Wait Until Dark: a military romantic suspense (The Night Stalkers Book 3) Page 5

  Now, with shouldered duffels, they tried to look unhurried—outright bored as Viper landed.

  The message was clear: “We’ve been here a long while. Where the hell have you been?” They were both under the one-hour limit mandated by the exercise, but it provided a fine chance to rub in the victory.

  While they waited in a loose line for Viper’s rotors to spin down, Connie edged up to John. “What did you do to the outer fence?”

  “My first gig at SOAR was a testing flight against the perimeter security. I found the backdoor password. A quick downlink over our new wideband and I hacked the system. I told it to look anywhere except where we were. Then I instructed it to reset after thirty seconds. Viper walked right into it.”

  She nodded, filing the information away.

  “LtCGrimm1981.”

  Connie looked at him in shock. Sharing an insider secret just like that and he did it without thought, consideration, or negotiated trade. He shared the password because he had it to share and trusted her.

  LtCGrimm1981.

  Easy to remember, probably one of the more logical passwords in SOAR. Lieutenant Colonel Michael C. Grimm, one of the founders of the Air Regiment and one of the first to be lost, pushed the envelope that night-vision technology hadn’t yet learned how to fill. The Night Stalkers’ passion to develop night-vision gear now in use by the military worldwide, could be traced directly to the night Grimm ate a power line flying an MH-6 Little Bird at full throttle in a narrow river valley while leading a flight of twenty-two helicopters on a nighttime training exercise. His was only the fourth of the hundred names on the Memorial Wall outside Grimm Hall. Lt. C. Grimm. Died 1981.

  When Connie was standing quietly shoulder-to-shoulder with John like now, he didn’t seem so overwhelming. Big and powerful, but with a kindness inside that was so unexpected from a man bigger than Muhammad Ali. Even exhausted and cold and viewed in profile, she could see his irrepressible merriness. Nothing like her father who had been quiet, thoughtful, and guarded. Never speaking without thinking. She’d done her best to emulate him.

  But perhaps she was missing something.

  John made her feel…

  Connie wasn’t sure. She’d never been good at placing words on her emotions, when she allowed herself to consider them at all. Pain she knew. The pain that wrapped around her heart every time she thought of her father’s death in an unnamed helicopter in an unknown place.

  Around John, that constant pain eased. The tight squeeze that often made it hard to breathe, let go a tiny bit, and the sensation was quite heady.

  A part of her heard John teasing his buddy Crazy Tim. A part of her heard the deep friendship that lay between them. But the words garbled and were washed away by the solid thud of her own heart.

  Standing next to John, she felt that weightless moment she had embraced when jumping out of the back of the C-17 Globemaster III.

  That incredible sense of flying.

  10

  Twelve hours.

  Pure luxury. Twelve hours out cold with a hot meal and a hot shower on each end.

  John had not one complaint. Well, not much of a complaint, though he could certainly think of one fine enhancement. And his opportunities were much better here. Not a lot of available women in Bati, Pakistan, especially ones not likely to knife him while he slept. There had only been four American women at the base—the major, Kee the gunner, a day staffer, and Connie.

  While Fort Campbell wasn’t what you’d called a target-rich environment, in comparison it wasn’t so bad at all.

  He mounded up a short stack of pancakes, a couple eggs, bacon and sausage, English muffin, hash browns, and a coffee mug the size of his fist. A damn cute mess hall orderly, with skin hued nearly the same color as the dark roast she poured, offered to refill his mug every time he set it back down.

  They definitely knew how to live back here at the SOAR regimental headquarters. Instead of a chow tent, huddled at one end of a scorched and abandoned soccer stadium dotted with plywood tables, they were in Grimm Hall. He hadn’t seen this many Americans at once in over six months. He’d seen bigger crowds in the Afghan and Pakistani markets—pressing, pushing, crowded mayhem—but that was different and dangerous as well. Here, with the SOAR training battalion and the first two fighting battalions, Fort Campbell felt like New York in comparison, all energy and purpose.

  They were also in the westernmost corner of Kentucky, only a couple of states over from his family. Maybe he could find time to see them; it had been too long.

  The orderly came around again to flirt a bit more. She was long, lean, and Army fit. A seriously nice combination. He wouldn’t mind a dose of her kind of companionship. Wouldn’t mind it a bit. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Connie coming off the chow line. Without thinking, he raised a hand high to get her attention.

  Despite the distance, he noted her eyes going a bit wide. He waved for her to join him.

  She started in his direction, looking as if she were grinding gears and couldn’t quite engage her transmission.

  “You could have said,” the orderly’s voice had gone coffee-bitter.

  “Hunh?” By the time he looked in the orderly’s direction, she was striding off without the nice sashay of those splendid hips she’d offered the first few times around. What? Connie was one of his crewmates. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to see the orderly. Connie was just…

  He watched her as she approached. She was just… Something about her snagged his full attention. His world went quiet around her. Not as if he didn’t want to speak, but as if he didn’t need to.

  “You sure?” She stood half a step from the other chair at the two-top table.

  “I’m sure.” And he was. Now that was interesting. Cute, leggy, and willing orderly with skin the color of night. Cool and remote white-chick Sergeant Connie Davis who always ate alone. Always sat by herself. But there wasn’t any contest. Connie brought that incredible mind of hers. Also a gentleness that he’d bet would surprise her if he pointed it out. And the more he watched her, the more he liked her looks. No longer simply pretty, they were becoming familiar.

  He couldn’t read that poker face that she always wore, not yet, but he caught hints through its mighty shield. Her eyes had lost the steady gaze as even the brown flecks receded—they’d gone almost pure green. What else hid behind those hazel eyes?

  She cleared her tray, setting plate, napkin, cup of tea, silverware as if she were dining at home. Perhaps she was. He remembered that his question of home had been answered with a list of Army air bases. She treated her past as a closed book, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to know more about her.

  For one thing, she was nervous. He could tell by the way her eyes shifted to his as she sat. Nervous around him?

  “Something bothering you?” He dug up a mouthful of something from his plate but didn’t taste it.

  She fooled around with the toast on her plate, as if studying it for hidden secrets. A bite of hash browns and more messing with her toast before answering. “They’ve been working on our helicopters since the moment we walked away from them.”

  Why did he feel that was a topic change, even if he couldn’t quite pin it down?

  “Not unusual. We’re fresh in from a forward theater of operations. Frankly, I’m glad to have someone else muck out all that dust and grit. Every bit of it brings back dusty, gritty, and downright nasty memories. I mean, what am I gonna do if I don’t find sand in my shorts and a dusting of brown dirt on my dinner? Have withdrawals? Go for it. That’s what I have to say.”

  “They aren’t cleaning. They’re installing. New systems.”

  He dropped his fork. He didn’t intend to. It simply slipped out of limp fingers and tumbled a piece of sausage into his coffee. A sheen of oil rose to the surface and shimmered across it. “What new systems?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Didn’t or wouldn’t?”

  Her shrug was eloquent.

  He started to rise, then caught her expression. It shifted. For a single blink-long instant. Her eyes casting down to the left as if he’d sworn at her or something.

  He dropped back into his seat. Sat and stared into his breakfast. What had been a banquet moments before now looked to be slowly congealing under layers of now-cold syrup and long drools of dull-red hot sauce. He ate a piece or two of bacon, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  “What are they doing to my helo?” he asked himself. Not looking up, not wanting to see the pain that drove the green from those gentle eyes when he’d made to leave her alone at the table.

  “Five external fittings.” Her voice was rock steady. A glance showed her eyes were recovering much more slowly.

  “Huh?” He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud and had momentarily forgotten about Connie. But now, so close, he could smell her. The freshness of soap and shampoo, with an underlying treat of spice. Not the home-cooked freshness you’d expect from a girl like her, but rather a bright, enticing drift barely kissing the air.

  “Two low forward, one low aft. Front and rear high.”

  “ADAS?” He breathed it. It felt like a prayer on his lips. There’d been rumors and a limited press release of initial testing. But field ready?

  She nodded. Clearly her guess as well. “This I gotta see. Are you done?”

  Connie looked down at her untouched plate and his mostly full one.

  Then she focused back on him and did the impossible. She smiled.

  The warmth of it, the force of it, slammed him back in his seat. It lit her up with a radiance that nearly blinded. It made the rest of the room pale by comparison. It shifted her from merely beautiful to the most stunning creature he’d ever seen.

  “Yes, I think we are.” He caught her gentle emphasis on the “we,” a testing sound, but couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps he’d imagined it. Or maybe he wasn’t and she was a bloody nutcase. But that didn’t fit.

  She made a quick sandwich of her English muffin, scrambled eggs, and sausage patty before standing. He did the same, with an extra layer of pancakes, and followed her to the tray-drop window. They ate as they headed for the airfield.

  His last gasp of breath was still somewhere back at their table.

  The rest of him was busy trying to figure out how to make her smile again.

  11

  “What do you think?”

  Connie jumped a bit to find Major Beale close beside her. The blasting heaters were loud enough to mask smaller noises in the hangar, and the major moved so quietly.

  “I’ve always liked it here.” And Connie did. They were in the Fort Campbell maintenance hangar that they’d flown through last night. Lower than an airplane hanger, it was made for helicopters. They could park a couple of the massive twin-rotor Chinooks in here, but a 737 not so much. The walls were lined with overhaul parts: pumps, rotors, racks of small parts, and anything else a mechanic could want. Every tool, lifter, and overhead crane imaginable stood available for the moment it might be needed. Through an open door she could see a full machine shop.

  “I’d rather be flying. It makes me nervous to see that.” Beale nodded toward the two helicopters.

  A cluster of service techs, all in matching white coveralls with the vendor’s red corporate logo, were attacking their birds. FLIR dismounted. Panels pulled topside and the floor plates stacked on a handy rolling cart. The Hawks’ guts, especially the wiring control systems that ran through a Hawk’s cowling and underbelly, were exposed for all to see. A section of cockpit control panel had been pulled out and set on a wooden pallet.

  Another team was also replacing the rotor blades, though they’d only been reinstalled yesterday in Afghanistan. Actually, they were replacing the entire upper end of the rotor head to accommodate five blades instead of the standard four, and they’d already changed out the rear rotor as well. Being told five blades were “quieter” was an understatement. The Hawks were being rigged for stealth, at least in sound. Radar stealth would require replacing most of the helo’s skin with different components, but with this, they’d be much quieter. Something was definitely up.

  Where the major saw disarray, Connie saw the bones of the Hawk, and they were good bones. She liked being able to see all of the systems laid bare that she could normally only see in her head.

  They stood in silence watching the process. There was a clear process flow of delayering the existing system and the first steps of layering in the new technology. She and John had reviewed the installation plans carefully and couldn’t critique them. The vendor, as usual, knew exactly what it was doing down to the last meter of fiber optic.

  Right now John and Tim were over at Viper, talking over something. Tim hauled off and punched John hard on the arm. Tim was shorter than John but powerfully built across the shoulders. Tim’s blow would have rocked a lesser man but only made John laugh. He wrapped Tim in a headlock, knocking knuckles on Tim’s skull as if trying to knock sense into it.

  “They’re good together.”

  She nodded in response to the major’s observation. They were. Not only friends. Not merely soldiers who had served side-by-side for a decade. They were part of the kind of integrated team that formed in the best helo crews. Teams so tight that you trusted yourself and your crew like no other. So close that if someone took the bullet, all of the others hated that they weren’t the ones who’d been hit instead.

  For Connie’s whole life, she’d been the outside observer. She’d never been able to pretend that she truly belonged. Always on the outside of the crew looking in. Someday. Maybe. Probably not. She knew herself too well. She’d met other introverts who could fake it, women who could pretend they fit in with the crowd until they only stood out to other introverts. But she’d never been one of those.

  Connie wanted to move forward and see what the tech was doing on the forward mount, but she didn’t want to break this moment she was sharing with the major.

  “How did you end up in SOAR?” The question was out before Connie knew where it came from.

  Major Beale laughed aloud, that easy musical sound that would draw any male not already drawn to her blonde beauty. “The only way; the hard way.”

  Connie knew what she meant. Soldiers, enlisted like her and officers alike, tried time after time to qualify for Special Operational Forces, waiting a year at a time before their next opportunity to apply. Seventy-five percent of Army fliers, all with years of prior military experience, couldn’t make the cut.

  The Special Operations Forces trials for SOAR began with the brutal Assessment Week followed by the five-week Green Platoon training cycle. There was no way to tell ahead of time who would tough it out. The skinny geek with a compulsively bobbing Adam’s apple bruted out twenty-mile hikes with fifty-pound packs and no sleep. Gung-ho G.I. Joes never made it out of the Day One mud pit.

  Assessment Week drove past skills and past endurance, the Green Platoon taught just how insignificant that first step had been. What saw a soldier through was only one thing—motivation.

  A grunt had to want it, want it so bad that it was part of their inner core. So bad that their soul wouldn’t be complete without it.

  It was a bond she and the major had in common, they’d both walked places few women had ever trod.

  Connie recalled hallucinating on the firing range but still placing five rounds touching the black. Or waking up to discover she’d been walking with a full pack for hours, but couldn’t remember ever starting out. But she’d wanted it. To prove herself to herself. To prove that her father had not died in vain, though she knew he had. It was up to her to prove his sacrifice hadn’t been wasted, and she’d made sure of it.

  “I remember…” The major was gazing over at the helicopters. “I was standing about where John and Tim are, two and a half years ago. A beautiful summer night. A one-star general was facing off with me over a maneuver I’d flown, well outside the original practice-mission profile, but I got it done. Thought he was going to bust my ass back to regular Army. If he was, he’d have to do it. I wasn’t giving in one lousy inch that I’d done anything wrong.”

  Connie tried to imagine herself being so sure of her own rightness that she’d face down a one-star, but she couldn’t think of any scenario where that might occur.

  “I had a Drill back at West Point who insisted he’d ‘never trust a girl to fly anything as expensive as a helicopter.’ Put it in my damned Army file that way; I saw it once.” The major shook her head.

  “Eight years later, I stood right over there in front of the one-star considering whether it was worth the time I’d get in lockup if I popped him in the nose. I was so sure he’d say the same damn thing. Instead, he snarled at me, ‘Captain Beale, I’ll be damned if I’d ever trust such a hard-ass as you with anything less than an attack helicopter.’ That’s when he assigned me to the DAP. Best day of my life.”

  “What was the best day of your life?” Major Henderson had slipped up close behind his wife and was trying to pretend he was hurt by her last comment. With the slightest of motions Major Beale leaned back against his chest.

  “The day I got my DAP.”

  “Not the day I proposed?” He didn’t sound hurt, simply teasing. Flirting with his wife. Slipping his hands around her waist.

  “Close second, dear.”

  Connie wondered if she’d ever feel so comfortable around a man but couldn’t imagine it. They were so close that they were almost universally known as “The Majors.” It was enough to identify them to anyone who knew them and many who didn’t.

  That’s when she spotted John waving in her direction, signaling her to come over and see something in the cockpit installation.