Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers) (22 page)

Tim almost missed her in the dusk when he looked down the beach. Had to walk halfway to her before he was sure.

Lola was huddled a hundred yards down the beach, almost at the water’s edge. Her arms wrapped around her knees, pulled so tight against her chest she could rest her chin on them.

For a moment he considered leaving her there.

Hadn’t he been clear? There couldn’t be anyone but her for him. And he knew it was mutual. There’d never been anyone who made him feel so schoolboy happy. They held hands everywhere except when they went running. They communicated with an ease, with a silence that often didn’t need words.

He wanted to shout at her. To rage. About betrayal. About breaking so many silent promises. About his family teapot. He raised his hand to look at the handle still clutched there. His mother’s favorite piece of china now just a handle connected to nothing. Tiny trails of pink roses leading to jagged and sharp edges where it had been shattered. All been shattered.

A deep fury boiled up within him. That she had led him so far astray, so wrong. That she’d broken his grandmother’s teapot.

Perhaps it was the absurdity of that last thought. Perhaps it was knowing he’d have to explain the loss to his mother. For whatever reason, the anger that was nearly blinding him drained abruptly away and left him ragged and exhausted. Worse, far worse than the adrenal letdown after battle.

To hell with Lola. He thought it, but knew it was wrong. It didn’t find its target. He tried to restir the righteous anger he wanted to wrap around himself. It only made him even sadder and lonelier.

On the verge of turning away he noticed she still hadn’t moved. He was close enough to see she was shivering despite the warm evening breeze, staring sightlessly toward Assateague Island.

At a loss, Tim moved until he was just a pace away and slowly sank to a squat beside her. She didn’t turn to face him. This close, he could see that she fought the shivers coursing in waves up and down her frame.

Without thinking, he reached out to run a soothing hand down her arm, but she flinched away ever so slightly and he withdrew before he touched her. Still she didn’t turn to him.

He tried to think of ways to break the silence, but none of them were right.

At length, Lola’s frame stopped shaking like some terrified rabbit. She closed her eyes and finally rested her forehead on her knees, the arms not releasing the tension in the slightest.

Her voice barely a whisper, he had to concentrate and turn his ears clear of the gentle breeze to hear her.

“I’m so sorry. I can’t. I just can’t. You don’t know. I just can’t.”

The hysterical edge to her whispered voice finally broke through his own miasma.

“Shh. Easy. We’ll figure this out.”

“No!” She popped up her head and shouted at him. Her voice enough of a slap that he lost his balance from his squat and fell back until he too sat in the sand. Her eyes blazed red with pain and her running tears caught the last of the day’s light, but her words were sharp, hard-edged.

“No! ‘We’ won’t figure it out! There is no ‘we.’” She huffed out a breath, shook her head to clear the hair from her eyes, and looked right at him for the first time. Her voice softer, if not kinder.

“Goddamn it, Tim. I can’t be part of a ‘we.’ Nobody can be enough of an idiot to want me to be part of their ‘we.’ You’re better than that. Go find someone. But not me. Find some sweet, gentle-hearted woman. One who will make you and your family happy. Not some screwed-up, harpy bitch.”

“I already did.” And he had.

But all she did was laugh bitterly and look away again.

Not knowing what else to do, Tim sat with her. Cross-legged beneath the emerging stars, he stared at the teapot handle still clenched in his hand. He set it carefully on the sand, the handle sticking up into the air as if the teapot were but buried spout down.

He opened his other hand, the one that had been fisted closed since the moment Lola dove from the helicopter. Closed tight until the fingers were numb from lack of blood flow. Forcing the fingers open, he managed to create an opening big enough to see to his palm, the first tingles of pain arcing up his fingers.

His grandmother’s ruby wedding ring. The heirloom his mother had offered him with such hope last night. For one heartbeat, then another, he considered casting it aside. Throwing it into the ocean, or better, into the Potomac. Let the ring join Washington’s apocryphal silver dollar beneath the muddy waters. If he could have flexed his numb hand, he might have thrown the ring away and damn the consequences.

He stared down into the shadowed cup of his hand at the shimmering circlet that caught even the starlight with such hope.

Then, without looking up at Lola, he slowly forced his fist closed, a motion twice as painful now that the blood was returning. He would keep it safe, hidden. It would wait, like a Night Stalker waited in the dark, until the time was right. Until that perfect moment of flight.

He stood, steady on legs that moments before couldn’t hold him upright.

“Come on. I need to clean up, then we’ll return the chopper and I’ll get you to a hotel.”

She nodded but didn’t move.

He left her there and turned to go sweep up the pieces.

***

Lola watched Tim walk away. Not directly; didn’t want to be caught watching if he looked back to check on her. Which he did several times, as if she were a phantom who might disappear into thin air.

Maybe if she just kept running down the beach she’d never have to see him again. Going AWOL wasn’t exactly on the list of experiences she wanted to try. Nor did she want to abandon her post, she’d worked harder to make SOAR than anything in her life. And harder still to live up to Emily Beale’s standards. “Away without leave” was one of the nastier crimes in the military, right up there with fraternizing with an enlisted.

She rested her forehead back on her knees. How had she crash-landed in such a place? All she’d wanted to do was have a little fun. She didn’t want to be someone’s dream. Didn’t want to own someone else’s heart. Not even Tim’s.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the brilliant white arc of beautiful teapot handle still rising from the soil. The small section of pot that remained, awash with tiny pink roses. It was the most romantic gesture anyone had ever made to her.

Living with Mama Raci, a living she’d earned in scrubbed pots and cut vegetables, had left her on the outside looking in. Hers wasn’t the world of TV sitcoms with happy families. When she wandered out of Storyville into the French Quarter or Metairie, she’d watched people happily strolling through the neighborhood, enjoying their family sit-down dinners, relaxing in front of the television behind brightly lit windows of nice homes.

It wasn’t for her. Whatever was going on in Sergeant Tim Maloney’s mind, whatever madness had taken root there, it wasn’t her problem.

Lola looked up at the starry sky, so different from the sky she’d watched last night from her lover’s arms. Different too from the heavens of her youth in New Orleans. The Gulf always cast some high weather system, the heat a palpable shimmer that battered at a person, made the world difficult to see clearly.

Here in D.C., it was a sky of spilled paint. So picture perfect that nothing could go wrong beneath it.

Nothing but Lola LaRue.

She hid her eyes and did her best not to think or feel.

She struggled to her feet and shook the feeling back into her legs. She didn’t want Tim to come find her. Didn’t want him to touch her. Didn’t want what she knew she would feel if he did. A joy like none she’d ever found in being with another. A peace she didn’t deserve or understand.

She reached down and grasped the teapot handle. It felt oddly light, her muscles still expected the mass of the full pot.

Lola tucked it out of sight under the edge of her shirt as she climbed the beach back toward the chopper.

The whirlwind descended as they drove back into the city. For something to do with her hands, for something to do in the silence that descended as dense as any sandstorm between her and Tim, Lola fished her cell phone out of the fanny pack she’d tossed on the car floor while helping to clean and stow the Huey.

A message flashed, now an hour old, calling them to the Treasury Building in less than an hour from now.

Tim laid down on the accelerator and raced through the streets like a madman. She’d managed to make it up the stairs to the apartment to bathe and for them to pack their gear. She transferred the teapot handle to her duffel with Tim none the wiser.

Tim ducked into the kitchen to return the apartment keys. She had to sit and wait for several minutes.

Was Tim telling his mother about the teapot?

Lola felt cowardly leaving him to face the rocket fire when she’d been the one to destroy the family heirloom, but though she reached for the car’s door handle several times, she never actually opened it.

Or was he making some excuse why Lola wouldn’t come in to say good-bye? Possibly cursing her mere existence?

She’d liked his family—Cara always so willing to give of her love and his father, Jackson, always ready with a smile or a wry joke. Having just refused their son, there was no way on the planet that she could face them.

When Tim returned to the car, he looked grim, and she didn’t dare ask. She wasn’t just cruel, she was a coward on top of it.

They raced in silence to arrive at the Treasury Building with minutes to spare, not having exchanged a single word since the beach other than her reading their orders off her voice mail. Orderlies swept aside their gear on arrival. They were ushered through metal detectors, each leaving a couple of knives and their sidearms in security’s lockbox.

Down a long hall, where their passes were checked twice more, they entered the White House basement, arriving exactly on time in a concrete conference room. It was twice the size of the Situation Room but with none of the niceties. This was a room where serious work was done and nothing wasted on such luxuries as a comfortable chair or even a water pitcher.

The other members of the two DAP Hawk crews were there along with two D-boys, Colonel Gibson and a Captain Thomas. Emily looked at Lola strangely when she neither chose a chair by Tim nor by her. Lola’s heart hurt too much to care.

Seeking a quick distraction, Lola dropped into a hard plastic seat next to Kee. Thankful for the distraction, she offered the woman her friendliest smile.

“Where’s the kid?”

Kee unwound enough to answer, “Probably in the Oval Office. Her grandmother’s in town, so she’s staying with Calledbetty, but they’re meeting with the President at the moment.”

Lola tried to think up something to say, something to expand this momentary bridge between them, but she came up blank. So the little squirt hadn’t been making it up. She did know the President and therefore, almost certainly, the head of the Presidential Protection Detail.

Before she could form her thoughts into a coherent response, General Brett Rogers tromped in and Lola was back on her feet even before she heard Viper Henderson shout out, “’Tenshun!” or the general’s, “At ease. At ease,” that let them settle back slowly into their chairs.

Chief of Staff Daniel Darlington followed him in, shut the door, and began speaking before he even turned to the room.

“The President is unavailable at the moment, but this”—he dropped an envelope on the table bearing the presidential seal—“is National Security Presidential Directive Number 73. General Rogers will explain the contents.”

Rogers stood at the head of the table in silence and scanned the room.

Lola did the same. Two D-boys and eight fliers. Seven of them tried-and-true SOAR pilots and crew chiefs, and then Lola. She suppressed a sudden desire to laugh at her inclusion in this circle. Even Sergeant Kee Stevenson belonged here more than she ever could. When their gazes met, she could see Kee making a similar assessment of her. “You don’t belong here.” No kidding.

Lola was flying with the likes of Mark Henderson and Emily Beale. How was she ever supposed to measure up to that?

The General cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention back to the head of the table.

“Based on the Insurrection Act of 1807 and Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, you are not allowed to enter into a military operation on U.S. soil except as required by the Constitution and an Act of Congress. Not even to enforce law and order. It does not permit aggressive action against U.S. nationals. This”—the General tapped the envelope—“on the advice of the National Security Council, permits exactly that.” He pulled it out of the envelope, even as Mark and Emily groaned aloud.

The General shot them a withering glance, but Emily just reached out to take Mark’s hand.

Lola could see that they’d clearly read a similar document once before, but that the General hadn’t. He too quickly took in the implication. The Majors had known and performed some secret mission, secret even from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that had required broad sweeping powers from the President. Oddly, as she scanned the room, no one else in their crews seemed to know either, except Daniel. The President’s Chief of Staff clearly had a few guesses even if he didn’t show a look of absolute certainty.

The General harrumphed, then read aloud, “You are hereby authorized to use any force at any place and any time at your commander’s discretion that is deemed necessary to protect the safety and sanctity of the United States and her people. Signed, President Peter Matthews.”

Emily covered her face as, with obvious reluctance, Major Henderson took the paper presented by the General.

“No word of this mission is ever to reach beyond the people sitting in this room. Is that clear?” The last had a snap of command that had the ten of them jumping to their feet and responding with a shouted, “Sir, yes, sir!”

***

“Unknown to the Iranian executive branch,” the General continued his lecture in the conference room beneath the White House, “and possibly unknown to the clerical branch of their government as well, a secret laboratory was constructed in the deep desert outside Ravar, Iran. A dreadful biocide was produced there. Soman is a Schedule 1 substance deemed to be a weapon of mass destruction per UN Security Council Resolution 687. It is a nerve agent that specifically targets all mammalian life forms and is one of the two or three most lethal such agents on the planet.”

Lola saw Emily place her hands over her belly, as if she could further protect the month-old fetus.

“Based on the research data your teams recovered from the desert, it is prepped to be released in an aerosol form, an airborne attack. We know the target is the Southern United States, and that’s where you’re headed. You’re being dispatched immediately to Fort Rucker to prepare for on-call action. You will pick up additional crew there as needed. CIA, FBI, and NSA assets are scrambling to get you a point of interdiction, but if it is airborne, your teams will be the spearhead once we identify the target. Questions?”

“What’s our cover, sir?” Lola’s voice felt rough from not being used in the last several hours.

“You’ll be making the crossing tonight under cover of darkness. After that, if daytime actions are required, you’ll be a training-and-testing flight. At Rucker, your birds will be rearmed with Hellfire IIIs. These are brand-new, nano-thermite-equipped missiles. Based upon the CIA experts’ calculations, they should burn hot enough to vaporize the Soman, and being FAEs, fuel-air explosives, hopefully they’ll be able to do so across a large enough area.” Then the old warrior looked exhausted.

“This assumes that you can arrive at a biocide launch site before it has had a chance to significantly disperse. You are authorized to use this weaponry over citizen populations if the Soman has been released before you arrive. Trust me, it will be an act of kindness to those who might be already exposed.”

He dropped into the seat at the head of the table and hung his head.

Lola looked around, wanted someone to give the rallying talk she’d always heard in these types of situations. To know that someone had that absolute conviction of success.

She could see Emily Beale struggling to find the right words, but her face merely looked white and drawn.

“Well…” Lola leaned forward. “I’m sure there is something brilliant that can be said right about now. Regrettably, it needs someone smarter than me to say it.” Her irony earned her a soft laugh.

Her brief meeting with Emily’s gaze told Lola to keep going, even if she didn’t believe it herself.

“All I can think to say is: We’re the Night Stalkers.”

Emily echoed it softly along with a few of the others, “We’re the Night Stalkers.”

“NSDQ.” Lola made it a flat statement, each letter distinct.

“NSDQ,” was mumbled around the table as a benison. Lola repeated it with more strength, more force. It was the Night Stalkers’ motto.

“Night Stalkers Don’t Quit!” She nearly shouted it.

“Night Stalkers Don’t Quit!” Emily hammered down her fist as she replied.

“Night Stalkers Don’t Quit!” roared from the throats of both crews, their fists landing once, hard enough to shake the table.

She whispered it one more time to herself, searching for that absolute commitment, as others rose to their feet and began heading for the door.

“Night Stalkers Don’t Quit!”