Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers) (5 page)

“Walk with me.”

Walk with the Major? Lola wanted to just go stand in the shower and try not to cry as she washed this latest flight off her skin and out of her brain. Seven missions in six days. Tonight they’d gotten back to base barely in time for an emergency extraction call. The second flight had been beyond ugly, pulling broken bodies off shattered hillsides under a fusillade of flying lead.

With luck maybe she’d be washed right down the shower drain along with the prior evening’s misplaced hopes. She hadn’t killed any friendlies, but she’d come damn close. And she’d wiped out some bad guys, but not enough. Two soldiers had died even as they boarded the choppers that were there to save them.

But the Major’s “Walk with me” hadn’t sounded like a request.

Lola set her helmet on the copilot’s seat, wondering if she’d get to fly again. She hesitated, but the Major didn’t protest her leaving it there. She’d take that as a good sign.

It was still dark as they left the chopper and moved toward the running track that circled the Bati soccer field. She could feel the others watching her.
Well, Sergeant Kee Stevenson, tonight you may get your wish.
But Lola had worked too hard for this, even if she wasn’t any longer sure she wanted it. No, she wanted it but didn’t deserve it. If they were planning to be rid of her, they’d have to do it themselves.

“Hey, Major. Do you—” Crazy Tim came trotting up.

“Get lost, Mr. Maloney.” The Major’s voice was calm, perfectly polite, and stopped Tim cold in his tracks.

Nice of him to try and run interference. Too late for that. Lola sent him a look of thanks, wishing she could just curl up against his shoulder and let the shame run out of her. That was weird. Guys were a place you went for sex and entertainment, not for safety.

He shrugged helplessly as she turned away. Whatever the medicine, Lola was, as usual, on her own and would have to take it.

She and the Major walked out onto the track, barely visible beneath the stars. The disappearance of the very dimmest stars indicated dawn lay not far off. Continuing around the track, Lola started to worry at the problem. Half a lap and still not a word. Should she speak first? Bite her tongue? Run away screaming?

By a full lap neither of them had spoken. She glanced toward the helicopter as they came by it and wondered if Tim was still there. If her gear was still there. Or had the Major already assigned someone to pack up all of Lola’s equipment in preparation for shipping her out?

“Do you want to be here?” The Major’s question was so soft that Lola barely heard it. Almost asked the Major to repeat it, but finally registered the words before she had to ask.

Lola looked up at the stars and all she felt was exhaustion. Rooted right down into her boots. She didn’t often think about what she wanted. She just kept moving forward. As long as it was new, she was game. Military, flying, helicopters, Special Forces, CSAR, SOAR… It was always the next thing.

She shrugged, knowing the Major couldn’t see her response. Still far too dark.

“You’re a damn fine pilot. Maybe as good as I was when I hit SOAR. But we have a problem.”

A problem? Other than she couldn’t walk or talk or even think? Wait. Something. The Major had said she was a good pilot?
No
way.

Major Beale circled back to where Lola had come to a stop without realizing. The sandy soil and uncertain surface threatened to pitch Lola to her knees. When they stood face to face with just a hint of dawn revealing the light oval of Major Beale’s face, though not her expressionless blue eyes, the Major stopped and crossed her arms.

“I’m your commander. That’s means more than you might think. I need to build a team. One I can trust. Trust without thought. Without consideration. That takes time. Before you and I invest that time, do you want to be here at that level? A hundred percent in with no questions. No doubts. You can’t be any more a little bit SOAR than you can be a little bit pregnant.”

Lola had faced a lot of tough questions in her life. She’d faced questions that had changed her past and her future. After Mama Raci, the SOAR review boards had been a cakewalk. After Mama Raci, anything was a cakewalk… except perhaps Major Emily Beale.

She’d struggled so hard to be here. Years of Army, years of SOAR training, and the Major had the gall to ask if she wanted to be here? Lola considered getting angry and lashing out with some vitriolic derision. But when she reached for it, it wasn’t there. Whatever her self-defense mechanism, the Major had triggered something else. The question had raised doubts and fears instead. Something she always tried her best to avoid, but there they were.

Was she good enough? Lola didn’t know. Strong enough? Sufficiently dedicated?

“How did you decide?” She didn’t know where she’d found the question or the nerve to ask it. By not giving herself time to think.

“I didn’t.” Major Beale turned to look up toward the reddening of the eastern sky over the tiers of concrete bleachers that encircled them. Now they stood side by side facing the same canvas of empty sky. The silence stretched around them as infinite as the desert beyond the walls and the sky above. A held breath. In the far distance she could hear the muezzin of Bati calling the faithful to morning prayer.

“For me it wasn’t a decision. It was simply the only thing that made sense. Flying, SOAR… Mark too. I didn’t think about them. I actually fought hard against the last and best, but thankfully Mark is even more stubborn than I am.”

Reaching up, the Major unclipped her dog tags and slipped a wedding ring off the chain. She re-latched the clasp and pulled the ring on. Jewelry wasn’t good in flight or a combat situation. Exposed, it could catch light or snag on fabric. It could hurt and cut if you were firing a weapon and the stock jammed against the ring. If your hand needed surgery, they might have to shear the ring… Many soldiers Lola knew didn’t wear rings at all. That the Major did wear one revealed a softer side evident in no other way.

Lola turned to watch the last stars fading in the morning sky. Shoulder to shoulder with the finest pilot she’d ever seen. With a woman that everyone respected. She wanted that, more badly than she’d thought.

But what she’d really wanted was to feel what she’d witnessed the first time she’d met Emily Beale. The Major had hovered closer to death than life but had cared more about the safety of her crew than anything else. More than for her craft or herself.

Now that Lola replayed the memories of that brief meeting, she realized that the Majors had already been married by that time. But the first thing Emily Beale had asked about was her crew.

Lola wanted to care that deeply. She wanted to care that much about something, about anything. Wanted to care so badly it hurt like an ache around her empty Tin Man heart.

She blinked her eyes, gone dry with staring at the sky, and turned to the Major.

But the woman was gone, had left her alone with her question.

The Major’s answer was clear. Either figure it out, or clear out your gear and get on the next flight to somewhere else.

Well, Chief Warrant 2 Lola May LaRue knew her answer. Absolutely clear. Five by five. Truly, deeply, even madly.

Yes.

The feeling roared into her with a clarity and power she could barely contain.

For perhaps the first time in her life, she knew exactly where she wanted to be.

Flying right next to Major Emily Beale.

Tim had lounged in the shadows around Lola’s bird.

The grapes had come by, the fueling crew in their safety-identifying purple vests. Once they’d cleared, the reds from ordnance had rolled in with cans of 7.62 mm cartridges, Hydra rockets, and rounds for the 30 mm cannon. They’d even checked over the personal weapons hanging in their door clips, though it was clear that the FN SCARs hadn’t been used. He’d hovered in the shadows as they checked the barrels of the miniguns, but no maintenance was needed. Kee and Connie had left theirs as clean as he and John always left their own.

Once they all left, he set into pacing. He knew something wasn’t right. He just didn’t know how to fix it. When his sister came home from her first high-school breakup, he’d made her laugh through her tears and fed her chocolate ice cream. When his brother had burned himself so badly with hot oil that his whole arm blistered, Tim had been the level-headed one to call the ambulance and keep his mother too distracted to weep, much.

He could think of a thousand times he and John had…

For the life of him he didn’t know what was up with Lola LaRue. But he wished he did. Wished he knew how to fix it.

He glared at her black helmet with the silver fleur-de-lis where it rested on her seat. It wasn’t giving him any answers either. French? So, was she French? Her accent, soft, enticing like a summer breeze, had eluded him. Whenever he thought he’d pinned it down, it shifted. As if she didn’t come from anywhere. Had no anchor.

Tim had an anchor as deep as the ocean. The fact that it had led him to the itinerant Army lifestyle was only one of the many odd turns of his past. But the odd turn that kept bugging him at the moment was how the Major was treating Chief Warrant LaRue.

Beale had never taken a copilot, or any other crew member, straight into battle before. She’d always given them a week or so in the backfield to settle in. The operational tempo was high, but it wasn’t that fierce.
Viper
could easily have flown the last two weeks’ forward missions, but instead Major Beale had taken
Vengeance
and her new copilot straight in.

He finally spotted Major Beale heading back toward the tents through the soft dawn. Probably gone to change and get some chow. Still no sign of Lola.

Five minutes later, he leaned back against closed cargo-bay door and started to wonder just how stupid he was for waiting. Who knew what they’d talked about? Maybe Lola went back to the tents down the other side of the bird. The sun cracked enough over the horizon to light the top row of stadium seating, flooding the field with soft reflected light. Maybe just five more—

Something slammed into him, full on. Not even giving him time to blink or react.

One instant, standing there…

The next moment, his breath knocked out of him and Lola leaned hard against him. She clamped his face in her hands as she gave him a smacking kiss.

She started to pull back, but Tim’s reactions finally kicked in and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back in.

For a moment, she held back, a breath separating them. Her eyes aglow with a joy he’d not seen before. She’d shifted from merely gorgeous to radiant.

Lola laid back into the kiss, driving her body against his, kissing him so hard his lips were stinging.

He slid one arm around her slender waist and dug the other into the lush cascade of softly curling hair he’d been dying to toy with since the first time he’d seen her. It had been another time, another mission; an unknown woman standing on the wind-blown ship’s deck in the wintery Baltic Sea. Even at a distance, she’d captivated him. Though she was a little taller, their bodies shaped and molded closer together more perfectly with each passing moment.

An energy coursed through her that drove his body’s attention into overdrive. Every nerve ending vibrated where they touched.

And her kiss! Rocket fire and the scorching heat of his family’s chicken fricassee. Lola LaRue tasted like fire and heaven.

She started sliding back and forth against him. First a slow gyration side to side, building rapidly until she shifted out of his arms. Their last point of contact, her teeth dragging across his lower lip.

Grabbing one of his hands, she gave it a sharp tug and pulled him from where he had been plastered against the chopper. In a moment she stood cheek to cheek with him, one hand on his right arm, their clasped hands pointing toward the
Viper.
He slid his arm back around her waist, blown away by the perfect way she fit there, and pulled their bodies together with a sharp tug.

She threw her head back with a laugh that reminded him of starlight, and with a kick and step, they were sliding ahead in an impromptu tango. Five steps, slow-slow-fast-fast-slow, he spun her into a twirl and pulled her back.

Their bodies slammed together, and again the starlight-sparkling laugh.

This time the kiss was quick and fast, with just the slightest linger.

When she moved away this time, he was powerless to stop her. As she danced downfield between the choppers, her hips sliding side to side in a way designed to make a grown man go blind, he heard her voice whispering back to him.

“I was right. You are sweet.”

All he could do was watch her go.

He looked down at his feet. So light a moment ago, they weren’t going anywhere now.

Yep! No doubt about it. He’d been absolutely right when he’d assessed their first meeting.

He was totally screwed.

Major Emily Beale sat with Mark and Colonel Michael Gibson of Delta Force, her usual breakfast partners. But she wasn’t really paying attention. The two of them were, as so often happened, trading fish stories. One a Montana boy and the other Colorado born and bred. High mountain streams, lakes that were a three-day horse ride in, pan-fried versus grilled on a green maple twig directly over the fire.

Mark had taught her to fish, and for a city girl, she’d discovered camping suited her very nicely. But she’d rather lie on the bank nearby and read a good book while Mark strode hip-deep into freezing water.

She let them talk, let her body eat, paying some attention to her steak and eggs, but mostly she watched her crew halfway across the tent. Taking her chance to assess their attitudes unobserved.

Archie and Big John were busy entertaining Dilya. And the little girl, who had bloomed over the last year, teased them right back. Clearly smart, she was consuming culture and schooling like water. Kee sat beside her chatting with Connie.

Kee lacked the playful streak that was such a surprise in Archie, but she and Dilya had something special. Some understanding and feeling that went deeper than anything Emily had ever imagined. Made her yearn for a child of her own.

Without turning, she reached out a hand. Without pausing in his story about a remote California lake of golden trout originally stocked by Chuck Yeager and an illegal Air Force mission he’d arranged, Mark slipped his hand into hers and held it tightly.

Not yet. But someday. Today she had other concerns.

Her first cue was Kee’s sudden stiffening.

Emily didn’t have to see her face to feel the scowl.

Silhouetted by the brightening daylight, Chief Warrant LaRue stood in the entry of the tent. Emily didn’t need the woman’s careful nod in her direction to know the answer.

The woman who had flown with such a desperate need to please was gone. LaRue no longer stood stoop-shouldered as she’d been out on the track just a few minutes ago.

The woman about to enter the chow tent now was a tall and confident woman. Emily would bet safe money that if she could see LaRue’s face, it would be flushed. She wanted to take them back aloft right now to see how it translated into her flying.

Whatever LaRue had decided, it had also put a dance in her step as she moved toward the chow line. A number of the Rangers tracked her across the tent, she was hard not to watch.

As Emily returned her attention to her food, another shadow darkened the entry.

No mistaking the powerfully shouldered silhouette. Tim Maloney also stopped when just a step inside. It was a common event, waiting for your eyes to adapt from the bright sun to the dim tent.

But the morning wasn’t that bright yet.

He scanned the room, nodded slowly to Big John, but still didn’t move. Took a step toward the chow line, but stopped again. Then he turned slowly, not just his head, but his whole body turning as he tracked…

Emily looked over her shoulder and saw Lola LaRue crossing from the chow line back to the crew’s table with a laden tray.

When Emily looked back at the entry, Tim was gone.

She bit her lower lip. Hoped she wouldn’t have to warn Mark. Tim was on his crew now.

And she hoped for Tim’s sake that a cold shower would be enough.

Five get you ten, it wouldn’t be.