I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers (31 page)

“Captain.” Major Henderson turned, the laptop’s plastic shell crumbling beneath his heel with a low moan, and stepped back out of the tent into the driving sun with no sign that he would ever break a sweat.

Emily tossed her helmet to Big Bad John, her crew chief from Kentucky coal mine country. The nickname had been inevitable. Six foot four and powerfully muscled. She hustled after the major, out of the tent and across the sandy landing field.

The most common theory placed Major Henderson’s mother as part snake and his father as pure viper. The very fastest, most dangerous viper, everyone added quickly. There were even debates on exactly what breed that would be.

Others claimed that he hadn’t been born but rather hatched.

But she’d flown with him the first two weeks before being given her own bird, and she’d seen the two small pictures he tucked in his window every flight. Once, when he’d been out of the bird, she’d leaned in to inspect them more closely.

One a young boy wearing mirrored shades, just like his highly decorated SEAL commander father who had Mark tucked under his arm.

And the other, much more recent of Mark and his parents, all mounted on some seriously large and majestic horses, and all three wore mirrored shades. He and his father could be copies of each other, except Mark was darker, his features more sharply defined. She could see where Mark had gotten that and his straight, dark hair. His mother was a tall woman with strong Native American features and a cascade of black hair that flowed past her shoulders almost to her waist. Above them arched a carved sign that looked quite new and proclaimed: “Henderson Ranch, Highfalls, MT.” They were as stunning specimens of the human race as their mounts were of the equine.

Outsiders teased their company about being the Black Adders because their company so fixated on The Viper’s nickname. Henderson’s pilots took it as a compliment and painted winged, striking adders on their helos, all sporting Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean smile. About half the winged tattoos worn by the pilots in the tent depicted striking adders, though only Crazy Tim, to no one’s surprise, had placed the classic, beak-nosed Mr. Bean face permanently on his skin.

Major Henderson wasn’t just the commander of the 3rd Hawk Company of the 5th Battalion SOAR. He was also the most decorated, toughest son of a bitch in the 160th Air Regiment. And, despite her first impression at the airport, he wasn’t much nicer on the ground. But he had the only thing that really mattered in covert helicopter operations. He was the best.

Only the most exceptional fliers were invited to inter-view week at the 160th. Only the toughest survived it with a residual shred of ego intact. And of the few who made it through the pearly gates of the back lot of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, over half flunked out of the eight months of initial training. Never mind the year and a half of advanced training after you’d made the grade. Only the most terrifyingly qualified of those who survived made command.

Stories of Major Mark Henderson abounded on all sides. One told that he’d taken on a battalion of the Republican Guard during Operation Iraqi Freedom, with only his bird and his wingman’s, and won.

Emily had assumed that they were just telling the newbie tall tales. But the crew stuck to the tale of two lonely choppers, totaling eight men, against five hundred troops armed with the very best the Iraqis could buy from Russia. Around Major Mark Henderson, it almost seemed possible.

Another told of the time he’d been smashed down a hundred miles behind unfriendly lines and decided to use his time awaiting rescue to blow up a few military targets. He and his three-man crew had done it running from hidey-hole to hidey-hole with a jury-rigged, four-hundred-pound, nineteen-round rocket pod torn off his chopper in the crash. His actions supposedly opened a whole section of the battlefront for easy access.

And those were before you got into the real whoppers. Tall tales edged well past surreal, one of which Emily knew from personal experience to be completely accurate. And to this day she counted herself lucky to be alive after that mission.

She caught up with Major Henderson around the midfield line. Their base camp was an old soccer stadium. Tier upon tier of concrete benches coated in flaking whitewash ringed the field. Too arid to sustain grass, the field now sprouted with a dozen-odd helicopters of varying sizes and capabilities.

Black Hawks, the hammer force, ranged down near the enemy’s goal line.

A flock of Little Birds sprouted about midfield ready to deliver clusters of four Special Forces operators to almost anywhere that they were needed fast. The birds were so small that the soldiers didn’t even sit in them, but rather on fold-down benches to either side. A short step to ground or a thirty-meter fast rope into a zone too hot to land.

A pair of massive, twin-rotor Chinooks, half-hidden in heat haze and thermal shimmer, lurked around the home team’s goal. The playing field was owned and operated by a well-oiled, three-company mash-up of the 1st and 5th SOAR battalions.

Sentries from the 75th Rangers were perched along the topmost row of the stadium looking outward. Dust rose from every footstep and hung in the still, breathless air for hours.

She matched her stride to his. It was always nice, those quiet moments when they walked side by side. Some kind of harmony like that very first day. She’d come through the gate, bag over her shoulder, and he hadn’t even nodded or smiled. Just pivoted easily on his heel and landed in perfect synch with her as they headed toward parking.

The major continued to move steadily across the dusty field toward his small command center set up by the barricaded entrance tunnel at the home team end. Why had he interfered in the tent? She could have laughed it off. Could have. Wouldn’t have. Maybe the major had been right to shut down the guys’ teasing, but now there’d be an even bigger wall of separation to knock down, as if being a female pilot in a combat zone wasn’t three strikes already.

They reached the end of the field together, like a couple out enjoying a quiet stroll. She shook her head to shed the bizarre image. Not with her commanding officer, and certainly not with a man as nasty and dangerous as The Viper.

He stepped onto the sizzling earth of the running track that surrounded the field. They were in Chinook country now. The Black Hawks and Little Birds were but vague suggestions in the morning’s heat shimmer. Down here at the command end, the pair of monstrous Chinook workhorses squatted, their twin rotors sagging like the feathers of an improbably ugly ostrich. These birds looked far too big to fly, yet they could move an entire platoon of fifty guys and their gear, or a half platoon along with their ATVs, motorcycles, and rubber boats.

“I’m sorry, sir. I know I shouldn’t have discharged a firearm in camp. I’ll replace the computer, but I’m a pilot and those news guys didn’t…”

He stopped and turned to look at her. Not a word.

“I just…” She looked very small and insignificant in his mirrored shades. Twice.

“Captain?” His voice flat and neutral.

“I… Dammit! I’m a pilot, sir. They had no right. No bloody, blasted stupid right to do that to me. I
—
”

“Don’t care.”

Her tiny, twinned reflection dropped her jaw.

Then Major Mark Henderson did the strangest thing. He reached up a meat cleaver-sized hand and pulled his glasses down his nose. Now she knew she was screwed. She’d never be able to joke with the guys again about the major not having eyes.

Steel gray. As hard as his body. The most dangerous-looking viper she’d ever seen.

Then he smiled. She almost fell as she dropped back a step. The smile reached his eyes and turned them the soft, inviting gray of a summer sunrise.

“Do you think I give one good goddamn about a lousy piece of hardware or about what CNN thinks? In my command, only one thing matters: are you the best flying? Period.” His voice was firm, but soft and friendly. Almost teasing.

Then he shoved his glasses back in place, and the smile clicked off in the same motion. He turned back for the tent.

She tried to follow. Really she did. But two thoughts rooted her in place.

First, had The Viper really just smiled at her? Been pleasant? It would prove he was human, which didn’t seem much more likely than him pulling down his sunglasses.

Second, her body felt weak and ravished by his simple gaze, though it had not raked over her like the news camera. Those gray eyes, especially when he smiled… What would she have to do to have them look at her like that again?

It still pissed her off a bit. How would he like to be called the sexiest major flying?

She got her feet moving again.

He’d probably love it
—
he was a guy, after all.

M.L. Buchman began writing novels on July 22, 1993, while on a plane from Korea to ride a bicycle across the Australian Outback. M.L. has been a substitute instructor for University of Washington’s Certificate in Commercial Fiction program and spoken at dozens of conferences including RWA national and BookExpo. Past lives include: renovating a fifty-foot sailboat, fifteen years in corporate computer systems design, bicycling solo around the world, developing maps for a national franchise, and designing roof trusses, in roughly that order. M.L. and family live on an island in the Pacific Northwest in a solar-powered home of their own design.

“To Champion the Human Spirit, Celebrate the Power of Joy, and Revel in the Wonder of Love.”
www.mlbuchman.com

Cover Me

by Catherine Mann

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

For more Catherine Mann, visit:

www.sourcebooks.com

Hot Zone

by Catherine Mann

He’ll take any mission, the riskier the better…

The haunted eyes of pararescueman Hugh Franco should have been her first clue that deep pain roiled beneath the surface. But if Amelia couldn’t see the damage, how could she be expected to know he’d break her heart?

She’ll prove to be his biggest risk yet…

Amelia Bailey’s not the kind of girl who usually needs rescuing…but these are anything but usual circumstances.

Praise for Catherine Mann:

“Nobody writes military romance like Catherine Mann!”—Suzanne Brockmann,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Tall, Dark and Deadly

“A powerful, passionate read not to be missed!”—Lori Foster,
New York Times
bestselling author of
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For more Catherine Mann, visit:

www.sourcebooks.com