The Ides of Matt 2015

Heart of the Storm-1

Heart of the Storm

Some stories are born out of thin air…in this case very thin air high atop the fourteen thousand foot peak of Mt. Rainier.

I set out to learn the backstory of Delta Force operator Michael Gibson. I needed to know more about him before writing his romantic suspense novel, Bring on the Dusk (the sixth novel in the main flight of my series The Night Stalkers).

Colonel Michael Gibson materialized out of thin air while I was writing the very first book in the series, The Night Is Mine. And he refused to leave. Book after book, when the mission got truly ugly, Michael was there at the heart of it. And the fans were constantly asking me for more about him.

I had been writing about him in desert situations, so I decided to toss him into a very different environment and sat back to see what happened. I set him high on the slopes of Mt. Rainier, alone in the middle of a winter blizzard. You know, a training hike…Delta Force-style.

There is a silence that wraps around Michael. It is a silence that I’ve heard up on those slopes (though I was there in the summer and didn’t go anywhere near the glacier-shrouded peak). But I’ve heard the wind slipping over the ice field with the soft rattle of ice granules. I’ve followed the melt-out stream upslope until it was at first ice-covered and finally frozen solid.

Against his desire for a little peace and silence, he is soon wrapped up in a high-mountain rescue—drawn back into the world he was trying to avoid for a little time.

Two unexpected things happened at that point for me as a writer.

I needed a helicopter, a crazy-good one flown by a top pilot. Who better than then-Captain Mark Henderson and members of his newly formed 5th Battalion D Company. I had not expected to discover the origins of the company I’d already written five novels about while in a short story about a Delta Force operator. I also learned why Colonel Michael Gibson just always seemed to be there at the tip of the spear with the Night Stalkers of the 5D.

It was over a year later that this little story offered up its second surprise. The woman rescued by Michael and Mark high atop the slopes that winter was a small character, practically a throw away.

Except she refused to be thrown away. When I finally launched my Delta Force romantic suspense series, she stepped to the fore and said, “Book Number Two. That one is mine!” When Melissa Charlene Moore speaks, you listen.

I’m glad I did. She totally rocked Heart Strike, earning fantastic reviews. Rock it, Charli!

Five Years Ago

1

Major Michael Gibson of U.S. Army’s Delta Force was at eleven thousand feet, less than two hundred feet below the summit of Little Tahoma Peak when he heard the distress call on his radio. It was pure chance that he heard anything.

The January winds were howling down upon him, caught in the funnel of Little Tahoma and Mount Rainier’s nearby peak that climbed another three thousand feet above him. The Arctic northerly, driving in the frigid Canadian air and dumping several feet of overnight snow, still howled beneath a sky so blue it could have been a child’s spilled paints.

At least it was blue where last night’s storm scrubbed the sky clean before departing southward to rush over Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood on its way to bury the Siskiyou Mountains of northern California. The northern sky already looked to be gearing up for the next onslaught through the Cascade Mountain Range.

Michael had escaped the ceaseless roar of the icy wind when he tucked down behind a sharp crag for a minute to chew on an energy bar and drink some water. He wasn’t hungry, or thirsty. But his high-altitude survival training had reinforced what he’d already known—by the time you noticed hunger or thirst at altitude, it was already too late. And this broken bit of volcanic rock was probably his last refuge before the summit—two hundred feet and perhaps an hour and a half above him. He should have just enough time to take the peak and get clear. Maybe he could cut the ascent time down to an hour.

Hunkered down behind his rock, he was offered one of the best views on the planet. From southeast sweeping around to southwest, the lush forests of Washington State spread over the rugged terrain. Doug Fir, Larch, White Pine, all underlaid with Oregon grape and blackberries so thick that even a Special Operations soldier would go looking for a way around.

North down to northwest revealed relative flatlands, no less green. In the far distance the waters of Puget Sound glittered beneath the low morning sun. If he’d been willing to remove his snow goggles and pull out his binoculars, Tacoma and Seattle would come easily into view despite the fifty miles of distance. As it was, the big airplanes climbing out of SeaTac Airport were the only encroachment from the big cities; he could feel the passengers snapping blurred pictures through plastic windows from their warm, plush seats as they flew over.

Immediately below him in all directions were the glaciers of Mt. Rainier National Park. From his vantage point high on Little Tahoma’s flank, Emmons, Ingraham, Cowlitz, and the bound shoulder of Nisqually Glacier lay like a broken carpet of blinding white; constantly tearing at the volcano’s rocky sides to bring the old girl down. Good luck with that.

Straight ahead Mount Rainier rose to fourteen thousand-four hundred feet, her rounded peak in stark relief—permanently-glaciered blinding white against the blue sky. He’d ridden out last night’s brief but vicious blow at the base of Little Tahoma in a snow cave.

He found a small patch of snow to sit on among the high rock to give his legs a moment or two to recover while he ate.

His goal was to hit Little Tahoma Peak today, and then get off the mountain. He’d originally thought to climb Rainier as well while he was up here, but he could see the northern horizon already graying up even more in the five minutes he’d crouched here. Tonight’s storm was predicted to make last night’s look like a mere flurry. It would lock out the mountain to even the most ambitious climbers for days. And he was due back in the Congo Rainforest hunting genocidal warlords soon.

Michael listened for a response to the radio distress call. He should have heard it if there was one. From his perch he had sweeping coverage of the entire west of the Rainier down to Camp Muir at ten thousand feet and Paradise at five thousand.

The call repeated.

Silence, except for the wind raging to either side of his boulder. The park rangers clearly hadn’t heard it though the call had been on the frequency that everyone on the mountain was required to monitor.

Everyone on the mountain.

It was the first day of the New Year, there were only five people listed in the Park Office’s register. An elderly couple in their fifties hiking to Camp Muir for an overnight. A young couple, Charlene and Fred Moore with a climbing pass for the summit. And him.

Reluctantly, sorry to break away from the peace of his solo climb, he pulled out his radio and fitted the earpiece; partly because it used less power than the speaker, and partly his military training to not give away his position was so deeply ingrained—despite being on friendly soil.

“To distress call on Rainier. This is Michael, go ahead.”

“Oh thank god!” A woman’s voice crackled over the earbud. “Fred has fallen into a crevasse and I can’t get him out. He’s trapped and hurt. His radio must be broken, but we can sort of shout in between the wind gusts. At least I think so. It’s hard to tell. Please, come. Please. We need help.”

Michael listened for a moment. The wind wasn’t gusting much. More of a steady howl.

“Okay, I need you to remain calm,” he thought back to the register at the park office, “Charlene. We’re going to go through this by the numbers. First, are you personally safe? Solidly anchored and warm enough?”

“Yes, we’re both snapped into an ice screw. I managed to get a piton into the rock and have a backup line anchored there. And its Charli.”

“Good,” more together than he’d expected. “Now, where are you?”

She wasn’t sure. The trip had been Fred’s idea, no surprise there. In Michael’s experience women were generally too sensible to do something like climb Rainier in the dead of winter. Though they weren’t sensible enough not to follow along when a likely male beckoned them into doing something stupid.

For himself, he’d wanted to keep his snow and ice skills up. He could feel them melting away under ops conducted in the heat and humidity of the Congolese rainforest, so he’d gone for a winter tromp up Rainier.

But if she’d known to anchor herself more securely before calling for help, she wasn’t a helpless soul traveling on her husband’s whim either.

So, they began playing the “what can you see” game in a world of ice, rock, and sky.

2

Captain Mark Henderson stood outside hangar 4-C and stared up at the northern sky. He debated whether to call for a training sortie or to give his crew the night off.

It was midday and he was supposed to be sleeping, just as they were now, but upper brass never did understand SOAR. They’d rousted him with a question that could have been asked and answered by e-mail anytime in the next week if some Colonel hadn’t had a hair up his a*s.

The U.S. Army 160th Special Aviation Regiment specialized in one thing, nighttime helicopter operations. They did it better than anyone on the planet. That’s how they earned the Night Stalkers nickname. They’d flown into hundreds of places that they could never admit to, delivering Delta, SEAL, and other U.S. Special Operations assets to places no one else could get them into…or back out of alive.

But that meant he was supposed to be asleep right now like the rest of his crew. Not that he’d been sleeping much lately. Three months ago, the powers that be had decided that SOAR needed a fifth battalion. It was to be based in Tacoma, Washington at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The 5th was to have four companies and he’d gotten the tap to lead “D” Company.

His goal was simple. If SOAR were the best helicopter pilots on the planet, the 5th Battalion’s D Company was going to be the best in SOAR.

Period.

There would be no need to brag.

They’d earn it.

He had argued for and, surprisingly considering the layers of brass involved, been given the go-ahead to assemble a mixed company—the only one in the entire regiment. Most of SOAR was structured with one type of helicopter per company. Hell, the entire 2nd Battalion only flew the massive twin-rotor Chinooks. If they needed a Black Hawk or a Little Bird, they had to go outside not just the company, but the battalion to borrow assets.

It made sense to the paper pushers. This way the 2nd Battalion only needed one set of spare parts, one set of mechanics.

Mark didn’t give one damn about logistics.

Well, he did, but he cared far more about his ability to respond. Because the 5D was a unique experiment, they’d decided to cripple his a*s by giving him fewer assets. They’d learn and change their tune soon enough. In the meantime, he was collecting the best of the best personnel he could find, anywhere. He called and they came running, whether or not he’d flown with them before. It was deeply gratifying because these guys really were good.

At the moment he had two Little Bird helicopters good for fast attacks and tight in-and-out tight scenarios, one of the big Chinook heavy lifters, two transport Black Hawks, and his baby.

He needed to name her, but she was so perfect that he hadn’t found the right name yet. She was one of the rarest helicopters on the planet. There were only a dozen of them and they were custom designed by SOAR for their exclusive usage. The Direct Action Penetrator DAP Hawk might look like a weaponized Sikorsky Black Hawk, but she wasn’t even close. She was the most sophisticated, bad-a*s helo ever launched into the night sky. And she was all his.