes me think about doin’ some future Joint Special Operations.”
He had less than twenty seconds to go. She lowered her voice to make it as throaty as she could and breathed a little onto the microphone, “I love,” she drawled out the word, “joint operations. Don’t you, Major?”
“In the worst way.” His voice sounded tight and a little desperate.
She slewed right, then pulled hard left to pass between a pair of billboards with the rotors almost vertical, not enough room to fly through on the flat. She actually smacked a wheel across one of the billboards. Probably left a skid mark across some politician’s face. Close, she huffed out a held breath, but not much more than normal.
A glance at the timer showed Mark should almost be—
“Down. Three seconds from the mark.”
“Early again, flyboy.”
***
He felt a little better after she hit Fort Story. He’d missed by three and she by six again. Now she only had a two-second advantage.
While the ground crews fueled up and the flight crews sat on the tarmac as if someone had cut them off at the knees, he and Emily agreed to start the last leg together, giving her a two-second head start. Simultaneous touchdown on the time mark at Anacostia was the goal.
Before they parted, he leaned his helmet against hers. Even if anyone saw them, they were just two pilots in full flight gear discussing the flight.
“I’ve got battle plans for a joint operation, Beale.” A plan that was driving him insane.
“Really, Major? I can’t imagine.” So cool, so smooth. Just the way she flew. But he knew better. He’d seen the rocket-fire heat that could light her up until all she could do was moan and shudder.
“A plan to rip off your flight suit and every scrap under it.” Oh, man, the image was killing him. Killing him slow. “I can show you all about right on time.”
He heard her reply as much through the helmet as through his ears.
“Dream on, big boy.” But her voice was rough and her breathing fast. “Besides, who says I’m wearing anything else?” Now he understood how his copilot felt, Mark felt a desperate need to sit down abruptly on the tarmac. She wasn’t killing him slow, not Emily Beale. She was killing him fast.
Chapter 53
At one point, Emily almost gave the controls to the copilot, but one look at his hands stopped her. They were fisted tightly in his lap as he stared rigidly ahead.
Focus, Beale. Focus.
She was, and that was the problem. She was focusing on Mark’s rough voice and thinking about his gentle hands. That was a dangerous place to be while flying just twenty feet above the rolling seas. She was tipped far enough forward that her rotor tips were five feet closer to the water, and that was all she dared risk. The Chesapeake Bay could offer surprise chop that rose to twice normal height.
A quick glance at the FLIR showed Mark on the opposite side of the shipping channel, roughly dead even.
The clock was running. Once again, she tried to run the numbers in her brain; time, distance, power, fuel. At this speed, the load lightened by 2.9 gallons every second, 19.6 pounds every second. Even rounding to twenty pounds, she couldn’t do the math for one minute. Sixty seconds. What could Mark make her feel in sixty seconds? Maybe that’s what she’d do; give him sixty seconds and then they’d be done.
Insane. She wouldn’t be satisfied in sixty hours. She wouldn’t have begun to explore the possibilities. That’s why this wouldn’t work.
One time somewhere safe to blow off the intense heat that fired between them wasn’t going to do it. And courtesy of the Army code they’d both sworn to uphold, they couldn’t risk being together more than that. That’s why she wasn’t even going to start.
Once more she tried to focus on the numbers—and barely managed to shear aside in time to avoid clipping the small sailboat out for a night sail.
***
A tie. There was no other way to call it. Mark might have been a few seconds behind, or not. Perhaps she eased her rate of descent for the last ten feet, maybe he’d accelerated his descent. They were so in sync, cutting in from different sides of the base and arriving together, settling in perfect unison. Everything else aside, they hit tar together. Four seconds after the mark.
By twenty seconds after the mark, the copilots were gone, staggering like drunks. The crew chiefs tucked the birds in for the nigh
t and were gone inside of ten minutes. Hangar doors closed, floodlights out.
Mark stood, his clipboard with his maps and notes in hand. A work light hung over the briefing table in the corner. Emily looked down at her own clipboard and couldn’t read a single word of her own handwriting. The questions, the doubts, the fears. She tried to hang on to them. To remember why she wasn’t going to have sex with this man. Why she wasn’t…
The clipboard slipped from her fingers and clattered to the concrete so loudly that they both jumped.
Mark stood there looking at her, his helmet at his feet. His flight suit was unzipped just enough to reveal the collar of an army-green T-shirt.
She knew only one thing.
Only one question filled her mind.
She had to clear her throat twice to give it voice.
“Your helicopter or mine?”
Neither of them jumped when his clipboard slipped free and clattered to ground.
***
Mark covered the five steps between them faster than she could raise her arms to welcome him. He plowed into her and kept right on going until her back slammed against the chopper’s pilot door. He’d have driven the air from her body if their mouths were not already clamped together, her arms wrapped around the back of his head.
Her chopper.
His mouth raged along her jawline, down her neck.
She shoved him away and tore at the release on his flight vest. Didn’t bother to push it off his shoulders, but dragged down the tab on his flight suit. Rammed her hands down the front into the silken gym shorts he wore and wrapped her fingers around all that hard heat. He was so ready; well, so was she.
Emily reached for her own vest only to find that Mark had already removed it without her noticing.
Night Is Mine Page 25