I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers (21 page)

“Good morning.”

“Oh, shit!” Kee looked up at Major Emily Beale. The blue eyes hidden by mirrored shades despite the predawn darkness.

She tried to sit up. Really tried. But Archie lay tangled all about her, more or less on her.

Kee thumped his shoulder hard enough to bruise.

He woke up and shook his head, then he offered her that sleepy smile that started first in his eyes.

“You were wonder—” He cut off and furrowed his brow at her, finally noticing her frantic expression, or at least her tension.

He looked over his shoulder.

Then Kee felt his entire body flinch against hers as if he’d just been stung by a giant bee.

“Oh, shit!” He leapt to his feet, taking the blanket with him.

Kee could feel the cold night air slipping over her skin and realized she still lay naked, cushioned only by their clothes. At the last second she hooked the blanket and pulled it against her.

Archie stumbled free of it before finding his feet. He stood stark naked in front of the Major except for one sock.

He tried to salute. Thought better of it. Briefly shot for parade rest before moving his hands forward to cover himself. Then his knees finally gave out and he sat abruptly on the next row of seating. For some reason covered his knees rather than his crotch.

Kee thought about laughing, but instead watched the Major for her reaction. Fraternization could get them both discharged. He was an officer and she an enlisted, he could get court-martialed.

Major Beale stood at ease, turned three-quarters away from them as she scanned the field. The vague silhouettes of the tents, Hawks, and Chinooks barely visible as shadowed outlines.

“Quiet morning.” She began descending the tiers of seating back toward the field fading into the blue-black of early morning.

As soon as she was out of sight, they scrambled into their clothes without a word. Kee folded the blanket to the smallest bundle she could and tucked it under her arm.

She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to comb it into place.

When she turned to descend, Archie stopped her with a hand on her arm.

He slid a hand up her back and into her hair before kissing her, slowly and thoroughly, damning the growing light.

“Keiko.” Again that perfect whisper that slid and wrapped around her spine.

“Archibald.”

He cocked his head for a moment, then shook it. “No, that does not work, does it? To you, I am always Archie. Or maybe Professor.”

“Whatever you say, Magic Man.”

“Ouch!” He laughed, slapped her butt, and they headed for the field.

“Thanks for getting the blanket.” Kee did her best to keep it tucked casually out of sight in case they met someone. “I didn’t notice you leave to go get it.”

“I didn’t. You were lying on my clothes anyway. It isn’t my habit to prance naked before my fellow officers, despite present evidence to the contrary. I thought you’d tucked it away in the dark.”

Kee missed the step off the last riser and would have fallen onto the track if Archie hadn’t steadied her.

“The Major?” She mouthed the question silently.

Archie shook his head.

One of the Ranger sentries?

Kee surprised herself to feel the heat rising to her face.

She thought she was long past being embarrassed by sex.

“Who’s been messing with my Hawk?” John stormed into the chow tent looking very big and very bad. He waved a logbook over his head. “When I find the mother, I’m gonna crush his head between these two hands.”

He held them out like weapons. They were each the size of Kee’s head.

He slammed the Hawk’s maintenance logbook down on the table.

“This you, Smith?” He didn’t even open the pages.

She held up both hands in innocence.

John glared at Archie, then headed over to confront Major Henderson’s mechanic. Dusty James had just freshly returned from surfing off Australia with the ocean-bleached hair to prove it.

Kee glanced around and spotted Connie Davis, calm as could be, working her way down the chow line, getting her breakfast.

“John!” Kee called him back.

He ground around in place like an Abrams tank until he faced her, barrel aimed and ready to fire, his eyes burning like a laser-bright guidance system.

“Is anything actually done wrong?”

“How the hell would I know?” He tossed the book back down in front of her and flipped it open. He jabbed a finger down at the pages. “There’s three dozen entries, half of them overlapping in a dozen different ways. Fuel flow systems, nozzle and air flow adjustments, alterations to the IRSS exhaust cowling that I’ve never seen before. Is our heat signature masked better, or will the next SAM missile within a hundred miles ram itself up our tailpipe just because it can? How the hell would I know?” He snapped the book shut. “Just tell me who to kill, Smith. Who?”

“That would be me.” Connie Davis stepped over from the line still carrying her tray. Connie was taller than Kee by several inches, but the top of her head still barely reached John’s chin. She probably weighed less than one of his legs. “Every single change was made according to factory specifications.”

She turned her back on John and set her tray at the table where she’d been eating alone all week. Kee had finally started feeling bad about that, but she’d been eating at odd hours to avoid Archie until now. John stared down at the book in his hand and then at the woman’s back as she unfolded her napkin and set out her silverware.

Kee had to give Connie points, it took guts to turn your back on Big John, especially when he looked so big and so bad.

He turned to Kee, seething with frustration. She could hear his teeth grinding as he struggled to make sense of what had happened.

Connie unloaded her tray and set it aside, cut a chunk of sausage, and paused. Without turning, she spoke, “I must say, especially for a forward theater of operations, you have maintained the Black Hawk very well.” She ate her sausage as neatly as could be, clearly done with the conversation.

John dropped onto the bench near Kee, almost flipping her into the air. He waved the book at her weakly, his expression so woeful that she had to laugh and reach out to pat his shoulder.

Before John could recover, Archie appeared with Dilya dancing by his side. All the life that had been squeezed out of her these last days by Kee’s disagreement with Archie now flooded out of her in a single dam-bursting tidal wave. She danced up to John and patted a quick, two-handed drumroll on his knee. He managed a weak laugh and ruffled her hair.

She jumped into Kee’s arms and rubbed her nose on Kee’s. It tickled. Kee rubbed Dilya’s back.

“The Kee and String Man like blan-ket?”

Kee stole a glance at Archie. He positively blanched, first going sheet-white, then beet red. So red, even John cast him a strange look.

Kee laughed and nodded her nose against the girl’s. Then she leaned in until her mouth was at Dilyana’s ear and whispered.

“Keiko says thank you to Dilyana.” Then she pulled back and checked the girl’s eyes.

A sharp nod and Kee knew that the girl understood her tryst with Archie and the story of the blanket were as private as their private names. Kee gave her a squeeze and then lifted her up and plopped her on her feet.

“Breakfast!”

Dilya was off like a shot.

She offered Archie her blandest smile.

He shook himself, a little like a wet dog, and followed in the girl’s tracks.

John was watching her closely.

“So, John, did you get a lady out dancing with you?” Kee deflected his question, hopefully before it could finish forming in his mind.

He slowly relaxed into a smile, leaned an elbow on the table. “Oh yeah. A couple of ’em actually. But that Jennifer, wow! Almost put my back out trying to keep up with that lady. Two parts serpent the way she could twist around you like—”

“Whoa, Big John! Too many details.”

He grinned and then really looked at her. “Any details you wanna be sharing?”

“Not a one I can think of.”

With a loud laugh, he slapped her hard enough on the back that she lost half her air, then he headed off for the chow line.

Connie Davis stood looking at her. Had moved up so quietly, John hadn’t even noticed her.

“I don’t need to be defended. I can take care of myself.”

Kee opened her mouth, then closed it, not knowing what to say. The woman was gone before Kee found an answer.

A woman strong enough to stand up to John in a rage certainly didn’t need defending. But why didn’t Connie even want a helping hand?

“What did you do to my bird, John?” Major Beale’s voice came clear over the intercom. They weren’t ten minutes into the night’s mission.

Kee knew they were probably safe from any hostiles here, but sharpened her attention outside in case they had to put down. Clear field, a couple of goats, they should be okay.

“Wasn’t me. What’s wrong?” He sounded panicked.

Kee was a good mechanic, but she wasn’t a chief. John was chief of the bird and he worried about it a lot. Which was a good thing considering the abuse the Major heaped on the poor thing.

“Nothing. She’s found some more guts than I thought she had. Maybe she needed a vacation, too. At least she didn’t have to eat so much fish. Mark had me eating trout three meals a day. I didn’t know the man was a maniac fisherman when I married him. We’ll have to live in the desert if I want to see him after we retire.”

Kee looked over at John. His face was positively grim. Connie had better be careful if she didn’t want her neck wrung.

“When did you get back, Archie?”

The Major must have enjoyed her vacation more than she was letting on to be so chatty. The 101st had released the Apache helicopters and they were watching those gunships’ backsides, so there wasn’t anything else going on. But usually they flew silent.

“Four days ago. Maybe five.”

“What?”

“Two days out. Three on the boat. Then we were called back for a single mission. No point going anywhere after that.”

And no point revisiting the hell that she and Archie had turned those everlasting days into.

“What was the mission? Why weren’t we called?” Major Emily Beale did not sound happy.

“You were too far out of position, I suppose.”

“And?”

Archie continued as if he didn’t hear the venom seething over the headset.

“Clay and I flew. Kee and Connie were at the guns.”

“What?” Big John burst out so loud it hurt Kee’s ears, and not just through the headphones inside her helmet. He shouted louder than the rotor roar.

“My gun. What did she do to it?” He faced Kee. “What?”

Kee swallowed hard. “She, uh, did tear them down. Did something to the trigger assembly. Mine, too. Feels a little smoother when I—”

With a foul curse he turned back to his minigun and started checking it inch by inch in the faint glow of his night vision.

“It works fine, John. We took it for a run after she did it. It works fine.”

He just cursed and kept checking the weapon. Then he froze.

“Wait a sec, Smith. She flew?”

“Specialist Connie Davis. Knew what she was doin’. Kinda pissed me off.”

“Major, what’s up with that?” Big John managed to sound respectful, barely.

“She’s here a couple months ahead of schedule. Third woman into SOAR. Mark told me she was coming, none of us knew when.”

“She messed with my bird. She messed with my gun.”

Major Beale actually glanced back at Kee between the seats and offered her a smile. She mouthed, “Men.”

Kee returned the smile. Not only did she respect the Major, she was starting to like Emily Beale. The woman did retain a sense of humor underneath all that hard-ass officer she wore like armor plating. And she’d been really decent about finding her and Archie all tangled up together.

“So, Archie.” The Major’s voice sounded so dry that Kee had to mute her microphone to not laugh at John. “What was the mission?”

“Solo. Long flight, too. I was glad for Clay’s extra hand. We delivered a colonel in a beat-up Toyota pickup on the north slope of the Hindu Kush.”

“The north slope. Solo.” All of the humor had been stripped from the Major’s voice. “You flew nine hours over bad terrain solo?”

“Eleven hours. Three midair refuels. Two in and one back out. We supposedly had a deep backup that wasn’t directly privy to the mission, but I watched. We were definitely solo.”

Kee swallowed hard. Helicopters just didn’t do that. She’d felt much better thinking someone had their backside on the mission. Now she felt cold for the dangerous chance they’d taken.

“He routed us over valleys I had never seen before,” Archie continued. “I do not think anyone ever has. We were way off the edge of the map. Not a single shot fired. We were low and fast, valley-and-pass the whole way.”

“Pickup truck?” Big John didn’t sound happy.

“Underslung.” Kee decided she’d take some of the heat. “Connie checked the load points three times after I did them.”

John groaned in pain for his helicopter and patted his hand on the deck in apology.

“The weird thing was, well, there were a lot of weird things. Like I didn’t get to see what he had in the truck, but I saw him strap on an AK-47 and hide a Russian Makarov PM handgun when he changed.” Kee thought about mentioning how he’d given her the creeps, but that was personal. Those pale, pale eyes of his, almost no color at all.

“The weirdest thing was the man himself. When we were close, he changed into native garb, upper-peasant level. Then climbed down a fast rope with no gloves. We were still two hundred miles out and moving at refuel speed when he went down. Why he didn’t die is beyond me. He crawled in through the driver’s window. He spent the last hour swinging out there in the wind.”

Archie chimed in again, “He released a couple feet up. Popped me up a hundred feet without warning when he unloaded. If any radar had been watching, I probably came awfully close to being visible. If he’d waited even five more seconds, I could have dropped him pretty as could be. Probably jarred his spine hard.”

“Their spines.”

“Their?”

Kee nodded and then realized how much ten days on the ground had spoiled her. No one could see her nod.

“Yes. As you were pulling up and out, we got sideways on him. He had a passenger. I’m guessing native, but hard to really tell through the night goggles.”

A silence descended in the helicopter. Only the rotor noise continued, usually a funky backbeat making her want to tap her feet, now just chopping away at the hard silence.

Kee checked out the window. They were still holding a high and back station. She imagined she could see a couple of rocket flares in the far distance, but it was too hard to judge if the Apaches were being allowed to take some of the heat this time. They were far enough out, they could be static across her night vision. She flipped the goggles back, but there was nothing to see tonight. Stars and mountains and a waning crescent moon rising in the east.

“Let me get this straight.” The Major’s voice sounded perplexed. An unusual tone for her.

“Some unidentified colonel gets Fort Campbell to call back one team. A mixed team at that. You then fly him five hundred miles over the worst terrain on the planet with no backup. No rescue possible. You drop him on the back side of nowhere with someone you didn’t even know you carried as a passenger dangling for five hours in an underslung pickup truck.”

Again the silence of the pounding blades.

“And don’t forget that woman messed with my bird.” John still sounded pretty grumpy. In any other situation, it would be cute.

“Noted, John.” Again Beale showed her true colors for not taking him down a notch.

Kee would have told him to get the hell over it. The Major knew how to treat her people. She could learn a lot from the Major.

Beale swiveled in her seat as far as her harness allowed and stared back at Kee.

“Definitely two aboard?”

Kee nodded since the Major was facing her. “Specialist Connie Davis can confirm it, ma’am.”

She glanced toward Archie.

Kee couldn’t see his response through the back of the seat that separated their positions, but whatever it was, the Major didn’t like it. She faced forward, turned to Kee for a moment, then dropped back in her seat facing forward.

“Screw this.” There was the distinct click as she keyed the mic. “
Viper
, this is
Vengeance
, come back.”

“
Viper
here.” Major Mark Henderson’s voice sounded clear over the encrypted radio. Kee usually didn’t notice the radio traffic from outside the aircraft, operations kept her mind elsewhere. She’d had commanders who kept their radio traffic off the internal intercom, but Beale believed in open communications. Damned decent of her, treating her crew like people.

“There’s a situation we need to discuss.”

“Fire away.”

“At base.”

A silence. A silence that stretched until it was painful.

“Now.” Beale’s voice left no question or doubt.

“Roger that.” No hesitation in his response this time. Either Emily Beale had her husband whipped but good, or he was smart enough to trust his wife’s instincts. There was a long pause. Either while he thought it over or while he radioed the overhead AWACS for clearance to withdraw. “Proceed. We’re thirty-five minutes out.”

“Roger. Moving. Out.” Beale slammed the bird over hard. If Kee weren’t strapped into her seat, she’d have flown out the gunner’s window despite the M134 minigun that filled most of it. When the g-forces eased up enough, she glanced at John. He shrugged then tipped his head to relieve a crick in his neck. Exactly the same gesture Connie Davis had used.

Kee knew for damn sure that John wouldn’t appreciate that bit of information.