Night Is Mine (5 page)

SOAR had been born in secrecy. They’d entered the public eye when they’d shown their strengths in Grenada and their weaknesses in Mogadishu. But they still tried to remain as low profile as possible. Of the eight choppers on the takedown of bin Laden, the news had only mentioned three. And not a word about SOAR. In thirty years they’d run thousands of missions that no one heard about or ever would. SOAR helicopters provided Special Forces operators with the world’s best nighttime transport and protection.

The Night Stalkers shunned news as much as the Navy SEALs, and she’d hit front and center on CNN. Was that the problem? What idiot in command had even authorized the interview?

She hadn’t considered that.

The moment she did, she knew the answer. Her mother would see it as a step up the social ladder. If she couldn’t be in the same room as her daughter for five minutes in a row without them fighting, at least she could garner a nice social-circle boost out of Emily’s unique position. And her mother had the ears of senators, newsmen, and dozens of others. A CNN piece that had nothing to do with flying or secret operations would be an easy sell for her.

“Damn!”

“Sir?”

“Nothing.” She waved the swabbie on and trudged behind, the doomed woman being led to the gallows.

Her mother hadn’t been trying to raise her own social status. Helen Cartwright Magnuson Beale had her sights set on a different primary mission: how to best prepare her daughter for Operation Marriage. Easy. Get her a near-enough-naked spot on CNN prime-time news. She’d probably, no, she’d certainly been in the editing room.

That’s why there was nothing about flying, not one shot in her uniform or flight gear, though they’d taken enough footage of that too. That would hurt her daughter’s marriage prospects.

She’d surely sold it as a “good PR piece” but, as was typical for Helen Beale, every statement had two meanings, except when it had three. Good PR for the Army and the news station, and good PR for getting her difficult daughter a husband of sufficient stature. One who would force her to stop “that foolish flying” and taking “those unnecessary risks.”

The swabbie guided her toward the captain’s office on the fifth floor of the carrier’s tower as if Emily didn’t know the way. She could trip him down a ladder or two and go hide in the bilge until the whole mess blew over. A lot of places to hide on a boat a quarter-mile long, near enough a football field wide, and a dozen decks deep.

But if she hid the rest of her life, she’d never have a chance to strangle her mother. And she’d thought that poor laptop had shown the worst of the problem.

When she’d gotten back to the tent after the meeting with Henderson and Michael, she’d found that her crew had dug a pit in the sand directly where it had landed and were waiting for her arrival to bury the machine’s remains, with full honors. Most of the guys had even put on their service uniforms.

She’d cast the first handful of dirt, Big Bad John, in a big deep voice that would have sounded good on a preacher, had offered comforting words to a soldier who had served its country well but fallen while honorably performing its duty. Archie had even found a tiny American flag and presented it to her in proper triangle-folded form smaller than a silver dollar. She’d have to tell the boys they’d done good. If she saw them again.

But the problem hadn’t stopped there. It had taken on a life of its own. And now she had to face the backlash.

She and the swabbie climbed the twenty-jillionth ladder-steep stair, entered a steel corridor that looked no different than the last couple dozen, and stood before a wooden door like any other except for the nameplate. “Captain.” Not even “Rick Tully.” Just his rank.

Getting a firm grip on her mother’s throat wasn’t going to happen any time soon, so she’d better shuffle the thought aside and concentrate. There was music to face right here, and she’d bet it was closer to gangster rap than string quartet.

The swabbie delivered two sharp knocks on the captain’s door, gaining Emily a call to enter. He swung open the door, dropped to a parade rest so lazy that it bordered on insolent, and shut the door behind her as soon as she’d passed in.

The air-conditioned chill of the office hammered against her sweat-soaked chest through the open flight suit. A quick glance down as she slammed to attention precisely three steps into the room revealed that, well, way too much was revealed.

Too late to do anything about it.

She snapped a salute as if she were in Class-As with a spit shine on her shoes that she could see to brush her hair in. Not scuffed boots that hadn’t seen a cloth in a month, sun-faded flight suit that was once flight-crew brown but now more of a dull tan except where it sported circles of oil-stain black, and helmet hair waving and weaving down past her sweat-stained collar.

“Captain Emily Beale reporting, sir.”

Captain Tully’s lazy salute emphasized how disheveled she appeared, hardly worthy of a serious effort. Of course he sat comfortably in his office with its large oak desk, leather office chairs, and perfectly starched and creased khakis made so by some poor schmuck of a one-tour orderly. The place even smelled of lemon polish. Her own office measured one bucket seat wide, exactly as long as hip to pedal, and reeked of jet fuel, cordite from spent ammunition, and sweat.

“Hi, Emily.”

She snapped a salute at Rear Admiral James Parker. “Hello, sir. Good to see you, sir.”

He returned the salute a little less casually than the commander, but it wasn’t exactly singing with respect either.

“You’ve certainly grown up since the last time I saw you.” He had the decency not to look down her front like most guys. She’d developed two responses. If they made no comment, rare, neither did she. If they leered and went for the lame joke, she bloodied their nose but good. Usually once or twice proved sufficient to drive the message into their thick skulls.

As basic career advice, she decided not to bloody the admiral’s nose even if he did start staring at her chest. For one thing, flying a helicopter would be impossible from a stockade.

“How long has it been, Captain?” The admiral’s slacks and shirt were as starched and pressed as the commander’s. The latter had returned his attention to his paperwork without as much as another glance in her direction.

“Four years, sir. When we were operating cleanup during that Sri Lankan mess, sir.” That’s when he’d personally recommended her for the Air Medal for Valor for exceptional ingenuity under pressure.

She’d been unable to fire into the rioting crowd, even when they shot at her. Against the rules to shoot up a bunch of civilians, no matter how unruly. So, she’d had her entire flight blast the crowd apart with the Hawks’ downdraft. Every time the crowd tried to reassemble, she led her four Hawks to a mere dozen feet above street level, down tight between the buildings, easy prey if the crowd had a single decent shooter among them, and they’d literally blown the rioters apart with rotor wind and dust until they gave up.

“Sri Lanka. That’s right. You like flying the Hawk?”

“Best bird in the sky, sir!”

“At ease, soldier.”

“Thank you, sir.” Was that enough permission to zip up the flight suit before the trickle of sweat between her breasts turned into an air-conditioned icicle?

Her body answered with a clear, “No,” as instinct and years of training dropped her into parade rest, feet spread shoulder-wide and hands clasped behind her back, shoulders still back and chest out. The action pulled the flight suit wider open, but what was a girl to do? At least the green tee and shorts were regulation.

“You like that cooking stuff, too?”

“Always have, sir.”

“I recall you were damn good at it.”

“Thank you, sir.” She’d cooked for him more than once at her father’s house. She’d felt far more at home in the kitchen with her parents’ French chef than she had in the museum-quality rooms of her mother’s
Architectural
Digest
house. Domicile. Work of residential art. And her mother had been much happier to have her uncomfortable daughter out from under foot and out of the public’s social eye.

Emily learned to cook at Clarice’s knee, French toast by the time she was five, and soloed on her first apple tart at seven. It had been a complete mess, the crust singed almost to charcoal, but she still had a Polaroid of it on the bulletin board behind the door of her bedroom back in D.C. She’d considered being a chef until the first time her father took her along for a helicopter ride. One flight and her life had been set. From that moment on, she only cared about being best at one thing, chopper pilot.

“Richard,” he turned to Captain Tully. “If you ever have a chance to try her rack of lamb with white truffle sauce, do. It’s exquisite.”

The captain merely grunted without looking up from his paperwork.

“Nice of you to remember, sir.” She filled the silence.

The admiral slid down into one of the leather armchairs. Then he waved her toward the other one.

She remained riveted to the steel plate. It was never good when a top officer wanted a lower rank to sit in his or her presence.

By the sheer brute strength gained from years of hurking ten tons of armored chopper across the sky, Emily managed to wrench herself free of parade rest and sit in the chair. As she sat bolt upright on the edge of the seat, the front of the flight suit billowed outward. She grabbed at the zipper and hauled it up. So tight to her neck that her gag reflex tried to kick in, but her hands were already folded neatly in her lap, and she wasn’t going to do anything more to make herself look stupid. If possible.

“I have a special assignment for you. Indefinite time period. Completely optional, no repercussions, though I hope that you’ll consider it seriously.”

Meaning she had no choice whatsoever.

Mark left the equipment check to his crew. It was a crappy call, but he was in no mood to make sure he hadn’t broken a forty-million-dollar helicopter with that landing. Truth be told, the way he was acting, they’d be in no mood to let him.

As soon as he stepped on deck, he was ricocheted around by the deck crew like an old and unwanted billiard ball. The blue-jacketed chock-and-chain crew pushed him one way and pinned his bird to the deck despite the calm seas. White-vested safety guys shoved him the other and checked the chocks and looked for any fuel leaks. Two reds waited for him to move before they ran a quick inspection and dodged off to the shipboard munitions lift for resupply. The Hawk hadn’t yet been restocked after last night’s op at the cave.

A couple grapes, in their flame retardant suits and purple vests, waved for him to stand clear, then pulled a hose free from a handy deck hatch and started pumping JP-5 fuel to top off his tanks.

He finally found peace at the edge of the deck, just two steps from the sixty-foot drop to the Arabian Sea. Good thing the seas were calm today.

He glared up at the carrier’s tower. Somewhere in there was Captain Emily Beale. If she was truly reassigned, he’d have to fill the seat on her bird. Bronson maybe. But the man was useless in combat. He’d have to reassign her bird to a carrier run until he figured out what the hell was going on.

He should be back at the base, but he couldn’t let anyone else transport her. He knew it made no sense, but he didn’t trust Beale to anyone else. Sure, the two of them flew side by side into life-threatening danger as often as not, but she also ranked as the most precious cargo he’d ever carried.

Knowing that the feeling made no sense made it no less true.

He turned to face the ocean, back toward Afghanistan lost over the watery horizon. Back where they’d flown together, chasing each other across the heart of the Hindu Kush, a grin of delight plastered across his face. Glad to be flying beside her even when he was losing the race.

What woman had last preoccupied his brain like Emily Beale? Okay, no one. Mary Taylor had filled his waking and sometimes his sleeping thoughts at sixteen. That she was two years older, a senior infinitely far out of his reach, hadn’t stopped him. And perseverance had eventually paid off there. When he was seventeen, Laura had given him a very memorable and educational night for his Junior Prom.

Being in ROTC and a football wide receiver in college had offered him his pick of women, and he’d enjoyed every one. He’d been assigned for a couple of years to Italy, where he’d learned about the bountiful physical gifts of Italian women and their willingness to share them with a handsome American aviator. It still ranked as his first choice port-of-call for leave after his parents’ ranch.

But none of them cluttered his brain like Emily Beale.

Any contentment with his lifestyle evaporated the first time he’d ever seen her. He’d come up from 5th Battalion’s Fort Lewis HQ to fetch the latest newbie to graduate Fort Campbell training. Somehow a woman had made it through selection and training. The first ever, and he’d been saddled with her.

And his world had changed. Even though she’d been dressed in civvies, carrying a bright red knapsack, with her wheat-blond hair caught back in a ponytail to look like any other returning tourist, he’d known at a glance that she was the one he was there to meet.