The Complete Delta Force Shooters Read online

  The Complete Delta Force Shooters

  a military romantic suspense story collection

  M. L. Buchman

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  Contents

  About This Book

  Introduction

  Sound of Her Warrior Heart

  For Her Dark Eyes Only

  Love’s Second Chance

  What the Heart Holds Safe

  Her Silent Heart and the Open Sky

  Last Words

  If you enjoyed that,

  About the Author

  Also by M. L. Buchman

  About This Book

  Join M. L. Buchman for this five-story collection about the snipers of the elite Delta Force.

  Praise for M. L.’s Delta Force series:

  “The contemporary standard bearer of military romance.”

  “Top 10 Romance of the Year.”

  “A romantic adrenaline junkie’s kind of book.”

  M. L. will lead you through each story with brand-new introductions, their origins, and why they were written.

  Discover tales of danger, adventure, and ever-lasting love with the top fighters anywhere.

  Five great reads for one amazing price.

  Introduction

  I started writing about Delta Force in 2008 when Colonel Michael Gibson stepped onto the scene in an early draft of The Night Is Mine (The Night Stalkers #1). It was easy to become intrigued by these unconventional warriors.

  They were unconventional in every way.

  In a military built around massive, highly structured elements (especially in the 1970s), the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta was structured around very small teams. They replaced force with speed, intense planning with intense training, and military convention with operating way outside any envelope ever seen outside the British SAS that they were based on.

  For years, the US military fought against using Delta’s capabilities, but in our changing world and its changing wars, Delta proved that counter terrorism was far from their only strength. Their ability to react effectively on “no notice” situations turned them into the stiletto in a military built around battle-hammer thinking.

  I became fascinated.

  These were the warrior elite that every other military unit either aspires to or fears down to their boots.

  I’ve written many Delta Force novels and stories, trying to bring a civilian’s understanding to their motivations and their lives. They may be the most elite fighters in any military, but they are still people. It is easy to label such forces simply as “other.”

  Years ago, I had a couple beers and a lot of fiery-hot Buffalo wings at the actual Anchor Bar where they were created. The friend who took me there talked about how being a cop (and his wife’s role as a nurse) made them “other.”

  “No matter who we meet, at a party or in the grocery store, they see us as outside their society. We aren’t treated as people; we’re treated as ‘cop’ and ‘nurse’.”

  It would take me a decade to find where to tell that story. I thought it would be when writing about the elite helicopter pilots of the 160th SOAR Night Stalkers. But it was Delta Force who were the ultimate extreme warriors. And it was in telling their stories that I found a place to explore “otherness.”

  As to why these five stories for this collection; Delta Force serves many roles within their elite niche. And this expanded far beyond their original counter-terrorism mandate.

  One of those roles is that they’re perhaps the best snipers anywhere. There are others, the US Marine Corps Scout Sniper comes easily to mind, but the tiny Delta Force (of perhaps 1,200 operators) annually shoots more rounds than all of the US Marine Corps (182,000 personnel) combined.

  Practice may not make perfect, but it sure helps.

  Most estimates state that a US military action fires between ten- and fifty-thousand rounds per kill. (Some reports place that number as high as a quarter-million.)

  Delta Force is estimated to have a shot-to-kill on the scale of five to ten (not thousand, just five to ten). And that includes the fact that they prefer to use three rounds per target as extra insurance.

  But the other part of being a sniper, and the biggest impact on the one former sniper I spoke with, was that a sniper sees their target. It’s often not a battle. It’s not a firefight. They choose a target, see them, in extreme cases may get to know a great deal about them, and then they kill that individual.

  All of these factors combined into the telling of these stories. I wanted to look at what drove these shooters to be able to do that. And how did it affect them.

  In these five romance tales, I hope that I also have come even a little bit close to capturing that for you.

  Sound of Her Warrior Heart

  Delta Force operator Katrina Melman’s hearing goes missing when her mission gets blown away. But she’s Delta, the Army doesn’t pay her to fail.

  Sergeant Tomas Gallagher, the best soldier she’s ever met, only speaks to her in sharp commanding tones. Now she can’t hear him at all.

  Only together can they complete the mission if they hope to find the Sound of Her Warrior Heart.

  Introduction

  This story was born out of a curious debate with a friend, just how many nations are there in the world?

  You would think this was a very straightforward question. Yes, it might change with time as one country is annexed or another breaks free, but it’s a known number.

  Except it isn’t.

  The UN states there are 193 countries and two “observer states” (Vatican City and Palestine). According to a 2019 article by Stratfor, there are:

  five more that have been recognized by at least one UN member

  three to six others that are self-declared countries

  206 nations eligible for the Olympics

  211 who can compete in the FIFA soccer World Cup

  249 on the ISO Standards list (you know, CH, JP, NZ, US, UK, etc.)

  One of the self-declared countries that is only recognized by three other non-UN countries is Transnistria. The UN classifies it as a part of Moldova; it lies between that country and Ukraine. They declared independence in 1990, which everyone around them declared was invalid, but neither was any action ever taken to reannex them.

  So I had my setting, a strange little landlocked slice of a country. Their culture and heritage is very Russian, quite distinct from Moldova’s Romanian roots. Perhaps Moldova doesn’t want them back.

  Because I write so much about aircraft and airports, that led me to their tiny, archaic air force, marooned at their lone, non-functioning airport.

  But it also led me to another setting that I discovered they had in Transnistria. Six years earlier, I had greatly enjoyed writing in Where Dreams Are Born about a vineyard. In the months before this story, I had also written the Delta Force #3 novel Wild Justice, in which my heroine owns a vineyard that they visit in the middle of the book.

  Here was a chance to return to these two lovely settings, but in a quite different fashion—in battle.

  The final element that shaped this tale came from myself. Even with hearing aids, I don’t hear terribly well. I’ve often thought about what would happen if I were to totally lose my hearing.

  I gave that challenge to my heroine warrior, and there I opened the story.

  1

  Purple.

  A purple so deep that it made her think of the purest fresh-
pressed grape juice.

  Purple grapes. Round globes of color so dark that they ate the brilliant sunlight until they were almost black.

  Green leaves. Impossibly blue sky.

  Katrina knew something was wrong, but it took her a moment to identify what was missing.

  Birds. There should be birdsong. Her family’s vineyard was never quiet when the grapes were so close to harvest. This late in the season the bees had moved on to more flowery pastures, but the birds should be singing, arguing, playing.

  Funny, she didn’t recognize this row of vines, she thought she knew them all.

  It was hard to care, though. She’d always loved to lie on the rich soil between the rows of vines and stare at the deeply blue sky. She rarely spent that time thinking about the future or the past. In her memories it hadn’t been about some boy either. Of course when the boys came along, she’d spent less time alone in the vineyard watching the sky. No, the vineyard was always about the present moment.

  A thread of black smoke slid across the blue sky. Burning a slash pile? Too early in the season for that. The summer was still hot and dry.

  She reached a hand up through the silence to pluck a grape. They looked ripe enough that half the cluster might fall into her palm at the lightest touch.

  Except she didn’t recognize the hand. They weren’t her slender teenage fingers. Where was the silver thumb ring that Granny had given her at twelve that had finally moved to her middle finger at fourteen?

  This hand was strong, with a shooter’s callus on the webbing between thumb and forefinger. And why was the hand, her hand covered in red, sticky…blood?

  A face intervened between her and her view of sky, grape leaves, hand…blood?

  It was a hard, male face.

  One that needed a shave.

  It should have alarmed her that he was so close, but she knew him. Or thought she should. He wore a close-fitting military helmet and anti-glare glasses. She flexed her jaw and could feel the familiar pressure of the strap of her own helmet. Squinching her nose revealed that she too wore sunglasses.

  Why did they need helmets to lie in the vineyard to watch the grapes ripen in the sunshine? She didn’t like sunglasses, they changed the color of the blue sky. She tried looking around the edges, but they were wrap-around, just like his.

  He was familiar.

  Very familiar.

  But never from this close. That wasn’t normal.

  His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear a thing.

  “What?”

  He clamped a hard hand over her mouth and his lips made a “Shh!” shape, but she couldn’t hear anything.

  She studied his lips.

  Words. They were forming words.

  Kat! Are you okay? Not Katrina. Kat wasn’t a family nickname. Always her full name in the Melman family. Miss Katrina to the Mexican field hands as if her family were lords and ladies rather than third-generation Oregon vineyard owners.

  Sure she was okay. Though it was weird to have the face asking it silently, especially that face. She associated it with a cold, emotionless tone that could slice concrete.

  But why wouldn’t she be okay? She was lying in a lovely vineyard, the sun warming her face while she watched purple grapes, blue sky, and black smoke from a slash pile fire. It was expanding though. Maybe the fire was out of control.

  The bloody hand was still bothering her.

  And the silence.

  Maybe she wasn’t okay.

  Maybe she’d been—

  The memory slammed in like the blast of a mortar.

  Which was exactly what had happened.

  2

  Sergeant Katrina Melman suddenly remembered the feeling of flying.

  There had been the high whistle of an incoming mortar round. She and Tomas—who she always teased about abandoning his name’s poor H somewhere along the way, cruelly leaving it to wander the world on its own—had dropped flat in the vineyard and offered up a quick prayer for the round to land somewhere else.

  It had partially worked. Rather than a direct hit, the force of the blast had merely thrown her aside, slamming her into a line of grape vines. The burnt sulfur smell of exploded TNT overwhelmed the sweet grapes and rich soil.

  Pain was starting to report in. Abused muscles, the nasty gash on her hand, but nothing felt broken.

  “I think I’m okay.”

  Tomas shushed her again. Again she had to concentrate on his lips to figure out which words he was speaking silently. You’re shouting.

  “I am?”

  Again the hand clamped over her mouth.

  The silence. The echoing silence. The world hadn’t gone quiet. Her hearing had gone instead.

  Deaf.

  When she nodded her understanding, Tomas eased off his hold on her. He mouthed out some long sentence that she had no hope of unraveling, especially as he kept looking away to scan the vineyard, hiding his mouth in the process.

  “I can’t hear you,” she tried to make it a whisper.

  Tomas spun back to face her and winced.

  Unable to hear herself, she’d lost all calibration of her volume.

  You can’t? Tomas’ lips moved, but she heard nothing—not even the proverbial pin. At least she was fairly sure that’s what he’d said. Lipreading was something they taught undercover types. She was a shooter.

  Katrina stuck with just shaking her head.

  Shit! No problem reading that. With quick rough hands he began inspecting her.

  She slapped his hands aside then sat up, and wished she hadn’t. Every muscle screamed—silently—in protest. She began inspecting herself. Everything moved when she tried it. A quick pat-down revealed no sources of blood other than her hand.

  Tomas bound that quickly enough, using the medkit that hung from his vest.

  Armored vest.

  Field.

  Mortar.

  She looked around and spotted her rifle tangled in one of the grapevines. She slid it out and it appeared none the worse for having been blown up.

  “That makes one of us who’s okay,” she whispered to her baby. The MK21 Precision Sniper Rifle was fifty-two inches and eighteen pounds of silent death that let her “reach out and touch someone” over a mile away. It was her reason for being—her role in Delta Force. Her role in—

  Moldova. She and her rifle had been blown up in a vineyard in the Eastern European country sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania. Except no one was supposed to know they were here. They—

  Tomas slammed her down to the ground and lay on top of her and her rifle. She could feel by the rigidity of his body that he wasn’t dead. He was bracing over her like a human shield. For half a moment she thought she finally saw a bird flying across the sky. A falcon swooping on its prey. An…incoming round!

  She felt the ground buck against her back from the explosion. The air blast hit against the far side of the vines, peppering the two of them with hundreds of grapes blown off the vines. The vintner was going to be furious.

  Tomas pushed back to kneeling beside her.

  We’ve… but Tomas turned away and she missed the rest of his sentence. It was as if he didn’t want to look at her after lying full length upon her a moment before. They were both wearing combat vests, making it one of the unsexiest moments ever, but she got the feeling he was still embarrassed by it.

  Sitting up, she grabbed the helmet straps on either side of his jaw and turned him back to face her.

  “What did you say?” Katrina struggled to keep it soft. Tomas didn’t reprimand her so she must have succeeded. “I’m deaf.”

  His eyes widened briefly. Then he grabbed her head, his powerful hands strong but gentle along her cheeks, and turned it to either side to inspect her ears.

  No blood, his lips formed the words quickly, but she hoped she got it right.

  She heaved out a sigh of relief at his words. Good. That was good. No dribbling blood meant that maybe her eardrums were still intact.

  He made a sharp
slicing motion to the west with a flat hand. Right. They needed to get moving. He signaled reminders to stay low and go down the center of the path—jostling a vine might give away their changing position.

  At her nod, he led off.

  Stepping out, she walked straight into a grapevine.

  She scooted to the middle of the path and tried again.

  This time she plunged into the grapes the next row over.

  It wasn’t vertigo, she’d had that induced during training and learned how to fire through it. Besides, vertigo always made you spin in the same direction. With her ears out of operation, her balance was off.

  Tomas grabbed her arm and, though it felt like he was pulling her hard to the right, they progressed straight down the aisle of dirt between two rows of green leaves with her weaving like a drunkard.

  Fifteen seconds later she felt the air thump against her back as a mortar killed the poor grapevines she’d stumbled into. Whoever was firing at them was good.

  3

  By the end of the row, she began to get a feel for how to counteract her balance problems.

  Tomas yanked her down to the soil, scanning the terrain ahead. He might be a hardcore pain in the ass, but she couldn’t ask for a better soldier to be at her side. There was no better man to be in a tight situation with in Delta. She’d tried to talk to him in camp, but he always gave her the cold shoulder, with a voice that could be used to chill a meat locker. However, on assignment, he guarded her like a mother hen or big brother. He was the best soldier, and she’d always been drawn to the best, but for some reason he wouldn’t even give her the time of day once they were back in a green zone.