Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers) (12 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Connie won’t speak to me.”

“She doesn’t speak to anyone except Big John. Mr. Garrulous and Ms. Silent. No one understands that relationship except them, and I guess they’re the only two that matter. But don’t take that one personally.”

“Sergeant Stevenson wishes I were dead.”

Lola could see Emily’s nod in the dark. “She does. That one you’re going to have to work out.”

“Why me?” Lola felt cornered. Trapped. They walked side by side as she hauled the next rotor blade into place and returned to wait for the last one.

“Part of being a pilot. You are responsible for making your crew into a team.”

“But it’s your team.”

Lola could hear the distant roar of the big jet engines that must be on a C-5 Galaxy transport, the only military plane big enough to carry the Chinook and both of their Hawks.

Beale didn’t bother responding, she just stood there.

Someone must have scattered some infrared markers to lay out an impromptu runway in the desert.

If Beale really was pregnant, Lola would bet she’d want to keep the kid. Most of the girls in Mama Raci’s wanted to keep the kid, even when they didn’t dare or couldn’t afford to.

The C-5 roared down onto the desert a couple thousand meters away, quickly looming larger and larger in the night. The reversers doubling the volume and tripling the dust cloud that the transport kicked up as it came in. An experienced desert pilot would be throttling back right about now to make sure he didn’t get lost in his own personal dust storm. Right on cue, the engine roar faded and the jet rolled more slowly toward them.

If Beale kept the kid, she’d be out of the pilot’s seat almost immediately. Then it really could become Lola’s flight.

That thought was even scarier than Tim being all gone on her.

The next thirty minutes of havoc passed as they always did—in meticulously ordered and well-orchestrated military mayhem fast enough to keep Lola very warm despite the cooling night air, but slow enough to allow no mistakes.

The monstrous C-5 jet transport, as large as a 747 but lower to the ground, rolled to a stop with its nose less than a rotor from the Chinook. With a characteristic groan, four stories worth of nose cone detached from the fuselage and began swinging up into the air on giant hinges until the nose cone towered high above the cockpit. The raised nose exposed the cavernous cargo bay interior, lit softly in red light to preserve everyone’s night vision.

The moment the loading ramp hit the dust, two small tractors descended the ramp. Too small for a person to sit on, but strong enough to move a C-5 fully loaded if they were run in tandem. Two loadmasters followed each tractor, one with a wireless remote control strapped to his wrist. They steered the tractors toward the waiting Black Hawks.

Almost before the two crews could tie down the last blade and scramble out of the way, the C-5 loadmasters had latched the two Black Hawks’ front wheels onto the tractors and begun towing them backward onto the looming airplane. Just under a football field long and with a cargo bay that could swallow of couple of Abrams main battle tanks, the C-5 quickly gulped down the DAP Hawks.

By the time they were up the ramp, inside, and tied down, one of the tractor crews came back out to the Chinook. With the help of the D-boys, the SOAR crew had the two three-bladed rotors folded with seconds to spare. Not tens of seconds, but they beat the tractor crew.

All four loadmasters worked to make sure the Chinook made it up the ramp clean and was pegged down so that it couldn’t shift in flight. They went over their checklists again, double-checking that the choppers were placed properly on the position markers running down the inside of the plane’s cargo bay. Off by just a couple feet and the center of gravity could be far enough off to cripple the jet in flight. Or cause a crash on attempted takeoff.

The ramp was already lifting as the crew stumbled aboard.

As soon as the nose cone thudded into place, the engines roared from idle back to takeoff speeds. In the trackless desert, it didn’t matter. No taxiing back to the head of some runway, no other air traffic or buildings in their way. They just continued pointing into the wind and opened up the throttles wide.

Lola checked her watch. Total time on the ground for the C-5, twelve minutes, forty-seven seconds. For the Black Hawks and Chinook, just a few ticks over half an hour. They rotated and became fully airborne faster than Lola and the rest of the SOAR crews could find jump seats down either side of the aircraft and buckle in.

A plane capable of carrying 125 tons shot upward with a load of barely forty-five.

There wasn’t any point in asking where they were going. When Major Henderson wanted them to know, he’d tell them.

Once they reached cruising altitude, Lola unbuckled and wandered as nonchalantly as possible toward the rear of the aircraft where
Vengeance
had been tied down.

The Chinook had been resealed. A lone D-boy had apparently decided to toss down his pack and sit on it where he just happened to have a perfect view of both the chopper’s rear ramp, where it had picked up the stolen truck, and the pilot’s door, both closed. At least the pack was probably more comfortable than the folding jump seats that lined the walls.

Lola rather hoped that his eyes tracked her for her looks instead of the package he was guarding.

What in the world had they uncovered out there? Seemed like a good old snatch-and-grab operation. Gather a bunch of intel and turn it over to the CIA or whoever cared about such things. But a twenty-four-hour watch and a surprise trip on twenty minutes’ notice…

Stateside. That’s where they were headed. Pentagon probably. They had to be going somewhere seriously secure. New bomb design maybe? Perhaps final proof that the Iranians really had become the planet’s newest nuclear power. Maybe their first bomb, stolen right from under their noses.

Well, her current mission had nothing to do with whatever lay inside the Chinook. She was half past the
Viper
when she heard the double footfall close behind her. The sound of someone dropping from the Black Hawk’s cargo deck down to the steel plating of the C-5’s deck.

She turned and, sure enough, Tim Maloney stood there looking all handsome and swaggery. It was easy to imagine just letting him wrap her up in his arms and burn away all of her fears about the crew and her own abilities with one of his searing kisses. Well, more than one.

But then again, he was also becoming one of her fears. Time to deal with that. If what she suspected was coming down the pipe at her with Major Beale’s news, she didn’t need any distractions, no matter how cute.

“Hey there, Sergeant.” Lola did her best to keep her voice light.

“Hey, yourself.” He took one of those easy, swagger-style steps toward her, but stopped when she took a step back.

She could see the puzzled look flicker across his face. Crap! She was setting up to hurt him, and for the first time, she cared enough about a man to not want to do that. How do you let a guy down easy? No one had ever taught her that and she’d never bothered to learn. If they bore you or get all possessive, you boot ’em out and move on. She didn’t want to do that to him.

“Tim, I—”

It was as far as she got before Big John clambered out of
Viper
much more lightly than his smaller friend. He eyed Lola for a moment, then smacked a hand down on Tim’s shoulder with enough force to have driven a lesser man two feet into the steel decking.

“Hey, Timmy. Poker game setting up. C’mon.”

For a moment she thought John might try tucking Tim under his arm. That would be impossible for any man smaller than John, but he just settled for a headlock. He looked back over his shoulder at her as he dragged Tim away toward the front of the plane.

“Connie’s playing and I need someone to be putting dough in my wife’s pocket besides me. She doesn’t share her winnings.” His voice was light and funny, his look back to her was anything but. The message was clear—if she hurt Tim, the rest of the crew was going to turn on her, and turn on her hard.

Merde
! She didn’t sign up for this shit! Nothing was making any sense. And now she was all tied up in whatever they’d found in the bloody desert before she could even settle in properly. A dozen flights, a couple of really fine kisses, and now her world was comin’ apart at the seams. She hadn’t even gotten any real sex out of the deal.

Maybe she’d taken a wrong turn out of CSAR, should never have joined SOAR. Or picking up Beale in the middle of Poland in the dead of night. Never should have accepted that mission.

Beale. Right. Lola had a small mission and wasn’t even getting that done. A quick check showed she was finally alone. She clambered aboard the
Vengeance
, sat on the cargo deck, and rummaged around behind the cargo net until she found the extra med kit in a small, bright red duffel that she’d stowed behind the .50 cal ammo. Bottom right corner farthest from where the zipper opened. She pulled out two sticks, thought better of it, and scooped a third into her grip before pulling them out.

“Pooh the Bear keeps honey jars in his pantry.”

Lola spun around. She snagged the three white-plastic-wrapped packages on the safety netting and they scattered across the cargo deck. Dilya, the little kid, was sitting in the shadows on Kee’s gunner seat. Her book sat in her lap. A small book light cast a soft glow onto the open pages, which was how Lola had missed her in the dimly lit end of the jet’s cargo bay.

“Mary Lennox found her key under the ground. She keeps it in her pocket. What does La Roo keep in her helicopter?”

“Uh.” Lola collected the pregnancy test packets and slipped them into a thigh pocket. “Medicine.”

“Is La Roo sick? Piglet had the worst case of hiccups once. Could you make him better?”

“No. He did? Maybe.”

Dilya nodded her head with the sage wisdom of an elder crone.

“Mary Lennox has met a very sick boy. Maybe she can make him better.”

Lola almost said, “She did.” But that would give the ending away. “Uh, when you finish the book, you can let me know. I like to make people better.”

“With medicine?”

“With medicine.”

The girl was quiet for long enough that Lola had time to restow the med kit, fasten the cargo net, and consider leaving. But something made her wait. Lean back against the net and the steel ammo boxes and just wait for the little girl to think her thoughts.

“Making people better is more good than making people dead?”

It was. But it wasn’t the choice she’d made. She’d gone from Search and Rescue to a DAP Hawk, from saving lives to taking them. Which had saved more people? Picking broken bodies off battlefields one by one, or killing the bad guys before they killed others?

“Sometimes,” she answered the girl’s silence. “Not always.”

Again, the crone’s nod of wisdom.

“Dilya only help make people dead. Not good. Dilya not do that no more.”

“Anymore,” some knee-jerk part of Lola’s brain offered up. At her age, Dilya had helped make people dead?

“Anymore,” Dilya responded. This little girl who had apparently dispensed death also worked at correcting her English. She returned to her book. “I let La Roo know if Mary Lennox makes little boy better or dead.”

Clearly dismissed, Lola left the helicopter and moved toward the front of the plane. Walking away from the little girl for whom death was as natural as life.

Lola liked flying the Hawk. Liked reaching out and saving people before they were hurt, even if it meant hurting others. She’d chosen to believe that those she fought to save were worth saving and those who wished them dead—those who flew planes into the Twin Towers—were wrong and best off removed as fast as possible.

But it left her queasy and a little unnerved as she walked up the length of the roaring cargo bay. The massive jet engines, barely a dozen feet away through a very thin fuselage, washed the bay in noise so thick you could cut it up with a knife. This was a military cargo jet, not some dressed-up passenger liner. No pretty beige walls, carpeting, or little plastic windows. The only way to tell night from day was to glance up at the flight deck three flights of steel stairs above the cargo deck and look for light through the pilot’s windshield. No security doors around the pilots. Again military, no need.

No light shone down from above. Clearly night, wherever they were. No one had said where they were headed, so no one had asked. They’d taken off right after sunset. If they were indeed flying to the States, they’d be in darkness the whole way, chasing the night halfway around the planet.

The only lights this far back in the bay were the small, red jump lights. Up forward, everyone was hanging around the front of the Chinook. She could hear their voices and laughter, a muffled overlay to the engine’s noise. The D-boy who’d been pretending to relax while watching the locked-up Chinook had set up on the other side of the bay.

From the shadow of
Viper
, a shadow separated itself from behind a 20 mm chain gun hanging from a weapon’s mounting hard point.

Lola slipped the three packets into Major Beale’s hand and said very softly, “Pee on the end, wait three minutes. Even if all three come back positive, it could be false. Still see the doc.”

“I’m so looking forward to a career-changing talk with a doctor.” Beale’s voice almost cracked. The Major held Lola’s hand for a long moment of thanks and bestowed a brief hug before moving off.

Lola didn’t know which was more unnerving, a child who talked of causing death or a grown woman whose hands shook with the possibility of life.

Tim had waited for his opportunity. He’d lost a quick twenty bucks at the poker game, not much left to chance when Connie and Major Henderson were facing off. Then he’d found a sandwich and stood back a step as Big John managed to take two hands in a row.

Tim faded down the side of the Chinook and nodded to the watching D-boy. After eight years in, Tim had learned to just accept what came next, at least on the Army side of life. He’d find out what they’d uncovered in the Iranian desert soon enough. Probably too soon once the truth was told.

Dilya drifted by, a book clutched in her hands, probably headed forward for food. A full year since they’d rescued her from starving in the heart of the Hindu Kush, and she still ate like a vacuum cleaner. She’d eat six meals a day if she could, often did, and all she did was grow a little taller. The gaunt was gone, showing that she’d be a great beauty some day, but still just a slip of a kid.

Always a bit too serious except around Archie, always a little reserved except around Kee. Tim messed up her hair as she went by. She brushed it aside enough to show her world-deep eyes and her smile before continuing forward.

As Tim crossed into the shadow between the Chinook and Henderson’s
Viper
, he spotted Lola and Beale having a little tête-à-tête. Tim pulled back into the shadow to give them their moment and finish his sandwich. He couldn’t hear them over the engine noise, but he could see that whatever the conversation was, it had drawn them close.

Even in jeans, a T-shirt, and a light vest, Major Beale still radiated strength and power. The woman was pure, unbending military. Tim knew from long experience that she was unflappable, never blinked first, and the best damn pilot he’d ever met. Other than with her husband, Major Beale never showed anything beyond pure military. The perfect, textbook, kick-ass-and-don’t-take-names blond.

Lola, by contrast, slouched casually against the side of the Black Hawk while they talked. While Beale’s off-the-shelf jeans fit nicely enough, Lola’s followed every skintight curve. She wore a dark blouse of thin material that both revealed and hid her shape. Unbuttoned enough to suggest no bra without actually revealing the truth of the promise. Her natural stance heavily flavored with casual, she could look like she was leaning comfortably against the air if nothing stood nearby for her to lean on.

Everything that was so perfectly controlled in the Major was loose and easy on Lola. Her dark hair fell in long, messy waves. Burying his face in that soft mass had been a true joy, one he was looking forward to repeating at the first opportunity. Where the Major’s hands were quiet, Lola’s waved about and shaped the air as she spoke. And all of the Major’s serious attitude turned to smiles and head nods in Lola.

Yet for all of the contrasts, there was a similarity deep inside. Something that made both of them fly like no man he’d ever seen. When they flew, it was some kind of magic. He’d spent more time than he should have watching them fly nearby on missions. He could tell instantly who had the controls.

Major Beale was a surgeon, always in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment.

Lola LaRue was a dancer, a quick bob-and-weave placing her where the casual observer would least expect, suddenly hammering away at the exact heart of the problem but from a wholly unexpected direction.

Kee’s distrust of Chief Warrant Lola LaRue had set him back on his heels. Kee was wicked savvy about people. And with Lola her dislike was deep and wide, though she still refused to explain why. Her attitude had made him doubt what he was feeling.

But here was Major Beale, clearly trusting Lola deeply. The Major had always taken weeks and sometimes months to burn in a new crew member, doing easy runs in patrol zones, then light action before trusting them with full-action missions. Even then, they had to earn her full stamp of approval through some extraordinary action, like Kee stopping a war or Connie stopping a holocaust.

Major Beale was the litmus test of SOAR. Within a week, he’d seen her discard plenty of fliers that any other commander would have been thrilled to keep.

With Lola, Beale had taken her to the front lines on the first mission. Now, after just a couple weeks, when Beale might normally let a newbie know they had a chance of being almost acceptable if they just tried harder, she was being all friendly with her new copilot. Actually gave her a long, tight hug before returning forward.

He felt almost as dazed as Lola appeared to be. The Major never did that. Ever.

Lola remained there in the shadows, blinking rapidly after the Major. Turning one way and then the other but not going anywhere, as if she couldn’t get her feet moving. Finally just leaning back against the chopper and hanging her head as if exhausted.

Tim came to her, as if drawn by a stout cargo-lifting line, unable to simply watch her wrestle with whatever was in her heart. She didn’t startle when she spotted him. She raised her gaze until he stopped a mere breath away.

He waited there. Waited for her. He’d never wanted a woman so much, to hold, to help, to care for. Normally, he’d make some joke, slide an arm around the likely woman’s waist, and pull her in. He’d earned a few slaps, but only a few. His timing and judgment had long since been honed with practice.

With Lola, he stood and waited.

Even in the dim lighting, he could see the tears in her eyes. Not weeping, he’d never seen her cry, but far from her normal laugh-at-it-all self.

She didn’t wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face on his shoulder. As if she were made of stronger stuff, she just leaned there and looked at him, eye to eye. She swallowed, a lovely motion on her long neck, and blinked a few more times. Then without a change of expression, she slid a hand into his. The shock of contact coursed up his arm and straight down his body.

Not releasing her hold, she turned and headed for the very rear of the jet. As they passed the
Vengeance
, she stopped for a moment and indicated he should stay where he stood. She ducked inside for a moment, then once again led him to the rear of the cargo bay.

The massive rear clamshell doors sloped upward from the cargo deck at a forty-five-degree angle like a rising hillside twenty feet wide and more than that tall. The rear rotor and tail section of the
Vengeance
cast a shadow of near impenetrable darkness. When Lola stepped into it, she simply disappeared.

Tim stepped into the darkness with her. When he did, she did exactly as he first imagined—turned and slid up against him. Wrapped her arms about him and buried her face against his shoulder, holding on as tight as she could.

He slipped his hands around that perfect waist and held her tight. Traced up the length of those magnificent shoulder muscles that only soldier-training could develop. Civilians simply didn’t train at the level of a soldier, not the workout queens, not the aerobics instructors, none of them compared. Especially not to the standards of a Special Forces soldier.

Her hair. He buried his face in her hair and breathed her in. Inhaled the intoxicant of her skin, breathed in until he became light-headed.

His hunger for her at the end of the last mission was no less now, but instead of ravenous, it took a gentle, savoring turn. He nuzzled her neck, tasted her earlobe with a light tug of his teeth, kissing her on the eyelids after they had fluttered shut.

His hands that had previously been so greedy for butt and breast now lost themselves in her hair, cradling her head as he kissed her, digging fingers into over-tight shoulder muscles until she groaned against his lips.

Her fingers slid up into his hair and massaged until all he could do was stand there with his forehead against hers and revel in the sensation. With an easy motion, she pulled him down enough to kiss his forehead, then guided him lower.

She encouraged him to feast on collarbone, one of her finest features on a startlingly beautiful woman. His fingers leading the way, he unbuttoned her blouse, the promise of no bra come true, but opened it no wider than the trail down to her belly. He knelt before her and nuzzled the impossible soft flesh there, and all she did was encourage, hold on, and press him closer, her hands still in his hair.

His hands traveled where his tongue did not, discovering what a perfect, generous handful her breasts made against his palm. How the lower curve of her glutes stood proudly above powerful thighs, a well-defined and awesome behind.

Her strength lay in long layers of smooth muscle. He never moved his head from where his cheek rested against her belly, cradled in her long-fingered hands, not as he studied the curve of her calf, not as he explored every curve back up the length of her body. He wished he could memorize her, every shape, every inch, every taste.

He leaned back to look up at her in the dark. He couldn’t see her face, shrouded in a deeper darkness by her hair cascading down either side, but he knew she looked at him just as intently.

There was no need for the question. Nor the answer.

Tim pulled her down atop him as he leaned back against the cargo bay doors.

***

Lola sank to her knees over Tim. Let herself sink until they lay pressed so close together that what little clothing separated them didn’t matter. Wasn’t there. Just her heart pounding against his.

She slid down enough to lay her ear on his chest and listen to the quick double-beat of his heart. His hands gathered and combed her hair with a gentleness belied by their size and strength. She’d watched him hammering the side of a powerful fist on a reluctant piece of Black Hawk, trying to repair a panel. Another time, when an armorer’s lift broke, Tim had easily helped him lift fresh munitions onto the chopper’s hardpoint mounts.

And he brushed her hair through his fingers as if he were little more than a breath of spring breeze.

She lay there, her body buzzing but oddly content to remain silently tended while she listened to the double-tap of his heart. But the buzz in her body kept growing, and Tim’s clearly had similar feelings. There was no mistaking the point of contact where his hips lined up with her belly.

She sat up and began undoing his pants, testing shape and texture as she went. The hard, six-pack abs. The soft hair tickling the backs of her fingers, the impossibly smooth skin where hip met upper thigh.

When she cupped him, he made the first sound that had passed between them, the low moan of a beast in pain, exquisite pain.

She toyed with him, slowly, gently, feeling him get harder and harder until she could take his pulse there against her palm.

Without releasing him, she leaned forward to kiss him. He slid his hands up inside her open blouse until he supported her weight easily with her breasts against his palms. As if she were as light as a feather. As if she were floating.

“I don’t…” he managed to groan out before she covered his mouth with hers.

His kisses were so strong, so powerful that she momentarily forgot her hand still wrapped around him or his palms pressing against her breasts. Tim’s lips could drive a woman mad. Soft, teasing, lush. Backed by strong teeth that nipped and pulled and a stronger tongue that drove as greedily against hers as hers did on his.

She knew what he meant, of course. She sat back up and freed one hand. Slipping it into a pocket, she held forth the foil packet she’d snagged from the chopper’s med kit.

His soft noises as she rolled it over him were all she needed to make her sure.

She’d wanted to be held. Needed to be held. Tim had done that. Made her have needs beyond mere release.

Lola had hoped that, with some sex, she could stop all that was going on in her head. Tim had offered an opportunity to do that.

But he’d given her more. From that impossibly deep strength wrapped around his heart, he’d offered her far more than she’d ever anticipated.

He was making love.

She stripped out of her pants, until only her open blouse covered her.

He was making love with her.

She settled down over him where he lay against the cargo bay doors.

This one time she would let it happen.

They moved together in such perfect harmony that neither of them could have spoken had their lives depended on it.

She would let herself be made love to.

He drove upward into her until she floated, feeling nothing but where they connected at hip, hand, and lips. Filled so thoroughly in body and soul.

She would let herself love back.

For the moment.

For this one time.

When she came, and he followed her over the peak, she floated free of herself and simply reveled in the cleansing waves that rippled up and down her body.

Floated 35,000 feet above the world.

Had the clamshell doors supporting them swung open and tumbled them out to float in space, she could not have felt lighter than this moment as she lay against Tim. His hands cradling her like a lover as the last shivers slid up their bodies in perfect harmony.