Take Over at Midnight (The Night Stalkers) (4 page)

“Let’s go!” Tim Maloney stood from the chow table but didn’t head off.

“Go where?” Lola had just finished breakfast, for which she’d had dinner, as the sun set, and they were about to have a whole night off. No missions tonight, which was good. For a whole week, all Lola had done was prove that she’d been a total idiot in signing up for SOAR in the first place.

Now, with nothing to do for a whole night, she dreaded what she knew was going to happen. She’d overthink every action for the last week, each flight, each maneuver. She’d dwell on them until she’d spiraled into a place of depression and self-disgust at her own incompetence. She’d land in a place that reminded her far too much of living with her father. A helpless downward spiral of crashing self-esteem that she’d always been powerless to stop once she got caught in the downdraft.

“Go where?” she repeated when Tim didn’t bother to explain.

He just gave her enough of a light punch on the arm to get her moving. She shrugged. What the hell, why not? Maybe he’d keep her from dwelling on how badly she’d screwed up her career. Two years of training and now she was flunking out. Not in testing, not in training; it was the real world where she wasn’t good enough. Well, that didn’t come as such a surprise. After all, it was right on track with the rest of her life.

Tim rousted the rest of the table, snagging the Majors and the D-boy colonel along the way. A couple of the Little Bird crews tagged along and enough Rangers that soon twenty or so of them were trooping out into the dark of Bati air base. Probably a trip into town. It was dangerous to go with less than a squad, but they were nearer a platoon now, and that was too big and would just tick off the locals.

Tim had scooted ahead. Just outside the chow tent he was handing out old second-generation NVGs. The monocular night-vision goggles were monstrous by today’s standards. Where in the world had he dug up these dinosaurs? They were heavy and covered the face from tip of nose to top of forehead to block interfering light. A single lens stuck out like a stubby misplaced unicorn’s horn right over the bridge of the nose.

Soon everybody had one and Tim was gesturing to put them on.

Lola decided to play along. He was the only reason she’d felt welcome at Bati. Every day he found something to amuse her or help her out. He’d showed her where a pretty decent weight set had been gathered in the back of a supply tent, complete with a couple of benches and enough iron to keep a half-dozen grunts happy. When he’d discovered she played backgammon, he’d turned a couple of games into a daily morning ritual between breakfast and sack time. They were fairly well matched, which kept it interesting.

She pulled on the NVGs, adjusting the straps so that they settled not too uncomfortably. With the goggles on, she could see that Bati field was brightly awash under a half-dozen infrared lights. Shadows of helicopters were sharp-edged and overlapping against the bright green wash. A small flag stood in front of her with a number
1
on it.

Tim held out a golf club. No, it was a golf putter and a ball with a strip of infrared reflecting paint and the letter
S
on one side, a
1
on the other.

“I knew color wouldn’t show up,” Tim said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “So your balls are marked for your group.”

A number of vulgar jokes were tossed back from the crowd as Tim distributed putters and golf balls. A couple of the ruder remarks were aimed her way. Typical. Army grunts always tried to see if they could offend or embarrass the women entering their ranks. Lola knew from watching others in the past that once you showed the least weakness, they’d drive it home until you wanted to curl up and die. But she’d spent a lot of her teen years working the kitchens at Mama Raci’s, nothing was offensive after that. And years of search and rescue had long since cured her of any squeamishness.

“Just ’cause I got no balls, mon,” she shot back at one of them, “don’ mean I ain’t gone kick you in yours.” That got the expected laugh and they eased off.

A
D
-marked ball for the colonel and the two other D-boys. A dozen
R
’s for the rangers.
S
for the rest of SOAR. He fished into his bucket and came up with
A
balls for a couple of Army folks who were there in support roles—three armorers and a couple kitchen guys. Tim even had little scorecards and stubby pencils. Where the hell had he gotten all this?

Only when everyone was outfitted and people were knocking around their golf balls on the rough dirt of the hard-packed running track did Tim continue.

“Twenty bucks!” he called loud enough to stop conversation. “Twenty bucks each into the kitty. Three prizes: a half, a third, and a sixth. Cough it up!” Some grumbled, though most pitched in with good humor. With Tim cajoling them, no one walked away and he soon had five hundred bucks stuffed into his pocket.

Tim set them off down the course in pairs. Eighteen holes around Bati stadium. Obstacles were rough ground; some oddly placed boards; a ramp that led four tiers up into the bleachers, thirty feet along the narrow seat ledge, and back down; and the undercarriages of helicopters and service gear. He must have worked on this through the whole day when the rest of the crews had been sleeping.

She and Tim ended up together as one of the last teams. Just before they teed off, Colonel Gibson came up. Even with the NVG covering most of his face, there was no mistaking the man. The smooth movement, the lower jaw marked clearly by a broad scar that looked piratical rather than disfiguring.

Without saying a word, he took the ball out of Tim’s palm and dropped his own in its place. He glided back down toward the tee-off for the second hole.

Tim laughed quietly. “Didn’t think I’d get that by him.”

“What?” Lola watched Tim as he fished out another ball with an
S
on it.

He glanced around, but they were alone at the moment. He took the two balls, the
S
- and the
D
-marked ones and rolled them together on the ground. The one with the
S
bounced and gyrated over the rough ground, but went generally straight. The one with the
D
wobbled, then stabilized into a long, curving track. They came to rest a dozen feet away and several feet apart.

He gathered them up and dropped the one with the
D
back into the bucket with a few other leftovers.

“Saw them in one of those party game catalogs. Couldn’t resist.”

Lola looked at him aghast and then glanced down the course to make sure that no hoard of angry putt-putt golfers was fast approaching. “You gave rigged balls to everyone?”

“Everyone except SOAR.” He held up his
S
for her to see. “Gotta keep our reputation in place.”

“And if the Rangers figure it out, they’re gonna beat the shit out of you.” Even as she said it, she thought over the start. Tim had only paired SOAR with other SOAR. Everyone else was paired with someone with a rigged ball. They’d attribute all of their problems to the rough course. She shook her head in grudging admiration.

“You really are Crazy Tim.”

Tim shrugged negligently. “Seemed worth the risk. Besides, they’re just Rangers. How would they ever know?”

***

And they didn’t. Lola patted the eighty-five dollars in her pocket for coming in third. Henderson won, not a big surprise, and Colonel Gibson placed second with his
S
-marked ball. She’d finished only a stroke ahead of Tim and Major Beale. Kee was three strokes back and was laughing about it right until Lola finished and tallied up a winner. Well, screw her. Lola had had fun.

More than just the game, though. She’d really had fun because of the time with Tim. For a couple of hours she’d forgotten herself. Laughed a bit. Laughed a lot.

Tim told stories of his prior escapades. He’d done everything from the dumbest stunts to the most elaborate. Offering around pepper chewing gum for Marines the moment before his chopper had dumped them in central nowhere for a weeklong, deep-country survival training class.

He’d once gotten really pissed at a lousy commander in his early days of flight. He’d snuck out and unmounted the pilot’s seat, turned it around, and bolted it back down facing backward. “Not that he’d have noticed the difference, he was that bad. Problem was, he was too sick to fly the next day. That was the first time I met the Viper. He was the substitute pilot.”

At Lola’s inquiry, he’d finished the story. “All Henderson said was, ‘Either give me a mirror so I can see where I’m going or turn that damn thing around.’ John and I had it back in place before he finished preflight. Flown with him ever since.”

They’d laughed together. They’d lagged behind everyone else. He’d told her stories of growing up in his family’s restaurant kitchen.

Tim didn’t push when she declined to fill in the spaces he left for her to offer her own stories.

Lola compared his upbringing to Mama Raci’s kitchen. Close family and good food versus a nasty, old, black Cajun brothel-owner stingy with the girls—“Mon don’ want ’em plump”—and not much nicer to the customers. “Enough cheap booze and I don’ have to feed no mon much to get der money.”

But when Lola had finally had the good sense to run away from home, Mama Raci had taken her in. Fed her the same as the working girls, and Lola had paid for it by washing dishes and sweeping the cracked-out linoleum. She’d even had a small room off the kitchen all her own. Way better than living with her criminal father and his creepy buddies always hanging around and eyeing a growing girl. And way, way, way better than joining the bloodthirsty street gangs. That was no way out of anything. It was a trap in the shape of a bottomless pit.

Lola wandered toward her bunk after the game. Eighty-five dollars would have been a fortune back then. Still nothing to sneeze at.

Tim left her feeling strange. He’d been easy around her. Made her easy around him. Left her relaxed and forgetful of her differences from all of those around her. Almost made her feel as if she belonged.

“It was weird.” Lola rolled the dice and moved her backgammon marker three and two. Safe.

“What was?” Tim Maloney sat across the table from her, shaking his dice cup in the nearly empty chow tent. Sitting with Tim Maloney had rapidly become her treat to herself. Ever since the crazy golf game a half-dozen flights ago, he’d dropped the goggle-eyed expression he’d been aiming at her when he didn’t think she was watching. In its wake there remained an amazingly handsome, easygoing guy she enjoyed spending time with.

Breakfast had been cleared, and most of the base’s personnel had drifted away to do whatever they did. The fliers to kill some time before sleeping through the day. The 160th SOAR was called the Night Stalkers for a reason. They flew at night, slept in the day. The maintenance guys were normal shifters. They worked on the birds—refueling, rearming, and repairing through the day, then sleeping while the crews flew.

A couple of the Little Bird guys were lingering over coffee. Some Rangers were going back to the line for seconds or maybe thirds, despite the rising heat of the day making the air too oppressive to allow minor considerations like hunger. Rangers were tough; she’d made it through Airborne and Ranger school herself, and she knew how tough they were. But only an idiot kept eating in this heat.

At the far end of the tent, a group of D-boys sat in their own little world. Even the Rangers were careful to leave them a wide berth. Most of the time. Except every now and then one would go suddenly “Ranger stupid.” Something would go sideways in a Ranger’s brain and he’d choose death by Delta. It was like the idiots who shot at the White House with a .22 trying to arrange suicide by cop. Neither action typically led to actual dying, but in most cases that would have been less painful.

Weirdly enough, Sergeant Kee Stevenson was over sitting with the D-boys. And that little native kid who always followed in her shadow. D-boys tolerated nobody outside their own circle, but they let the Sergeant, the kid, and her
Secret
Garden
book sit with them.

Lola had tried talking about Mary and Dickon with the kid. Not much luck with Mother Superior looking over her like Lola would somehow break the child just by speaking with her.

Tim rolled a four-six. Great. He was about three moves from totally barricading her in.

She returned her attention to the game and what was really bugging her.

“I’m a good pilot. Damn good. But flying with Beale…” She shrugged. She had no better words for it.

Tim had the decency to not laugh at either her statement or the useless one-four she rolled. She could either play safe and make no real progress or play messy and hope he didn’t roll on top of her.

She played messy, leaving three pieces open. As long as he didn’t roll…

Double-twos. Crap! He knocked all three of her open pieces back to the bar.

“I always outflew everyone.” Even her SOAR trainers had given her nothing but praise. Okay, that wasn’t right. They’d insulted her less than anyone else in her class, which was as high as their praise ever rose. But the slick grace and perfect control Major Emily Beale had demonstrated again tonight was at a whole other level. Like Lola was an outsider looking in at something she barely understood.

She really, really needed double fours to stay in the game. She rattled her dice cup hopefully. Tim’s silence was companionable, inviting her to talk. Men were never easy to be around. They always wanted something, sex usually, or at least dominance of power. Around Tim she felt strangely mellow. He was easy to talk to. No agenda.

“I had this friend Rikki back when I flew with the Eagles. Best shooter you ever saw. World-class sniper. Then she told me about this Special Forces chick who fired twice Rikki’s normal score. She tried to explain what she saw but couldn’t, didn’t even know what the woman had done that she wasn’t doing. I never understood what she was saying until now.”

“She say who? Your roll.”

Lola rolled. Four-six. She moved one piece off the bar and back into the game, but the other two were still blocked by Tim’s pieces. Military snipers were a small world, but she couldn’t remember the name.

“Smith. Maybe. All I know is some little Asian chick with a weird rifle.”

“An HK MSG-90A1?”

Tim doubled-down on her lone piece and bounced her back to the bar.

“Yeah.” You didn’t forget a weapon like that. “How did you—”

He pointed over at the D-boys’ table.

You’d expect a D-boy to be able to shoot like… But there was only one woman at the table. Sergeant Kee Stevenson.

“Smith was her maiden name.”

Great. Another damned overachiever. And Big John and Tim had agreed that Connie Davis was a scary-good chief mechanic, even by their own caliber of excellence. She’d signed aboard a flight of goddamned superwomen. Which meant she’d never measure up.

She rolled again.

Nothing.

She was in over her head and getting absolutely nowhere.