For Her Dark Eyes Only Read online

  For Her Dark Eyes Only

  a Delta Force romance story

  by M. L. Buchman

  1

  “Sucks!” I called out to the watch officer as I strode into the command hangar at the ass-end of Riyadh airfield. Surprising a Delta Force operator with one of my sniper-silent approaches was never a good idea. Doing it to the six-foot-two of officer who stood four inches taller than me and had much broader shoulders was an even worse one.

  Part of our low profile stance in Saudi Arabia was that we ran our operation in the shadowy back corner of the most rundown hangar on the base. It was so beat-up that it captured more of the passing sandstorms than it kept out. Delta’s watch post was tucked behind a small flock of Night Stalkers’ helos and an Air Force four-prop C-130 cargo plane which served as our secure storage and could get us up and out in fifteen minutes if we had to jump in somewhere. At night, with only a single desk lamp on, it was a murky place of shadows and secrets.

  “Kurt,” was all that Lieutenant Bill Bruce grunted in reply—about as much as my greeting deserved. Two a.m. shift change, and the country was still cooking so hot that I had probably sweat out a liter just crossing over from the long banks of containerized living units—CLUs—in the US Spec Ops sector. My last leave back home on the Oregon Coast was still in my blood and the desert sucked. The six hours that Lieutenant Bruce had just spent on the watch desk also couldn’t have been much of lark. So, neither of us had been issued a cheery mood.

  “I swear my CLU was shipped over during Desert Storm.” The container had two bunks, two chairs, and a toilet in a twenty-foot steel box with an AC unit bolted on one end that groaned, wheezed, and could sometimes drop the inside temperature a whole ten degrees—my home for the last six months that Delta Force had parked my ass here.

  “CLUs weren’t part of inventory back then, Sergeant.” The lieutenant’s ex-SEAL was showing through. Those guys never had a decent sense of humor, not even after joining The Unit—what most folks call Delta Force. We were officially CAG, the Combat Applications Group, with a strong emphasis on “Application.”

  “Maybe you could un-invent them, sir.” Then I didn’t see any reason to not keep messing with him. “I bet some supply sergeant timewarped it back so that it would corrode and spring sand leaks until I moved in.” It was almost plausible. I’d long since learned to never underestimate the power of a good quartermaster—especially if you ticked him off.

  Still no response.

  “I swear, thing’s the same age I am and someone should have taken it out to pasture and shot it a long time back.” I might have done it myself if we weren’t supposed to be keeping such a low profile.

  We tried to stay quiet because the Saudis weren’t big fans of having US commandos squatting in the heart of their country, no matter how badly they needed us. Being here worked for us too. From Riyadh we were four hundred klicks to Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and a dozen other disasters waiting to happen. So, during those rare pauses in between assignments, this base was where we squatted and sweat until hot metal and the almost cinnamon tang of blowing dust had become a part of who we were.

  The lieutenant kept his blue-eyed gaze flat and his face deadpan. Thought I’d earned more than that, but there wasn’t even a hint of a smile; the bastard was damned hard to read at the best of times. He was married to a seriously cute helo pilot from the Night Stalkers, but I was careful to not even glance at her when Lieutenant Bruce was around. The man might be an officer, but he was also a Unit operator and just as dangerous as any of us. He also hung tight with Colonel Gibson who was more dangerous than all of us combined.

  “Anything cooking on the desk?”…other than the damned desk in this heat? I grabbed a water bottle out of the kicker fridge and rubbed it across my forehead—so cold it almost gave me a headache. A mission would make the night much more tolerable, but it all looked pretty damn quiet. The folding table supported a stack of silent comm gear, a couple big screens that were supposed to be for situational displays but streamed movies just fine on pizza-and-no beer nights—dry post on Saudi soil.

  “Left you some routine crap,” Bill flicked a finger against the paper in the in-basket.

  “Thanks so much, asshole.” I gave it a friendly tone.

  He glanced at me. There were certain looks that they only teach in officer’s school and this was one of them.

  “Thanks so much, asshole Sir.” Shit! Still nothing. There was no saluting in the field. It might attract a sniper’s bullet targeted at whoever that identified as being in charge. But I was tempted just in case there was a sniper on the hunt tonight, because that would at least change the mood.

  The lieutenant tapped the pile again, marking it as my top priority, before heading out into the dark heat.

  The small fan perched on the edge of the desk helped a little when I dropped into the folding steel chair. Now instead of slowly baking to death, I was going to be put out of my misery much sooner by the blowtorch of fan-driven hot air.

  Comms were silent. I logged into the computer and made sure the command message queue was up on the screen. I popped up a second window that showed the regional queue as well. Nothing but a whole lot of quiet. I could have heard a gecko walking on the metal ceiling a dozen meters above me.

  Feet on the desk, I pulled over the in-basket and began flipping through it. Some supply chain crap. New sergeant coming over soon. No sign of my reassignment to somewhere, anywhere else, not that I was expecting one anytime soon but I could always hope. I’d give up my next pay for two damned minutes of Oregon Coast air—just a walk with my lady down the long sand beaches; the wind off the Pacific rolling in cool, wet, and so fresh it was like no one had ever breathed it before.

  Dreaming of other places, I had the manila folder from deep in the pile half open before I froze in place. The chill up my spine had a whole lot more to do with Arctic training than Saudi desert. I almost shouted out Landmine! to warn everyone around me—except if I did, only the plane and helicopters were there to hear me. I was sitting alone and holding a viper made out of beige manila—a viper way more dangerous than the flesh-and-blood kind.

  “Classified-Secret.”

  A big red stamp on the cover. Typically illegible authorization signature. An innocuous number on the tab.

  Why the hell was a classified document buried in the watch desk in-basket? I wanted to take the damn thing and ram it right up the lieutenant’s ass for leaving such a thing out to be found.

  Protocol said to lock it up in the secure vault resting under the table, then report it to command and send an armed guard to take the lieutenant into custody. Reality said to lock it up and suggest to his boss that the man get a refresher course in proper handling of classifieds.

  Instead, I eased it open.

  “Eyes only!”

  Viper? Hell. I was holding a damned grenade with no sign of the pin or handle—and three of five seconds gone.

  Should have slapped it closed. Should have the fucking lieutenant shot.

  Instead I read the damned thing.

  2

  Mira slipped into the hangar. The way that woman moved was like nothing else I’d ever seen. There weren’t all that many Spec Ops women, but she made it look natural…natural and dangerous as hell. We’d quietly shared enough two-week leaves for me to know that both assessments were accurate about her in every way. Dusky skinned enough to pass as a native anywhere in the Middle East, her night ops black hair curled down to her shoulders. Her face was forgettably normal (which was ideal for an operator)—forgettable unless you knew the woman who hid so carefully behind it.

  She didn’t a
sk why I called and woke her. Instead, she sat down on another chair and waited.

  I turned the folder over in my lap and showed her the front.

  A shrug.

  I peeled back the front flap enough to reveal the “Eyes Only.”

  Her gaze shot up and inspected me carefully. I could see her connecting pieces, putting together the question that I wasn’t willing to speak aloud. I wasn’t asking the question of my lover. I was a sniper asking a question of my spotter.

  A sniper has to move undercover in any environment—hard to do as a single man, much easier with a woman at his side. He also needs a spotter to watch his back and cover the wider view. She excelled at both roles. Whether we were on overwatch protecting door-kicker troops working the street below or out in the weeds, Mira didn’t miss a thing. We were one of the top teams operating.

  Mira would of course integrate all this into her consideration about the question I had asked by flashing the folder. She knew she could stand up and walk away with no hard feelings, but she also knew I wouldn’t have called her lightly.

  This time I couldn’t read what was behind her dark eyes any more than the damn lieutenant’s light ones, but she reached out and took the file.

  Based on the data in the folder, I began studying city maps and drone overflight images on the dual screens while she read.

  3

  “We’re not supposed to be here, Kurt!” Only Mira’s eyes showed through the narrow slit of the niqab headpiece she’d worn as we worked our way across Riyadh looking like any other Arab couple.

  “Then leave.” It came out harsher than I intended, but I was feeling the pressure too. “Sorry.” The “home” we were surveying would have been a mansion in Los Angeles, a damned big one. Here it was called a palace but that didn’t make it any smaller.

  I could tell by the narrowing of her eyes that Mira was scowling at me, which I ignored just as I had been for the other fifty times she’d said it since last night. Though once she’d read the file there hadn’t been any question of not going in together. Something about complaining made her feel like she was in control whenever the situation was spinning out of control, but I knew that about her and usually let it slide.

  Didn’t matter anyway.

  Once we stepped past this point we’d be in it deep and the only way out was going to be even uglier than the way in. In truth, all bets were on a one-way ticket.

  We weren’t supposed to be here—no one could know. Literally… No. One. That’s what the Unit specialized in, but even by our standards this was beyond dark and creepy.

  The objective was inside this monstrosity. Four stories with a double-height first. Delta named the sides of a building from front entrance around clockwise by the alphabet for easy reference—front door wall was “A,” next wall to the right “B,” and so on. Don’t know if this place would have fit in the alphabet. Shining white, two big wings, attached garages that would fit twenty cars, bathhouses between the two pools, a clubhouse by the putting greens… The place was absurd. Thankfully, that worked in our favor as the target would never think guards were needed every foot. It was old enough that the cameras and sensors had been installed later, making them both easy to spot and fewer than they should have been.

  Mira was right though, this was the last check-in, the last point to turn back.

  I flicked a “Move Out” sign, but more as a question. At Mira’s nod, we shed our outer robes. From here on, blending in wasn’t the issue, being invisible was. Dark camouflage, night-vision goggles, and minimal gear other than our weapons and a lot of extra rounds. We headed in.

  They didn’t train snipers in The Unit to waste time. Our training was all about achieving results. I wasn’t the first operator to have used that as an excuse in marginal conditions and I wasn’t about to be the last. Because we delivered, Joint Special Operations Command did a fine job of looking the other way.

  When we were rolling up Iraqi terror cells back in the war, the Status of Forces Agreement prohibited US counterterrorism raids without an Iraqi court-issued warrant. To solve this, Spec Ops built courtrooms in every major city in-country and made sure they were manned by US lawyers and a local judge 24/7. Still, the ops in the field sometimes outstripped the speed of the courts. When we had a known terrorist in our sights, the lawyers back-timed the judge’s signature and the judge turned a blind eye.

  Were mistakes made?

  Very few and only very quiet ones.

  The Unit wasn’t SEAL Team Six. ST6 made noise about their ops—Captain Phillips, bin Laden, Jessica Buchanan; high profile wasn’t in our program. With command’s and the Iraqi courts’ authorization, four thousand Al-Qaeda leaders were removed in the last four years of the Iraq War. It all happened so quietly that local Al-Qaeda required years of inattention by Iraq Security Forces in order to rebuild into any level of viable threat. Noise wasn’t the Unit’s way. Wasn’t really ST6’s either, but the newsies had latched onto them so hard they could barely take a shit without hitting the headlines—better them than us.

  This op wasn’t exactly authorized either.

  No warrant had been issued.

  No war existed here.

  No order had been issued.

  Except for what was in that goddamn folder, which probably no longer existed. When I hand-delivered the thing back to Lieutenant Bruce, an “Oh, thanks Master Sergeant,” was all I got for my trouble.

  That and a headful of crap I wished I never knew.

  This was a friendly country, an ally, even the kind that The Unit usually cultivated—a dangerous one.

  The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia spent more per capita on their military than any other country. Number One. The Big Kahuna. The KSA spent three times the amount that Singapore, Israel, or even the US did. Five times more than anyone in the next tier down. A higher percentage of their annual GDP than anyone except North Korea and that place was fucked anyway.

  Mira and I slid in through the garage: Bentley, Rolls, Lambo, Porsche, not a whole lot of American other than a Humvee and a Tesla. No Japanese at all. Got to admit that the Lamborghini Countach was a classic that almost stopped me in my tracks—it was a low-slung craft of beauty.

  Mira nudged me with the butt of her rifle. “Boys and toys,” she whispered but I could hear the laugh in it.

  I hadn’t felt much like laughing since I’d spent the hours reading that goddamn document before I called Mira.

  The KSA was run by one king and seven thousand princes, all blood relatives. Family reunions must be hell. Especially with how these guys got along. Internecine conflict didn’t begin to describe it. And when huge bulks of oil fortunes were on the move, it got messy. Defense Ministers took billion dollar bribes from military vendors like it was cotton candy. Lately the Saudis had been going through Ministers of Defense and the Interior so fast it was a wonder anyone was left in the royal family, because sure as shit if you were one of the top thirty, you were related by direct blood to the king and your motives were suspect.

  Some of the princes were pro-American, some anti-. That didn’t bother me any and it hadn’t bothered Mira when I was giving her the lay of the land. It’s not like that was any news to us. Both of our fathers had done the Desert Storm dance, staging in The KSA to clear Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. They’d both brought back plenty of stories and a gutful of hate.

  But I hadn’t meant to suck Mira all of the way in. I had just wanted her take on the file’s contents. Was I reading too much into that “Eyes Only” report or…apparently not.

  Saudi Prince Abdul Malik Hassan was demanding heavy “donations” for feeding the US with prime intel. Turned out that he also was taking prime intel on our movements and selling them back to every bidder.

  Twenty-five of my SEAL Team 6 brothers—I only sneer at them to keep them on their toes—were in a Chinook helo that was shot down in Afghanistan in 2011. Deep resea
rch pointed to Abdul feeding the intel to Al-Qaeda shooters—no proof. Again when ST6 had been repulsed by Al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia, Abdul’s call had been traced there as well. He had a whole network of brothers, cousins, and sons servicing the intel in both directions—a clusterfuck that involved a dozen princes and twenty more besides. We needed the intelligence reports he gave us, so the CIA had labeled him “Untouchable.”

  There were other opinions in that damn file. The Saudi Defense Minister, the US Secretary of State, the Head of the Joint Chiefs, a scribble that just might be the President’s initials… They all agreed that Abdul had walked way too far over the lines in both directions. But no one wanted to do the deed. No one wanted the CIA to find out they’d done the deed.

  And neither Mira nor I gave a shit about any of them.

  It was the price of what Abdul took…

  I no longer had brothers, not outside the service.

  No family outside the service.

  My brother Stan found heroin, then God, then tried combining the two so that he could go meet God face to face. He never came back to tell me if it worked. Mom had long since walked away and Dad eventually ate his gun. We weren’t what you’d call…close.

  “Close” is what I found in The Unit, even before I met Mira Stenkowski.

  Five years in Special Forces, tromping ass with the 3rd SFG Green Berets, before I could even apply to The Unit. Delta Assessment Phase spent a month proving that nobody loved me—but I already knew that, so it didn’t knock me out like so many others. Combined with being tough as hell, I made the five percent cut. And they took me in.

  All the way in.

  The Unit did that. These weren’t fellow soldiers. The guys weren’t some inbred clan like Prince Abdul’s. These were men, and now the few women, that I’d stand at the tip of the spear for. Give me the first hit. Take me down first. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get at me and mine.

  But Abdul didn’t believe that.