Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers) (24 page)

“How do we do this?” Lola broke the silence that had lasted since they’d climbed up onto the Aviation Center of Excellence hangar roof to watch the sunset.

Spread out below them were two dozen Chinooks. She’d never seen so many of the giant choppers gathered in one place. Like a Chinook convention all sitting around the bar telling tall tales of mountaintops and drug lords, of massive troop loads and extended over-water flights, and maybe a quiet one, sitting in the corner, never talking about a certain nighttime trip into the Iranian desert.

Next week it would probably be all Black Hawks with their war stories, or OH-6 surveillance Kiowas chattering like magpies about “you’ll never guess what I saw.” “No, no, first guess what I saw.”

Thankfully, it hadn’t been all silence with Tim as they’d walked halfway across the base, but they sure hadn’t known what to say to each other. They’d talked of the mission. He’d told her about his first trip to Mother Rucker. She talked about SOAR interview week. Harder in some ways than the monthlong hell of quals for Ranger school.

Talking with Tim had been easy, comfortable, and she’d missed it. Terribly. When she toyed with the phrase in her head—“Missed him. Terribly.”—it didn’t sit so comfortably.

“How, Tim?”

He sat beside her, looking out at the world that was Fort Rucker. Close, but not quite touching. Both facing out at the world, but focused on each other.

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. But I can tell you that being apart doesn’t work.”

It didn’t.

“Not for me anyway. I’ve never wanted a woman in my life the way I want you. The longest I ever had a girlfriend was about six months, no, nine.”

“Who was she?” Lola found herself curious. Not jealous. It was far longer than any of her relationships had ever lasted.

“Bess Thompson. Half of senior year of high school and a great summer while I worked the restaurant. Then she ‘Dear Tim’ed’ me during Basic. I’d told her I was going real Army, not just a two-year tour, and she didn’t want that. Can’t blame her. Her dad was on Navy subs, gone six months at a time. Hard life for the woman and impossible for the kid.”

“Were you that serious?”

Tim inspected the sky awash with orange and gold for a while. “We thought we were. But we were eighteen. What did we know.”

“A whole decade older, are we any wiser?”

That got a laugh. A warm, gentle sound that included her.

“I like to think so, but I sure buggered it, didn’t I?”

No need to question what “it” was.

“No, Tim. You did perfect.” A helicopter, the closest she had to a home. A sunset picnic, so charming and cozy. The flowers and teapot were the perfect touches. How much time had she spent sitting on her bunk these last three days, just holding the damned broken teapot handle while she tried to figure out the mess going on inside her head.

“Guys always make me feel like a female of the species. They can’t help it with the way their bodies react to mine. You’re the first who ever made me feel feminine. No one ever gave me such a gift.”

“Then why? Can you help me understand why?” He was begging.

Lola had been trying to avoid that question herself for days. But he deserved an answer, even if she didn’t have one to give.

“Every time I answer that one in my head, I just sound stupid or petty. All I know is that I can’t. My past—”

“Is the past.” His voice sounded soldier rough. “My past is a loving family. Your past isn’t. My past was most of the way to prison, yours just as close to being a hooker. Does it matter? What really matters is now!”

Again she didn’t know how to respond. How could she explain to someone who had so much what it was like to have nothing?

She’d run into the same problem with the swim girls at college. They’d go out on team shopping sprees, waving their parents’ credit cards like magic wands. She’d gone along once or twice, but never bought anything. Even with ROTC, the swimming scholarship, and waitressing, she barely made ends meet each quarter.

When cornered about it, she’d tried to explain. Other than her dress uniform and one new swimsuit a year, her clothing budget was spent at Goodwill. The other swimmers had nodded in understanding the one time she tried to explain, but were confused on the next trip when again she’d try things on but buy nothing. She’d stopped going.

“You’re right, Tim. Only the here and now should matter. But it doesn’t work that way. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.”

They sat in silence as the oranges faded to reds, the reds to dusky gray. On the verge of true darkness, a dozen crews came running out of the building below them, sixty men and women sprinting toward the dozen machines for some simulated combat alert. Within minutes, she and Tim couldn’t have spoken even if they wanted to. Each Chinook spun up a pair of five-thousand-horsepower turbine engines.

Lola realized she was counting seconds in her head from the first alert. One minute… Two… Three minutes beyond when they should have been airborne, the first bird wallowed into the night sky. It was a full thirty seconds before the next was away. Their ascents were spread over the next four minutes instead of the group departing in a single clean flight, the last bird seven full minutes slower than it should have been.

She shared a glance and smile with Tim in the dim light cast up from the lit field below. There were gonna be some very unhappy trainers during post-flight debrief. Even for regular Army, they’d been sloppy. Definitely not SOAR.

“Rooks.”

Lola could read the word on Tim’s lips as the final Chinook roared close overhead, its turbines definitely past yellow line as its crew abused the machine to try and make up for their own lateness. Definitely rookies.

“Probably visiting Air Force.”

They were all going to catch hell at the debrief. The last guy for abusing the equipment and the first one for not waiting to form up. She remembered that lecture with soft nostalgia. First didn’t matter. Team mattered.

Together they waited, listening to the choppers fade into the night.

She’d come a long way since those days. Lola remembered the struggles to remember the preflight checklist that was now instinct, hunting for the right switches for startup that she could now hit every time in blackout conditions with incoming live fire while attempting to restart a flamed-out turbine.

She’d come a long way since those days.

Tim’s head was still turned to the northern sky though the choppers were long gone.

When she rested a hand on his shoulder, he faced her.

Their faces inches apart, she could read the question in his eyes in the reflected light and shadows.

“No promises.”

He waited the length of a long breath and release before answering with a slow nod.

She leaned in the last inches until her lips were on his.

Lola knew she’d never forget this moment. The two of them wrapped in the night, sitting above an airfield still well populated by silent helicopters, nothing beneath them but a hard-surfaced roof.

Tim’s lips gentle, so soft on hers she could barely feel them. Their lovemaking hadn’t always been wild, but there’d always been a strength that bordered on or crossed over into ravenous or a playful battle. They’d each sported their fair share of bruises after their sexual bouts in D.C.

Now he held her as if she were something precious. A strong arm cradled her against him, holding her as no one had ever done. His fingers inspected her cheekbones, brushing her eyes closed, traced her lips as lightly as if they were feathers, not human flesh and blood.

Lola kept her eyes closed, unable to focus on anything but where he touched her. So completely was he focusing her attention that she couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain. An exquisite agony pulsed through her, like a foot gone to sleep and now tingling awake. As if the blood flowed into her body for the first time.

She too touched him in wonder. Studying the angles of his face until she knew her fingertips could never forget them. The taste of his skin by his collarbone, the heat of his chest, the sound of his heart when she laid her ear upon it. Each sensation to be studied, relished, remembered.

His exploration was as slow, as careful, as thorough. His rough hands, his soldier-strong hands, were weapons able to dispense the most feathering of touches, arousing her skin like never before.

An exquisite eternity later, waves of heat pulsed through her, pounding against her senses, leaving her aware of nothing except how she felt and the man who sent her there.

But the heat didn’t pulse upward from between her legs. Instead it originated in her chest and rolled outward in broad concentric rings that heated, burned, scorched. It burned away layers of Lola LaRue, old layers, cracking and flaking aside like the rolling brownout she’d created along an Iranian highway. Shedding old dust until she lay totally exposed and new in his arms.

For the first time in her life, her heart lay wide open to the world. And she felt so perfectly safe in Tim’s gentle hands.

“How much longer?” President Matthews looked at Daniel and the General. They were the only occupants of the Situation Room. The Director of the CIA was on secure link from his office, his face an image in the corner of the main screen.

“Give the Coast Guard another half hour. We have to be sure. You should get some sleep, Mr. President.”

The General was right. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not while Emily was flying out there.

The main image across the screen showed the night-vision view from Emily’s Black Hawk. Mark’s chopper hung just visible in the upper right corner. In front and below rolled the midnight dark sea and four small boats. Apparently boats filled with Cuban refugees a dozen miles from the promised land of the Florida Keys rather than deadly chemicals.

The reason they’d called out the Night Stalkers was the speed with which these boats were moving. Most Cuban flotillas were slow, poorly guided, often dangerously off course, headed for open ocean. This particular group had been moving solidly in a straight beeline for Key Largo, the closest U.S. island to the Cuban mainland, at a very respectable eight knots. The U.S. Coast Guard had been sent out to investigate. With the Night Stalkers for close, unseen support just in case.

“We should have sent our people,” CIA Director Bill Smith complained for about the tenth time.

“Bill, until your Special Activities Division can best the Black Adders, shut the hell up.”

There’d been an ugly mission in North Korea about six months before. An operation that the CIA’s own experts had decided was beyond the SAD’s paramilitary group. Emily and Mark’s crews had to fly it instead.

Peter exchanged a look with Daniel. The slightest nod confirmed he hadn’t gone too far out of line. That Daniel had found his Alice as a by-product of that particular operation added some bias, but the CIA had to learn they weren’t the only specialists in the world who could get things done.

The General, as former commander of U.S. Special Forces, was almost smiling at the slap at the CIA. A near smile from Brett Rogers represented the height of hilarity for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

But, political expediency being what it was, Peter gave Bill another excuse to focus on.

“We need to keep this quiet as long as we can.”

“But you have choppers out there—”

“That won’t show up on the Coast Guard’s radar as more than sea clutter at their present altitude.”

The rolling waves did indeed appear to be mere inches below the Black Hawk’s cameras, causing a slightly seasick feeling if Peter watched the screen feed for too long.

“How long, Mr. President? How long can we do this without changing the alert status? Without expanding the team?”

It was a good question. The problem was, when you jumped up defense alert levels, people starting asking what to look for. Even the U.S. Coast Guard out there right now in the night were told only to watch for non-Cuban nationals or unanticipated equipment or cases.

A Cuban national could easily be bought with a simple bribe like a free ride on the very craft they were now inspecting. It was a seaworthy boat, stoutly made with plank framing and a heavy plastic tarp pulled over it to make a mostly waterproof hull, and it had a sufficiently large motor. Also, it didn’t help that enough poison to destroy a city would fit in a couple cases of two-liter soda bottles and the dispersal mechanism could be a crop-duster aircraft rented anywhere on U.S. soil.

Expanding the team had other risks. The more people in the know, the greater likelihood of a report from “an informed government source.” The press would ramp it up, perhaps without exaggerating but by reporting truth about the Soman nerve agent and how it could be spread. There’d be a panic of national proportions. A risk Peter wasn’t yet willing to take.

President Madani was feeding them whatever information he could. And Bill’s people were working the captured data, but the destination and delivery method were never recorded. Or if they were, it was in some of the heavily coded information they’d yet to crack, though there was very little of that left with the NSA helping out.

A phone buzzed and the General answered it. He listened for a moment, then hung up.

“USCG says they’re clean and they’re taking them in tow.”

“Call off Emily.”

The General placed another call. Thirty seconds later, the two Black Hawks veered off and headed back over the dark sea to Rucker. It was the fourth call out in three days. They couldn’t sustain this much longer.

None of them could.

But he didn’t have a better plan.

When they landed, no one was moving quickly. Lola checked the mission clock. They’d been out there for three hours hovering on station during the Coasties’ inspection, plus two hours in flight each way. Even taking turns in flight didn’t relieve the stress or the toll it was taking on everyone’s patience.

They all sat around the debriefing table too frustrated to speak. Almost too tired to care. They had to do something, if only she could think what.

Sergeant Kee was texting on her phone.

“How’s the kid?”

Kee looked at her, startled to be directly addressed. “Uh, she’s fine. She’s with Archie and his mother. They’re trying to work the shipping angle.”

“She’s a bright kid.”

“Smarter than any of us.”

Lola heard the motherly bias but didn’t doubt it. One year in their culture and the kid’s insights were startling. Had learned enough English to jump all the way into
The
Secret
Garden.

“How are Mary and Dickon and Colin doing?”

Again Kee studied her carefully before answering, “Colin can run now, but he’s in the chair still around the house, pretending he’s a cripple. Dilya’s having trouble understanding that. After crossing the Hindu Kush on foot, she thinks he should want to stay in the chair and be rolled around.”

Lola began a light laugh, picturing the incredibly active kid choosing to live out her days in a wheelchair. “Wait, did you say she walked across the Hindu Kush?”

Kee nodded. “Most of it. Barefoot besides. That’s where we found her.” She returned to her texting.

Lola remembered how much she’d enjoyed the book. A secret among children. A place of absolute safety. A false presentation to the outside world.

A falsehood. There was something there.

“We’re sure they’re bringing it in by ship, not by air?”

A couple of the crew raised their heads from where they’d been nodding with exhaustion. They blinked in her direction, like owls woken in midday but ready to go back to sleep.

Kee and Emily nodded.

Tim answered, “That’s based on President Madani’s intelligence. Yes. The Gulf. But that’s all we really know.”

“Okay, so let’s trust that he’s good that far. But what if that’s false?”

“False like a cripple in a chair?” Kee asked, jumping straight to where it had taken several minutes for her to reach.

“Yes. So, if it’s by sea, what haven’t we thought of?”

Kee glared at her for a long moment, ready to fire off a quick comeback.

“Look, for the moment just put aside whatever it is you so despise about me and think about it. Okay?” Lola returned heat for heat. At the moment she had bigger concerns than why one of her crewmates despised her.

Kee took a breath, let it out, then finally nodded her acquiescence.

“Little boats,” Tim picked it up before she and Kee could go another round. “We’re watching those. Big ships. Cruise boats. Military rigs. How can we check all of the possibilities?”

“Port of New Orleans gets a new boat arrival about every twenty minutes, right around the clock.” A fact Lola had learned flying patrol for the Air National Guard.

“Crap!” Kee dropped her chin onto her fists resting on the table.

“What else is in the Gulf?”

“Everything.” Kee waved her hand to the south. “Oil rigs, shrimp boats, and a raghead with a load of hate on and a chemical to wipe out a city.”

“Not if it spreads.” Big John looked over at the map of the Southeastern United States they’d tacked on the wall. “It could wipe out a whole lot more than that.”

“Thanks, John. I really needed that image.”

He shrugged. “Just saying.”

Connie went to a whiteboard and started writing. Lola dragged her head around to watch. Doubtful if she had the energy to stand herself.

Connie started with the list they’d already spoken about, then kept going. Soon people were calling out suggestions.

“Pleasure yachts. Tugs. Sailboats. Racing boats. Fireboats. Cop boats.” They moved on four or five more before Tim’s curse brought them all to a halt.

Connie didn’t speak; she simply stopped writing and turned to face Tim.

***

Tim groaned. This couldn’t be happening. He’d finally managed a partial peace with Lola, though it was wearing thin under the exhaustion and frustration they were all feeling.

He turned from the whiteboard, folded his hands on the table, and faced Lola, ignoring the rest of his crewmates. He took a deep breath and decided he had no choice but to bite off the next piece. He just hoped he could handle it.

“When I called your dad—”

“You called my father?” Lola looked as if he’d just slapped her.

Tim ignored the others remarking that they thought she’d said the man was dead.

“You called my father?” He could read the silent repeat on her lips.

“Yes, before I…” How much was he willing to humiliate himself? A lot apparently. “…before I proposed. I called to ask his permission.”

The room went silent. Everyone alert.

Well, he’d been wondering if she’d run from him because he’d called her father. It didn’t help that it had been even stupider than he’d thought at the time. But she hadn’t heard that part of his proposal. Now that he thought back, she’d already been running as the words of his carefully rehearsed speech had continued to dribble out onto the hard stone. He’d driven her away with the proposal itself. He didn’t know if that made him feel any smarter.

Kee was the first to break the silence. Her voice dripped vitriol as she turned to face Lola. “You refused Tim? For what goddamned, idiot-dumb—”

“Can it, Kee!” Tim didn’t look at her. Didn’t let his attention drift even for an instant from Lola’s face.

Kee sputtered at his command, but subsided. For the moment.

“You called my father?” He could hear the ire taking root. He knew once it took hold, she’d be too stubborn to hear him.

“I’m a good Catholic boy. Okay, I’m not. I’m a bad Catholic boy with good Catholic parents. I wanted to do it right.”

“By calling my father!” It wasn’t quite a shout, but it was getting close.

He considered telling her the other reason he’d called. He’d wanted Lola to see Ricky LaRue. Just once. Not as a rejected and ignored little girl, but rather as the woman of immense beauty and power that she now was. For Lola to understand how far she’d come, how magnificent she really was.

But he’d bet that at the moment, in front of all these people, it would sound even stupider if spoken aloud than if he just kept it to himself.

“Can we just ignore that for the moment?”

He decided to take her indecipherable growl as a brief window of opportunity.

“When I spoke to him, I tried to find some common ground to, you know, get the conversation going okay.”

“And you found?” This time he was able to translate the growl, but it had a building ferocity.

“Boats.”

“Boats?” That stopped her for a moment.

“You said he was into a dozen different criminal activities. Well, I looked him up on the Internet, and he’s now deputy sheriff of the New Orleans harbor police. If anyone knows about criminal activity in the Gulf…”

“He’s the man who would know.”

“A criminal posing as a cop.” Tim closed the circle. “Like a boy hiding in a wheelchair.”

“Shit!” Lola swore. “You know what this means?”

Tim knew but played dumb.

“It means I’m going to have to talk to the bastard.”

Lola looked at him, and a silence seemed to wrap around them as others burst into conversation. In the background, Beale called someone, probably the White House, about the possible lead.

Her voice was a harsh whisper for his ears alone. “You actually called my father to ask for permission to marry me?”

Tim nodded carefully.

“Knowing I’d kill you if I found out?”

He nodded again, momentarily glad for the table between them.

“You’re not just crazy.” Her smile cracked forth, turning into the lopsided, dimpled grin that had stolen his heart. “You’re also the bravest man I’ve ever met.”