Wait Until Dark: a military romantic suspense (The Night Stalkers Book 3) Read online

  After they called it off as a job well done, or as well as they could, they moved to the benches at the head of the cargo bay. Crazy Tim had shoved a couple of crates around until he had a makeshift poker table. John had been taking Tim’s money since Basic Training and saw no reason to stop simply because he was exhausted.

  Even Major Henderson was yawning, but exhaustion wouldn’t be a problem for him; he never lost at poker. John always figured it was the price of observing a master at play, to sit down to a game with the company’s commander. And he always dragged some winnings off Dusty as well. Usually enough to break even, but rarely did he make enough for a night out. Sometimes not even a lousy beer’s worth. Henderson was simply that good. Clay had learned the hard way to resist joining in. Major Beale didn’t play.

  Major Henderson at least played low stakes with his own crew. Other crews weren’t so lucky and had suffered badly at the table when the Black Adders helicopter company came to play. The name had been a natural extension when the 5th Battalion D Company was formed by then Captain Mark “Viper” Henderson. Now, many of them had the striking snake tattoo, along with the flying Pegasus with laser-vision eyes that was the unofficial emblem of the Night Stalkers.

  Connie sat down across from John.

  “You play much?” he asked as Tim shuffled the cards.

  “Never.” Her typical one-word reply.

  He did his best to hide a smile. An easy mark and quick money in his pocket would be so fine.

  He told her the rules once and she had it. Or claimed she did. That simple, silent, single-time nod of hers with no wasted motion. Recorded, registered deep in her weird-ass brain that never needed to look in a service manual to fix the most esoteric problems on the Hawk.

  Well, he was about to prove her wrong. Henderson was kind enough to run through a couple of hands open and a few more for no money until she had the feel of it—and he did a fair job of keeping the avaricious gleam out of his eyes. Now they were playing for money, low money, but that wasn’t the point. Tonight, today, whatever it was, John would tempt fate and his wallet by throwing caution out the window.

  “See your buck,” he called loud enough to be heard over the roar of the Globemaster’s engines. “And one more.” John was nursing along a respectable trip jacks. A high percentage winner in five-card draw. He knew he had Tim beat by how he sat. The simplest poker game to play, but it was hard to win. He eyed the major.

  Henderson laughed and matched but didn’t raise. Crazy Tim tossed in his cards with disgust on top of his two bucks already in the pot.

  Dusty released a massive yawn. “I’m out and done.” He tossed his cards down, accidentally face up, revealing a low full house. When John exclaimed, Dusty looked at them again. “Sorry.” He flipped the cards face down and crawled off to sack out on a bench seat. Too tired to notice that he’d thrown down a near-guaranteed winning hand.

  Connie inspected each player carefully. Laid down the one dollar to stay in and raised another dollar back. Four bucks in.

  He had to see this. What the hell, he raised her back as well. Teach the newbie a lesson.

  The major hesitated. Hesitated too long, making it clear he didn’t have squat, cursed quietly, realizing he’d been tired enough to give himself away, then threw his cards on top of Tim’s. First time John had ever seen him falter.

  There were only the two of them now.

  She waited. Did she somehow know to watch for his reveal, a facial tic that might give him away? A twitch of his pinkie that he didn’t know about possibly indicating the quality of his hand? Maybe she paused merely to test his confidence. To test him. Well, he was up to that. She was probably trying to remember if two pair beat three of a kind.

  At length, she matched his bet. Seventeen bucks. A sweet pot in such a low-stakes game.

  He laid down his three boys and sat back to watch her. Without a word, no hesitation to double-check, she fanned her three ladies on top of his jacks.

  Not a glimmer. Not the least hint that she’d figured out the cards and taken her first hand at poker. No hesitation, no uncertainty.

  John glanced over at the major.

  “Nope. I didn’t see it either. Let’s go again.”

  “See what?” Connie’s first words since she’d sat down and said that she’d never played.

  Neither of them answered.

  They dealt around again. Connie only took one card on the draw, classic two-pair move.

  He drew… garbage. The temptation to play it out drew at him, but didn’t bite.

  This time the major went for the ride on Connie’s trip tens with his aces and eights pairs.

  Connie’s stack of ones and fives was growing.

  Major Henderson didn’t look so sleepy anymore and John couldn’t figure out how he was losing money so fast in such a small game.

  By the fourth hand, he and Tim were folding on the deal, leaving the major and Connie to go at it. They were so intent that when the C-17 drove into an air pocket—dropping them a quick twenty feet or so—and all of the cards and money floated weightless for a moment, neither of them glanced away. Mark merely slapped his hand down on the pot to hold everything in place until the flight resettled. They watched each other far more than the cards.

  Thirty bucks down, John folded for the night. Tim had long since lost interest and fallen asleep stretched out on the deck.

  The major had to be fifty in the hole by the time he threw up his hands in surrender.

  “Game over. Okay, girl. Give.”

  Connie had started straightening her winnings. She looked at him a moment, tipped her head sideways as if to relieve a crick, and then offered him her stack, over a hundred dollars.

  “No. No. No. That’s yours.” He scrubbed at his face. “You’ve never played before? How did you do that? How did you beat us?”

  She finished with the money, slipped it into a back pocket, and began reboxing the cards.

  “It strikes me as a relatively simple game in many ways. Between what is in my hand and discards, and the pattern of discards of others, I can discount at least fifteen of the fifty-two cards. Taken only in combination, the odds simplify further. Then I observe the players and that alters the odds. After that I simply need to know if I can make you believe I have a better hand, whether or not I do.”

  The major grunted barely loud enough to be heard. “Then John…”

  The major slapped his shoulder. “You’ve got to watch how you hold your hand, buddy boy.”

  “Not his hand. His mouth.” Connie corrected him without hesitation.

  “My mouth?” John knew that a key to poker was knowing one’s own “tell.” A tell was a giveaway about the quality of what you had versus what other might think you have. Hearing about your own tell was rare and priceless.

  “No. His hand. He holds it higher when it’s worth less,” Mark insisted.

  He did?

  “No,” Connie shook her head. “Not always. But when his hand is truly miserable, he has a tiny bit of a smile. You, Major, are far easier to read.”

  He blanched. The inscrutable Viper actually blanched before the fair Connie Davis. John could get to like this woman after all.

  “Easier?” John could see the major’s lips move, but his voice was a stunned gasp lost in the unending roar of the jet’s engines.

  She pointed over his shoulder to where Major Beale sat perched on a crate close behind him.

  Mark spun around to look at his wife. Her grin was sheepish.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was giving away your cards. I don’t have much of a poker face, do I?”

  “It depends,” Connie answered matter-of-factly, “on which side you’re on.”

  Mark burst out laughing and pulled his wife into his lap. The ramrod straight Major Beale curled against him like any other girl.

  John loved watching them in these moments. They’d been magnetic together since the first time he saw them, though it took them a while to figure it out. And there was no woman he’d ever respected more highly.

  Connie snapped the rubber band around the box of cards. Here was another woman he couldn’t help but watch.

  9

  “Practice.” Connie sucked hard to get her breath in the freezing air now roaring through the Globemaster’s cargo bay. “Practice makes perfect.” She whispered it like a mantra. It was how her father had raised her and the Army had trained her. And she agreed. But right now she was cold and tired.

  Excellent conditions for an advanced training opportunity. She could practically hear her past instructors barking that out.

  After a mission, thirteen hours repairing their DAP, and fourteen hours in flight, they were twenty miles short of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the home of the 160th SOAR. Whatever was so urgent as to drag them across half the world didn’t supplant a training opportunity. Not in Fort Campbell’s mind.

  Despite wearing her helmet, she could barely hear herself think. They were down from thirty-five thousand feet to seven hundred. The crews sat on the side benches, their knees pulled in tight, facing the two Black Hawks awash in the red light that let their eyes adapt for the dark. The helicopters loomed huge inside the Globemaster’s bay.

  The sound redoubled as the jet’s crew opened the belly door. One section folded up into the ceiling, revealing the black of a winter’s night in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. No moon, no clouds to reflect back any man-made light. The other section of the rear door folded down until it angled down slightly below horizontal. Where the rear of the cargo bay had been now gaped a great maw of darkness waiting to swallow them whole.

  “Drop zone in ten,” the pilot announced over the intercom.

  “Parachutes suck!” John leaned in and yelled near the leading edge of Con
nie’s helmet so that she could hear him.

  A crew member in a harness strolled to the rear of the aircraft and chucked a small package out into the wind stream. The wind caught it, and in moments a four-foot drogue chute danced beyond the tail at the end of a long line leading back to the helo.

  “Five.”

  “They’re frickin’ awesome! I love free fall!” she shouted back.

  The crewman strolled back to mid-ship.

  “Drop! Drop! Drop!” sounded over the intercom. The C-17 loadmaster popped the release, and the main chute was pulled out by the drogue. One instant, the main parachute shot out the rear opening and filled to a huge size, larger than the cargo door it had just exited.

  The next instant, the Vengeance Black Hawk MH-60M DAP shot by Connie’s knees with a foot to spare. By the time it reached the door, the ten-thousand-pound bird was moving at the speed of an express train. Actually, the parachute was slowing it down to earthbound speeds while the C-17 continued to roar ahead.

  Another long webbing leash tied to Henderson’s Hawk shot out the cargo door. It in turn dragged free the second bird’s big parachute, and in moments the second chute and Viper were gone, moving faster. It left Connie breathless in the sudden vacuum of the abruptly empty cavernous interior of the plane.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  Magically the crewman materialized in the center of the cargo hatch. Both Black Hawk crews were scrambling to their feet from opposite sides of the cargo bay.

  “Free fall makes me barf!” John shouted at her as they threw off their safety belts and jumped to their feet. Or rather struggled upright. Large survival kits dangled from the fronts of their vests to hang awkwardly between their legs.

  They waddled past the jumpmaster as fast as they could. He checked the security of their riplines on the overhead rail before letting them waddle off the plane.

  At the tail edge of the ramp, she turned to face John. Connie yelled out, “Wimp!” and allowed herself to tumble over backward into the night sky.

  She started the timer on her watch as she completed the first somersault. A heat blast and the burned-fuel smell of jet exhaust surrounded her for half a moment before she fell into clear air.

  Connie normally loved free fall. HALO jumps were her favorite training exercise. High altitude, low opening, you felt as if nothing could hold you back. With the right gear, you could plunge seven miles from jetliner altitudes at thirty-five thousand feet to under a thousand feet in less than two minutes. Two hundred miles per hour without a vehicle or any more protection than a helmet and a high-altitude suit.

  But not tonight, so Big John would be okay. Tonight was a LALO jump: low altitude, low opening. She pulled the ripcord. The line jerked her drogue parachute free. It in turn yanked out her main chute the moment she caught air, and the harness grabbed her hard, jerked her painfully to an abrupt halt. From a hundred-plus knots of the jet’s speed to twenty in two seconds flat.

  She checked the sky about her.

  Seven other chutes, John close beside her. Good, the whole team accounted for.

  The C-17 disappeared from all visibility as she watched, the closing rear hatch cutting out the red interior lights. Gone. Even though they were over friendly soil, the jet had flown without lights for such a training run. At the limit of vision, the nav lights blinked on and then they were gone.

  Below, the two massive chutes lowering the Black Hawks toward the open field of the drop zone were etched against the white landscape. Snow. It was going to be cold down on the ground reassembling the Hawks for flight. She steered for them. The freezing night air was chapping every part of her face that wasn’t protected by the helmet.

  At a hundred feet, she dropped the survival bag on a long lead line. Fifty feet. Thirty. The bag hit the ground like an anchor. She stalled the chute and landed soft. A quick pull on the forward shroud lines and the chute spilled air, collapsing to the ground.

  She jerked the quick-release toggle and started gathering her chute as Big John dropped in fifty feet to her left. The others ranged beyond him in a tight grouping. John set to work on bundling his chute.

  “No barfing. Not so much as a gag. I’m disappointed.”

  All he did was snarl in reply, “Sixty minutes.”

  She checked her wrist, fifty-six and counting from when they’d stepped off the tailgate. The exercise hadn’t specified which time to start, so she’d count from the “Go!” not the ground.

  She saw John’s nod. The burden was now on them. On that they could agree.

  First, they had to check the helo. Then put her back together. After that, they’d perform the preflight check so that the major could fly them back to Fort Campbell. Undetected.

  And, more importantly, they had to beat Viper. Fifty-five minutes.

  “Goddamn it!” Sergeant Steve Johnson looked out Fort Campbell’s heli-field control-tower window.

  “Hey, Jeff. How many Hawks were on the concrete when we came on shift?”

  “I don’t know. A dozen, give or take.”

  “How many were DAP Hawks?”

  “Two. Why?”

  “Well, now there are three.” He had the satisfaction of hearing Jeff’s curse. Jeff moved beside him and looked down at the field.

  “How in the hell did they do that? And when?”

  Steve ran the security recordings back. “Four minutes ago.” Low and slow. They’d actually come sliding out from inside a hangar he knew to be empty. He rolled back on camera four. There they were, dropping two crew chiefs to the ground. The smaller one did something quick at the edge of the hangar doors. He’d better let maintenance know they’d need to fix the alarm on the hangar’s back door.

  The pilot flew straight through, low enough that he’d barely had to hesitate at the threshold to retrieve the ground team.

  “Slick.” He’d seen Navy SEALs who were clumsier. He rolled the recorder further back. Camera fourteen at the back gate.

  Again the two crew chiefs slid out from the night with the grace of combat operators and captured the guard booth and its three inhabitants. They’d actually opened the gate so that the Hawk could fly through with her body well below any radar and her rotors clear of the wire.

  Steve called the booth. He didn’t have to ask the question.

  The guards answered with, “They told us we had a choice—be tied up, face down out in the snow, or keep our mouths shut until you called us. We chose the latter, sue us.”

  Steve hung up on them without responding.

  He was used to SOAR’s pilots trying to outsmart Fort Campbell’s security, an old game. Strictly against the rules, but most rules didn’t apply to the highly secretive 160th Special Operations Air Regiment. One rule did though, always. Never, ever be seen. All else came second. And the tower worked hard to make that first one a real challenge. No one ever got by them—until tonight.

  “You know what I’m thinking?” Jeff picked up his night-vision binoculars.

  “Helicopters always travel in pairs?” Steve concentrated on the low clutter at the bottom edge of the field’s radar sweep.

  “And that had to be Emily Beale’s team. Had to be. So goddamn smooth.”

  The two of them shared a smile. That pretty much identified the other bird. It took two more minutes, but their vigilance paid off. Not that they could have missed it. The low-sweep, outer-perimeter radar gathered up the second helicopter with ease.

  Steve snapped on the infrared searchlight and swept the second DAP Hawk as it hopped over the fence, clearing the razor wire by no more than two feet.

  “Greetings, Viper!”

  “Get that damn thing out of my eyes!” Major Mark Henderson snapped over the radio.

  Steve doused the light. “Welcome to Fort Campbell. Haven’t seen you in a while. When did you get stateside?” He tried to sound sassy, but he couldn’t figure how the major had gotten past the first three levels of threat detection that surrounded SOAR’s home base.

  And how the Viper’s wife had gotten past all six.

  Connie spilled out of the Hawk with the rest of the crew to crow a bit over Viper being caught. While waiting, from forty-eight minutes to fifty-four minutes into the exercise, they’d scrambled to shut down the bird and strip off helmets and vests in the cramped space. John handed around warm hats. They’d all hustled to tie down the blades and cover the key components.