Target of Mine: The Night Stalkers 5E (Titan World Book 2) Read online

  Target of Mine

  a Night Stalkers 5E / Titan World romance

  M. L. Buchman

  Contents

  Also by M. L. Buchman

  Titles of the Titan World Project

  Letter from Cristin Harber

  Letter from M. L. Buchman

  Don’t Miss a Thing!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  If you enjoyed this title

  Also by M. L. Buchman

  Don’t Miss a Thing!

  Also by M. L. Buchman

  The Night Stalkers

  Main Flight

  The Night Is Mine

  I Own the Dawn

  Wait Until Dark

  Take Over at Midnight

  Light Up the Night

  Bring On the Dusk

  By Break of Day

  * * *

  White House Holiday

  Daniel’s Christmas

  Frank’s Independence Day

  Peter’s Christmas

  Zachary’s Christmas

  Roy’s Independence Day

  Damien’s Christmas

  * * *

  and the Navy

  Christmas at Steel Beach

  Christmas at Peleliu Cove

  * * *

  5E

  Target of the Heart

  Target Lock on Love

  Target of Mine

  Firehawks

  Main Flight

  Pure Heat

  Full Blaze

  Hot Point

  Flash of Fire

  Wild Fire

  * * *

  Smokejumpers

  Wildfire at Dawn

  Wildfire at Larch Creek

  Wildfire on the Skagit

  Delta Force

  Main Flight

  Target Engaged

  Heart Strike

  Angelo’s Hearth

  Where Dreams are Born

  Where Dreams Reside

  Maria’s Christmas Table

  Where Dreams Unfold

  Where Dreams Are Written

  Eagle Cove

  Return to Eagle Cove

  Recipe for Eagle Cove

  Longing for Eagle Cove

  Keepsake for Eagle Cove

  Deities Anonymous

  Cookbook from Hell: Reheated

  Saviors 101

  Dead Chef

  Swap Out!

  One Chef!

  Two Chef!

  SF/F Titles

  Nara

  Monk’s Maze

  The Me and Elsie Chronicles

  * * *

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  www.mlbuchman.com

  Titles of the Titan World Project

  in alphabetical order by author

  Flightpath by Amber Addison

  Going Under by Anna Bishop Barker

  Target of Mine by M. L. Buchman

  Where I Belong by Claudia Connor

  Rescued Heart by Tarina Deaton

  Deja Vu by Cristin Harber

  Twisted Desire by Sharon Kay

  Bullets and Bluebonnets by Jessie Lane

  Downtime by Karen Lawerence

  Edge of Temptation by Gennita Low

  Never Mine by Megan Mitcham

  Letter from Cristin Harber

  Dear Readers,

  Welcome to the Titan World books with stories ranging from military romance to paranormal to contemporary romance. There’s something for everyone—action-packed romance, swoon-worthy moments, and happily ever after!

  When I started the Titan series, I wanted to combine my love of steamy romance and action-packed suspense. I wrote strong men and women who I hoped readers would fall in love with. I can’t think of anything more exciting than opening my world up to very talented authors to extend that experience so that you, the reader, can have a deeper connection to more than one book series at a time.

  You will meet new characters and see them interact with familiar ones; you will also see the interpretation of the Titan universe through another author’s eyes. I hope that you take the time to experience each book in the Titan World series!

  I’m thrilled for you to read M. L. Buchman’s Target of Mine, where the elite military crew from the Night Stalkers 5E meet the Titan Group in an exciting and romantic ride. I first met M. L. in person at a novelist conference, and we began discussing our characters with such passion that I knew that our teams had to meet. He agreed! Our readers are in for a treat as our worlds collide.

  Thank you to M. L. Buchman and all the authors who took time out of their busy writing schedules to participate in this project. I think the result is something our military romance readers will find special.

  * * *

  Titan Hugs and Happy Reading,

  Cristin Harber

  Letter from M. L. Buchman

  Greetings!

  The main thing I remember about my first conversation with Cristin was that we both spent most of it laughing and saying, “I know!” We had so much fun talking about our characters, our stories, our families…I could have spent the whole conference just sitting and chatting with Cristin and ignored everything else.

  Then she suggested that we should collaborate on a project together. I made a few simple suggestions on how we could test the waters. Her answer was to leap in and suggested that I write a novel for her Titan World project.

  It’s the main thing we found in common. We both love romance, we both love action-packed suspense, but most especially we both love plunging into projects and discovering the joy of the characters and story.

  Getting a chance to play with Team Titan has been so much fun. I was captivated by the team leader, Jared Westin, and the woman who sweeps his feet out from under him—sometimes literally—Lily “Sugar” Chase. They were so unlike any character I had ever written, and yet I so enjoyed their story that I just had to tackle them.

  Target of Mine takes place shortly after Cristin’s Westin’s Chase. It is also the third title in my Night Stalkers 5E series but, as with all of my books, written completely to stand just fine on its own from either series.

  Thank you, Cristin and Team Titan, for letting the Night Stalkers come play!

  * * *

  Hope you enjoy the flight,

  M. L. Buchman

  2017, the Oregon Coast

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  * * *

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  Chapter One

  Rain sucked.

  Philippine September-monsoon rain really sucked.

  In a full flightsuit and helmet it was thick, hot, and disgustingly sweaty.

  Worse, it was creating mayhem with their midnight attack plan.

  Drake Roman hung on to his M134 Minigun with both hands as the Night Stalkers’ DAP Hawk helicopter Beatrix banked hard to avoid a hundred meters of island that came out of nowhere. The tactical readouts were sho
wing nothing but a wall of water thick enough to block most radar signals, and the infrared night vision was totally useless because everything was the same temperature—wet.

  His flight harness cut into his shoulders as he leaned against the turn. Levering himself forward, Drake stuck his head out the window, trying to see ahead through the unlit darkness. The rain was coming straight down, but the Hawk moved at over a hundred and fifty knots, so even in the slipstream of the hull, he couldn’t see squat as the rain drumbeat on his helmet.

  The crew chiefs’ seats faced to either side from close behind the two pilots’ seats. His Minigun was on a traveler that reached out the side window and gave him a full range of fire from directly sideways to straight ahead and from level to straight down.

  Right now he just wanted someone to aim it at.

  On the first pass, the other crew chief had taken a hit, a bad one by the sound of it. With Carl out of action, the pilots had twisted sideways, giving Drake the primary action side, so Carl was someone else’s problem. He had an aircraft to defend.

  Normally able to strike from a thousand meters away, tonight’s weather was forcing encounters to be up close and personal.

  “I’m in crew chief starboard seat,” a new voice announced on the intercom, “I’ve got Carl patched and sedated.” Anyone else, he wouldn’t have registered more than the fact that the position was occupied and Carl was alive. But Chief Petty Officer Nikita Hayward spoke with a smooth, soft Southern accent that had messed with him since the day he’d first met her on a mission a year before. Never did him any good, but damn he liked that voice.

  The wall of water broke—one instant in the midst of a biblical downpour, the next in clear air—to reveal a narrow beach and a high vertical cliff capped by dark jungle. Probably be dramatic as hell in the daytime. At night it was just another obstacle to not smash into. At the base was huddled a line of small boats.

  Less than a hundred meters above the sea and less than that from the soaring cliffs, the tactical readout inside his helmet’s visor finally painted a clear image.

  Tourist boat. Tourist boat…and another tourist boat. They were tied up just outside the surf line. Abandoned to the nightly monsoon, they’d be washed clean for tomorrow’s tourists who came to mob the dramatic beaches of Palawan Island, Philippines, along the South China Sea.

  Except it wasn’t only tourist boats huddled here tonight and the Night Stalkers of the 5th Battalion E Company had been waiting for just such a night to take care of a problem.

  Someone had made it abundantly clear to the Philippine military to not interfere in this region. The AFP had recently lost three helicopters, two boats, and twenty personnel before giving up.

  Drug-runner, gun-runner, pirate—it didn’t matter. Tonight was the night they were going down.

  Technically, the US couldn’t help, at least not in any obvious way. They couldn’t admit to attacking any Philippine nationals without putting their new military base leases at risk. The Philippine government had given the US military access to five new bases in addition to Subic Bay with the understanding that they’d help defend the country, not attack it.

  Regrettably, the local criminal element didn’t feel the need to honor any such unspoken agreement. The 5E were her to give them a lesson tonight in the hazards of ignoring that.

  The 5th Battalion E Company was here because they specialized in never-having-been-there operations.

  Tourist boat…tourist bo—

  The next boat flared with heat signatures of ten people on a night when no one in their right mind would be afloat. Hard radar returns, as if their boat was loaded with more than tourists or local fish. There was metal on that boat, a lot of it.

  He saw the hot flash of gunfire from yet another boat just emerging out of the curtain-like edge of the deluge. Multiple targets.

  The bastards had already taken the first shots, hitting Carl more by chance than skill—which satisfied the 5E’s rules of engagement for this mission: do not fire first. They hadn’t.

  But paybacks were about to be delivered.

  Big time.

  Chapter Two

  What the hell did you guys do to my helicopter?” The mechanic was practically screaming. Like he’d never seen a shot-up helo before.

  Nikita stood off to the side of the hangar next to a long folding table, checking through her gear. It was late afternoon and the four helicopters of the 5E had just unloaded from the C-5A Galaxy transport. After the long flight home, they’d been reassembled and then hopped to the 5E’s private corner of Mother Rucker. Fort Rucker, Alabama, had gained that name for the brutal standards of the Army flight instructors stationed here and, even though Nikita wasn’t part of the 5E, she’d adopted the name.

  “She only has a few holes in her,” Drake Roman protested loudly. “Beatrix done good!”

  “Thirty-two,” another mechanic, this one with a clipboard, spoke up. “Thirty-two holes. Who knows how much damage to internal systems we’ll find when we peel off the skins. If it wasn’t a Black Hawk, you’d be dead.”

  By Nikita’s estimation, that count was low for a standard mission with the 5E, but mechanics enjoyed whining. Besides, they didn’t count the holes that had been put in Carl.

  “Told you she done good,” Drake patted the side of the damaged helicopter.

  The helicopter wasn’t the only one who’d done good. Nikita had flown a half dozen missions with the 5E over the last year and they were becoming her favorite assignment. They weren’t designated as a Special Mission Unit, unlike her own DEVGRU SEAL Team 6, but they should be. Most of the time Delta Force and DEVGRU didn’t get anywhere without tapping the Night Stalkers of the 160th SOAR.

  The Special Operations Aviation Regiment delivered her team wherever they needed to go, and always showed up to get them back out no matter what unholy hell was breaking loose. Of them all, the 5E was both the smallest and the most effective. They only had four helicopters: a monstrous twin-rotor Chinook, the lethal DAP Hawk, and a pair of Little Bird attack helos. And they were all stealth rigged—making them some of the rarest helicopters anywhere. They also had one of the most advanced drones yet produced for their exclusive use.

  To her knowledge, the only other company who rated any stealth rotorcraft was the 5th Battalion D Company and the 5D only had two. Which was how the 5E rated their own private corner at Ech Stagefield on Mother Rucker whenever they were home. These assets were best kept hidden.

  “What is wrong with those people?” Drake stood directly across the folding tables she’d set up to sort her gear. He stood only a few inches taller than her own five-ten. He was lean, but soldier fit with dark eyes and darker hair. And he was pissed.

  “Why do you feel so defensive about your aircraft?” Nikita went back to sorting her ammo to determine how much she needed for restock. For some reason, which her commander Luke Altman wasn’t sharing, he and she had returned with the 5E. Usually they would do what the rest of the SEAL Team had done, just melt away after a mission. Standard protocol was to go back to the DEVGRU base at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia and do a full breakdown of the mission to extract lessons learned. Then start into skills training while waiting for the next call-up.

  “Because she did great!” Drake apparently just needed to rant, so she let him. He’d get down to what was actually bothering him eventually. He turned back to glare at the mechanics.

  That’s when she recognized the stain pattern on the back of his flightsuit. The outline of the crew chief’s seat back was marked across the fabric—clean where the seat back had been, dark brown where Drake’s arms and shoulders had stuck out beyond the edges of the seat.

  Carl’s blood-spray pattern. There’d been a lot of it.

  She’d stabilized him with a tourniquet around the stump of his mostly missing arm. And a pressure patch to the mess that was his other shoulder. Glue to close a few more holes. He was still listed as critical at the Antonio Bautista Air Base hospital in the Philippines.
The chances of Drake Roman’s fellow crew chief ever leaving there except in a box were slim.

  Nikita remembered what Lieutenant Commander Altman had done for her on a similar occasion.

  She walked over to the unlocked weapons cabinet where the team had been stashing their mission weapons. She grabbed a pair of MK11 sniper rifles, slipped on suppressors, and took a couple boxes of ammo.

  “Hey, Roman!”

  “What?”

  When he turned, she threw one of the rifles to him.

  He caught it and looked down at it in surprise. “What?”

  “You once said that you wish you could shoot like I did.”

  “Uh huh.” He’d been her rear guard during a Peruvian mission a few months ago. Six targets, all out past fifteen hundred meters. She’d taken down all six before they figured out what was happening. It’s what SEAL snipers were trained for.

  “Well, it’s never gonna happen.”

  That earned her a perplexed smile. “Great. So what’s with the rifle?”

  “I figure that I can’t make you a worse shot than you already are, so anything has to be an improvement.”

  He laughed. It was bitter, but it was a laugh. He was one of the top helicopter gunners anywhere. But a Minigun wasn’t a sniper weapon—it was a blunderbuss.

  “Besides,” she stepped out of the shadows into the sunlight and so-familiar heavy heat of the late Alabama afternoon, “I figure I should get you out of here before the mechanic shoots you, or the other way round.”

  “Fine.”

  Drake tried to shake off the tightness in his shoulders but wasn’t having much luck with it. They felt as if he was turning into the hunchback of Notre Dame. He had no idea why he was being so twitchy.