First Day, Every Day Read online

  First Day Every Day

  a Night Stalkers Romance Story

  M. L. Buchman

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  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy

  Ghost of Willow’s Past

  About the Author

  Also by M. L. Buchman

  The events in this story occur 2 years after

  Ghost of Willow’s Past

  (The Night Stalkers Story #1).

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  Chief Warrant Officer Amelia Patterson-James felt the jarring impact before she spotted its origin. Standard 9mm rifle rounds would ping off her helicopter’s windshield and armor with little effect. The only thing heavy enough to make the Menace jerk like this were anti-aircraft rounds, perhaps 23mm. Anything less wouldn’t have jarred the helo; anything heavier and they wouldn’t still be flying.

  The Menace was an MH-6M Little Bird helicopter loaded for bear. Twin mini-guns and two seven-rocket tubes mounted outside on stub wings—the coolest office a girl could have. Inside there was room enough for only the pilot and co-pilot, and barely that. The cabin was so tight that the Little Birds were flown without doors, only the large front windshield offering any forward protection and not much of that.

  Pilot? Amy felt the controls go loose in her hand. She’d been mirroring Bernie on her set of controls, and learning quite how good he was. It was her first sortie as co-pilot for the 5th Battalion D Company of the U.S. Army’s 160th SOAR, day one on the job after two years of training and five prior years of flying for lesser outfits.

  Bernie, the pilot, wasn’t reacting, which was a bad sign—no time to think about that.

  Amy slammed the cyclic joystick that rose between her knees hard to the left and let Menace tumble into a sideways roll to get clear of the attack. It would make her harder to hit again; she just hoped that the helicopter was undamaged enough to recover from this roll or she was a dead woman. Her body alternately floated off the seat and slammed back onto it as the helo exchanged right side up for upside down and continued over.

  Bernie flopped against her.

  A very bad sign.

  Pinning the cyclic between her thighs for a moment, she reached up and flicked the setting on his seatbelt harness that attached to the back of his vest. Now it was set to retract-only, like a car seatbelt, locking up during an emergency stop.

  Grabbing the cyclic again in her right hand, she gave it a twist during the next tumble. Bernie flopped back against his seat, the harness retracted, and pinned him in place.

  A quick glance revealed a hole punched through the left center of his visor. By the size of the hole, her estimate of the 23mm round was right on the money. The ultimate bad news for her pilot.

  On your own, girl.

  She didn’t even have time to add a heartfelt, Shit! for Bernie’s epitaph.

  Amy returned her attention to the sharp granite mountains leading to the narrow mountain pass between Soran, Iraq and Piranshahr, Iran.

  U.S. military forces weren’t even supposed to be here. This was a classic mission for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment: Get in, hit the target, get the hell out.

  Don’t be seen.

  Something the Night Stalkers of the 160th specialized in…usually.

  The don’t be seen part was easy. It was straight up midnight, two hours before moonrise. The anti-aircraft had caught them as much by chance as anything, firing wildly aloft after the two other helos ahead of her in the flight had roared by. They’d stirred up the hornet’s nest and she and Bernie had walked right into it.

  The three-bird flight had been flying down the gut of a river canyon. Now Amy was falling out of the sky into a river canyon and the rock walls were impossibly close through her night-vision goggles, glowing in a dozen shades of dull green in her infrared view.

  She stomped on the left rudder and dragged the cyclic back to the right to break the roll.

  The roll lashed back the other way and—once her eyes uncrossed from the g-force that drove her against her harness—she was able to focus on the fast-approaching rock of the steep canyon wall.

  Menace groaned in protest, but responded.

  Her baby wasn’t supposed to groan.

  Up on the collective with her left hand, craving a right turn through the sky with the cyclic in her right, she managed to skim along the wall with her skids barely a half-rotor diameter above the ground. Ripping along at a hundred-and-thirty knots—with rotor blades only twenty-seven feet in diameter—half a rotor was far too close for comfort.

  That’s when she spotted the attacker.

  Her attacker.

  The bastard nasty enough to think shooting her was a good idea.

  Guess again, Jerkwad. You messed with the wrong girl.

  Racing down the center of the narrow two-lane Iraq Route 3 that followed close beside the river was a white Toyota HiLux, the favorite vehicle of the world’s rebels and terrorists. It was reliable as a rock and plenty powerful to carry the ton of weight of the twin-barrel, Russian ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun—that was even now trying to get a bead on her as the driver bounced and careened over the rough-paved road. There were two other gunmen in the back of the vehicle firing rifles in her direction. Bright sparks flashed before her as their bullets bounced off her windshield.

  Without thought, courtesy of long training, Amy unleashed a pair of 70mm Hydra rockets up their tailpipe.

  The first one creased the side of their truck and punched a hole in the hillside above the next curve in the road.

  The second one delivered eight-point-seven pounds of high explosive as a direct hit on the tailgate. The rocket punched through the thin metal and delivered its full charge against the substantial anti-aircraft gun.

  A fireball bloomed in a blinding green-white flash on her night vision gear, completely overloading the electronics and her optic nerves and obliterating all visibility.

  Pull back on the cyclic.

  Still dazzled by the explosion, she climbed to clear the aftermath and tried to recall if the thin power lines were on the north side of the road, or south.

  North, she hoped, but wasn’t sure. After the tumble she wasn’t even sure whether she was flying east or west.

  Toss the coin.

  She pulled up and to the right. South.

  Everything came apart at once.

  Amy’s vision came back in time to see and avoid the telephone pole and line. It was also in time to witness one of her shot-up rotor blades break off at the midpoint. Instead of breaking away free, and giving the other five-and-a-half blades even a slim chance of survival, the titanium leading edge hung on long enough to slam the broken piece into her rear rotor.

  With the rear rotor gone and her main rotor compromised, the helicopter whirled into an uncontrollable spin. On the third loop around, catching the power line with one of her skids was the least of her worries as her helmet slammed against a support strut. Knocked silly, Amy’s head cleared while the helicopter was still swinging above the ground—upside down. She was dangling a dozen feet above the roadway, bobbing lightly up and down like some inverted carn
ival ride. The rotor blades, at least what remained of them, still spun below and were now blocking her escape. There’d be no jumping to get clear.

  Chapter 2

  There was an ominous crack.

  The power pole she was caught on snapped from dry rot, not to mention having a ton and a half of helicopter slam into it.

  The helo dropped, upside down, onto the boulder field close beside the narrow two-lane roadway. That took care of the lethal rotor at least. Menace’s last act was to roll slowly onto its side so that her exit was now blocked by the road’s surface.

  With the death of her console, the information normally projected on the inside of her visor blinked out and took the night-vision gear with it. Amy raised her visor and switched to battery-powered night-vision goggles.

  She lay with one shoulder on the ground, still strapped into her seat. Above her, Bernie dangled in his harness. A finger against his throat confirmed what she already knew.

  She slapped her chest to assure herself that her rifle and survival vest were still there. Then she punched a fist against the harness release and was free.

  Through the cracked glass-laminate of the wide windshield all she could see was boulders and a stretch of road. The canyon was well lit by the blazing truck somewhere out of view behind her. She stood up, impressed that her legs were still working and stuck her head out of Bernie’s door to scan around. She felt like a meerkat popping up out of its burrow to scan for danger.

  Empty road.

  Burning Toyota.

  And the sharp, kerosene-bite of Jet A fuel, not something the Toyota would have along. The Menace, truly dead, was leaking out her life’s blood of highly combustible fuel where a hot exhaust port or turbine engine was bound to ignite it.

  With an apology to the dead pilot, she set the timer on the self-destruct charges for thirty seconds and pulled the pin.

  Amy climbed out, trying not to step on Bernie as she did so.

  She wished she could think of some words to say. Or maybe take his rifle for backup, and any ammo she could grab. Or she could…Get her ass moving!

  A part of her was counting.

  Twenty. Her feet hit the ground.

  Nineteen. She started running.

  Eighteen and a half—her left leg collapsed beneath her.

  “Not good!” she muttered. “Go! Go!” Her leg didn’t seem inclined to answer her command.

  By twelve she had her FN-SCAR rifle free and by ten the stock extended. Faster! It made for a lousy crutch, but by eight she was hobbling away again.

  Along the road would be bad. No cover.

  Climb the steep canyon wall that began close beside the helicopter?

  Height was tactically good, but she didn’t have it in her.

  Instead she raced across the road.

  Almost went down in a pothole the size of Kansas, but recovered.

  At three, ignoring pain, she threw herself off the edge and rolled down the rocky embankment. She crashed into a large boulder close by the water—bad leg first, of course—trying not to scream aloud. The rock was all that kept her from falling into the rushing river.

  At zero, the self-destruct charges pre-mounted on the MH-6M Little Bird Menace fired off. The charge under the console shredded the electronics and shattered the forward sensor array. The second charge, planted close beside the T63 turboshaft engine, destroyed the engine and the rotor shaft. The last two charges blew the two side-mounted miniguns and the unfired missiles to hell, which in turn ignited all of the missiles still in their housing.

  “One kick-ass funeral pyre, Bernie. Sorry, best I could do.” Amy spoke from where she’d managed to get behind a boulder and wait out the rolling wave of fire—a scorching heat she could feel through her heavy flightsuit and the transparent helmet visor. Even with her eyes pressed shut and overloaded with stars of pain from her leg, the flash was bright enough to hurt.

  When the initial blast was done, she lay there a moment longer.

  Five years she’d flown with the 101st Airborne and had never lost a craft. Two more years of intensive training after SOAR had accepted her into the Night Stalkers, still no. And on her first flight as a mission-qualified co-pilot, she was lying wounded along a river in an enemy country where her life expectancy was suddenly very, very short.

  And her helo was rapidly turning into charred garbage.

  They’d assigned Bernie and her to fly rear guard because it was the safest position for her initial sortie.

  Right.

  Hell of a first day.

  Dusty would laugh himself sick when she told him about it.

  Chapter 3

  Chief Warrant Officer Dusty James was as furious as he thought only Amy could make him.

  “That’s my wife back there,” he snarled at Lola Maloney, the commander of the 5th Battalion D Company. She was flying just five rotors ahead of him.

  “It’s up to CSAR. Get off the air,” she snapped back.

  “Combat Search and Rescue, my ass,” he cursed at the radio, though without hitting transmit. Lola Maloney had flown CSAR before she went Night Stalkers, so she was biased in their favor.

  It didn’t help in the slightest that she was right. And that he shouldn’t have risked the radio transmission even on an encrypted channel.

  Already the spot where Amy had dropped off the tactical data feed on the inside of his visor was miles behind them, and the enemy in front of them couldn’t be allowed to gain more ground. He kept his Black Hawk moving at the V-max speed and dove down into the heart of the pass.

  They crossed over into Iran at three meters above the rocky soil. He had a fireteam of four U.S. Rangers and pair of Delta operators aboard. They were all headed to cut off the head of an extremist cell that was racing to a refuge in a country where the U.S. didn’t dare follow.

  Iran had insisted that it could deal with its own problems, but the last few incursions by jihadists from behind the “Hijab Curtain” had gone undetected. Terrorists would strike at the Iraqis, then rush to the Iranian border. There they’d pull on women’s clothes including the head covering of a hijab complete with a veil. They’d then cross the border—undetected by the male guards who were forbidden by Islamic Law from touching another man’s woman.

  If the terrorists made it over the last tortuous ten kilometers of road from the border, they would disappear into the quarter of a million people in the city of Piranshahr, Iran.

  Tonight they wouldn’t be getting away with that. Especially because America’s Number Three Most Wanted was in the group.

  But Amy—

  She had to be alive. No question there, Dusty reassured himself. Too good a pilot, too much of a survivor.

  He nosed down and crept a few rotors closer to LaRue’s helo.

  Get this strike done and then he was going back to find her, no matter what anyone said.

  Chapter 4

  Once her hearing recovered from the blast of destroying her own helicopter, Amy paused to assess.

  Left leg stung like a son of a bitch. Another reason to imagine Dusty laughing. He was the calm one who seldom swore. He’d hardly even cursed when she’d punched him on their first meeting in Portland, Oregon, and landed him in a bed of thorny rose bushes where an old willow tree had stood.

  She was definitely the one with the temper.

  First assessment. She heard nothing but the occasional unexploded round cooking off with a bang: two from the helo, one from the truck still blazing a few hundred meters down the road, then another spatter from the helo.

  No other vehicle sounds. If anyone was hunting her, they were doing it quietly on foot. She’d thought the night-vision gear had been a write-off, but her final dive had merely knocked it aside. She repositioned the four lens system, three of which were still working.

  Rocky valley. Rushing river a dozen meters wide. A lot of rocks and little growth. There were still two heat blooms up over the lip of the embankment.

  Second assessment. Her calf still hurt li
ke…Yeah, Dusty. About like that. She inspected the hole in her flightsuit. No massive entry hole like the 23mm that had bored through Bernie’s helmet.

  Only a 9mm. Exit hole the same size behind her calf. No blood pouring out or squishing down into her boot, so it wasn’t arterial. She’d been able to walk, which meant the bone was intact. At least before she’d slammed it into the boulder.

  Meat shot. A lucky shot that had slid in through the non-existent door while she was maneuvering; too hyped on adrenaline to feel it. Until now! Holy crap it hurt!

  She pulled a medical wrap out of her first aid chest pouch. Bright white. She did not need to place a banner on her leg that said, “Shoot me here. Again. Please.” But she didn’t have time to peel out of the flightsuit and do this properly.

  Stuffing away the bandage, she dug out a strip of matte-black hundred-mile-an-hour duct tape and wrapped her calf snugly. A quick check revealed no other signs or twinges of injury.

  Okay, time to start surviving.

  One. Don’t be found anywhere near a burning helicopter because they tended to draw a lot of attention.

  Again she listened.

  Nothing.

  She crawled up to pop her head over the edge of the embankment and scanned through her night-vision goggles.

  No one…No one…

  There!

  A single figure on the road. He was staggering and there were the brighter patches of hot blood on his shirt. He must have been blown clear of the truck by the blast. If one was, another could have been. The odds didn’t look good.

  So, Amy slid down the rubble bank toward the river that flowed briskly with the combination of melting snow and a recent spring rain.