The Christmas Lights Objective Read online

  The Christmas Lights Objective

  a Night Stalkers 5E romance

  M. L. Buchman

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  Chapter 1

  “This sounds as much fun as an air raid at Christmas… Wait, that’s what it is.” The guy in the goofy Santa hat cut Kelsey off after her opening line of the mission briefing: This mission flies tonight.

  “Dashing through the air,” the senior crew chief of the Night Stalker Chinook helicopter team began singing in her bright soprano. “In a two-rotor heli-sleigh.”

  “Over the jungle we go, a-fighting all the way,” another joined in—an off-key tenor.

  The various members of the operation’s primary helicopter crew began adding in verses. Soon both pilots and three crew chiefs were rocking to the beat just as if they were in their massive, twin-rotor Chinook.

  Sergeant Jason Gould—loadmaster on the Calamity Jane II and the man wearing the goofy Santa hat—joined in with a rich baritone. She didn’t know why she should be surprised.

  But she was surprised. He looked like a New York Jew from her own Brooklyn neighborhood. His speaking voice, while pleasant in the few words she’d been willing to exchange with someone in a Santa hat, hadn’t foreshadowed the bone-melting baritone that quickly became the anchor of the song.

  She could almost like him, except his hat sported a blinking-nose Rudolph on it. In her book, it was a target saying, “Please shoot me here.” Though since they’d just met, and they were both US Special Operations, she left her sidearm in its holster.

  They sat in a meeting room in the team’s residence building. It stood beside a large hangar—labeled as abandoned. Abandoned deep in the woods of Fort Rucker, Alabama. She’d been directed down a tiny access road that was marked as closed and had looked disused. The gray afternoon, dripping with December rain, made both the building and hangar appear even more sad and weather-beaten. She’d almost turned around—until she noticed the cutting-edge surveillance and security system tucked in the corners of the structures.

  The inside of the residence, once she’d gained admittance, was immaculate and comfortable with all of the latest conveniences. She hadn’t seen the inside of the hangar yet.

  The meeting room’s walls were covered in brilliant travel posters—so many of them that they were starting to overlap: Costa Rica, Honduras, and Venezuela were understandable. But there was also Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya…

  It was the strangest briefing room décor Kelsey Killaney had ever worked in.

  “It’s my Christmas, too. Not my call.” She grimaced as her protest cut off the singing. Killjoy Killaney. Once again, the old high school nickname was definitely her. If it had been up to her, she’d have scheduled the flight for Christmas Eve anyway, just so that she didn’t have to think about “the happy season” for one more millisecond than necessary. But it had been circumstances, not orders that had brought them together on Christmas Eve afternoon.

  This morning, everyone at her office in Fort Belvoir, Virginia had been buzzing with the “Best Wishes” and merry yeah-whatever. She’d wanted to lie on the floor and throw a tantrum as if she was nine, not twenty-nine—the little girl wanting everyone to just shut up. Her worldview was more mature now. Now, she was a grown woman who just wished everyone would go away.

  Another Christmas wish gone bust. Not that any of the ones as a child had paid off.

  This morning, Michael Gibson, the commander of Delta Force, had appeared at her desk inside The Activity’s headquarters without warning—not even from security who were there to make sure such things didn’t happen. The Intelligence Support Activity worked in one of the most secure buildings on a fort made up of twenty major intel agencies. The Activity’s sole purpose was serving the Special Operations Forces, but that didn’t mean they were supposed to be able to just walk in.

  “There’s a jet waiting for you at Davison Army Airfield,” had been his idea of a pleasant Christmas Eve morning greeting—which actually worked for her. “Here’s your team and mission file to read on the flight.”

  He’d handed her a slim folder that she wanted to handle as much as a live snake. It had a yellow fly sheet with a dark red border. In large type it only had an identification number and two of the scariest words in the intelligence business: Eyes Only. She’d checked the back of the fly sheet. Her name had been added in the second position, countersigned by Colonel Michael Gibson himself. Theirs were the only two names on the file.

  She’d looked back up at him, but he’d been gone. If not for the file clutched in her white-knuckled fingers, she’d have doubted he’d ever been there. One look at the first page and she was on the move. On her way out the door to grab the scram kit from the trunk of her car, she’d stopped off at the front desk. Just as she suspected, he never had been signed in…or even seen—Delta Force guys were just creepy sometimes.

  Reading the mission portion of the file Gibson had given her, made her the obvious choice for the operation. Actually, the only choice.

  Reading the portion about the 5E was just…headshaking.

  The 5E had an unprecedented number of missions with an unlikely success rate—even by the Night Stalkers’ stratospheric standards. Yet the details of most of their missions had been redacted from the file now sitting in the locked briefcase at her feet.

  With their song cut off, they were all sitting and waiting. Waiting and ready for their latest mission assignment. That’s when she looked at the posters again.

  “Duh!”

  Jason, happy in his Santa hat, looked over but she just shook her head to ward him off. She hoped he would look away before she was forced to attack Rudolph’s blinking nose. The last thing she needed was to explain herself to a Night Stalking Christmas elf, no matter how nice a voice he had. Why was a New York Jew singing Christmas carols anyway?

  Except he wasn’t a fellow Brooklynite. According to the file, Loadmaster Jason Gould was from Florida no matter how much he sounded New York.

  Kelsey understood now. She didn’t need the list of redacted missions—they were right there on the walls. These people collected travel posters of everywhere they’d ever had an operation. Now she could start putting some of the pieces together.

  Each poster was a snapshot of a mission file.

  “Find Beauty in Honduras.” A black ops Honduran mission last year that had shaken the corrupt banking-military cooperative to the core. It had significantly stabilized the duly-elected government—but no hint of who had done the mission. The answer sat in this room.

  “Surf Kamchatka.” The 5E had done the Russian drone mission.

  “Hike the Negev.” The disastrous Negev Desert, Israel, mission that had shaken The Activity itself to the core, somehow salvaged by the field team. By this team.

  She tried to catch her breath, but wasn’t having much luck. No wonder she hadn’t heard of the 5E, though they were the logical extension of Henderson’s and Beale’s D Company. The 5D had been hugely innovative in their approach to military tactics. The 5E, however, were the tactical equivalent of Delta Force—silent and dangerous as hell…or Christmas.

  “Damn it!” Jason complained. “Christmas Eve! Shit, man! And I was going to get my nails done tonight.” That earned a laugh around the table. The team was apparently unflappable.

  Despite her clumsiest efforts, their spirits remained high.

  She got along with data, not people.

  Activity agents were r
arely in on the final mission. They might go out into the field a dozen times themselves gathering intelligence, but operations were generally left to the action teams. But tonight there was no choice.

  Kelsey couldn’t stop herself from glancing down at Sergeant Jason Gould’s hands as he made a show of inspecting his nails critically. They were cut short, uneven, and showed that he made his living with those hands—which made sense for a ramp gunner on an MH-47G Chinook. As one of the three crew chiefs, he’d have a dozen roles to serve—all of which said competent and strong. He was several inches taller than her own five-seven with an attractive leanness. She knew from his file that his family had a sportfishing business out of St. Petersburg, Florida. Curly dark hair and nearly black eyes.

  She’d almost been attracted—if not for her hopelessness with attractive men. And the stupid hat.

  “We’ll go together, Jason. I need a mani-pedi anyway.” Carmen. Dark red hair. Crew chief of the Chinook. Married to the co-pilot on the same craft. What a crazy outfit.

  Five aboard the Chinook and four more aboard each of the two DAP Hawk gun platforms that would be flying protection. With her that made a total of fourteen flying tonight, plus two assets who had yet to arrive.

  As Kelsey had no more control over the crew selection than the mission, she started the briefing. They might appear carefree, but the moment she began laying out the details of the mission, she had a hundred percent of their attention.

  Chapter 2

  It was still mid-afternoon by the time the short briefing ended and they were into the hangar. The soft rain had turned downright wet.

  Jason had been searching for an excuse to talk to Kelsey Killaney since the moment she’d hit the pavement at the 5E’s compound. He found it when they stepped into the hangar.

  “Stealth, ma’am. Every last bird.” Their big Chinook, two DAP Hawks—Black Hawks turned into the world’s most advanced gun platforms, and two Little Birds. The last wouldn’t be on this mission, and the crews hadn’t been called.

  “I see that,” she sounded a little breathless. “I’ve simply never heard of them.”

  “Must admit that we like it that way.”

  “It explains how,” she looked at him puzzled for a moment, as if surprised to find herself talking to him. “How you do what you do.”

  “That, and the best crew flying.” He still couldn’t believe that he was here. He supposed it was just being in the right place at the right time. After the Negev Desert disaster, they’d needed a new bird. The Army had provided them with the stealth configured Calamity Jane II and shipped them down to the 5E’s team at Fort Rucker. Their mission pace had doubled and the complexity as well. He’d always simply been glad to be flying, but in the 5E he’d become more than he’d ever imagined.

  And now, with Kelsey Killaney standing so close beside him that he could smell her fresh scent, like a strange winter flower, he started to understand just what he’d achieved. He was a goddamn flyer on the best bird in the sky, anywhere. Maybe, just maybe, he was good enough to stand next to a woman like her and not feel out of place.

  They were following the rest of the crew up the rear ramp of the Calamity Jane II, prepping it for the first leg of the flight.

  Her light brown hair was back in a severe ponytail that emphasized her large eyes. She was fair-skinned and had one of those smiles that looked as if it was always ready, even though she hadn’t used it yet that he’d seen. The fact that she worked for The Activity said she was screamingly intelligent—an assumption borne out by the concise style of her briefing. If smart was the new sexy, she was a chart breaker—not that she wasn’t by the old measure as well.

  He’d truly done his best to pay attention at the briefing, but it had been hit and miss. He’d managed to sit next to her, by the simple stratagem of holding out a chair for her. But, no matter what he did, he couldn’t get her to laugh. That hint of a smile hadn’t even shifted when he'd started a whole riff about personal grooming tips off Carmen’s mani-pedi remark—which was more Zoe the drone pilot’s thing than Carmen’s anyway.

  Danny and the Captain were already in their seats running through checklists. Carmen and George were still outside pulling off pitot tube and air intake covers. So he had a moment and intended to use every second of it to his advantage.

  “You need anything, ma’am? If so, I’m your man.” He tried not to wince. Smooth as descending staircase on a tricycle—a trick he’d only tried once, but possibly where he got his taste for flying. He was getting no points for subtlety on this effort.

  “Do you have a reality check somewhere?” Her question caused him to do a doubletake. So she did have a sense of humor behind her ever-so-serious facade.

  “Somewhere, sure.” Jason began patting the pockets of his flightsuit, peeked inside a couple of the pouches on his survival vest, and finally pulled a small pack of candy out of his medical supplies. “Will these do?”

  Her expression turned into a dangerous scowl, “Hell no!”

  He looked down to see if he’d mistakenly pulled out a grenade or a breaching charge, but he hadn’t. “Who doesn’t like Skittles?”

  She sighed and rested a hand on his arm a moment as if apologizing.

  Her fingers were almost delicate, but he could see a strength to them. She was so fit that he’d have guessed she was the sort who went to the high-end gym three times a week with a gaggle of girlfriends and had an impossibly handsome aerobics trainer named Julio—except that she was Activity. The agents from The Activity were just as likely to go into the field to gather their own intel from behind enemy lines as they were to work at a desk in Fort Belvoir. They were known for being ruthlessly competent. Another thing he liked in a woman. If competence was the new sexy, then—

  “Thanks for the offer and, yes, I do like Skittles. I just have this thing about Christmas, so thanks but no thanks.”

  He looked down at the little pack. It was clearly labeled Holiday Mix and showed only red and green flavors rather than the normal rainbow.

  “Seems like you’re putting a lot of weight on a little bit of seasonal packaging.”

  She nodded, “No argument from me. It’s the one topic I’m a complete lunatic on.”

  “Christmas?”

  “Christmas,” she confirmed as if it was an incursion by an entire battalion of Taliban.

  “Completely rational about everything else?”

  “Everything!” Kelsey’s tone was dry enough for him to laugh, which had several of the crew turning to look at him.

  He squinted at Carmen, who had just come aboard and was checking over the internal systems, and mouthed, “What?”

  Carmen shook her head, keeping her thoughts to herself, as she continued the pre-flight check.

  Fine!

  He tried to turn to give Carmen the cold shoulder, but she gave him an I-caught-you wink that blew his timing, even if he didn’t know what she was on about.

  “Even rational about men?” Jason turned back to Kelsey.

  “Always,” then she grimaced, “for what good it has ever done me.”

  “I’m not sure if I should ask if that’s a good sign or a bad one for me.”

  “As long as you’re wearing that hat? Bad sign.”

  He looked up enough to spot the white, furry trim just above his eyebrows and remembered the blinking Rudolph.

  “Nope,” he looked back down at her and made a point of shaking his head hard enough to make the little bell at the end tinkle brightly. “Even being a gorgeous Activity agent, I’m not giving up my hat for you.”

  “Your loss,” and finally that smile of hers came out. She did a quick turn and hair toss worthy of any disdainful supermodel, then strode up the cargo bay. But it was the smile that slayed him. From pretty to radiant faster than a heat-seeking missile.

  He could only wonder what it would take to make her smile like that again. Taking off his hat? No. She’d smiled while making a joke because he had it on. He’d stick with a winning hand
, no matter what she said about Christmas.

  There had to be a reason behind it, but he wasn’t sure how comfortable he felt digging for it with a complete stranger, no matter how attractive. It wasn’t just her beauty. Something in her drew him—deeply. Not a feeling he was used to.

  Done with the exterior inspection, George boarded as well and began checking his Minigun just as Carmen began going over hers. His own M240 hung out of the way in its bracket close by the rear ramp.

  Kelsey sat in the observer’s chair just behind the pilots’ seats. That should be safe, they were both married: the Captain to the unit’s hot Italian drone pilot and quiet Danny—impossibly—to the vivacious Carmen. The only other crew member was the portside gunner and George was too British to try poaching where Jason had showed interest.

  Out of excuses, Jason started his own preflight checks of the Calamity Jane II for a mission. Ammo full-stocked after the last mission was still fully stocked. Emergency supplies of food, water, and first aid were fully stocked and inside the refresh date. Enough to feed the whole crew for a week if they went down hard somewhere.

  Then he started in puzzling on Kelsey. She must have her own reasons for being so Bah Humbug! But it didn’t fit her. She seemed…happier than that.

  Quiet. Which among the screaming extroverts of the 5E must be a shock. But there was something more. As if—

  A high whine of fast-moving tires was all the warning he had to dodge out of the way before a pair of Polaris MRZRs came racing up the rear ramp. He jumped aside, clinging to the inside of the Chinook’s hull to stay clear. The MRZRs were four-seater ATVs on Special Operations steroids. Tough, lightweight, fast, electric-quiet, and able to carry a thousand pounds of soldier and gear at sixty miles an hour or scramble over rough terrain at twenty. Except instead of the usual Army tan, they’d been painted like blue and red hotrods. Blinking Christmas lights had been wound around the bars of the roll cage which didn’t make much sense unless…undercover as civilian hotrod dune buggies.