Guardian of the Heart Read online

  Guardian of the Heart

  M. L. Buchman

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy:

  NSDQ (excerpt)

  About the Author

  Also by M. L. Buchman

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  Chapter 1

  “Don’t be looking at her, Jones! Are you crazy, man?”

  Master Sergeant Mason “The Jar” Buckley (he was kind of short and barrel-chested) yanked hard enough on Xavier’s safety harness to almost knock take him down on the hangar’s floor. They were buddy-checking their gear before saddling up onto a Black Hawk helicopter headed way out into hell-and-gone ISIS country. Even though the overheads weren’t very bright, the darkness of Iraq’s Balad Air Base was like a black door across the hangar’s maw.

  The Jar yanked Xavier’s harness the other way. Maybe Mason didn’t like his sucky nickname (Xavier had one he hated with a passion and could only hope he’d finally left Stateside). Maybe Mason had it in for new guys to the unit; perhaps he was just trying to make his point.

  Another possibility: maybe The Jar was an asshole.

  “Why? She yours? Can’t hurt a guy to look,” Xavier didn’t appreciate the manhandling. There was no need to bust his ass before he went aloft. Besides, the medic on the other side of the brightly lit hangar—shouldering a pack clearly labeled “Medical”—was well worth a second look, and a third. She was lightly built, but pulled on forty pounds of gear like it weighed nothing more than feather pillows. She wasn’t model material, more the hottest-girl-in-school type—the one so hot that no one ever stood a chance. Thick black hair that fell straight to her shoulders, coffee-and-cream skin, and an attitude like kick-ass sunshine after a long winter.

  “Hell no!” Masson looked aghast. “She’s not mine. She’s not anybody’s. That’s the Guardian of the Night—the goddamn Angel of Death. You don’t want her evil eye on you. Bad luck, brother. Seriously bad luck.” Mason picked up the FN-SCAR combat rifle from the table and slammed it against Xavier’s chest.

  Xavier slipped the strap around his neck and made sure it hung out of the way across his chest.

  “Dude’s right, you know,” one of the pilots, also donning his kit, leaned over. “Something about her is way different.” Then he and his copilot jogged toward the darkness.

  “You’re still lookin’.”

  “Didn’t know they built women like her.” Where Xavier came from the women were either jovial mamas with the best kinda curves on the planet (even when they got all out of control they were still mighty good) or they were lean (like anorexic crackhead lean) and mean (big on the mean). This one stood five-eight on a tall day, athlete’s curves rather than a plus-size model’s, and was joking with another medic as they moved off toward the waiting helo, disappearing into the darkness.

  “They don’t build women like her anywhere,” Mason continued but still wasn’t looking where she’d gone. “Nobody’s that scary.”

  “What? The evil eye, Angel of Death crap?” When Xavier was done with crosschecking Mason, he slammed Mason’s rifle into his chest just as hard as Mason had into him.

  Mason only nodded fiercely. Man looked spooked, which didn’t seem right on a master sergeant of the Night Stalkers.

  Xavier tapped at each of the pouches on his own vest to make sure nothing was missing: magazines for his sidearm, mags for his rifle, small med kit of his own, spare batteries for his night-vision goggles and radio, the NVGs and radio themselves. He counted items but came up one short.

  He did it again, then figured out what he was missing when he slapped his own head. Helmet. Sitting right there on the table. Damn! First day on the job, he seriously wanted to perform, not be some fresh-meat laughing stock. He’d had enough of that six years earlier on his first tour, enough to last a lifetime. However, after three full tours, he was the newest recruit again.

  Transitioning from a seasoned regular Army grunt to a fresh-out-of-training Special Operations Forces Army grunt had probably reset a whole block of his don’t-mess-with-me privileges. Now, after the toughest application process outside of Delta Force and two more years of training, he was finally FMQ—fully mission qualified—for the Night Stalkers of the 160th SOAR.

  Maybe Mason had a point on at least one count: the woman had distracted him. In a full vest, flightsuit, and Army boots, she still looked amazing. Just the way she walked: happy to be here, belonging-where-she-was, whole spring-her-in-step kind of thing. He guessed that alone set her outside the norm for central Iraq.

  He grabbed his helmet and set off at a jog beside Mason, out of the brightly lit hangar and onto the night-shrouded tarmac toward the rescue bird.

  Elsewhere across the field, other helos were roaring to life. Four Black Hawks, a massive Chinook, and a couple Little Birds. The Night Stalkers were going out in force tonight, which was so sweet for a first mission. And if everything went right, he’d be bored out of his gourd—because that’s what every CSAR flight wanted to be.

  Combat Search and Rescue was about going into the guts of the fight and hauling out whoever had caught the worst of it. A CSAR’s ideal mission was when they circled for hours out past the five-minute hold line and never got the call.

  But if the hot lady and her companion had to go in, he and Mason were there to keep them safe. Xavier liked running protection detail. He didn’t mind the battle when he was in it, but he preferred the far less glorious role of rescuing the wounded. He never gave it much thought, and jogging up to his bird for the first time wasn’t when a dude should start thinking.

  The Black Hawk waiting for them wasn’t some standard Geneva Agreement-Red Cross bearing-and-no-mounted-weapons bird. It was ten tons of pitch black nasty with a pair of side-mounted M134 Miniguns that could lay down six thousand rounds of havoc per minute.

  Army, Navy, Air Force’s 724th Pararescue—all those guys flew air ambulances that had to be marked clearly by international treaty and were forbidden to carry any but light personal weapons for protection only. It rankled that so many of the bad guys thought the big red cross was to make their targeting easier, but the US followed the rules in this even if many of the forces it faced didn’t. Of course there was no law against a pair of fully-loaded Apaches or Cobras hovering on close guard—which was standard operating practice for most teams.

  Most of the Spec Ops teams depended on the 724th Pararescue to drag out the wounded. But for the Night Stalkers, they were typically so far past the enemy’s (or a supposed friendly’s) line that there was no way for the Air Force to get to them in time. So, of all the spec ops outfits, only the 160th SOAR lofted their own CSAR med teams.

  As the helicopter transport team for Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, and the 75th Rangers—the Night Stalkers flew under different rules by definition. They always flew into the heart of the battle, well past the lines where anyone would pay attention to whether or not it was a medical flight.

  Glory hounds never made it to the Night Stalkers and Xavier was good with that. Too many from the old neighborhood cared more about their “reps” than their lives. Doofuses.

  So, instead of air ambulances ready to launch at a moment’s notice, SOAR sent their ow
n well-armed warbirds—ones that just happened to carry medics. The medheads were soldiers first and wore no Red Cross armbands of supposed “protection.” But they had the training and carried enough gear that they could do almost anything, including open heart surgery if necessary. The Black Hawks went in armed just to make sure they stayed safe.

  “What’s our op tempo?” he asked Mason as they secured their gear inside their bird.

  “You like the ground?”

  Xavier shrugged, not knowing what he was after.

  “Better kiss it goodbye. Won’t be seeing it much until you rotate back stateside.”

  “I don’t mean the regiment. I mean us, CSAR.”

  For a guy who talked so much, Mason’s sudden silence was eloquent.

  Shit!

  Noreen Wallace watched the new guy. Hard to miss. He stood half a head taller than The Jar and a shoulder wider—he was as big as her older brother, maybe even bigger. Her brother wore his curly hair short, despite her teasing him to cut it off so that he’d look like Luther in the Mission Impossible movies—Ving Rhames might be old, but he was still a total stud.

  This guy’s head was smooth-shaved like Ving’s. But trotting along in full combat gear made him look way more powerful than any mere movie star ever could.

  He moved at a brisk pace and made it look easy. You didn’t make it into Spec Ops without a lot of running, but he looked like a runner: smooth and fast despite his heavy load.

  Barry started calling out the list and she turned to check the gear hanging on every inside surface of the Black Hawk’s cargo bay: blood supply in the cooler, saline and antibiotics fully restocked, bandages okay in seven different sizes from cut to catastrophic. Barry read over a hundred items off the checklist and she verified every one—didn’t even have to search to find them, their position was long since hardwired into her nervous system.

  The Jar and the new guy were preflighting the helo. Both moved with the smooth efficiency of long practice.

  He kept an eye on her, but kept his words to himself as he worked.

  Within three minutes, the crew chiefs were aboard and checking their guns while the pilot and copilot started up the engines. As soon as they fed her power, she and Barry checked the heart monitors, defib, and IV infusion pumps.

  New Guy finished his preparations just as she finished item #103: water bottle to stay hydrated in the parching desert that had once been northern Iraq but now was simply a disaster.

  They turned toward each other at the same moment. He didn’t balk or act awkwardly. Instead he held out a hand that completely enveloped hers when they shook.

  “Guardian of the Night, huh? Or do you prefer Angel of Death?”

  So, The Jar had already been telling him stories and he hadn’t shied off. Good sign there. Though if she could think of a worse name to stick The Jar with, she’d do it. “Jar Jar Binks” maybe? Tempting, but that would be downright nasty. Not her style. She had fun teasing the Master Sergeant, but didn’t want to hurt him.

  “Stick with Guardian and we’ll get on fine. Though you missed ‘The Bitch of Black Death’ and—” She shrugged. A long litany of nicknames had marked her past, like mile markers on the highway; this was only the latest.

  He smiled rather than backing away. “Guessin’ you kinda forced ‘Guardian of the Night’ down their throats.”

  “Got it in one.”

  His smile was a dazzler, and there was no doubt that he knew it. This was not her brother John. John was the big-hearted storyteller of any crowd with an eager laugh and a soft manner—behind which hid the Number Two mechanic in the Night Stalkers. He was the first to acknowledge that his wife, Connie, ranked Number One—whose shy smiles were so rare that Noreen sometimes teased her fair-skinned sister-in-law that it was time to start cataloging them.

  “You got a name or do I just call you Guardian?”

  “Lieutenant Noreen Wallace. You?”

  “Staff Sergeant Xavier Jones.”

  She could see him wince ever so slightly, as if his name hurt him.

  No, it would be the obvious nickname: The X-Man. Or Egghead. Both were bad and inevitable—and way too obvious. Professor X, Charles Xavier, the bald leader of the comic book X-Men. Xavier looked the role: massive and imposing in a way that a little white guy like Patrick Stewart only pulled off in the movies by being so smart. Sergeant Jones’s power was out there for all to see.

  “Nice to meet you, ‘Captain Luc’.” She waited while he blinked once, twice, then tugged down on his Kevlar vest the same way Patrick Stewart always had tugged his uniform as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek’s Enterprise.

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Guardian,” he said in his big deep voice, with all of the formality a starship captain would have used.

  She laughed and he grinned back at her. You had to be more than just sharp to make it into the Night Stalkers. You had to be smart as hell. And to get a pass from her, a background in comics and science fiction was essential.

  The helo lifted, and she and Barry slid the side doors of the Black Hawk’s cargo bay closed. Xavier swung into his seat, snapped his vest to the safety harness, and yanked his helmet’s visor down. Even behind all that gear, he still stood out for his sheer size. It was a wonder he could cram into the tight gunner’s seat at all.

  As with every flight, she sent a prayer to whoever was listening up there that she’d have no work tonight. A prayer that was answered far too rarely.

  Xavier sat facing sideways behind the pilot seat, his Minigun on an armature that reached out through the hull and offered a wide range of fire in defense of the bird.

  He watched the tactical display running across the inside of his visor. The main flight was in the lead by twenty kilometers and five minutes. They were down at NOE. Nap-of-Earth flight was better than the best roller coaster at the county fair, and nobody flew the track like a Night Stalker pilot. Ten tons of helo zipped along less than fifty feet above the ground: hugging hills, slicing past trees, dodging houses.

  He kept his hands firmly on his Minigun’s handles, using it and his harness for bracing. The mission briefing had said they were flying through the Zagros Mountains where they’d gotten word of a large terrorist team on the move. He’d done six half-year deployments during his previous three tours and knew this part of Northeastern Iraq too well. It was like coming home—to a nightmare, but as much of a home as he’d ever had.

  “Beats the shit out of Mobile,” he mumbled to himself, then heard it in the headphones built into his helmet. Open intercom.

  “ ’Bama boy?” the male medic asked.

  “Army boy,” was all Xavier was now.

  “Name is Barry, if anyone cares.”

  “Sorry, Barry. My bad. Noreen’s such a damn dazzler. Don’t know how you can form a coherent sentence working alongside someone like that.”

  “Hey, I’m right here listening.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Wouldn’t have been any point in teasing her if she wasn’t.

  “Don’t I know it. I feel invisible around her,” Barry had an easy sense of humor, which Xavier liked about him. “And everybody’s from somewhere.”

  “Not me.” Xavier wasn’t quite sure how to bull his way out of this one—not bullshit, but rather bull in china shop to get away from the topic. “Born in the Army.”

  “You got a name, or do I just call you Rookie?”

  “Sorry, dude. Name is Xavier Jo—”

  “Captain Luc,” Noreen declared. “Cap’n for short.”

  “Name is Cap’n Luc,” Xavier tried not to miss a beat, “nice rank bump there. And I’m from nowhere. I got beamed aboard when I hit Fort Benning for Basic Training. Rest of before that…” he shuddered. Rest of before that he did his best to never think about.

  The two medics sat in jump seats at the back of the cargo bay. Funny how far away ten feet felt when his other side was rubbing against the back of the pilot’s seat.

  “Why Guardian of the Night?” he asked over the i
ntercom, wondering how such a pleasant woman struck such terror into an old hand like the master sergeant.

  “Angel of Death,” The Jar groaned like a lost soul.

  “I answer to both,” Noreen happily agreed.

  Xavier liked her voice, a winning combination of warmth and sass. He’d spent three months working with a British team in Baghdad during his second deployment. Cyril would have called her cheeky—it worked on her.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see,” Mason sounded grim.

  “Should have been a dwarf named Mopey for you, Mason.”

  The master sergeant growled, reminding Xavier exactly who outranked him here—everybody.

  But Noreen’s bright laugh told him it was worth the price he was bound to pay.

  Chapter 2

  The call came less than five minutes into the battle.

  Actually, by the time the call came in, they were already on the move. Noreen had heard the feed from enough battles to know the moment one went sideways.

  “Go!” was all she had to shout. Vince and Penny had flown with her long enough to stop questioning her diagnoses. They just laid down the hammer and the Black Hawk jumped as if it had been kicked like a football.

  The call officially came in twenty seconds after they were on the move. Per usual, it was: dead calm, matter-of-fact, and with about a tenth of the information she needed. Air Mission Commanders didn’t get flustered in the middle of battle any more than the fighters they were commanding, but they also were usually occupied with more problems than a hurt soldier when a battle took a bad turn.

  “Two men down,” and a set of battle coordinates.

  Were they on the flat ground or cliff side? The heart of the Zagros Mountains had plenty of both. Was it a small helo down or shot-up US Rangers who’d been riding in the belly of the Chinook? Surrounded by enemies, or safely behind the main team?