Lightning Strike to the Heart Read online

  Lightning Strike to the Heart

  a Delta Force romance story

  by M. L. Buchman

  1

  It was a bitter New Year’s Eve, especially at thirty-three thousand feet standing on the open rear ramp of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane. The rain drummed on the plane’s skin with such ferocity that she could barely hear the roar of the massive turboprop engines over the storm. She had to stay light on her toes to keep her balance on the shifting deck.

  Chief Petty Officer Teresa Mann of the US Coast Guard checked her watch: oh-two hundred. Happy New Year. What better time, place, and weather for her first combat jump with a Delta. She’d been thrilled at the chance to accompany a Unit operator—as Delta Force soldiers called themselves—but this was a little extreme even by the Airborne Jumpmaster Course’s harsh standards. She’d done HALO jumps before—bail out at high-altitude but wait for the last second before doing a low opening—but not in the middle of the night during a major storm.

  The C-130’s Loadmaster spoke over the intercom wired into her earphones, “Jump in fifteen seconds.” Only the dull red jumplight lit the cavernous rear of the aircraft. He and his assistant were anonymous in a full helmet and armored vest as the four of them grouped together for their final checks.

  Teresa began counting backwards.

  “Ground reports winds out of the southwest at forty,” he provided the last key element before the jump.

  In other words a total nightmare for the landing.

  “In ten!” He was a second fast. Then he yanked her and Hal Waldman’s communications cables, and her earphones went quiet.

  He disconnected their oxygen hookups to the aircraft’s supply system.

  For a jump from this altitude, she and Hal were wearing full facemasks and carrying five minutes of oxygen. Instead of helmets, they wore insulated caps that fitted tightly against the mask. Five minutes allowed plenty of margin for error as they should fall into breathable air within ninety seconds, but they couldn’t risk cracking their masks for the full three minutes of the jump until they deployed their chutes—the chance of getting frostbite from the wind chill was too high. They’d already checked each other head to toe to make sure there was no exposed skin. With a sixty-second margin of air, they were good to go.

  The Loadmaster unlatched Master Sergeant Waldman and then her own safety lines that had kept them securely connected to the racing cargo plane once the rear ramp had been lowered.

  Then the Loadmaster caressed her ass and gave it a hard squeeze.

  Rather than going for the obvious response—a sharp kick to the balls, which he was already turning aside to protect against in addition to having an armored flap dangling over his groin from his bullet-proof vest—she made her hand into a knife edge and drove her fingertips upward into his armpit through the gap in his armor between vest and sleeve. Once there, she grabbed and twisted the leading edge of the pectoral muscle hard enough that his arm wouldn’t work right for days without causing a shooting pain down its whole length. She gave an extra yank; he’d walk with a hunch for most of that time.

  His hand, which had clutched her even harder in initial shock, finally let go.

  As he jerked it back, she brought the edge of her hand down in a hard chop that may or may not have broken his wrist.

  By the volume of his scream—which was loud enough to be heard over the roar of rain and engine, despite no longer sharing the intercom—she’d guess a bad break. Hardly a traditional start to the New Year.

  She stepped to the rear edge of the cargo ramp with Hal. At the last second Teresa turned so that she was facing the still screaming Loadmaster and his assistant, who was clawing at his headphone’s volume control. She snapped to full attention as she stepped off the end of the ramp. With a sharp salute, she drifted off the plane and fell backwards into the storm.

  “Any problems?” Hal asked over their short-range encrypted radio link as they slammed from the plane’s two hundred miles an hour into freefall. Once they were flying with the wind, the battering eased.

  “It depends Waldman, are you a macho asshole?” In the pitch dark, Teresa oriented herself head down and lined up her body for the fastest descent speed.

  “I’ve been accused of the macho often enough. I try to avoid giving women a cause to call me an asshole though.”

  “Then we’re fine.”

  2

  Hal did his best to keep any thoughts about Chief Petty Officer Teresa Mann’s fineness to himself as they plummeted downward through thirty thousand feet and headed toward twenty-five. By that time they had reached terminal velocity. At a hundred-and-fifty miles per hour, the rain wasn’t merely noisy, it was also painful as it drove against his jumpsuit like a rapid fire BB gun.

  There was no sign of the city that lay below; the clouds had gathered so thickly that no hint of light made it up to their altitude.

  He’d seen the Loadmaster’s grope and, while he agreed that Mann had one of the best asses he’d ever seen in the military, he’d been trying to figure out how to report the man for his action as there wasn’t either time or opportunity for him to step in and thrash the man himself without missing the jump window.

  Then Mann had taken action of her own and absolved him from that part of the problem.

  The primary difficulty with making a report was that the C-130’s crew had been purposely misled to think that he and Teresa were a couple of crazy CIA spooks being sent in on some intelligence-gathering mission. So no one had asked anyone else’s names and no units were mentioned. He and Mann had showed up at the designated place, found the aforementioned aircraft, and climbed aboard without a word.

  Sending punishment meant reporting aspects of their mission to sections of the command authority that weren’t supposed to know about its existence.

  He had to admire the efficiency with which Mann had transferred the burden of explanation onto the Air Force Loadmaster. Now it would be up to him to explain how he’d broken his wrist and couldn’t use his right arm properly without saying anything about how it had happened. And if he did talk about the two strangers who had jumped out of his aircraft, he’d be grounded so fast that he’d have to sprint to keep ahead of the dishonorable discharge that would be racing to catch up with him. The authority structure of Joint Special Operations Command wasn’t a big fan of soldiers who violated their security clearances.

  Despite being Coast Guard, Teresa Mann had used Unit thinking which was still disorienting. Rumor said that the first woman of Delta was out in the field and that another was in the Operators Training Course—even if neither possibility sounded very likely. Petty Officer Teresa Mann was on loan from the U.S. Coast Guard’s MSST team—the USCG’s special forces. If the anti-terrorist Maritime Safety and Security Team produced any other women as obviously skilled as Mann, he’d be seriously impressed. If they had any more that looked like her, he’d change branches of the service just for the female scenery.

  He pulled his arm forward, keeping it close to his body to avoid invoking a mid-air tumble, to check the GPS and altimeter. Twenty thousand feet flashed by and he corrected his flight path ten degrees toward the southwest by briefly bending one knee to raise a foot into the wind. The rain pounded so hard against his plastic facemask that he couldn’t have heard her if Mann was speaking, but they were in communication blackout anyway, so it shouldn’t matter.

  They fell through thick clouds, and despite their suits the wet and the wind chill were severe enough that he’d be shivering if the jump adrenaline wasn’t pumping so hard. A bolt of lightning slashed somewhere nearby and for a second he saw Mann in clear outline just a hundred feet away, dressed in pitch black against a background of heavy storm, c
loud-lit brilliantly from within. Then they were plunged back into darkness.

  It was a glimpse he knew he’d never forget, Teresa Mann as Wonder Woman—no, Catwoman—dressed all in black, flying fearlessly through the storm, and dangerous as hell. He thanked whatever Army god had kicked the extraction assignment in his direction just forty-eight hours ago.

  HALO jump to listed coordinates. Escort individual to safety. Zero profile.

  Which in Delta-speak meant: “don’t be seen, even if you have to kill someone—but don’t do that either.” He considered possible scenarios based on the limited information. Command would have provided more if they had it, which meant he was jumping into an unknown situation, expected to carry out a barely defined mission, and not to be caught. That’s why the mission had come to Delta—no one rocked the unknown like The Unit.

  But the best option for keeping low cover on the ground would be a man-woman team, so he’d sent a request up the command chain without much hope. But for all the times that the Army mis-delivered—or didn’t deliver at all—this time it had supplied personnel magnificently.

  There had been the bewildering moment when the tall brunette with hair falling in soft waves to her shoulder had shown up at Incirlik Air Base.

  “Chief Petty Officer Teresa Mann assigned to your detail,” she’d dropped a set of transit orders into his lap.

  “I didn’t—” ask for a liaison officer, he almost said, but bit off the words. There was something about how a Special Operations field soldier stood that no one else could match. It wasn’t attitude, it was competence. And she had it. His initial thought was to ask her the usual litany of questions when facing an unknown soldier with undefined skills, but then he thought better of it—when the roles were reversed, those questions always just pissed him off. So instead he went with, “What was your last assignment?”

  And she’d given him the blank stare of experience with those cool brown eyes that said it was classified and he needed to find himself a new question. It was a good sign that her looks aside, she was one put-together soldier. Factor those in and…he looked down at her orders quickly for a distraction. She had her Master Parachutist Badge and also had the security clearance to know what was and wasn’t classified—both key elements to this operation.

  Hal had waved her to a seat and started right in on the briefing. As they worked out the final shape of the plan, she’d offered suggestions that showed field experience—not deep field experience, but rough enough to learn important lessons the hard way. Maybe women making it through the Delta Selection process and OTC wasn’t such an obscure possibility.

  Ten thousand feet. On target.

  The next bolt of lightning was so close that he wondered if they were about to be fried in the sky. Not that it would phase Petty Officer Mann. His few lame attempts at getting personal had revealed her near-robotic degree of control and dedication to the service. Gorgeous, but she had a wind chill factor even worse than the storm’s.

  3

  Teresa figured that her oxygen reserve had run out prematurely and she was going to have to peel back her mask and risk frostbite, when it occurred to her that she wasn’t breathing at all. With a sharp gasp, she sucked in oxygen, and her head cleared.

  Eight thousand.

  Another breath that tasted of panic. She bit it back hard and forced her next breath to be even and regulated.

  That last lightning flash had been so close she could still feel the induced charge across her skin. She’d been staring into the darkness toward Hal Waldman, her brain seeking some confirmation that she wasn’t alone in this madness, went the bolt had shocked through the clouds close behind her and revealed him in sharp relief against the storm. The brutal thump of thunder slammed her closer to him and momentarily drowned out both wind and storm.

  Closer to him. She knew nothing about him, but he exuded confidence and safety. Even in this crazy jump, she felt as if it was possible merely because he fell alongside her.

  She’d worked heavy-duty Coast Guard missions before, but when her commander had offered her a shot at jumping with the legendary Delta Force, she’d leapt at the chance. For some idiot reason she’d thought that three years in the MSST had prepared her for anything, but it certainly hadn’t prepared her for this. Jumping in this weather proved that the Delta guys really were as nuts as rumor said—something she’d never quite believed until this moment.

  She’d been ready for macho bravura and a dismissive attitude. What she hadn’t been ready for was when Master Sergeant Hal Waldman had simply waved her to a seat and started right into the briefing without so much as a hello. Pure soldier, a hundred-percent business. When he’d eventually offered a few openings to friendly conversation, she’d been too surprised to react before he shrugged and moved on.

  Even after three years, most of the MSST cadre didn’t treat her with such simple acceptance. Women were only a little more common there than they were in Special Operations—as in not at all.

  Sergeant Waldman’s steadiness had helped keep her own nerves calm. She’d only been assigned to carefully planned missions before, until she’d chafed at the restriction, as if she somehow wasn’t good enough. Delta’s specialty was the short notice plunge into unknown conditions. Someone was finally trusting her out on the edge…actually way past it. Ice fogged most of her facemask and the wind had bitten right through her flightsuit despite the waterproof materials and thick fleece lining.

  Three thousand. Two. At one-five she pulled her ripcord and by one thousand, the black chute opened with a sharp crack and the harness slammed up against her crotch and tried to remove her breasts—standard fare for the ride.

  A flash of lightning, more distant this time, revealed Hal Waldman close by and still no sign of the ground. She corrected right, then left to tuck in tight behind him.

  The squall blowing out of the southwest at forty knots made for excellent cover, but she couldn’t believe they’d actually been crazy enough to jump in it.

  A parachute typically landed going under twenty miles an hour; a hard stall at the last second could cut that in half. They were going to be blown backwards while flying full-speed forward. Nothing in her combat training had prepared her for that.

  A final glance at the GPS showed that Hal already had them flying into the wind and, yes, they were traveling backwards.

  “This wasn’t in any of my training!” she shouted at the wind.

  “Mine either.”

  Crap! She’d forgotten that they had an open radio link as long as they were within fifty meters of each other.

  “Not exactly a confidence builder, Waldman.”

  “It’s the Army, what do you expect?”

  She hadn’t expected Master Sergeant Hal Waldman to be understanding, let alone have any hint of humor. The combination was almost enough to make her bobble the descent.

  Unit operators were a tough, manly-men bunch, but with four older brothers she knew how to handle that. A Delta soldier would never admit a weakness, yet Hal had just admitted that he too was riding the hairy edge at the moment and it oddly gave her some hope.

  They were below two hundred feet when they broke out of the cloud cover.

  Her night-vision goggles revealed a classic upper-middle class Iraqi compound displayed in an NVG’s thousand shades of green heat. A high stone wall around a dusty courtyard that was currently a muddy courtyard. Several solid-looking buildings that she hoped they didn’t hit. A variety of miscellaneous obstacles.

  Too late to do more than pick where they were going to crash land, she let nerves and trained reflexes take over. Rather than stalling the chute to kill forward motion, they kept moving ahead at full flight into the wind…and the wind kept carrying them backward. She had to keep glancing over her shoulder to make sure she was being blown toward a safe landing zone.

  In a blur too fast for her mind to record, she adjusted to avoid a parked Toyota pickup, dodged a stone well, and slammed backward into the mud. Their chutes dra
gged them across the courtyard until they slammed into the perimeter wall together. Once she decided she was alive and opened her eyes, her night vision revealed two cows and a goat that were too startled to do more than stare as they cowered there seeking some protection against the wall.

  She, Hal, and their chutes were all tangled together. Hal’s arms were pinned to her body by a snarl of nylon paracords and his facemask was pressed hard against hers—their noses practically touching except for the two thin layers of plastic.

  Hal struggled briefly but was unable to free himself. He didn’t use the opportunity for a quick feel even though his arms were wrapped around her.

  Thinking back she was able to reconstruct that at the last moment he’d grabbed her and taken the brunt of the slam into the wall himself in order to spare her, which was damned decent—they’d hit hard. She was winded despite the buffer.

  They each managed to pull a hand free and peel off their facemasks now that they were out of oxygen. The rain, so cold and painful at altitude, was a refreshing wash across her heated face. The snarl of the paracord kept their faces only inches apart, but he eased the awkwardness with a smile and joke.

  “What do you do for fun when you aren’t doing crazy shit like this?”

  A cow stepped closer to sniff at them as a slap of wind slammed the stink of cow breath and manure at her.

  “Barbeque,” she told the cow. “Four older brothers, I’m big on barbeque.”

  4

  Hal made a quick scan of the yard as he laughed at her joke. Their arrival had gone by unobserved, which was good as they were still snarled together and he couldn’t draw so much as a penknife. Her humor after so dangerous a flight helped steady him as he worked to free himself and pack his chute. And their brief entanglement that had forced him into contact with a number of parts of Petty Officer Mann’s body—for which he apologized—he couldn’t regret for an instant. Despite flight gear, harness, and a small field pack, it had been impossible to avoid the body he’d sat only inches from for the last twenty-seven hours.