Night Is Mine (2 page)

She should’ve shot the stupid screen while she had the chance.

Even on the tiny laptop you could see good muscle definition right at her fighting weight. Not bodybuilder, though she lifted enough weights. Still, she wasn’t particularly happy with how she looked. She’d never met a woman who didn’t feel that way.

Did guys feel like that? This crowd seemed pretty pleased every time the camera caught one of them. A lot of macho shoulder punching, hard enough to bruise, each time one of them made national television.

The next clip showed her pulling out an emergency foil blanket, good for reflecting away the worst of the sun if you were smacked down in middle of sand dune nowhere. She’d demo-ed how to use one to hide from the sun, even digging it into the sand before disappearing beneath.

But in the next instant, she knew this broadcast didn’t go there. Instead they went with her quick origami moment to create a decent solar oven from the foil. Taken her a while to figure that one out back when she flew for the 101st. They jumped to a finished loaf of sourdough bread, from some starter she’d had smuggled in. Not bad. She could live with this. Somehow.

And then the next image rolled.

Not a helicopter or flight suit in sight. How long was this stupid clip anyway? They’d dogged her heels for a full day and this was the best they could do?

Back to the solar oven. The soufflé. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t. They did.

A whole circle of broad-shouldered, badass flyboys standing around her with their arms crossed over bare, serious-workout chests. A solid wall of shirtless, obviously posed male flesh she’d hadn’t even noticed the news crew setting up. Her tiny image on the screen lifted the chocolate soufflé from the makeshift oven. Perfect. And the desert was so frigging hot that the soufflé didn’t start its inevitable collapse from cooling until after the camera moved on. The round of applause had tickled her at the time. But on the squidgy, little piece-of-crap laptop, it just made her look like a half-naked Suzy Homemaker in shades.

“Flying into battle, you know her well-fed crew will follow Captain Emily Beale anywhere because she’s the hottest chef flying.” In the parting shot, a helmeted pilot, visible only as a silvered visor and blue-black helmet, lifted off in a swirl of dust.

Her helmet was purple with a gold-winged flying horse on the side, and everyone in the tent knew it. It remained clamped under her arm at this moment in case they wanted to double-check. She’d had no missions the day the film crew was in camp so they’d shot that dweeb Bronson, of all useless jerks.

That couldn’t be the end of the clip. But the wrap shot was perfect, the camera following Bronson high into the achingly blue sky.

All those interviews about her pride as the first woman serving in a man’s world.

Not one word made it in.

Descriptions of nasty but unclassified missions that she had been authorized to discuss.

All cut.

Actually, they hadn’t used a single word. She’d never spoken. Just cooked and been ogled.

And finally, to drive the hammer home, they’d used Bronson in his transport bird, not her heavy, in-your-face, DAP Hawk for the closer. When you wanted a joy ride, you called Bronson. When you wanted it done, you loaded up her MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator Black Hawk.

They had to include at least one—

“In New York’s Bryant Park today…” The laughter drowned out the parade of anorexic women who probably couldn’t shoot a lousy .22 without getting knocked on their narrow butts.

She pulled her pistol and let fly at the laptop. The first shot shattered the screen and flipped it off the empty ammo case. The second spun it in midair, and the third punched the computer into the sand.

A dozen guys inspected the smoldering laptop in the ear-ringing silence and then Emily’s face as she reholstered the sidearm. A little more mayhem than she’d intended, but she was a pilot first, dammit.

Then, as if on cue, several of the guys fist-pumped the air simultaneously.

“Sexiest chef flying, Captain!” “They got that right!” “Whoo-hoo!”

“Well, your next thousand meals are gonna be damned MREs.” She shouted to be heard over the rabble.

They hooted and applauded in reply.

“Cold egg burritos!” The very worst of the Meals Ready-to-Eat menu.

“Ooo!” “We’re so scared.” “Show us how to make an oven.” “Sexiest chef!”

She opened her mouth to offer a few uncouth words about how much they’d enjoyed watching their own lame selves—

“’Tenshun!” The deep voice sliced through the chatter like the rear rotor of her Black Hawk through a stick of softened butter. A voice that had sent a shiver down her spine ever since she’d first heard it two months before.

They all snapped to their feet as if they’d been electrocuted. Some part of the laptop still functioned, Carlson’s voice sounded into the sudden silence. “At a recent concert, the Rolling Stones—”

A booted foot smashed down and delivered the coup de grâce to the wounded machine.

Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson stood two paces inside the rolled-back flap of the tent, one foot still buried in the machine. Six feet of cliché soldier. Broad shoulders, raw muscle, and the most dangerous-looking man Emily had ever met. His straight black hair fell to his squared-off jawline. His face clean shaven, eyes hidden by mirrored Ray-Bans. Rumor had it they were implanted and the major no longer needed eyes.

After two months, she couldn’t say otherwise. He always wore the shades when he wasn’t wearing a helmet for a night mission.

Even the first time they’d met, as purported civilians at Washington state’s Sea-Tac Airport, he had worn them. Coming out of security, newly assigned to the 5th Battalion, she’d known instantly who waited for her. She doubted another person in the crowded airport would recognize him as a soldier; they’d both been trained to blend in. But she’d recognized Major Mark Henderson as if some part of her body had known him for years.

In the tent, he swiveled his head once, the sunglasses surveying the crowd. Every man jack of them knew the major had memorized exactly who was there, what they’d said, what they were about to say—and probably knew what they’d been thinking the moment they exited their mothers’ wombs. If they weren’t careful, he’d start telling them what they would be thinking about during their last moment on Earth, and none of them, not even Crazy Tim, wanted to run head-on into that level of mind-blower.

“There will be no gender-based commentary in this unit. Understood?”

“Sir! Yes, Sir!” Rang out so loudly it would’ve hurt Emily’s ears if she hadn’t been shouting herself.

“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.