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  “Whoo-ee, you have no idea, Danielle,” his voice was smooth as…well, always…so she wouldn’t think about it also sounding like a pickup line. He was beautiful, but didn’t interest her; the outgoing ones never did.

  “Tell me.” Men love to talk about themselves, so let them.

  And he did. But she’d soon forgotten about her novel, and would have forgotten the pizza if he hadn’t reminded her to eat.

  His stories shifted from intriguing to fascinating. There was a world out there that she’d been only peripherally aware of. The Night Stalkers of the 160th SOAR weren’t simply better helicopter pilots, they were the most highly-trained and best-equipped ones on the planet. Their missions were pure razor’s edge and black-op dark.

  He’d left her with a hundred questions and enough interest to fill out an application to the 160th. Being a decent guy, Justin even paid for the pizza after eating half.

  The speed at which she was rushed into testing told her that her meeting with Justin hadn’t been by chance and that she owed him more than half a pizza next time they met. She’d asked after him a couple of times since she’d made it past the qualification exams—and the examiners’ brutal interviews that had left her questioning her sanity, never mind her ability.

  “Justin Roberts is presently deployed, ma’am,” was the only response she’d ever gotten.

  Now that she was through training—almost, had to be soon, didn’t it?—Danielle realized that was probably less of an evasion and more likely to do with the brutal op tempo the Night Stalkers maintained. The SOAR 1st Battalion had just won the coveted Lt. General Ellis D. Parker awards for Outstanding Combat Aviation Battalion and Aviation Battalion of the Year. They’d been on deployment every single day of the last year, actually of the last decade-plus since 9/11.

  The very first Special Forces boots on the ground in Afghanistan were delivered that October by the Night Stalkers and nothing had slacked off since. Justin might be in the 5th battalion D company, but they were just as heavily assigned as the 1st.

  Part of their training had included tours in Afghanistan. But unlike their prior deployments, these were brief, intense, and then they’d be back in the States pushing to integrate their new skills.

  SOAR needed her training to end and so did she.

  Danielle was ready for the job, in her own, inestimable opinion. But she wasn’t going to get there until the trainers signed off that she’d reached fully mission-qualified proficiency.

  The Fort Campbell training course was never set up the same from one flight to the next, but it always had a time limit. The time would be short and they didn’t tell you what it was. So she drove the Chinook for all it was worth like Regina Jaquess waterskiing her way to U.S. Ski Team Female Athlete of the Year.

  The Night Stalkers were a damned secretive lot, and after two years of training, she understood why. With seven years flying for the 10th, she’d thought she was good.

  She’d been repeatedly lauded as one of the top pilots at Fort Drum.

  The Night Stalkers had offered an education in what it really meant to fly. In the two years of training, she’d flown more hours than in the seven years prior, despite two deployments to Iraq. And spent more time in the classroom than her life-to-date accumulated flight hours.

  But she was ready now. It was très viscérale, right down in her bones she could feel it. The Chinook was as much a part of her nervous system as breathing.

  Too bad they didn’t build men the way they built the big Chinooks—especially the MH-47G which were built specifically to SOAR’s requirements. The aircraft were steady, trustworthy, and the most immensely powerful helicopters deployed in the U.S. Army—what more could a girl ask for? But finding a superhero man to go with her superhero helicopter was just a fantasy for a lonely teenage girl.

  She dove down into a canyon and slid to a hover mere inches over the reservoir inside the thirty-second window laid out on the flight plan.

  Danielle resisted a sigh. She was ready for something to happen and to happen soon.

  # # #

  Pete’s Chinook and his two escort Black Hawks crossed into the mountainous province of Sikkim, India ten feet over the glaciers and still moving fast. It was an hour before dawn, they’d made it out of China while it was still dark.

  “Twenty minutes of fuel remaining,” Nicolai said it like a personal challenge when they hit the border.

  “Thanks, I never would have noticed.”

  It had been a nail-biting tradeoff: the more fuel he burned, the more easily he climbed due to the lighter load. The more he climbed, the faster he burned what little fuel remained.

  Safe in Indian airspace he climbed hard as Nicolai counted down the minutes remaining, burning fuel even faster than he had been while crossing the mountains of southern Tibet. They caught up with the U.S. Air Force HC-130P Combat King refueling tanker with only ten minutes of fuel left.

  “Ram that bitch,” Nicolai called out.

  Pete extended the refueling probe which reached only a few feet beyond the forward edge of the rotor blade and drove at the basket trailing behind the tanker on its long hose.

  He nailed it on the first try despite the fluky winds. Striking the valve in the basket with over four hundred pounds of pressure, a clamp snapped over the refueling probe and Jet A fuel shot into his tanks.

  His helo had the least fuel due to having the most men aboard, so he was first in line. His Number Two picked up the second refueling basket trailing off the other wing of the Combat King. Thirty seconds and three hundred gallons later and he was breathing much more easily.

  “Ah,” Nicolai sighed. “It is better than the sex,” his thick Russian accent only ever surfaced in this moment or in a bar while picking up women.

  “Hey, Nicolai,” Nicky the Greek called over the intercom from his crew chief position seated behind Pete. “Do you make love in Russian?”

  A question Pete had always been careful to avoid.

  “For you, I make special exception.” That got a laugh over the system.

  Which explained why Pete always kept his mouth shut at this moment.

  “The ladies, Nicolai? What about the ladies?” Alfie the portside gunner asked.

  “Ah,” he sighed happily as he signaled that the other choppers had finished their refueling and formed up to either side, “the ladies love the Russian. They don’t need to know I grew up in Maryland and I learn my great-great-grandfather’s native tongue at the University called Virginia.”

  He sounded so pleased that Pete wished he’d done the same rather than study Japanese and Mandarin.

  Another two hours of—thank god—straight-and-level flight at altitude through the breaking dawn and they landed on the aircraft carrier awaiting them in the Bay of Bengal. India had agreed to turn a blind eye as long as the Americans never actually touched their soil.

  Once standing on the deck—and the worst of the kinks had been worked out—he pulled his team together: six pilots and seven crew chiefs.

  “Honor to serve!” He saluted them sharply.

  “Hell yeah!” They shouted in response and saluted in turn. It was their version of spiking the football in the end zone.

  A petty officer in a bright green vest appeared at his elbow, “Follow me please, sir.” He pointed toward the Navy-gray command structure that towered above the carrier’s deck. The Commodore of the entire carrier group was waiting for him just outside the entrance. Not a good idea to keep a One-Star waiting, so he waved at the team.

  “See you in the mess for dinner,” he shouted to the crew over the noise of an F-18 Hornet fighter jet trapping on the #2 wire. After two days of surviving on MREs while squatting on the Tibetan tundra, he was ready for a steak, a burger, a mountain of pasta, whatever. Or maybe all three.

  The green escorted him across the hazards of the busy flight deck. Pete had
kept his helmet on to buffer the noise, but even at that he winced as another Hornet fired up and was flung aloft by the catapult.

  “Orders, Major Napier,” the Commodore handed him a folded sheet the moment he arrived. “Hate to lose you.”

  The Commodore saluted, which Pete automatically returned before looking down at the sheet of paper in his hands. The man was gone before the import of Pete’s orders slammed in.

  A different green-clad deckhand showed up with Pete’s duffle bag and began guiding him toward a loading C-2 Greyhound twin-prop airplane. It was parked number two for the launch catapult, close behind the raised jet-blast deflector.

  His crew, being led across in the opposite direction to return to the berthing decks below, looked at him aghast.

  “Stateside,” was all he managed to gasp out as they passed.

  A stream of foul cursing followed him from behind. Their crew was tight. Why the hell was Command breaking it up?

  And what in the name of fuck-all had he done to deserve this?

  He glanced at the orders again as he stumbled up the Greyhound’s rear ramp and crash landed into a seat.

  Training rookies?

  It was worse than a demotion.

  This was punishment.

  This and other titles are available at fine retailers everywhere.

  Copyright 2016 Matthew Lieber Buchman

  Published by Buchman Bookworks

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof,

  may not be reproduced in any form

  without permission from the author.

  Discover more by this author at: www.mlbuchman.com

  Cover images:

  Battleship In Space Photo © Philcold | Dreamstime.com

  Other works by M.L. Buchman

  Delta Force

  Target Engaged

  Firehawks

  Pure Heat

  Wildfire at Dawn

  Full Blaze

  Wildfire at Larch Creek

  Wildfire on the Skagit

  Hot Point

  Flash of Fire

  The Night Stalkers

  The Night Is Mine

  I Own the Dawn

  Daniel’s Christmas

  Wait Until Dark

  Frank’s Independence Day

  Peter’s Christmas

  Take Over at Midnight

  Light Up the Night

  Bring On the Dusk

  Target of the Heart

  Target Lock on Love

  Christmas at Peleliu Cove

  Zachary’s Christmas

  By Break of Day

  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

  Deities Anonymous

  Cookbook from Hell: Reheated

  Saviors 101

  Thrillers

  Swap Out!

  One Chef!

  Two Chef!

  SF/F Titles

  Nara

  Monk’s Maze

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