I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers Read online

  Dilyana took a breath, blanked her face, raised her chin, and turned to the man. But she’d have a real challenge, no one had missed her initial delight. She held up a single forefinger.

  Then she bent it down at the knuckle. One half.

  The merchant laughed. With a shake, he unfurled the scarf. Leaning over the table, he secured it over Dilyana’s hair with a practiced twist and shooed them all away from his table.

  Thunderstruck, Dilyana reached up a tentative hand to touch it. To stroke it.

  How could Kee thank him? Money would be wrong. She started to reach across the table, but the Professor stopped her before she started.

  He reached across and clasped the man’s hand firmly. They exchanged manly nods that apparently crossed every culture. Then they merged into the flow and were drawn forward again.

  “He couldn’t touch you. You are not his wife. It is forbidden.”

  Dilya led them this time, straight to a kebab stall.

  “The girl is hollow.”

  As they exited the constant flow of the market to stop at the food stall, Kee noticed.

  The Professor once again held her hand.

  She didn’t find herself complaining.

  ***

  When Kee headed to bed, she found Dilyana sitting cross-legged on the cot. Across her lap lay the green and blue scarf the merchant had given her that morning.

  She stroked it until it lay without fold or wrinkle. A sea of color overflowing her lap.

  Kee watched as the girl reached out tentative fingers to stroke the cloth. To rub her knuckles across its fine-woven surface.

  Kee knew the gesture. Knew it from her own past. The first new clothes she’d ever received had been a pair of sneakers Dave Bailey had stolen for her when she was twelve, just about Dilya’s age. Bright red Converse. White laces, eyelets, and side rubber. She’d been mesmerized just as Dilya was now. And he’d earned her first real kiss as a reward.

  Was the scarf Dilya’s first-ever new clothes?

  It was. Kee knew it.

  Well, one other thing she knew for certain.

  It wouldn’t be the girl’s last.

  Chapter 14

  “Leave?” Kee almost choked on her glass of milk.

  “Yes!” Big John slapped his tray down beside her. “The 10th Mountain, with a little help from the 160th because we are so friggin’ awesome—”

  He raised a high five that she slapped more out of habit than enthusiasm.

  “Cut a serious swath through the bad guys with that op the other night. They captured and cleared ammo dumps in all three villages as well as a midnight mule-train of inbound resupply from our supposed allies here in Pakistan. We hang for a week to make sure it stays quiet, then we get ten days stateside.”

  Crazy Tim dropped down beside Archie. “Suuuweeet! We bad!” He and Big John high-fived across the table with a smack loud enough to really sting.

  “They are also experiencing,” Archie said as he began unloading his tray onto the table, “month three of a drought and therefore money is very tight.”

  Dilya inspected the Professor’s dishes on the bare table, actually ran a finger over her plastic tray and then over the table. After looking at the tip of her finger, she checked that everyone else kept their plates on their trays and decided that’s what she’d do, too.

  Kee did her best to hide the smile at what the girl was learning and deciding. Both the tray and the table were probably cleaner than any surface she’d ever eaten from before.

  “They’re in desperate times. What little they have will be used to purchase food,” Archie continued. “It will take some time to save sufficient funds for enough ammunition to stage another assault. Might remain quiet for a couple months, which would allow our troops to perform some significant cleanup with a minimum of pain.”

  “What’re you supposed to do with ten days leave?” Kee poked at the venison Hungarian goulash the sadistic cook had made. The taste was excellent, not gamey at all, but it scorched going down. A hot and hearty meal while it was still half a jillion degrees outside and at least a quarter jillion inside.

  “Goin’ stateside, see my dad, and tie on a good one together,” Big John offered. “Work on this old GTO I’m rebuilding. See if Darlene or Maggie or Jennifer ain’t hitched yet and might wanna do a little dancing. Oh, yeah. Suuuweeet!” Another resounding cross-table high five.

  Dilya tried reaching across the table to get a high five from Big John. He offered a gentle slap as Archie leaned out of the way to give her more room. Didn’t have the loud pop the guys achieved, but Dilya seemed very pleased.

  “I’m gonna go home, and Ma and I, we’re gonna cook.” Crazy Tim made stirring motions with his hands. “Cook for the whole family.”

  “You cook?” Kee managed to put a decent scoff in her voice without choking on all these happy family images.

  “Not as good as the Major, but yeah.”

  “The Major cooks?”

  Everyone at the table turned to stare at her.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you ever watch the news?”

  “Only if there isn’t something better on.” Which would be anything. She used to watch the tube every chance as a kid and dream about living in the worlds they showed. But now that she’d escaped the streets and knew better, she’d stopped watching. On top of that, she got so sick of the American news. Fashion and celebrities over war she could understand, but there was a whole world of politics and economics outside the U.S. border that they completely ignored. Censorship by omission on an amazing scale.

  Car breaks down on the Brooklyn Bridge got more coverage than the 2nd Infantry gutting a key insurgent stronghold and four Americans going home in body bags. If asked to name the top alliances around the globe, how many would get past NAFTA and NATO? Would anyone even know about the G8 if it weren’t for those idiots who had rioted in Seattle? Certainly not through the American news. ASEAN, the AU, and the SCO wouldn’t be on any American news map and they were huge powers.

  “Major Beale cooks like a demoness.” Crazy Tim made a wide gesture that Archie ducked out of practice. “CNN came out and did a piece on her that got world play. Ended up at the White House kitchen to protect the First Lady. Personally saved the Commander-in-Chief’s life. Any of this soundin’ familiar? What rabbit hole you been hidin’ in?”

  Kee blinked. It was all she could do. She’d heard the story. Seen the tape of the flights. One with an injured pilot and one with an injured chopper. Hell, either one they should’ve plummeted out of the sky like a brick and augered a hole halfway to China. Kee recalled that the pilot had been shot in the helmet and the arm, too.

  She remembered the crease she’d seen that first day in the Major’s helmet. She’d landed the helicopter after being shot in the head. And it was the most amazing flying she’d ever seen, though she hadn’t connected that the pilot was Major Beale.

  “She cooks, too,” was all Kee managed.

  Even though she wasn’t a pilot, she’d seen the tapes of those two flights dozens of times. All the chopper pilots in the room going silent and moving closer every time the tapes were played, never tiring of it. Half of them working phantom controls as if trying to figure out what she’d done to stay aloft in a crippled chopper. The woman really could fly like that. No put-on.

  That meant she really had earned the Silver Star. And she cooked. Kee could heat an MRE, maybe cook pasta if the pressure really came on, but half the time that turned out as a single chunk of gluey crap. Was there anything the woman couldn’t do? When Big John said that the best man at the Majors’ wedding had been the President, did he mean of the United States?

  “Yeah,” Tim continued as if she hadn’t just been hit by a bunker-buster bomb. “She cooked for us a lot during the winter when the Hindu Kush was snowed in and it all went quiet up there. We’ve been a bit busy lately.”

  Kee nodded since she certainly couldn’t speak yet.

  “My family owns a restaur
ant chain. We’re in D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia so far. ‘Paulo’s Island.’ The best.”

  Kee managed a whistle. Or tried to between lips gone dry. She’d eaten there twice. Amazing food. Pretty high end, too. Both times glad the date was paying. And she’d taken Crazy Tim for street. Wasn’t anyone who they seemed?

  “So what’s with the Army?” She managed to find her voice. “Why not cooking?”

  Tim shrugged and dug into his goulash. “Dad was in Desert Storm, his dad in ’Nam, his in WWII. Part of what we do, cook for the troops. I signed up for my two years as a cook, but Army thinking put me in the air. Got hooked. Stayed in and worked my way to SOAR. No going back now. Open my own place when I retire.”

  No one ever mentioned that they were in the most dangerous occupation on the planet and SOAR wasn’t a one-tour gig. It was a career slot at any level. Survival that long was maybe a sixty-forty bet. Maybe as good as eighty-twenty, but no one ever took that kind of money in a combat zone. It simply wasn’t talked about, just part of the price you paid.

  When she turned her questioning look on Archie, he shrugged.

  “I was considering flying to the Aviano, Italy, air base, then taking a train over to the Amalfi coast. Perhaps renting a boat and doing a little cruising. What are your plans?” He had that puppy-dog look in his eyes again. How was she supposed to read that?

  No way was he hooked after one little kiss and holding her hand in the market. And he hadn’t offered another kiss when they’d returned from the market. She wouldn’t have minded testing again to see if the heat remained, that sharp initial shock that had radiated from the briefest brush of lips. Officer and enlisted, better that he hadn’t offered the temptation. But a part of her wanted to know why not. Wanted to know pretty badly.

  Maybe she’d been too distracted as she and Dilya had been making a game of being coy behind their new scarves, taking turns peeking and hiding from each other around the edge. She hadn’t missed Archie’s hand until they were already back at camp and he’d departed for his quarters. Besides, absolutely no way was she messing around with an officer, especially not in her crew. Double threat.

  Even now, sitting at the table, she could feel the heat of that moment-long kiss. No way was she going to tell how it had knocked her socks off. A kiss always meant sex to come, fast and rough and exactly the way she liked it. His kiss had been so gentle she’d barely felt it, at least not on her lips. Her toes, however, had curled up like a happy cat’s and her body, instead of switching to full auto-fire, had gone all quiet.

  The same way that his hand in hers felt safe. Just quiet and safe. Something she never felt around men. Voracious maybe, but not quiet and safe.

  “I…” She had nowhere to go. The Army was her home. For leave, she typically stayed on the base, went out to movies and restaurants, picked up some local entertainment for a night or two between the sheets.

  Dilyana watched her. Had followed the conversation as it batted around the table a couple times, understanding next to nothing of course, but surely keying in that something interesting was afoot and Kee wasn’t as happy as everyone else.

  “I can’t leave Dilya. We’ll just stay here.” She gave the girl a smile, thankful for the excuse of such an easy solution. “We’ll be fine.”

  Big John and Crazy Tim looked puzzled. Of course they would. Chance to go stateside to family and friends. Let’s see, Kee could go down Dog Alley and see if Hank still ran the meth shop out of the bakery’s basement, or up to the Boulevard to see if Celia had another abortion yet because her pimp kept her too stoned to remember to take the pill. Not so much.

  She smiled at them, reached across, and squeezed Dilya’s hand for a moment, getting a smile and a return squeeze.

  “No papers. She can’t cross borders. We’ll have a good time.”

  Archie shook his head. “They want the crew to decompress. The Major won’t like it.”

  “I won’t like what?”

  Major Emily Beale set her tray down beside Dilya. The little girl looked up at her, not with fear, Kee was glad to see. She’d been pretty jumpy the first few days, except around the Professor. Calmer, steadier now as she started to relax around the rest of the crew.

  “Where are you going for leave?” Kee dove for a subject change. Not much of a shift, but at least the focus would be elsewhere.

  “Mark has this crazy idea that I want to go ride horses on his parents’ ranch in Montana. Camping and fishing too, if you can imagine.” Her smile belied her slightly sarcastic tone. “As long as he guts the fish, it should be okay.”

  She took a chunk of the crusty white bread, dipped it in her goulash, and tore off a bite with those perfect teeth of hers.

  “What won’t I like?” The woman didn’t miss anything.

  Dilyana turned from the Major to inspect her own bowl of food. Glancing back, she imitated the process of dunking the bread and biting it off. She waited for the Major to do it again and did her best to get the timing and motion the same.

  The Major ran a hand over Dilya’s head and down her long, dark hair to acknowledge the girl’s attention without looking away from Kee.

  “I’m going to stay here for leave. Don’t have anywhere to go.” She bit her tongue hard. She’d never meant to say that. Especially not in front of Archie.

  The attention of the others, which had mercifully begun to drift away, now snapped back. In addition to Crazy Tim and Mr. Big Bad, Dusty James and Lieutenant Richardson from Henderson’s bird were looking at her oddly from their places farther down the table. And Mr. Professor Puppy-Dog was back in Archie’s eyes.

  “Uh, Dilya can’t leave anyway. And I don’t have anyone else to dump her on.” That sounded bitter, even on her own tongue. “Anyone to leave her with.” Not much better. “I don’t want to leave her.”

  The Major’s eyes, which had darkened for a moment, cleared as Kee crawled out of her verbal hole.

  “Is that last the most accurate?”

  Kee nodded. “I just wouldn’t trust anyone else with her.”

  “She that much trouble?”

  “No, ma’am. But no one cares about her like—” Kee had to bite it off again. She couldn’t believe what she’d been about to say. She’d gotten through life by being very careful not to care about anyone other than Kee Smith.

  The Major dipped a spoon into her venison goulash. Dilya had clearly been torn between waiting to imitate the Major and her own hunger. With the sudden release, she attacked her dinner. After a few spoonfuls she looked sheepishly at Kee.

  “Dilya know. Asta-asta.” And she slowed down but kept at it.

  “I’d given that some thought. Hoped you might feel that way.” The Major wiped her mouth neatly on her napkin. Dilya dropped her spoon and mirrored.

  Her gesture had been a little too dainty and had left a splash along her chin. Kee took her own napkin, reached across the table, and scrubbed Dilya’s entire face in a single playful sweep that both teased and gave Kee the chance to clear the missed spot. Dilya batted at Kee’s hands and giggled. Not quite a laugh, but good.

  “Are you willing to keep taking care of her?”

  “I’m sure not taking her to any refugee camp like Jali.” That Kee was absolutely clear about.

  “What about family?” The Major kept her blue eyes locked on Kee. Dilya caught on that there was something important going on and it was probably about her. She slowed her eating further, but didn’t stop, and once again began following the words back and forth. Kee could see the scared rabbit coming back to the surface. It still took very little for the survival instinct of the feral girl she’d first met to resurface. Kee knew from personal experience it would be years before that would go away, and it never left completely.

  The rest of the table followed the conversation in silence. No way to make this private.

  “From what I’ve been able to find out, her parents are gone. After three villages were blown out from beneath them, they tried to cross the mountains. I
’m guessing they were Uzbek living in Afghanistan and trying to get home. Got lost, really lost in the mountains, ending up where we found her near Asmar. They appear to have been noncombatants. My best guess is, mother and father dead from stray fire.”

  Dilya made the kwaa-ping noise of a round snapping by your ear so accurately that everyone at the table jumped, including the Major. Right, “mother,” “father,” and “dead” were in Dilya’s limited vocabulary. Poor kid. Lousy way to start learning a new language. Her food now sat before her completely forgotten.

  Kee was the first to recover her voice. “If she has other family, she doesn’t know about it. She has nowhere to go. Something we have in common.”

  Again, unintentional truth. Kept happening around the Major. Kee had no shields around the woman. She’d never have said that to a male commander or one of the guys, but the Major somehow drew it out of her.

  And Archie watched her. No disappointment. No dismissal. All she saw was sympathy and pity. Well, she didn’t need anyone’s pity.

  Kee had met lots of grunts for whom the Army was the only escape from the street. Fewer as she climbed, though. Airborne, Special Forces, Green Beret, SOAR, each level had weeded out another group. Being street tough didn’t cut it here. Dedicated wasn’t enough either.

  You had to want it so bad it became an obsession. And you had to be way smarter than the average bear. Anyone at this level packed an extra language or three, survival training, and a lot of other useful knowledge. Kee could fix and fire anything from an M9 Baretta to a Hellfire missile. That was her specialty, things that go bang. But she could also take apart most of a helicopter and might figure out how to get it back in the air despite not having all the replacement parts. If you were down and no medics were around, she could get you stabilized so you survived until medevac. And while comm wasn’t her specialty, she could get in touch if she had to with whatever kind of radio wasn’t shot up including Morse code with an infrared beacon.