Bring On the Dusk (4 page)

“Hey, I am too. I'm a respectable married lady now.” The woman who had yet to say her name or rank fished out her dog tags, which had a pretty ring threaded on the chain, and waved the ring at Dennis.

When he opened his mouth to respond, she shut him right down.

“Careful there, Mr. Dennis Hakawa. Don't be disparaging a D-boy's lady or I'll have him sit on you.”

“Yes, sir, Trisha, ma'am.” Dennis pretended to be scared but headed off without further argument.

Well, at least now she had a first name.

Trisha was a Delta operator's wife? Wow, was that ever a hard-road choice for a marriage!

Married to the one who'd ridden beside her last night? Why did she feel a small twinge of disappointment at that?

Utterly ridiculous.

They'd said about two words each, but she'd liked the way he sat there so peacefully right after action. A Marine would be boasting and roaring high on adrenaline. The Delta operator last night had simply sat quietly through the flight.

Wait!

Was he the one who'd guided her to her cabin? He was. She came up with a face. Rugged. Dark eyes and hair. It was a face filled with the man behind it. Even after just a single hazy glimpse through a hammer-load of exhaustion and adrenaline crash, she could picture that face perfectly. It wasn't one that you'd call handsome, not until you saw the man behind the eyes, and then it was…

Claudia was losing it. Totally brain dead. He was just some guy who'd helped her to her cabin. Probably this Trisha's husband.

There was a vague memory of something else about him, but it slipped away when she tried to focus on it.

So Trisha had married a D-boy? She must be even crazier than she acted.

It certainly wouldn't be Claudia's first choice—or second or third. Those guys went way out beyond any place that even hinted of being the front lines. They walked into the most dangerous places on the planet, and no one ever knew if they walked back out, because they never said anything. According to the Pentagon, they'd been formed in 1979
and
didn't exist. At all. They routinely denied the existence of “The Unit” despite what the little bits of news of it that had slipped out over the years.

The rumors about them were that they were misfits who hated the government and lived for the combat. That it was a troop of men who loved the fight but hated the system. All rebels and chaos and no control.

They were also said to be the absolute, number one counterterrorism team on the entire planet. That they were now even better than the British SAS that they'd been based on. Who knew where the truth lay inside those shadows. She, for one, would be glad to pass on finding out.

“C'mon.” Trisha led Claudia across the flight deck to another Little Bird just like the one she'd circled past moments before.

Except it wasn't.

Dennis flew the MH-6M, the same as she had last night. It was an aggressive flier designed to deliver four to six troops into places no other helicopter in the business could fit into. It was a bird that Claudia knew like the back of her hand after two years of SOAR training.

Trisha led her to an AH-6M Mission-Enhanced Little Bird,
A
for attack. These birds had been custom-designed to SOAR specifications. Instead of the two benches running down the exterior sides of the helicopter for the Special Operations Forces soldiers to ride on, she had a pair of M134 miniguns on the inside mounting points of the little side wings, and a pair of seven-rocket pods on the outer points for firing 2.75-inch Hydra 70 rockets. Claudia had really been hoping for an assignment to an attack version.

“Wait a second.”

“Girl is sharp.”

Claudia ignored the sassy tone and studied the helicopter. Six-blade rotor rather than the standard five, and a highly nonstandard shape to the hull, though still matte black like every other SOAR bird. Even the weapons were encased in odd-shaped carbon fiber housings. The windscreen still had the slightly bulbous shape that always reminded her of a cross-eyed hamster, but that was the only familiar shape on the whole bird.

It had to be a stealth rig, but she'd never heard of such a thing in a Little Bird helicopter. Everyone knew about the stealth bird that crashed in bin Laden's compound when they took him down back in 2011, but that was all. The evidence of the one that crashed had said that there were at least two stealth rigs on that mission.

She looked about the deck. Two of the helicopters parked here were the normal transport Little Birds—Dennis's bird and the one other that she'd flown. A massive twin-rotor Chinook helicopter, the heavy lifter of SOAR, was parked in the stern-most position of the flight deck.

Forward there were a pair of standard-looking transport Black Hawks and another Black Hawk that might have once been a Direct Action Penetrator weaponized bird but looked like nothing she'd ever seen. It too had an atypical number of rotor blades and the same radar-deceiving stealth shape.

That was why she'd been able to see two of the birds on infrared last night, but not on radar. The 5th Battalion, D Company, in addition to being the best, was clearly the stealth arm of the 160th SOAR.

“Holy crap!” What had she just landed in?

“Pretty cool, huh? We used to have a second stealth DAP but Major Henderson crashed it right before he retired, something about getting its tail shot off on an exercise, which I'm not buying at all. I bet he was into something nasty, but I've never found out the story on that one. All hush-hush. I guess they decided that we didn't need another one and gave us the Chinook and this sweet little stealth bird instead.” She patted the helicopter on the nose as if it were a puppy.

Claudia wondered which one she'd eventually fly. Her specialty was Little Birds and there were only the three of them here. It sounded as if all three already had lead pilots. Maybe she was someone's new copilot.

“Now, let's see you fly one. I already preflighted her.”

Claudia wanted nothing more, but she wasn't stupid. She just needed to figure out how to say it to this rankless woman.

Straight out was the only way that came to mind.

“Don't take this wrong, but I don't know who you are…” She left a pause that the woman declined to fill with an answer. “I don't fly a bird I didn't preflight myself.”

“Be my guest.” The infuriating woman waved for her to proceed.

Trisha stood and watched without comment as Claudia went over the Little Bird herself. As expected, everything was immaculate. SOAR always maintained their birds wonderfully. They had the highest operational availability percentages of any outfit in the U.S. Armed Forces, probably on the planet, and now she could see some of why. Even the Marine mechanics couldn't match this level, not in an operational environment.

This bird had seen some action—small swatches of hundred-mile-per-hour duct tape patched a number of holes like badges of honor. As she popped the engine covers for a visual inspection, she could see by some newer parts just what abuse this bird had taken in battle. She whistled silently. Two of the damage points must have made for ugly flights to get home. The bird also canted slightly to one side. The landing skid on the right was newer than the one on the left. She considered asking why but doubted she'd get an answer.

She turned to face this Trisha. “Good to go.”

“You're crazy,” Trisha said with a smile that Claudia would give good money to wipe off her face. Maybe the petite redhead had a personal vendetta against blond captains. “Three things you missed.”

Claudia reviewed both the physical checklist she'd carried around as well as the matching tally in her head. She hadn't missed a thing.

“You didn't preflight the pilot.” Trisha pointed a slender finger at Claudia's chest. “Barely awake is fine; that's why we're going aloft now to see how you're doing when it's the end of a long mission or an early alert. But tell me the last time you one: ate; two: drank water; or three: knocked back some electrolyte in this heat.”

Chagrined, Claudia reached for the thigh pouch on her flight suit.

Trisha leaned back against the Hydra rocket launcher on the shady side of the bird and waved for Claudia to sit on the edge of the copilot's door. Again the woman waited with what Claudia suspected was uncharacteristic patience.

She couldn't think of what to say, so she tapped some electrolyte into her water bottle then sat and ate an energy bar. In the late afternoon, the
Peleliu
's flight deck was unusually quiet; the two of them appeared to be the only life. A glance up and she could see a few shadowed figures behind their windows on the ship's nav bridge.

A lone sailor leaned on a rail and looked down at them from thirty feet above. For a moment he made her wish she'd chopped her hair back to Marine Corps short so that it wouldn't be so obvious she was a woman. No, she was past that. Now she'd just pull up her Ice Queen cloak, and to hell with him or any man.

When she was done eating and hydrating she felt better and, with a nod for permission, clambered aboard. Trisha circled around to the pilot's side.

“Captain, huh?” Trisha asked as Claudia began powering up the bird.

“Yes, ma'am. And you are…”

“A pain in the ass. At least so our commander keeps telling me.”

Claudia wasn't about to argue with that.

Trisha waved for her to take the controls and pointed up and west.

Claudia cleared her flight with the
Peleliu
's air boss in PriFly—Primary Flight Control jutted from an upper story of the ship's superstructure—and pulled up on the collective with her left hand. The Little Bird sounded different from inside, still loud but smoother somehow. She'd never listened to a stealth helicopter before. She knew the innovation was that the sound was directionless from the ground and the helo was likely to sound as if it was departing right before it landed on you, but she was surprised so little was changed in the cockpit. Trisha nodded that it was sounding right, so Claudia went with it.

Just before they cleared the edge of the assault ship's deck, a pair of men emerged onto the deck.

“Damn,” Claudia couldn't help exclaiming over the headset. “They breed them handsome out here.” She'd been exposed daily to the men of the nation's best and fittest fighting corps, but these two guys would have stood out in any crew.

“The pretty one's mine,” Trisha announced in no uncertain terms.

Claudia inspected the duo through the forward windscreen as she climbed the helo toward, then over them. The pretty one had to be the big guy, at least a head taller than Trisha. And he wore nothing but running shorts and a pair of sneakers. A scar ran down across his big chest. This must be her Delta Force husband. And he was indeed very pretty.

Good.

That meant his companion was not married to Trisha.

The other one had definitely been the man beside Claudia on last night's flight. Her vague memory of his face had been a complete underestimate.

He was totally arresting.

Significantly shorter than the big guy, maybe five-ten, and with a sleek frame that, like a greyhound's, looked to be all muscle. He was perhaps the handsomest man she'd ever seen. His rich brown hair fell past his ears, but even at this distance his eyes were his knockout feature. Not the color, she was too far away to check her memory of darkest brown.

It was the way they tracked her across the sky. She'd never felt so self-conscious before. Even when they were thousands of feet up and still climbing to the west, she could feel him watching her.

That's when the missing piece of last night clicked into place. A memory of being held in his arms. Of feeling for just that instant that she was perfectly safe from all that was changing around her.

She shook it off.

Safe was not real, didn't exist.

On top of that, Claudia reminded herself, he was also scary and bug-shit crazy.

Oddly, those two details didn't push her away as she'd expected. Still, there was no way she was going to be drawn in either.

* * *

Michael watched them aloft. Trisha wasn't flying. She flew the way she did everything else, flat out. He knew instinctively who was at the controls. That steadiness and smoothness to her flight was as clear as a fingerprint. That her face looked as amazing as she flew…

He wanted to laugh. Well, if the rest of her looked that good, he was totally screwed.

A meet-and-greet, Bill had said. No one dragged a pilot aloft before breakfast, especially after the shape she'd been in last night; that was just plain cruel. No one except Trisha O'Malley. Flat out. The way she flew and the way she made love.

Michael wondered if she'd told her husband that Trisha and he had been lovers briefly, a year before she and Bill met. Even if Trisha hadn't, Bill would have to know. Wouldn't he? Michael still didn't have a clear answer to that, so he once again kept his mouth shut.

They shared a glance and headed into the command tower. Michael had been doing some research while Bill was in the six-month operator training course at Delta. Didn't matter if he'd been a SEAL for half a decade, he'd needed OTC to make sure he met Delta standards and shared the skill set.

Now with Bill back, it was time to go sit with the ship's commander and lay out his idea for the next mission.

* * *

Trisha was talking about everything except SOAR or who she was. She was laying down this whole story about fighting in the Boston gangs, with a posh Boston accent that Claudia thought had gone out of style with President Kennedy. Street gangs? Not likely. Was she even a pilot? Was this just a way to haze a new team member by conning her into a free ride?

Claudia had a pretty good feel for the helicopter now. When she'd asked for permission, Trisha had simply replied, “Shake her out.”

Well, if the woman wasn't real, Claudia could claim ignorance. She'd grab any excuse to see what this bird could really do.