The Sword of Io Read online

  Copyright 2014 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 image:

  Shot down

  © Philcold | Dreamstime.com

  Other works by M.L. Buchman

  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

  Firehawks

  Pure Heat

  Wildfire at Dawn

  Full Blaze

  Angelo’s Hearth

  Where Dreams are Born

  Where Dreams Reside

  Maria’s Christmas Table

  Where Dreams Unfold

  Where Dreams Are Written

  Dieties Anonymous

  Cookbook from Hell: Reheated

  Saviors 101

  Thrillers

  Swap Out!

  One Chef

  SF/F Titles

  Nara

  Monk’s Maze

  Light Up the Night

  Second Lieutenant Trisha O’Malley waited ten kilometers off the north coast of Somalia for the mission “Go!” moment. She held her AH-6M Little Bird attack helicopter at wave height, exactly at wave height. The long metal skids were practically being licked clean by the rolling crests heading ashore from the Gulf of Aden.

  Through the large openings to either side of the tiny cockpit where the doors would be hung, the smell of the hot night ocean wafted thick with salt and bitter from the dust blown off the achingly dry land. Nobody flew a Little Bird with the doors on. She didn’t know why they even ordered them. The only time they were used was to protect the birds when they were parked in harsh enviornments; a piece of plastic could do that. When they flew, the doors were off. Having them off also added freedom of movement to the tiny cockpit and, far more importantly, the visibility was much better.

  Not that visibility was such a big deal at the moment. Outside the forward glass-and-polycarbonate windscreen, which reached from below her foot pedals to almost above her head, was nothing but impenetrable darkness. That was one of many things Trisha liked about the Little Birds. The console swept up between the pilots’ seats but was confined to a narrow column on the front windscreen that stopped below eye level.

  Flying an AH-6M was as close to flying with nothing between you and the sky as existed. No door beside you and bullet-resistant protection from below your feet to farther back than you could tilt your head while wearing a helmet. Everything a girl needed for a good time.

  The console itself was dominated by a pair of LCD multifunction screens that could be switched at the tap of a button from engine performance to weather radar to digital terrain map. It made her feel like those science fiction movie heroes in superpowered suits, as if rather than flying a chopper, she herself was wearing a weaponized suit that happened to be in the shape of a helicopter.

  Though there really was nothing to see at the moment. Even through her night-vision gear that projected infrared images from the cameras mounted on the outside of the chopper onto the inside of her helmet’s visor, there was nothing to see ahead. Except more waves.

  To her right hovered the DAP Hawk Vengeance with Chief Warrant 3 Lola Maloney commanding, and beyond that Dusty James’s transport Black Hawk, the Vicious. To Trisha’s left, if Chief Warrant 2 Roland Emerson weren’t sitting shoulder to shoulder with her in his copilot seat, she’d be able to see the two other Little Birds of her flight formation, Mad Max and Merchant of Death—Max and Merchant for short.

  When she’d named her bird May, everyone thought it was some stupid woman joke. But any fool who teased her about it being the Merry Month of…or Mayfly soon learned that it was short for Mayhem. She never had to explain it twice.

  There was no “Go!” command and no need for risking that extra bit of encrypted communication. The mission “Go” had been given fifteen minutes earlier when they’d spun up their rotors and departed the USS Peleliu amphibious assault ship floating forty miles out in the Arabian Sea.

  Now fifteen seconds to start of mission, she wound up on the throttle in her left hand. At five seconds to “Go!” both the bird and Trisha’s body were humming with the need to get moving.

  The clock on her dash hit 03:00—and she was gone. The May didn’t fly, she leaped. Not like a racehorse, like a greyhound. With the collective full up and the cyclic forward, Trisha was tilted nose down five feet above the waves and a hundred meters in the lead of any other bird in the flight, right where she liked to be. They closed formation quickly, but she liked setting a higher standard even on this, her first operational flight. It had been two long years of training and she was way past ready.

  Even with the low-noise blades and engine baffles, the roar inside the craft was loud enough that you wouldn’t want to try a conversation without your headset. You could do it, but your voice would get tired really fast. Despite the full-enclosure helmet, she could feel the familiar beat of the machine and whine of the high-speed turbine engine against her body.

  Everything in tune and running true. Sounded like an idea for a song, not that she could write music.

  Three a.m. should be the sleepiest moment on the Somali coast. Intelligence said the guard change was at oh-four-hundred. Everyone else should be asleep.

  Everyone except the Night Stalkers of the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (airborne). SOAR(a) ruled the night, the most elite Special Forces helicopter team on the planet.

  Tonight they’d be ruling the northern coastal town of Bosaso, Somalia, on the Horn of Africa. Or at least one corner of it. They wouldn’t be engaging within the third largest city in the country, because the pirates had made the mistake of using a compound outside of town. The local authorities were clamping down hard on piracy and, even if just for public image’s sake alone, they wouldn’t have been as tolerant of the pirates if they were right in town.

  She’d expected to feel some serious nerves. It was her first mission-qualified flight for the Night Stalkers. She’d spent five years with the 101st Airborne flying Cobra attack and Little Birds. She had planned that the day she hit the five-year minimum-experience requirement, she’d walk across Fort Campbell and knock on the 160th’s locked gate for an application. Instead, an invitation to apply had been waiting for her that very morning.

  Trisha smiled even at the memory of that. Her old friend Major Beale had kept track of her despite roaring up the officer ranks. Trisha hadn’t West Pointed in, though she could have. Instead she’d made her parents crazy by taking the NYU education that she’d paid for herself, then enlisting and bucking her way up from private. Though stepping back to the basics of Office Candidate School after she’d been a non-commissioned officer for several years had been tough . She didn’t want any advantages;she’d long since understood the value of learning the hard way. She’d no more climb up the broad ladder of her father’s political heft than she would clamber up the lace-draped tiers of her mother’s social one.

  Two more years had passed since she’d been accepted to SOAR. She was used to leading entire flights and planning operations for the Screaming Eagles. Not so with the Night Stalkers. They’d spent two years showing her just how little she knew. She was glad to simply be allowed to fly with them.

  “One click,” Roland said over the headset. She and Roland were the same rank, though he’d been in a year longer than she had. He was there in case she fucked up.

 
; No! Trisha admonished herself. He was there as her copilot. If he were there to cover for her, she’d be in the left seat and he’d be in the right-hand pilot position. All they both cared about was doing this mission and doing it right.

  One kilometer out. Fifteen seconds to shore.

  Right on cue, the breakwater came into view. A massive pile of car-sized concrete blocks protected the small harbor from storms coming in off the Arabian Sea. But it wasn’t ready for the storm that the Night Stalkers could unleash.

  # # #

  Navy SEAL Lieutenant William Bruce squatted in the dust, wearing the standard clothes of a mercenary soldier looking for a quick buck by joining the Somali pirates. Bill wore camo pants, a dark tank-tee, and a black sweatband. He carried a very battered but immensely serviceable M-16 which marked him even more clearly as a merc for bringing his own weapon with him.

  Most pirates wielded out-of-date Russian crap, some of it from all the way back to WWII, that was as likely to explode in their hands as to actually fire. He had a Russian TT-30 semi-auto pistol in the back of his waistband, a reliable enough weapon though he preferred a Sig Sauer, spare magazines in his thigh pouches, and a rusting but very sharp hunting knife strapped to his thigh. He fit right in.

  Bill checked his watch. Oh-three-hundred sharp.

  The choppers should be here in three minutes, if they were to be trusted. There was a laugh. A decade in the Navy, the last five years as a SEAL, and he still didn’t trust the Night Stalkers. He really should try to get over it, but he didn’t see that happening anytime soon. They were dead reliable, anywhere on the planet, any time. But this was Somalia, and though it wasn’t their fault, he couldn’t help himself. He would never trust them on Somali soil.

  Available at fine retailers every Sept, 2014

  More information at: www.mlbuchman.com