Wait Until Dark: a military romantic suspense (The Night Stalkers Book 3) Page 2

  John started swearing about the waste, as they both set to work with their saws.

  Viper circled wide to secure a safe perimeter around their craft, both drawing fire and answering it in a definitive fashion. It felt good knowing that Major Beale’s husband Major Henderson, and John’s best friend, Sergeant Tim Maloney, were close by watching over them. But the remaining fighters who’d been guarding the pass were on the move and time was running out.

  The third blade dropped free and fell aside at the same moment the four-point lifting harness dropped from the hovering Chinook.

  They had their damaged helicopter latched in and secure inside of thirty seconds. The pilots had them airborne and headed back to base while they were still scrambling into their seats. Connie tossed a pair of thermite grenades out the door onto the stack of partial blades as they lifted clear. With a blaze of white fire and shooting sparks, the grenades cooked, then melted most of the blades and fused a patch of sand ten feet across into brittle glass.

  The machine hadn’t killed her this time. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t next time.

  2

  Big John Wallace pulled off his helmet and scrubbed his fingers through his sweaty hair, reveling in the sensation. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Sergeant Connie Davis as they and their broken Black Hawk were lowered into their position at the air base. The moment they cleared possible enemy sight lines, she began stripping the equipment.

  Not her helmet, not the hot flight suit, not her harness. Always first things first by the book with Sergeant Connie Davis. Her Minigun’s ammunition belt slotted back into its case, her last round hand-cleared from the Minigun’s chamber, caught in the air, and stowed in the loose-round bag.

  Every move in US Army official order. Every bit of maintenance she ever did was done as if she were a walking, talking training manual. An attempt to alter any of her actions was met with page and paragraph quoted from memory. He’d stopped checking her on that, mostly. He hadn’t tripped her up yet, but he still had hopes.

  He’d flown with her on a couple of training missions, but Kee Smith was his usual gunner. Except now she was Kee Stevenson and off having her honeymoon. Better Archie than him.

  Before Kee, John had thought no one would ever replace Crazy Tim, but even Tim bowed to Kee’s marksmanship. And Kee ranked damned cute. Not his type, but real easy on the eyes, assuming you didn’t tick her off and get a punch in one.

  Sergeant Connie Davis, on the other hand, while awesomely nice to look at… he had no idea what to think of her. The woman never laughed, never smiled. Built at the US Army factory and shipped to the front with all parts in certified working order.

  Even Kee was more his type than Connie. Sure she looked like the sitcom dream girl next door, the quiet, smart one. The Kate Jackson of the original Charlie’s Angels. Taller than the feisty elf that was Kee, but not the long and leggy of Major Beale either. John was typically drawn to the latter, but there were two issues there. One, Major Beale had married Major Henderson, and two, she was also perhaps the scariest woman alive. A good person as a commanding officer, but lethal at any distance. It was a wonder Major Henderson had survived his courtship. Actually, considering what they’d been through, he almost hadn’t.

  Kee barely came up to Big John’s armpit, while the major rose well past his shoulder. Connie stood tall enough to rest her head against on his shoulder. Her long hair would fall in its soft waves across under his chin like…

  Connie stared at him square-on from three feet away across the Black Hawk’s cargo bay. And he was definitely staring without realizing that he was.

  “Sir?” Her helmet was off and her cascade of brunette hair flowed around her face exactly as he’d imagined it, looking as if she hadn’t spent the last six hours flying hot and sweaty under heavy gunfire. Her mirrored Ray-Bans were in place against the sharp light of the desert dawn.

  “Sergeant, not ‘sir.’” He responded automatically. He wasn’t a commissioned officer. He knew he sounded rude, inconsiderate. Though her eyes were covered, he knew they were a soft hazel and set wide. He also knew that they were the only part of her that indicated someone was home. A brown-flecked green that never stopped watching.

  On first meeting Connie Davis, he’d wanted to dismiss her as no more than a cute Connie Homemaker. The girl next door brought to life right out of the television screen.

  But he’d run into the wrong end of her keen mechanic’s mind more than once. Now she sat there, expressionless and unreadable, waiting for what he needed of her.

  Those eyes. Despite her sunglasses, they pinned his brain somewhere he couldn’t readily access. He cleared his throat to make it work.

  “Nice catch on the stutter.” He turned back to clear his own weapon.

  He barely heard her quiet reply of, “Thank you, Sergeant,” before she exited the helo.

  He cleared the chamber round and stowed the belt. Time to get moving. Connie would probably complete the damage inspection by the time he’d made sure his weapon was cleared and locked. She’d probably have it analyzed and half repaired by the time he had a chance to look it over.

  He was either going to kill the woman with his bare hands or…

  He had no idea what lay on the other side of the equation.

  And he didn’t want to know.

  3

  Connie looked at the crews of Viper and Vengeance across the mess tent, then down at the tray in her hands. Burger, fries, salad, and a large bottle of fruity electrolyte drink. An apple crisp in the corner. The Army fed you well when it could, even at a forward air base like Bati. All of it looking so normal and homey in an Army-base sort of way.

  When she looked up, nothing was normal at all.

  Bati was a town in northwest Pakistan where, as far as anyone other than the locals and a few government officials knew, this SOAR air base did not exist. Fifteen helicopters that were secretly located in a country that postured as unfriendly to America. The squatting rights were never mentioned, all part of an arms deal that was also kept quiet.

  No helicopters here, folks. And no Rangers or Delta Force operators being launched nightly into the battles raging across the Hindu Kush mountains of northeast Afghanistan. No, sir. No, ma’am. No base that showed up on any part of any world map except ones inside the Pentagon.

  The helos hunkered down in an abandoned soccer stadium of sprawling concrete and flaking whitewash. The same whitewash swirled about in bright flurries among the brownout dust cloud kicked up by the rotor blade’s downwash every time anyone fired up a helo.

  The chow tent was equally foreign as she moved through it heading for where she knew she’d land. Where she had always landed in the two months since her arrival here.

  The place felt cramped with the day staff fresh from their racks, eating breakfast, and the night fliers eating dinner before watching a movie or writing a letter home, then crashing out through the daytime. They jostled, crowded, rubbed shoulders. Most had their turf staked down and staked down hard.

  She headed away from the Rangers. All noise and bravado down at the far end, half of them moving out into the dawn light to eat on the soccer stadium tiers, plates in one fist and a tale of glory in the other. D-boys, the most dangerous fighters on the planet, were silent ghosts as always, briefly visible at mealtimes and then fading away as if they’d never been there. The only people they spoke to between missions were the Rangers who were stupid enough to bait them—a sport no Ranger could resist despite decades of failure.

  The masters of the Chinook heavy-lifters, the giant twin-rotor helicopters, always took the corner at the front of the tent by the entrance flap. Shoulder-to-shoulder, each team snagged an extra chair to fit their five-man crews at a four-top table. Closed circle.

  The pilots of the five two-seater Little Birds had a long table where they sat in neat pairs across from each other, pilot and copilot, though who sat on which side varied. Perhaps the pattern was unconscious. Connie considered their alternat
ion as she moved past but could find no particular sequencing of either a mathematical or a psychological nature. Four of the Black Hawk crews, the transport versions of the birds, intermixed at random tables. Then there were Viper and Vengeance. Supposedly her crew. The six crew members from the two DAP Hawks always ranged around a double table. DAPs were always a crew apart. Like police or nurses in the civilian world.

  The two Majors commanding the Direct Action Penetrators typically sat off by themselves at one of the back tables. On the rare occasions when they ate with their crew, another table was dragged in. But two copilots and four crew chiefs always ate, shared, and joked together. The recently promoted Captain Stevenson had been out for three months on med leave, and Chief Warrant Clay Anderson had taken his seat both in the air and at the table. And though she’d taken Dusty James’ place on Viper when he’d taken a round, she’d never felt welcome in his seat at the table.

  She’d not taken it while Dusty was gone. That was proper, it was his seat and now he’d come back to fill it. Had the bullet that found him that night flown six inches differently, she would be the one hit and would now be the returning comrade welcomed. Well, perhaps welcomed.

  There’d been no spot at all for a week, and she’d been assigned to a ground maintenance squad. They hadn’t put her in another bird because Kee Smith had upcoming marriage leave, which had arrived. Now Kee, the only person on the base she’d ever spoken much with, was gone. In two weeks she’d be back and Connie would be reassigned again.

  Should Connie take the seat that would only be hers for fourteen days? Would she know what to say if someone spoke to her? Everything she said always came out wrong.

  Her brief moment with Staff Sergeant John Wallace this morning being a prime example. Something she’d said had been wrong. She could see his face change, but though she studied it carefully, she couldn’t read his expression. Had he meant the compliment, or had he been angry that she’d noticed the failing rotor blade before he had? She didn’t know anyone well enough to ask.

  He hulked at the table, perfectly at ease, with that big, welcoming laugh of his flowing across his friends as he told the story of their roll, holding his arms out and tipping them sideways, making everyone duck.

  When he retracted his arms, his broad shoulder still intruded deep into the space where Kee always sat. Kee was small enough that it didn’t matter. And fierce enough that she didn’t care.

  But there was no room for Connie Davis.

  She turned for her usual table and sat with her back to the crew so that she wouldn’t have to watch yet another place she didn’t belong.

  4

  “Two days, maybe three.”

  “You have until dark, about thirteen hours, to make her air-worthy.”

  Big John slapped a hand as big as both of Connie’s on the table. “Dammit, Major. You gotta be kidding me.”

  Major Emily Beale had signaled Connie to come over and sit at the table as the meal broke up. Now it was the three of them, with the dirty dishes still rattling on John’s tray.

  “There is no damn way, Major!” Big John’s voice filled the chow tent, but the few people remaining didn’t bother to turn and watch. John’s booming voice was more of a constant than a surprise.

  Connie considered the logistics of repairing the Black Hawk.

  The Chinook was supposed to deliver a new set of blades in about six hours. She could hear the bird starting up for the three-hour run each way to go fetch a fresh set from the aircraft carrier. That gave them three hours to create a full parts list of what they’d need.

  It would start with several panels on the tail boom that had been beaten up by the dragging of the second broken blade. And the star-cracked plexi window on the copilot’s side. The rotor head was the real issue. Until they tore it open to see what had been wrenched…

  “Problem here?” Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson slid in next to Major Beale and kissed her solidly. It always made Connie blink. Their perfect ease about themselves and each other. They walked hand-in-hand from briefings to the flight line in thoughtless harmony, both absolute masters of their craft, two of the most accomplished and decorated helicopter pilots in the US Army. They clearly wasted no time doubting themselves or each other. From a place of such confidence, they flew where merely earthbound mortals must stumble along under gravity’s force.

  “Major, you gotta talk some sense into your wife, sir.” John held his hands out like a supplicant. “We just flew a full mission and you know my bird took it hard, but she’s a good one and saw us through. Now Major Beale wants the Vengeance mission-ready in thirteen hours. It ain’t gonna happen. No how, no way. Please talk to her.”

  “Mission-ready? Did I say mission-ready?” Major Beale spoke, all bright innocence.

  John floundered at a loss for words, as if his pilot had lied to him.

  Connie rolled the words back. “You said air-worthy, ma’am.”

  John jerked around to face her and blinked hard. Once. Twice.

  Emily Beale merely nodded an acknowledgment with a gentle swoosh of her straight blonde hair. As if she’d expected Connie to catch that.

  Connie had always thought herself unobserved. Time to upgrade her assessment, again, so as not to underestimate the major’s capabilities.

  “Air. Worthy.” Connie could hear Big John roll it around on his tongue. There was a huge difference. Making Vengeance flyable was quite different from ready to fly into combat.

  Connie dropped the battered panels and cracked plexi from her mental list. She dropped the necessary checks of the backup systems. She dropped the two radios and the FLIR that had taken direct hits and needed replacement, alignment, and recertification. She juggled times and equipment layers. She put the FLIR back in but left off the fine recalibration. It meant working straight through the day, their night, but—

  “It’s possible.”

  “No!” John’s hand hammered down again on the table that groaned beneath the blow. But Connie could see his mind working as his body protested. Could see the calculations in his unfocused gaze.

  “Wa-ell,” Major Henderson drawled in a horrid, fake Texas accent. “We could always give y’all another tow if ya can’t fix the Vengeance in time. You wouldn’t mind arriving at Bagram air base dangling from a Chinook’s underbelly like a limp piece of meat, would ya now? I know my wife, y’all’s commanding officer, couldn’t care no more than a snap of her fingers.”

  John finished his calculations as the major finished his sentence. John nodded slowly, also rearranging the details in his head. Connie could read his acceptance of the challenge in the narrowing of his eyes, the firm set of his jaw.

  “Thirteen hours. We can do that.” He glanced her way. The light emphasis on “we” was one of the nicest compliments Connie had received since arriving at Bati. Not that she doubted her own skills. But she knew her mechanical ability bothered Sergeant Wallace and this was the first time he’d acknowledged it directly as an asset instead of an irritant.

  “Excellent.” Major Henderson rose easily to his feet and took his wife’s hand to help her up.

  As they walked away, he drawled once more, “It’s just a-knowin’ how to motivate them thar troops.”

  John looked from the departing couple to Connie. “Did he say something about Bagram?”

  5

  They made it with twenty-eight minutes to spare.

  John flexed his hand again, wincing at the pull across his barked knuckles and the long scrape that ran from wrist to elbow.

  Twenty-eight minutes. Enough for a shower and a shave. Time to stuff his gear in his duffel and grab something better than the energy bar he’d stuffed down midday. He strolled toward the helo in the evening light with his kit on his back, a stack of salami sandwiches in his hand, and a cold Coke in one of his thigh pockets.

  Beale and Clay had pitched in where they could, but for the most part an officer’s usefulness on a repair was measured by their increasing distance from the jo
b. Front-seaters knew how to fly but were trouble beyond that. Major Beale had West Pointed in, never working as a back-ender other than in training.

  Every now and then a noncom made the jump to front seat like Clay, but no chief in his right mind would ever let them touch anything mission-critical again. Sure they thought they still knew, but they were wrong. Without constant study, no mere officer could keep up with all of the technology required to keep a Black Hawk humming.

  Even if Clay Anderson had stayed qualified, a DAP Hawk was a whole different bird beyond that. Newbies thought the mods designed by SOAR couldn’t be that drastic. But the Direct Action Penetrators were custom-built for SOAR and SOAR alone. Built from the ground up on a Black Hawk frame, but that and their name was about all that remained in common with the most manufactured helicopter on the planet. There were whole layers of gear and electronics that no other helicopter had ever carried.

  John stood now at the entrance to the hangar and admired their handiwork as he bit off another chunk of his first sandwich.

  Fewer than twenty DAPs were spread across five battalions, among the rarest and definitely the most lethal weapons ever launched into the night sky. Also one of the most complex. Seventeen separate software systems, eight in the weapon systems alone, networked across four different media. And that was only if you didn’t count the beamed-in ground reference, the satellite imaging systems, or the new drone feeds they’d recently installed.

  The major had made sure they were towed into the one Rubb shelter at the base. Covered in desert camo, the towering temporary hangar kept out most of the sand and all of the sun, making the desert midday heat merely intolerable rather than potentially lethal. The hangar also offered a ceiling-mounted crane that had been essential to the repairs.