Bring On the Dusk Read online

  Merchant was obviously the other transport Little Bird, so she moved up into formation beside it. The pilot waggled his bird side to side to wave hello. She answered in kind. Nice to be welcome despite being the late arrival to the party.

  Whoever was giving the orders was pilot in command, not the remote Air Mission Controller. The only female DAP pilot she knew of was Chief Warrant Lola Maloney. There were only five women in SOAR, but Claudia hadn’t tried to keep track of them. Actually, she’d purposely tried not to. They were in combat and she’d been in training, so by ignoring them, she’d felt freer to simply drive herself to be the very best. She was used to making her own way, had been doing it since she was a little kid.

  Still, now that she’d made it, it might be nice to have another woman in the same company she was going to.

  She hadn’t really thought about that.

  Claudia was only the sixth woman of SOAR, fifth now that Major Emily Beale had retired. She’d applied for the 5th Battalion, D Company, because even in a regiment as elite as SOAR, the 5D was rumored to be the very best. That was her kind of team. That she’d actually landed the assignment was a little daunting. Well, she’d have to prove she was up to it in the next ten minutes.

  They crossed over the beach, dropped down to twenty-five feet, and began following the ups and downs of the dry, rolling terrain. No need to talk; it was just what you did.

  * * *

  The moment that Michael heard the faintest beat of an approaching helicopter, he whispered into his radio the same word he’d spoken twenty-four hours ago when they’d jumped out of an airplane at thirty-five thousand feet.

  “Go.”

  They had less than sixty seconds; it was all they should need.

  He and Bill rose.

  His first silenced shot punched a hole through the window glass. The second took out the overhead lamp, plunging the southeast room into darkness. They dove through the window in unison as they pulled on their night-vision goggles.

  There was the low boom of a breaching charge removing the building’s front door—must have been locked. Patrols would have left no time to pick it. The other two operators were tasked with clearing the remaining five rooms and securing the front of the building.

  The soft double-spit of suppressed gunfire coming down the hallway said that at least one person had been elsewhere inside the building. They were dead now.

  Michael managed to kick six of the rifles aside before the al-Qaeda leaders could react. Bill, who was standing back to give him cover, shot the seventh in the arm and the eighth in the head, twice. Abu Nassir Wafi, a lead trainer, was down. He was the toughest fighter and the least important asset in the room. The double tap to the head was a good choice.

  After a brief scuffle, they had the seven remaining men gagged, with zip ties around their wrists and ankles. They lifted and threw each tied man back out through the window. Some grunted through their gags as they landed atop one another.

  Bill pulled a short roll of heavily reinforced black garbage bags out of a pouch along his pants’ calf—a trick that the SEALs hadn’t learned before the bin Laden raid. Word was that they’d wasted valuable time scrounging old gym bags to cart out the intel they’d found inside Osama’s fortress. He and Bill began dumping laptops and files into the bags.

  The birds were close overhead. He could hear the helicopters’ rotor roar drowning out the near-constant fire from the front of the building, the quiet double spit of the Delta operators’ HK416s echoing down the hall, and the sharp barks of AK-47s wielded by the terrorist trainers out in the compound.

  “All evac on southeast side,” he told the helos. He didn’t need to tell the other two operators to fall back to join them in the southeast room. They’d know to do that as soon as they were ready.

  He emptied the last file drawer and tossed the sack on top of the struggling al-Qaeda leaders.

  He and Bill jumped over the sill, not taking much care about who they landed on.

  The other two operators followed them out, just moments before a large detonation shook the building and blew fire out the window inches above their heads.

  The inside team had left a booby trap in the weapons’ store. The building was now secure—the entire inside was engulfed in flames.

  * * *

  The landing zone was a total shit storm, just like a typical training scenario except this time the bad guys were trying to kill the good guys with live rounds.

  The air was thick with the hail of small-arms fire as Claudia swung her helo wide to clear the streamers of fire that punched out the windows of the building to all sides. She settled as close as she dared beside the southeast wall of the building.

  Merchant threw up a world of dust as it dropped in beside her.

  Two men came running toward them, but she could see the small infrared patches on their shoulders that identified them as friendlies so she kept her hands on the controls rather than grabbing for her weapon. They were also each carrying large heavy sacks. The bigger guy—and he was way big and broad-shouldered—headed for Merchant.

  The smaller man tossed his bag on top of her own gear in the rear and returned to the group of bound men on the ground.

  Two more friendlies moved to squat at the corners of the building and were laying down cover fire against anyone who tried to circle around the building to the helicopters. Anyone remaining out in the compound had the two gun platforms circling above to keep them occupied.

  There was the harsh roar of a minigun sluicing down five thousand rounds a minute, interrupted by the harsh sizzle of rockets and matching explosions just moments later.

  For now, they were in a quiet bubble behind the shield of the building, but it would only last another few seconds.

  Claudia let go of the controls and took up her weapon to guard for approaches over the desert.

  The big guy-little guy team moved to cut the prisoners’ feet loose in pairs. They hustled their prisoners onto Merchant’s bench seats, tied them in place, and shot each with a tranquilizer injection into their necks. In moments, they had four tied and slumped bad guys on Merchant’s benches. The two friendlies who’d been working guard at the corners of the building clambered onto Merchant and the bird dusted off. The two soldiers continued providing cover from their positions aloft.

  The other two soldiers started her way, herding the last three prisoners.

  On a quick sweep, she spotted a figure running toward them over a low dune beyond the camp.

  No “friendly” infrared tags on the man’s shoulder, and his weapon was up. She popped the safety and unleashed a three-shot burst. He cried out and fell to the ground.

  By the time she turned back, they had the prisoners tied on and drugged out. The big guy sat on an outside bench and the smaller one slipped into her empty copilot seat.

  At his nod, she grabbed the controls and was out of there, staying low and racing directly away from the gun battle still roaring across the compound, the two attack helos and the armed terrorists going at one another. Claudia knew it would be a very one-sided battle. There was a reason that “Death Waits in the Dark” was one of the Night Stalkers’ mottoes.

  She crested a dune and spotted an outlier guard in her infrared night vision. Someone lying on the back of the dune face, spread-eagled and holding a weapon.

  “Shooter!” she called out. She needed both hands on the controls, and this wasn’t a gunship; she had no weapon other than the one hanging across her chest.

  Even as she spun to give the man in the copilot’s seat a better angle, he twisted in his seat and fired downward through the open door—two shots so close together that they almost sounded like one.

  The man turned back, not even bothering to watch the results of his effort.

  Though they were already moving at over fifty miles per hour, Claudia could see the bad guy on the g
round convulse. His shot went wild and a rocket-propelled grenade blew up the face of a dune.

  Damn, she didn’t know anyone could really shoot like that. She was good, but that shot was insane.

  Not wanting to hang around and see who else was lurking in the dunes, she rolled right to cut the shortest route back to the coast and laid down the hammer. Right at redline on the engine RPMs, she was outta there. Behind her she could see the bright flashes of the DAP Hawk and the attack Little Bird tearing up the camp. Merchant was just two rotor diameters off her port side.

  Ripples of adrenaline raced through her body like shock waves from a bomb blast. Her old Marine SuperCobra was a pure attack helicopter. She’d flown plenty of protection runs during an exfiltration, but she’d never flown transport right down in the thick of it. It was a whole different up-close-and-personal kind of ride that still had her heart pounding and her breath running short.

  The man beside her didn’t say a word. He simply sat back with his rifle laid across his chest.

  He kept his hands lightly on the weapon but closed his eyes as if he was perfectly comfortable and not just thirty seconds from a life-or-death mission. He’d been the one actually in the battle, and she was the one being wound all the way up.

  He began tapping the back of his helmet lightly against the back of his seat. It wasn’t frantic, like nerves. It was slow, almost gentle; a stark contrast to the shooter of a moment before.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure.” He kept up the tapping.

  She found herself echoing the rhythm with one finger tapping against the cyclic control in her right hand.

  “IMF,” he added softly.

  IMF? I am fine. Probably. Everything in the military was an acronym, and some made as little sense as that.

  Though the IMF was also the Impossible Missions Force—the secret branch of the military in the Mission Impossible movies—and Delta specialized in impossible missions just like the one falling rapidly behind them.

  “You and Tom Cruise.” She kept her tone neutral. “Just fine.”

  He stopped his tapping and turned to stare at her.

  She ignored his searching attention.

  In the exchange, she’d found his quiet rhythm. It was…the way an evening breeze might move through the Sonoran Desert of her youth in Arizona. Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap. Gods, she could feel the harshest layers of the adrenaline draining slowly out of her system. Tap. Pause. Tap.

  Time, which had been compressed out of all recognition, began to have meaning again.

  Her heart rate had returned to normal by the time she crossed a final berm and was once again “feet wet” over the ocean. She climbed back up to fifty feet and trailed Merchant. The other two aircraft, finished with the camp, were formed up behind them. Now she could finally spare the attention to look at her companion clearly for the first time.

  He’d finally turned back to watch forward. He seemed small only when compared to the big soldier who’d been with him and was perched on one of the outside benches. Sitting next to her, he looked to be her height, perhaps another inch or two taller.

  MICH helmet, not a lot of heavy armor like she wore, and enough ammo to suppress a midsized city.

  Four guys attacking an entire terrorist camp at sunset. Coming away with seven hostages and what she assumed were large sacks of intel.

  Only one group was that bug-shit crazy. She’d never flown with them, only knew them by myth and rumor. In eight years of service, Claudia couldn’t be sure if she’d ever even met one of them before.

  Delta.

  Scary bastards, making her damned glad they were on her side.

  Still, Claudia made it a personal policy to steer well clear of scary bastards who were bug-shit crazy.

  A policy she had no intention of changing.

  * * *

  Michael registered many things about his pilot.

  Female by her voice.

  She flew well, with a smoothness that he liked, as if she knew exactly who she was and where she was going. It was a trait they looked for in Delta operators; only the very best had it. And no one but the very best made the Delta grade.

  There was nothing to see. Flight suit, armor, and vest. Flight gloves, full helmet with projection visor, and even her lower face covered with a breathing mask and radio mike that let pilots breathe and be heard in even the dustiest and noisiest environments.

  But he couldn’t stop glancing over.

  No one got his jokes. The few who noticed them go by did so only after painfully long pauses. Most wouldn’t even get that IMF could be “I’m fine.” But to make the jump to Mission Impossible and then answer with the next step beyond that he hadn’t even seen himself—the name of the character he would be parallel to… Damn! That impressed him almost as much as anything else she’d done in their brief acquaintance.

  He’d heard another female pilot was incoming into SOAR’s 5th Battalion, D Company, so this must be her. Making it into the 5D said she was already an exceptional pilot. She hadn’t harassed him about his tapping thing; just checked in with him and then moved on, which said she knew to trust a soldier’s self-assessment. For some reason, his tapping drove a lot of people nuts.

  It wasn’t like the jittery leg that so many soldiers had, though that was trained out of Deltas. Actually, not all that many guys with those kinds of nerves made it into Delta to begin with.

  The gentle tap, tap was how he let the adrenal rush of action run out of him. The gentle rhythm reminded him of climbing trees in his childhood when he’d been seeking somewhere no one else could go. It wasn’t escape; it was going higher and farther than anyone before him that charged him up.

  Right now he shouldn’t be thinking about her; he should be assessing the team’s performance. What could they have done differently to capture all eight unfriendlies? How could they have anticipated the arrival at the camp of four Tier One targets or the presence of so much unexpected intel? If there’d been anything to gather in the other rooms, there simply hadn’t been time to look. They definitely should have had another bird in deep backup; pure luck they’d gotten this one. The entire camp had erupted in blazes of gunfire from the trainers, answered by the dragon roars from the hovering attack platforms responding with rockets and miniguns.

  But that didn’t reorient the direction of his thoughts.

  This pilot simply allowed him “to be,” which he appreciated. Even Emily Beale, as well as they’d gotten along, had never understood his little jokes. Or quite known what to make of him.

  Not surprising, Michael. You’re not the most accessible dude in the Force.

  That he knew for damn sure.

  He liked this woman sight unseen.

  He also knew that, which was surprising.

  * * *

  The prisoners’ knockout shots wore off as they arrived on deck at the USS Peleliu, making the unloading a little chaotic. Michael was on the verge of dosing them again when the CIA team arrived from the carrier to take custody. He sighed; they sure did love their debriefings. It would take the next four hours to cover a sixty-second actual engagement. About normal.

  Then he’d noticed the new pilot, still sitting in her Little Bird. No, sagging in her seat.

  He touched her on the arm and she startled.

  “When was the last time you slept?” He slid up her visor and removed her breather mask. She had a nice face that he decided fit her well, even though he knew almost nothing about her.

  “Uh”—she blinked at him—“last time I what?”

  “Okay.” He’d certainly seen this enough times. She’d held it together for the flight but was wholly tapped out now that it was over. It took four, perhaps five, days without a full sleep—depending on the person and the number of catnaps they’d managed to steal—to make them like this.

  Michael unbuckle
d her harness and eased her out of the helo, taking most of her weight by lifting the big D-ring attached at the center of her vest. The D-ring was there in case she crashed in somewhere and needed a rope rescue. Well, this was a type of rescue, and the heavy vest and flight suit blocked most of the feeling of grabbing her right between the breasts.

  He leaned her against the side of the helo, tugged on her rucksack after letting out the straps a bit, and slung her duffel over one arm.

  One of the CIA guys was hustling over to drag him off for debriefing.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  The guy got all officious. Right until he spotted the look in Michael’s eye and scurried back to wherever he’d been.

  Michael had thought to coax her along, but she was really past that.

  He slipped an arm around her waist and guided her down through the ship. Flight deck…hangar deck…down to second deck. He stopped a Navy orderly who knew where to aim them.

  Her bunk was right near the other SOAR women, which made sense.

  When he got her there, she simply stood in the middle of her quarters, weaving and staring down at the bunk.

  Michael dumped her duffel and pack.

  Since she was clearly unable to manage for herself, he undid her helmet and pulled it free. Then the fire-resistant inner hood. A shower of shining blond hair cascaded over his hands, reminding him of silk and water.

  Her FN-SCAR rifle, survival vest, and Dragon Skin underneath. Smart woman.

  He was not about to undo the front of her flight suit as he had no way of knowing what she did or didn’t wear under there, and she was already giving him trouble.

  He never had problems concentrating around women. But something about this one…

  Even exhausted, travel-worn, and battle weary she smelled of the desert night and—

  Cut it, Michael.

  So he did. “You okay from here?”

  She nodded vaguely, which he’d take as a yes.

  He was a step from making good his retreat when her hand rested lightly on his arm.