Target Lock on Love

Chapter 1-2

“Which is why we’re here,” though he didn’t waste his effort on saying it aloud. Patty was perfectly capable of sustaining the conversation on her own. Gods but the woman cracked him up.

A straight-in approach was safe enough, because the entire 5E flew stealth-modified aircraft. At fifty feet up in a storm, the Koreans’ radar wouldn’t see a thing of their four helicopters. Of course, if it weren’t for the lovely Sofia flying her Avenger drone fifty thousand feet above them, they wouldn’t be seeing a thing either.

Patty could see exactly where Mick’s attention had gone; like he stood a chance. He’d been smitten since the first moment Second Lieutenant Sofia Gracie had been added to their team. All of the guys had been gobsmacked because Sofia really was that stunning. Most of them had recovered with time, but Mick wasn’t one of them.

Being strictly impartial about it, Mick was a handsome enough bastard in a dark, brooding way. Black hair flowed to his collar, matching his dark eyes. It was that deep, soft voice of his that slayed Patty, though she wasn’t complaining about his fisherman’s physique or the way his big hands were so light on the Little Bird’s controls either.

The Mighty Quinn was a solid anchor in any situation. He was always so calm and steady, no matter what storm she tossed in his direction to best him.

He was also one of the few that could keep up with her, male or female. No insult to Kenny and M&M in the Leeloo, but they just didn’t have the feel for the sprightliness of the Little Bird helos the way that Mick did with the Linda. Each time she’d flown with them, they’d learned far more from her than she from them. Mick could just as easily be “Magic Man” as “The Mighty Quinn” for what he could make their aircraft do.

Not that she’d ever consider telling him. If his head ever became as swollen as his shoulders, she’d have to copilot from the outside of the helicopter rather than the left-hand seat. The stealth aircraft flew with its doors on, unlike most Little Birds—the door had a lower radar signature than a pilot sitting in their seat. Mick was an easy man to share the cramped space with.

But if he thought all that was enough to win him “Latin Lady’s” undying affection, then good luck to him. Patty hadn’t seen Sofia pick up even a single hint, not that Mick had dropped one either. Dumb. Guys were so damn dumb.

Sofia was in some whole other class of woman that was way above a guy who was merely dark and handsome. She should be modeling women’s underwear or doing Miss Clairol commercials with that swirling dark hair and her Brazilian-brown skin. Or Estée Lauder with those dark, dark eyes.

But she didn’t.

She was an awesome Avenger pilot. Of course that meant that she and her copilot flew their remotely-piloted aircraft from a cargo container packed with high-tech gear currently parked at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson—typically called a “coffin” for its long, low shape. JBER was eight hundred miles away back in Anchorage, but satellite communications made that irrelevant. Didn’t matter that she wasn’t physically present, because she did it damn well. She had proved several times that she knew exactly what to do with her drone—sorry Sofia—her jet-powered RPA that flew ten miles up at four-hundred-and-fifty miles-an-hour.

Sofia was also an easy person to like. Maybe there was some way Patty could encourage Mick but sabotage him with Sofia at the same time just for the hell of it. Nah! The few times she’d stuck her foot in someone else’s mess, she’d only made it worse…and then gotten caught. Didn’t matter; she had faith that the big lummox would find a way to fail all on his own. Too bad; they’d look good together. Of course, any man would with Sofia on their arm.

And now it was time to look good for the North Koreans...who would never see them coming.

Fifty feet up, they should pick up the Korean’s top-of-mast radar at ten miles out.

“Five. Four. Three. Two…” She stretched it out but shouldn’t have. Right on cue, the KPN’s radar sweeps blasted onto the Little Bird’s passive detection systems.

“How do you do things like that?”

“s**t like that, Quinn. For God’s sake, loosen up. And it’s because I’m that goddamn good. Not that it matters. Look at the frequency these guys are using,” she waved at hand at the console, knowing Mick didn’t have time to look down. “They’re running tech that the Army retired back while you and I were still pooping up our diapers, or at least you were. I was always a dainty little kid.”

“Uh-huh,” Mick’s grunt might have been long-suffering or it might have been a tease. Man’s grunts were hard to read.

“The KPN’s radar uses such a broad sweep that we could fly right between their lines of resolution. Even Danielle’s big-ass Chinook could do that.”

Why was it that the ever so classy Danielle flew the monstrous, twin-rotor Carrie-Anne? Of course, flying in a Chinook MH-47G named for the actress who played Trinity in The Matrix—the ultimate leather-clad kick-ass heroine—had its points.

Still, Patty could have enjoyed flying her Little Bird with Danielle, not that she wanted to trade Mick even one little bit. Not only was he an enjoyable piece of eye candy, but he also flew like a goddamn genius. And he put up with her, which even not being totally honest with herself, she knew was a serious challenge. Her father had used less kind words.

But Danielle had so much smooth sophistication that Patty knew she totally lacked. If they flew as a girl-girl team, it would have been fun…and maybe a little of the effortless elegance would have rubbed off on her.

“Too bad for the KPN,” Mick didn’t sound sorry at all, “that we’re stealth rigged. All that energy spent looking for something they’ll never see.”

“Poor bastards,” Patty agreed. The storm was beating on them now, thick with rain and hard winds. The KPN’s ships were all in the two- to three-hundred-foot range but narrow enough that they rolled hard in the rough waves. Even for people she didn’t like, they were not having a good day…and the Night Stalkers were about to make it even worse.

“Just makes it more fun,” Mick commented.

“You are evil and twisted. There’s hope for you yet, Quinn,” she grinned behind the lowered visor of her helmet which was glowing on the inside with layers of rapidly shifting tactical information.

Mick didn’t let his snide out very often, but she always appreciated it when he did.

“Knew there was a reason I liked flying with you.” Because whatever else The Mighty Quinn might be, he was a hell of a partner.

She was never as good beside any other pilot; his skill demanded her best performance be even better. Be all you can be. Hell with joining the Army, she’d already done that. Earning the right to fly beside Mick Quinn, that took some serious doing.

“Our target will be the westernmost ship,” she filled him in. “It’s also the biggest, a Nampo class. Twin 30mm machine guns, so don’t mess with that. And intel says an RBU-1200—that’s a five-missile anti-submarine weapon so we should be fine as long as you don’t dump us in the soup.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Mick stated it as if he was discussing a change in a battle plan. She really needed to find a way to loosen him up.

“They also have a helo platform, not that they have the skills to launch in this weather. Rumor has it that they’re still flying Russian Mi-4 Hounds. You know those things are half a century old. It would be really cool to see one, even parked on a crap frigate. North Korea is the last nation trying to fly them.”

“One minute,” Major Napier, their company commander, called over the encrypted radio channel from the trailing Chinook Carrie-Anne. “Keep them busy.”

“Dance!” Danielle called before Napier clicked off.

That was another reason to want to be like Captain Danielle Delacroix.

Dance.

It was one of those crazy commands that the captain had cooked up during training—back before they’d been formed into the 5E and Pete “The Rapier” Napier took command.

If Patty could be any other woman, it wouldn’t be the curvaceous Sofia Gracie; it would be Captain Delacroix with her soft-spoken Québécois French accent and exceptionally strategic mind. Though if she’d been Danielle, she’d now be married to Major Pete Napier and Patty would have killed his ass in the first month. He’d be damned irritating if he wasn’t such a good commander.

So, not Danielle.

Patty would find her boy someday. But he wouldn’t be a fisherman, who thought a pretty woman on a working boat was an open invitation. The first real attack on her person had only been averted because she happened to be in the galley and could grab a knife. After that, she’d learned to always have a blade handy and still had to flash it at the occasional overeager asshole to convince them that “No!” meant no. Two of them she’d had to scar but good before they’d backed off.

And it wouldn’t be some gung-ho Army pilot too damn sure of himself. If she never heard another airjock say “Come fly me!” then ask if she still had her stewardess uniform, it would be too soon. She’d had enough of those kind of creeps who didn’t like the fact that she could outfly every one of their asses. By that time she didn’t need a knife, the Army had trained her plenty well in hand-to-hand combat. Switching to Special Operations had only honed those skills.

She glanced over at Mick. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be someone who was both fisher and pilot no matter how handsome.

In the meantime she had every intention of enjoying herself. She’d taken up with teasing Julian over on the Beatrix. But it was just to mess with his head, there was nothing ever going to happen there. As it was, she’d been having a long dry spell and was just fine with that.

Dance, Danielle had said. With that simple command, she’d just instructed each of the pilots to implement evasive tactics based on their favorite music. Better than something Star Trekish like “Execute Evasion Plan Delta.” The military’s top pilots would each dance differently. It made the flight wholly unpredictable and nearly impossible to target. It also meant…

“Oh, man! You are not gonna hit me with country,” she aimed her complaint at Mick over the on-board intercom. She checked that all weapons’ systems were armed and ready in case the North Koreans were dumb enough to actually try and engage American aircraft while sailing in American waters.

“Only the finest,” Mick began humming some Tim McGraw song.

“Goddamn it, Quinn. How is it possible that a perfectly respectable girl knows that’s a Tim McGraw song? You’re ruining me.”

“Because a perfectly respectable girl would know it was Tim McGraw.”

“That’s not true!” Patty resisted the urge to stomp a little rock and roll into the rudder pedals as he began making the Little Bird shift and sway.

“It is,” Mick continued placidly. “Which begs the question of how you know anything about it.”

So much worse than that, she even knew the words well enough to sing along—which she absolutely wasn’t about to do. “I’m gonna request a goddamn new pilot; one who knows decent music when he hears it.”

He hummed even louder over the intercom until it was resonating inside her helmet.

“Keep it up and you’re gonna be so far beyond dead that you’ll be way past living like you still had any dying to do.”

Patty knew it was a mistake as soon as she said it.

Mick broke into full song with the last line of the refrain, which is what she’d just done her best to mangle. Then he began all over going on all about skydiving and climbing mountains—the helicopter swooping and slipping through the air in perfect time to his music. He wielded a good, deep baritone designed to turn a girl into a liquid puddle.

Well not her.

She fought back with Marianas Trench’s Fallout, but she couldn’t carry a tune for crap so her attempt at punk/emo didn’t cut him down even a little.

At that moment, the tall sides of the frigate came into view just a dozen rotor diameters ahead. Which on a Little Bird, with its tiny five-blade, twenty-seven-foot diameter main rotor, wasn’t very far.

The ship’s high bow was climbing clear of a big wave and then crashing down into the next trough; a very uncomfortable-looking ride. They’d be better off in a fishing boat that could just ride over one wave at a time without all of the bucking and yawing. Military ships were built narrow to move fast, but that meant they totally sucked during a storm.

Mick hit the KPN with the song’s line about riding a rodeo bull just to emphasize the point—wasn’t right that a country boy could make her laugh so easily—and then he dodged aside as the frigate’s forward anti-submarine rocket launcher tried to spear them when the ship took another painful roll.

The ship only had running lights on: red and green to the sides, a white all-around at the top of the mast, a second white below that pointing forward. The deck itself was ink-and-storm dark.

The North Koreans didn’t notice that they’d acquired a pitch-black Little Bird helicopter hovering above their foredeck. Of course, the Linda was a stealth craft with its running lights out.

Mick slipped up until the Little Bird was hovering directly in front of the command bridge’s windows.

“Are you feeling ignored, madam?” Mick asked Patty in an über-polite voice as if they were at some snooty Boston social event rather than a couple of fishers-turned-pilots now hovering over a ship’s deck in the middle of the Aleutians.

“Why yes, good sir. I feel as if they aren’t paying any frickin’ attention to us at all.” She raised a pinkie finger from the cyclic control, not that Mick would be able to see it.

Quinn switched to singing the Trace Adkins song about a lonely heart who turned on every light in the house to show his departed lover the way back home.

Oh, what the hell! She could take a hint. So, she joined on the chorus and hit the landing light, aiming it directly into the command bridge windows.

The reaction was galvanic. It was easy to see the several seasick officers leaning against any support—brown water navy indeed. Two seamen, looking far more stoic than their superiors, clung to the wheel.

And every one of them too frozen with surprise to even cover their eyes. Korean deer staring into the headlights.

Perfect.

Because tonight’s mission was to make sure that the KPN never looked astern to see what the SEAL team delivered by the Chinook Carrie-Anne was doing back there.