Night Is Mine

by M. L. Buchman

  For an instant she wondered if he meant as a flier or a girlfriend. Not a hard one to answer actually. Again, clearly he meant both.

  His shades still covered his eyes, though true sunset had arrived. The moment, as measured by the Bedouin she’d lived among during a mission to Yemen, when a red thread and a blue one held a finger’s width apart can no longer be distinguished by color.

  She studied her hands. Mark had made a nice offer, even if they both knew it was impossible. Army Regulation 600-20 was very clear on that point. He’d made it decently. A good man, he’d proven that by his actions. A thoughtful man, he’d proven that by how he offered but didn’t push. A handsome man, every woman who’d ever seen him would agree. A man who knew who she was. That she didn’t exist without her team, without her flight.

  So why did she want to pound her fists against him?

  Hard.

  “One other thing.”

  “Ah.” There it was. “What’s the other shoe?”

  He laughed. A single, short chuckle. Not long, but complete. A compliment. That no matter how messed up her feelings were, her brain remained on the job.

  “When you get back, I’m going to strip you of your bars.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.” Back a grade to first lieutenant. Not too bad for having killed the President’s wife.

  “Yeah. I’ve spoken with your Sneaker Boy pal. This time you’re going to wear the damned oak leaf if he and I have to pin you down while I staple it to your naked breast.”

  “Oak leaf?” It took a moment, then she sat bolt upright as if she’d been electrocuted.

  “No! Uh-uh! I don’t want to be a major, Major. I fly. I don’t command and sit back. I fly.”

  “Do you see me sitting it out? Bet your pretty ass you fly. As long as you’re in my outfit, you fly.”

  That was something at least. Up a pay grade but still flying.

  “I only command my one bird though, right?” She’d never wanted more than her four-man team. Hated the feel of remote control on people’s lives. And watching Mark juggle a dozen birds, with fifty crew and a couple hundred support personnel, just made her head pound.

  “Wa’alll…”

  She knew she was in trouble if the Texas accent was back.

  “I think your copilot, Archie, is almost ready to become your wingman in his own bird.”

  She nodded. He was. Past due if they weren’t such a good team together. She’d been flying with Archie since West Point days, and she’d miss sharing a cockpit with him.

  “But first there’s these two gal crew chiefs who’ve qualified as armaments and engineer, number two and three in Night Stalker history. They’ll need someone to show them the ropes. They need someone who’s the best.”

  That could be fun. Teaching a woman how to keep all these macho jocks in place. One good female copilot, and they’d be the most kick-ass crew the Night Stalkers had ever fielded.

  “One of them’s pretty hot, you know.”

  The elbow to his ribs didn’t even take a thought. It shot out and caught him solidly enough to hurt.

  She turned to apologize. Maybe her feelings really were messed up enough to need a break.

  He smiled at her. The damn man smiled at her. As if he didn’t know he’d just made her day. Her year.

  “Y’all know something?”

  “What?” She just knew she’d be flying. It was all she ever needed to know.

  “Army Regulation 600-20, Chapter 4, Section 14, is titled: ‘Relationships between officers of different ranks.’”

  She blinked. Blinked hard. “But…”

  “But what?”

  Emily looked at him, back at Venus, down at her folded hands, and back at Mark. Sex. They could have sex without being thrown out of the Army for her being his subordinate. Major and major. Same rank.

  “But…”

  This time he didn’t respond. Mark let his silence wait for her own thoughts to move less like a chopper with its rear rotor just shot off.

  She wanted Mark. So badly it made her head spin worse than when the hallucinations hit during Green Platoon training. But she didn’t want sex. Well, not just sex. She wanted to curl up with him in the same bed and sleep with the perfect safety of his arms wrapped about her. She wanted… “More.”

  He dug into his pocket and pulled out a second set of orders. Venus now shone brilliant in the night, other stars following close in her wake. Emily couldn’t read them even if he gave them to her.

  But he held onto them. Drawing them back when she reached out.

  “Nope. Not yours, honey pie. Not yours, sweetest lady I’ve ever met.” His voice slipped from fake Texas twang to the soft voice she’d only heard a few times when they were alone together.

  Mark unfolded the paper and adjusted his mirrored shades as if that would help him read in the dark. He turned the sheet top for bottom, then front to back, finally holding it sideways as if that made any difference.

  “After the Washington shenanigans, I could only get five days off myself.”

  “Five days,” Emily whispered out into the dark night. What could they do in five days? A lot. When they’d only had three hours, they’d done plenty. But she wanted… If only she knew. The words were there, but she couldn’t find them.

  “I’m a-figurin’…” He folded the order laboriously. “I’m a-figurin’ that five days ain’t really enough time for a purty little gal to plan a wedding and have a honeymoon, but if I gave you a five-day head start…” His shrug was eloquent even in the dark.

  Wedding and a honeymoon.

  He returned the order to his pocket and slid his glasses up into his hair. She could see the outline of his face in the starlight. Could feel him waiting in the dark.

  Waiting in the place of greatest safety for any Night Stalker.

  He was asking the same question Peter had.

  They could fly together. Major and major.

  Be together, husband and wife. Joint operations in the truest sense.

  Mark’s question sent a delightful shiver up her spine as warmth spread through her, melting a cold spot inside that the desert heat had failed to touch in the two weeks since her return. A hope of love and family she’d always imagined but never really believed in. Didn’t believe in until the first time he’d kissed her aboard the carrier a lifetime ago.

  Peter had proposed to her. That was the dream she’d always held, but the price had been so high. To abandon all that she’d trained to be. All she’d wanted since the first time she’d taken the controls of her first little Robinson two-seater. All she’d made herself be. Peter loved the precocious little girl. Or, more accurately, the memory of her. The warrior she’d become, though perhaps intriguing, was to be easily discarded in a way she would never survive.

  And Peter’s kiss had been… That was the other problem. She had to admit it. Finally.

  It wasn’t rough. Peter wasn’t the rough sort. But the kiss she’d longed for all those years had taken itself for granted. He’d curled his hand around the back of her neck and dug his fingers into her hair to hold tight. He’d pulled her in, not roughly, but like a man who already knew the answer. No soul-filling warmth. No electrifying spark. Just possession. Taking for granted that she too would come to him as easily as all his successes.

  “How’s my timing, Emma?” Mark whispered her name into the night and cradled his hand against her cheek. That wonderful rough palm snuggled warm against her skin.

  If her name had sounded good on his lips before, tonight it sounded perfect.

  She rubbed her cheek against his palm. It took one warrior to understand another. He wanted her, the warrior and the flier. And he respected her enough to ask. Enough to stand against his desires, his needs on her behalf if that was her decision. If she said no, Mark would turn back into her commander. It might kill him inside, but he would do it.

  He wanted the woman she’d made, the woman she’d become. Built layer by layer until she’d gained enough
hard lift to reach the sky.

  She ran her fingertips over his face, the details now hidden by the night. Brushed them across his eyelids, which fluttered shut as she felt the outline of those eyes that always saw her so clearly, despite the darkness that hid their color.

  Mark would provide even more, sufficient lift to reach her dreams. They could fly to them together.

  Her father had said she’d get there. Now that she had, it was easy to see despite the dark.

  Mark wouldn’t want her to be different than who she was, any more than he could be unkind. The perfect, clichéd warrior. Exactly as she’d thought of him every time she’d flown with him. Except not cliché at all. He still awaited her answer, assumed nothing. A hundred percent class act.

  Emily turned until her lips were against the cup of his palm, and he sighed into the night as she kissed him there. A pent-up release of breath held against fear. Fear she might say no. As if she could. As if her heart would let her.

  Without a single word of her own, with the perfect timing of her husband-to-be, she turned to straddle his lap and lay her head on his shoulder as he stroked her hair.

  Sometimes the answer was easy. As easy as flying.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  I Own the Dawn

  M.L. Buchman

  Available August 2012

  From Sourcebooks Casablanca

  Falling down like a hammer out of the crystal blue sky came her baby: a Black Hawk helicopter. And not just any Hawk. It was an MH-60L DAP. The Direct Action Penetrator was the nastiest gunship God ever put on Earth and only the best flew in her. Kee’d almost died of pleasure the first time she saw one—actually, she’d been about to die literally, too.

  She’d spent five long years bucking her way up from infantry to get aboard. It had taken her three of those to get into SOAR and another two to get through SOAR training. Now she was here, forward operations. She’d done it, facing a DAP Hawk. No man had ever made her feel this good.

  And this sweet bird wasn’t fooling around. Two massive weapons’ pylons stuck out from either side of the midsection. On one side she had a rocket pod carrying nineteen birds and a 30 mm cannon just in case they wanted to go mastodon hunting. On the other pylon, another rocket pod and a rack of Hellfire anti-tank missiles, three of which were missing.

  Unfriendlies lay pretty close aboard here in the baking desert in bloody baking Pakistan, their base of operations a dusty bivouac fifty miles from Afghanistan’s brutal Hindu Kush mountains. The surrounding town of five thousand people could be hiding anybody. The two Crew Chiefs still had their hands on the M134 miniguns peeking out of their shooting holes even while they were just a hundred feet up. The Hawk had the midair refueling probe which meant she went in way deep. Kee was down with that.

  Only one group flew such a bird: SOAR. The Special Operations Aviation Regiment (airborne), the Army’s 160th. The Night Stalkers. The baddest asses on the face of the sky. And she was here. She pinched her leg, on the side away from Major Muscle-head. It stung. This wasn’t no dream. Wide awake. She’d done it.

  They both turned away and covered their faces as a brown-out of dust washed across the field adding another layer to her too many hours of grime. Once the bird hunkered down and speech and vision were again possible, she faced him.

  “That.” She cocked a thumb over her shoulder. “Me.” She thumped her chest with a fist. “Sir!” For good measure.

  “Done!” Again that hidden laugh. “If you can talk your way past the pilot.” He turned on his heel and disappeared into the heat shimmer.

  So, all up to her, huh? Good. Didn’t scare her none.

  Kee yanked her duffle over her shoulder and tromped over to the DAP as her rotors wound down and the dust and sand settled.

  Respect. She’d give that a shot first. Respect with a little help. Because, like a good soldier, she had more than one weapon in her arsenal. She tossed down her duffle and the rifle case at the edge of the rotor sweep and made sure her T-shirt lay smooth and tight on her skin so that every muscle and curve showed. Pack ‘n’ Rack. Six-pack abs and a good solid rack for a chest. On clear display. Her dusky skin, almond eyes, and single blond-streak in dark hair that had some kind of magic at knocking men dead. Wasn’t why she had it, but it worked.

  She didn’t tease, it wasn’t her mode. If she offered, she meant it and delivered. But having men’s brains switch off around her had its advantages. She wasn’t gonna be filing a letter of complaint with the chief people designer that wired men’s brains to blow away like dust in rotor wash whenever they were around her. It just amused her that it worked every damn time.

  The pilot climbed down, leaned in to trade a joke with his crew chief and then headed out from under the slowing rotors. He almost passed her by, but Kee snapped a sharp salute.

  “At ease.” No salute back.

  Crap! Newbie mistake. She jerked her hand back to her side and couldn’t help checking behind her, but Major Muscle was gone. She knew better, had been forward-deployed plenty to know better. In the field you never salute a superior officer. Sure way to tell a sniper who to target.

  Kee dropped to parade rest, clenched her hands behind her back. Muscled arms and shoulders back focused men on a chest that wowed ’em all. Some civilian women thought they were hot, but there was nothing like a buffed-out soldier babe. And they knew it, too. Wasn’t a single civilian chick ever gave her a smile when she entered a bar.

  “Sergeant Kee Smith. Best damn gunner you ever met. I want on your ship, sir.”

  The pilot peeled off his helmet, revealing blue-green eyes and an unruly wave of soft brown hair that she’d bet never stayed under control, no matter how long a woman played with it. He opened the front of his flight suit to reveal a sweaty tee on a slender frame.

  “First Lieutenant Archibald Jeffrey Stevenson III at your service. And it’s not my ship. You’ll be wanting to converse with the major.” His voice so slow and smooth and refined, like a radio announcer on those classical stations.

  Then he grinned at her, a saucy, funny grin. Started in his eyes and wandered down to his lips, ending up kind of lopsided. Not Handsome-Mr.-Major, but it made him look pretty damn cute. She couldn’t help but notice that his long and lean had some nice muscle underneath; you’d expect no less from a SOAR.

  The lieutenant, however, didn’t even have the decency to rake his eyes down her body. The major hadn’t been able to help studying her frame, she could tell despite the mirrored shades he wore as if they’d been welded there. But this lieutenant somehow managed. Either gay or self-control of steel-like strength. Came down to it, she’d be betting on the latter. What happened when that much self control let go? Now that could be worth the price of the ticket to find out.

  He moved off to her right, passing so close they almost brushed shoulders. He leaned in and whispered, “Good luck. You are going to need it.”

  And even though she didn’t turn to look at him, she knew they were smiling together for that moment. Lieutenant Archibald Jeffrey Stevenson III, indeed. What was this woman’s army coming to? Though she’d liked the way he said it, with a voice like silk.

  She spotted the oak leaves on the collar of the other pilot and set aside thoughts of long and lean lieutenants with wavy hair. The major was still helmeted and chatting with the crew coming in to service his chopper. The Hawk’d been through some hard times. Tape patches showed more than a few hits on the fuselage, some of the panels had been replaced and a couple of those had patched holes, too. Now that they’d stopped spinning, she could see that one of the rotor blades was clearly newer than the other three, replaced after taking too much abuse. This bird had seen some heavy action. She moved in to check out the guns, worn hard but so immaculate you could eat off them. Her kind of weapon.

  “Pretty, isn’t she?” Some crewwoman’s voice sounded close behind her. SOAR had women in the ground personnel, but Kee was only the second woman to ever make the grade for flight operations. Sweet candy
for sure. A serpent of coiled gray had been painted across the dusky green of the chopper. The colors so close in tone made it hard to see in places, which made it appear all the more dangerous. It wrapped around the gunner’s lookout window and writhed across the pilot’s door. Etched in his scales was the name of the bird: “Vengeance.” The serpent’s head, striking forward along the nose of the chopper, sported mirrored shades. In the lenses, someone had even drawn a reflected explosion of an enemy going down hard.

  “Better than sex.” She rubbed a hand down the long barrel of the 30 mm cannon. “I can’t believe that bastard major wanted to slot me on the girlie-chopper. This is real flight.”

  “Don’t like girlie-choppers?”

  “Not one friggin’ bit. I want this bad boy. I didn’t come here to form no goddamn chick squad.” She stepped forward to stare into the face of the rocket launcher. Seven fired. They’d been in some heat last night. She’d wager it hadn’t turned out well for the bad guys. Night Stalkers ruled the dark.

  Something kept dragging at her attention. She’d been trained to pay attention to the niggling feeling that something was out of place. Not right. It had saved her life more than once while pounding ground for the 10th Mountain Division.

  Looking up, she spotted it.

  “The rotor blades. They look different.”

  Kee could feel the maintenance chick, still behind her, focusing her attention upward.

  “Thicker. Most can’t see that. This is the first ‘M’-mod in the theater. The MH-60M upgrade adds twenty-five percent larger engines, needs a heavier blade.”

  Kee whistled in admiration. “She must haul ass across the sky.”

  “She does.”

  Kee glanced over at her new companion. “Kee Smith.”

  The first thing she noticed was the shoulder-length blonde hair and the bluest eyes on the planet. Pretty, slender, perfect posture. Would fit in with Archibald Jeffrey Stevenson III just fine. Maybe they were hitched. Met in a frickin’ hoity-toity fern bar somewhere on the Upper West Side. She dug a sparkler out of a pocket and slipped it on her left, though the lieutenant’s hand had been clean. Still, could be.