Night Is Mine (43 page)

M.L. Buchman

Available August 2012

From Sourcebooks Casablanca

Falling down like a hammer out of the crystal blue sky came her baby: a Black Hawk helicopter. And not just any Hawk. It was an MH-60L DAP. The Direct Action Penetrator was the nastiest gunship God ever put on Earth and only the best flew in her. Kee’d almost died of pleasure the first time she saw one—actually, she’d been about to die literally, too.

She’d spent five long years bucking her way up from infantry to get aboard. It had taken her three of those to get into SOAR and another two to get through SOAR training. Now she was here, forward operations. She’d done it, facing a DAP Hawk. No man had ever made her feel this good.

And this sweet bird wasn’t fooling around. Two massive weapons’ pylons stuck out from either side of the midsection. On one side she had a rocket pod carrying nineteen birds and a 30 mm cannon just in case they wanted to go mastodon hunting. On the other pylon, another rocket pod and a rack of Hellfire anti-tank missiles, three of which were missing.

Unfriendlies lay pretty close aboard here in the baking desert in bloody baking Pakistan, their base of operations a dusty bivouac fifty miles from Afghanistan’s brutal Hindu Kush mountains. The surrounding town of five thousand people could be hiding anybody. The two Crew Chiefs still had their hands on the M134 miniguns peeking out of their shooting holes even while they were just a hundred feet up. The Hawk had the midair refueling probe which meant she went in way deep. Kee was down with that.

Only one group flew such a bird: SOAR. The Special Operations Aviation Regiment (airborne), the Army’s 160th. The Night Stalkers. The baddest asses on the face of the sky. And she was here. She pinched her leg, on the side away from Major Muscle-head. It stung. This wasn’t no dream. Wide awake. She’d done it.

They both turned away and covered their faces as a brown-out of dust washed across the field adding another layer to her too many hours of grime. Once the bird hunkered down and speech and vision were again possible, she faced him.

“That.” She cocked a thumb over her shoulder. “Me.” She thumped her chest with a fist. “Sir!” For good measure.

“Done!” Again that hidden laugh. “If you can talk your way past the pilot.” He turned on his heel and disappeared into the heat shimmer.

So, all up to her, huh? Good. Didn’t scare her none.

Kee yanked her duffle over her shoulder and tromped over to the DAP as her rotors wound down and the dust and sand settled.

Respect. She’d give that a shot first. Respect with a little help. Because, like a good soldier, she had more than one weapon in her arsenal. She tossed down her duffle and the rifle case at the edge of the rotor sweep and made sure her T-shirt lay smooth and tight on her skin so that every muscle and curve showed. Pack ‘n’ Rack. Six-pack abs and a good solid rack for a chest. On clear display. Her dusky skin, almond eyes, and single blond-streak in dark hair that had some kind of magic at knocking men dead. Wasn’t why she had it, but it worked.

She didn’t tease, it wasn’t her mode. If she offered, she meant it and delivered. But having men’s brains switch off around her had its advantages. She wasn’t gonna be filing a letter of complaint with the chief people designer that wired men’s brains to blow away like dust in rotor wash whenever they were around her. It just amused her that it worked every damn time.

The pilot climbed down, leaned in to trade a joke with his crew chief and then headed out from under the slowing rotors. He almost passed her by, but Kee snapped a sharp salute.

“At ease.” No salute back.

Crap! Newbie mistake. She jerked her hand back to her side and couldn’t help checking behind her, but Major Muscle was gone. She knew better, had been forward-deployed plenty to know better. In the field you never salute a superior officer. Sure way to tell a sniper who to target.

Kee dropped to parade rest, clenched her hands behind her back. Muscled arms and shoulders back focused men on a chest that wowed ’em all. Some civilian women thought they were hot, but there was nothing like a buffed-out soldier babe. And they knew it, too. Wasn’t a single civilian chick ever gave her a smile when she entered a bar.

“Sergeant Kee Smith. Best damn gunner you ever met. I want on your ship, sir.”

The pilot peeled off his helmet, revealing blue-green eyes and an unruly wave of soft brown hair that she’d bet never stayed under control, no matter how long a woman played with it. He opened the front of his flight suit to reveal a sweaty tee on a slender frame.

“First Lieutenant Archibald Jeffrey Stevenson III at your service. And it’s not my ship. You’ll be wanting to converse with the major.” His voice so slow and smooth and refined, like a radio announcer on those classical stations.

Then he grinned at her, a saucy, funny grin. Started in his eyes and wandered down to his lips, ending up kind of lopsided. Not Handsome-Mr.-Major, but it made him look pretty damn cute. She couldn’t help but notice that his long and lean had some nice muscle underneath; you’d expect no less from a SOAR.

The lieutenant, however, didn’t even have the decency to rake his eyes down her body. The major hadn’t been able to help studying her frame, she could tell despite the mirrored shades he wore as if they’d been welded there. But this lieutenant somehow managed. Either gay or self-control of steel-like strength. Came down to it, she’d be betting on the latter. What happened when that much self control let go? Now that could be worth the price of the ticket to find out.

He moved off to her right, passing so close they almost brushed shoulders. He leaned in and whispered, “Good luck. You are going to need it.”

And even though she didn’t turn to look at him, she knew they were smiling together for that moment. Lieutenant Archibald Jeffrey Stevenson III, indeed. What was this woman’s army coming to? Though she’d liked the way he said it, with a voice like silk.

She spotted the oak leaves on the collar of the other pilot and set aside thoughts of long and lean lieutenants with wavy hair. The major was still helmeted and chatting with the crew coming in to service his chopper. The Hawk’d been through some hard times. Tape patches showed more than a few hits on the fuselage, some of the panels had been replaced and a couple of those had patched holes, too. Now that they’d stopped spinning, she could see that one of the rotor blades was clearly newer than the other three, replaced after taking too much abuse. This bird had seen some heavy action. She moved in to check out the guns, worn hard but so immaculate you could eat off them. Her kind of weapon.

“Pretty, isn’t she?” Some crewwoman’s voice sounded close behind her. SOAR had women in the ground personnel, but Kee was only the second woman to ever make the grade for flight operations. Sweet candy for sure. A serpent of coiled gray had been painted across the dusky green of the chopper. The colors so close in tone made it hard to see in places, which made it appear all the more dangerous. It wrapped around the gunner’s lookout window and writhed across the pilot’s door. Etched in his scales was the name of the bird: “Vengeance.” The serpent’s head, striking forward along the nose of the chopper, sported mirrored shades. In the lenses, someone had even drawn a reflected explosion of an enemy going down hard.

“Better than sex.” She rubbed a hand down the long barrel of the 30 mm cannon. “I can’t believe that bastard major wanted to slot me on the girlie-chopper. This is real flight.”

“Don’t like girlie-choppers?”

“Not one friggin’ bit. I want this bad boy. I didn’t come here to form no goddamn chick squad.” She stepped forward to stare into the face of the rocket launcher. Seven fired. They’d been in some heat last night. She’d wager it hadn’t turned out well for the bad guys. Night Stalkers ruled the dark.

Something kept dragging at her attention. She’d been trained to pay attention to the niggling feeling that something was out of place. Not right. It had saved her life more than once while pounding ground for the 10th Mountain Division.

Looking up, she spotted it.

“The rotor blades. They look different.”

Kee could feel the maintenance chick, still behind her, focusing her attention upward.

“Thicker. Most can’t see that. This is the first ‘M’-mod in the theater. The MH-60M upgrade adds twenty-five percent larger engines, needs a heavier blade.”

Kee whistled in admiration. “She must haul ass across the sky.”

“She does.”

Kee glanced over at her new companion. “Kee Smith.”

The first thing she noticed was the shoulder-length blonde hair and the bluest eyes on the planet. Pretty, slender, perfect posture. Would fit in with Archibald Jeffrey Stevenson III just fine. Maybe they were hitched. Met in a frickin’ hoity-toity fern bar somewhere on the Upper West Side. She dug a sparkler out of a pocket and slipped it on her left, though the lieutenant’s hand had been clean. Still, could be.

The second thing Kee noticed was the worn flight suit, the battered helmet under one arm, the scuffed-up M9 Beretta at her hip, and the pair of major’s oak leaves on the woman’s lapels.

Kee’s poker face clicked in a beat and a half too late. One woman had made it into SOAR before her. A friggin’ legend. And not for spreading her legs to the top. A girl couldn’t turn around without being compared to the one other woman flight-qualified in the whole regiment. That damn Major Muscle had tricked her. Tricked her into begging to get onto the girlie-chopper she so hadn’t wanted. Who’d have guessed the girlie-bird would be a DAP Hawk?

Kee knew the woman’s name even before she spoke in that refined voice of hers.

“Emily Beale.”

It should have been a simple mission…

Pararescueman Wade Rocha fast ropes from the back of a helicopter into a blizzard to save a climber stranded on an Aleutian Island, but Sunny Foster insists she can take care of herself just fine…

But when it comes to passion, nothing is ever simple…

With the snowstorm kicking into overdrive, Sunny and Wade hunker down in a cave and barely resist the urge to keep each other warm…until they discover the frozen remains of a horrific crime…

Unable to trust the local police force, Sunny and Wade investigate, while their irresistible passion for each other gets them more and more dangerously entangled…

Praise for Catherine Mann:

“Catherine Mann weaves deep emotion with intense suspense for an all-night read.” —#1
New York Times
bestseller Sherrilyn Kenyon

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