I Own the Dawn

Chapter 1-2

“Sweet candy for sure,” Kee agreed.

A serpent of coiled gray had been painted across the Night Stalker-black of the helo. The colors so close in tone made it hard to see in places, which made it appear all the more dangerous. It wrapped around the gunner’s lookout window and writhed across the pilot’s door. Etched in his scales, the name of the bird. Vengeance. The serpent’s head, striking forward along the nose of the helo, sported mirrored shades. In the lenses, someone had drawn a reflected explosion of an enemy going down hard.

“Better than sex.” She rubbed a hand down the long barrel of the 30 mm cannon. “I can’t believe that bastard major wanted to slot me on the girlie-chopper. This is real flight.”

“Don’t like girlie-choppers?”

“Not one friggin’ bit. I want this bad boy. I didn’t come here to form no goddamn chick squad.” She stepped forward to stare into the face of the rocket launcher. Seven fired. They’d been in the heat last night. She’d wager it hadn’t turned out well for the bad guys. Night Stalkers ruled the dark—it was one of their two mottos.

Something kept dragging at her attention. She’d been trained to pay attention to the niggling feeling that something was out of place. Something not right. It had saved her life more than once while pounding ground for the 10th Mountain Division.

Looking up, she spotted it.

“The rotor blades. They look different.” Kee could feel the maintenance chick, still behind her, focusing her attention upward.

“Thicker. Most can’t see that. This is the first M-mod in the theater. The MH-60M upgrade adds twenty-five percent larger engines, needs a heavier blade.”

Kee whistled in admiration. “She must haul ass across the sky.”

“She does.”

Kee glanced over at her new companion. “Kee Smith.” The first thing she noticed was the shoulder-length blonde hair and the bluest eyes on the planet. Pretty, slender, perfect posture. Would fit in with Archibald Jeffrey Stevenson III oh so fine. Maybe they were hitched. Met in a frickin’ hoity-toity fern bar somewhere on the Upper West Side. The woman dug a sparkler out of a pocket and slipped it on her left, though the Captain’s hand had been clean. Still, could be.

The second thing Kee noticed was the worn flight suit, the battered helmet under one arm, the scuffed-up M9 Beretta at her hip, and the pair of major’s oak leaves on the woman’s lapels.

Kee’s poker face clicked in a beat and a half too late. One woman had made it into SOAR before her. A friggin’ legend. And not for spreading her legs to the top. A girl couldn’t turn around without being compared to the one other woman flight-qualified in the whole regiment. That damn Major Muscle had tricked her. Tricked her into begging to get onto the girlie-chopper she so hadn’t wanted. Who’d have guessed the girlie-bird would be a DAP Hawk?

Kee knew the woman’s name before she spoke in that refined voice of hers.

“Emily Beale.”

“You for real?” Kee couldn’t equate the tall slip of a blonde standing in the dust beside her with the legend. Real or not, no woman truly met SOAR standards before Kee’d come along. That was cold cash to your street dealer. There had to be another story here.

“Last I checked.”

Kee managed to clamp her tongue between her teeth before she could put her foot any farther down the rabbit hole. The legend told that the title of SOAR’s number-one pilot belonged to the only woman flying in all five battalions. Kee also knew for a fact that officers lived to mess with lower ranks’ minds.

SOAR pilots were as bad-ass as the ground pounders they carted through the sky. Every hour a Special Operations Forces guy trained, a SOAR flier trained. The 75th Rangers didn’t have nothing on a Night Stalker. And they couldn’t fly.

The Delta operators, the D-boys, okay, they were something other. Even a SOAR couldn’t keep up with them, but the crew for the 160th’s helicopters sat at the pinnacle of the US military’s air power for a reason. They were the best. That meant being the toughest.

Major Beale was a total lightweight, all trim and slender. If you gave Kee a .50-cal machine gun to cart around with a case of ammo, you’d be getting somewhere. But if you gave a whimp-ass FN SCAR carbine to Ms. Major Beale, could she so much as pick it up? Well, she did have one hanging across her chest, but if she fired it, she’d probably be kicked onto that narrow ass of hers.

Major and Major. Her brain went click, loud enough to be audible. Major Chunk-o-Muscle had smiled at the sky when this bird had swung into view. He had the shackle of gold on his left hand to match Beale’s sparkler. Married her way to the top. Hey, whatever worked. Didn’t mean Kee wanted to fly with Miss Hoity-Toity Girl. She’d never make her mark if they always kept her in the shadow of SOAR’s only other woman.

But, damn, a berth on a DAP Hawk. Despite flying with a girl pilot, she’d be aboard a piece of serious hardware.

“Having trouble, Keiko Smith?”

“Don’t call me that shit.”

“What s**t?” The curse sounded prissy coming out of that perfect face.

“Keiko. My mama may have named me after a stupid killer whale, but that don’t make it my name. Name’s Kee.”

“Not unless you’re fifteen years old. No one knew Keiko the Whale’s name until he starred in the movie Free Willy in the mid-’90s. She named you in Japanese. It means blessed child. A—”

“Don’t give a s**t. And I’m not Japanese. I’m American.” Maybe half Japanese, or part Chinese or whatever, and half who-knew, for sure her mother didn’t. Two days in transit, Kee needed sleep—bad. But she wanted on this bird so bad it hurt right down to her aching butt.

Maybe the cute copilot she’d met earlier, Archibald something the flippin’ Third, flew the missions. Could Beale be a fake legend?

“Doesn’t matter. The name is Kee. And how is it you know my name?”

The silence landed on her as oppressive as the temperature. Fort Campbell, Kentucky, could be hot, but she was dyin’ here. The heat off the bird burned into her brain. The first day in any desert was always tough. That combined with going on forty-eight hours with no shut-eye, that rated plain old harsh.

Only when a hand landed on her shoulder, hard, did she notice she was weaving. Soldiers didn’t weave. She blinked her eyes several times to clear the fog and shrugged off the steadying hand though it belonged to a major.

“Name’s Kee, ma’am. Kee Smith.” A name she’d taken the day she joined the Army, the day she’d reinvented herself. She staggered away, stumbled on her duffel and dragged it onto her shoulder. The rifle case, usually so light in her hands, weighed a ton.

Beaten. Again. She’d set her hopes so high. Five years of busting butt and she’d made it. SOAR. The 160th. She’d toughed it out. Survived. Faced down every man jerk on the way up who said women couldn’t make the grade. Every crap sergeant who thought a woman only had one use in the world and then tried to demonstrate what that was.

First they hated you for being a woman, then for not giving out, and finally, most of all, for when you showed up their ass and proved them wrong. Now this. SOAR had five battalions, and she’d ended up here. Even if Kee had the heart to climb over another obstacle, knowing that Major Muscle backed up his wife meant she never could. The Army’d stuck it up her backside but good this time.

“Sergeant Kee Smith!” Major Beale’s voice snapped through the burning haze.

Kee stumbled to a halt, head hanging down and she couldn’t drag it up. Right. Major Hoity would be as stick-in-the-mud as her hubby. She’d offered no “sir.” No frickin’ kowtow to the high master. She’d be cleaning out latrines until she died, a skill she already had too much undeserved practice in.

She managed to turn but didn’t speak. If they were going to burn her down, she’d take it standing. Head up, shoulders back, and, screw Ms. Perfect Size Two, chest out.

Major Prissy-Butt Emily Beale of Hoity-Toity Land still stood in front of her bird. A couple of armorers in their red vests were reloading the rocket pod. A fuel truck hovered nearby, waiting for the ordnance crew to clear.

Her arms were crossed, her purple helmet, unbelievable, with the rampant gold Pegasus, the winged horse of the Night Stalkers, dangled negligently from her fine-fingered hand. It had a bullet crease where a round had shot into the Kevlar, probably made the woman poop her pants. Or maybe she’d shot the helmet herself by accident. They stared at each other across ten paces of stamped earth.

Kee stood ready for ire, rage, dressing down. But the woman simply stared. The smile that pulled up one corner of her mouth lit the eyes and changed her from pretty to magazine-ad beautiful. She was a knockout! No wonder she’d tripped Major Muscle. But the smile wasn’t for Kee, but rather for a joke only the woman knew. Then, snap! The smile was gone. So gone, Kee couldn’t picture it in her mind’s eye. Not on that face.

“I know your name because Major Henderson assigned you to me, Smith. And we’re both going to have to learn to live with that.”

The major paused. Long enough for Kee to hear the unspoken second half of that sentence. Beale was most definitely not looking forward to figuring out how to live with her.

“You’ve got eleven hours and fourteen minutes to briefing, eleven hours and thirty-four to flight. Get a minimum eight hours of rack time. And lose the goddamn attitude.” She turned away.

Kee wavered on her feet again, the duffel nearly dragging her down to the dirt.

The Hawk. It filled her vision. They were letting her on a DAP.

Archie watched Sergeant Kee Smith from where he lounged comfortably in the shade of Major Henderson’s Black Hawk, two birds away.

The tiny woman saluted Major Beale’s back smartly. Enough spite to it that maybe she hoped a sniper was watching and would take out the major. Then she glanced around to make sure no one noticed.

Fooling yourself again, Archie.

But he didn’t turn and leave. Couldn’t. Sergeant Kee Smith. Almond eyes. Buffed out the way most guys couldn’t achieve, but a body that was all woman. Dark skin of the warmest shade the sun had ever kissed, like a permanent, perfect tan. Brown-black hair, with a single streak the color of a golden sun. It made for a saucy statement that lightened what would otherwise be a forbidding beauty.

With his usual luck she’d be a tramp or a prude or a lesbian, or want to be his friend, if that.

He’d never found a way to speak to an attractive woman. Pretty, sure. But attractive, the ones who wrenched at his gut when merely walking by? They tied his tongue into a Gordian knot.

Had he actually commented on her chest?

It rated somewhere between remarkable and spectacular on his own personal list. He had always been partial to well-chested women and that fact surprised him. It did seem rather crass after all, but true nonetheless. But there existed no Captain Archibald Stevenson III he knew who would actually say such a thing to a woman. Now he watched her from his bit of shade as if she could fulfill every prurient fantasy he’d harbored as a young boy.

Sergeant Kee Smith hadn’t acted offended at his comment, but neither had she flaunted her body at the major as she had for his enjoyment.

Still she stood facing the DAP Hawk, entranced despite Beale’s departure. A pixie-sized fairy of mythological origin reborn in this desert wilderness. Careful, Archie. It couldn’t happen of course, he was an officer and she an enlisted. That was naught but a quick road to a court martial.

However, that didn’t stop a man from thinking thoughts. He knew himself too well. He could fall for a woman, dream of her from afar for months, and never take action. Never actually speak to her. Too much disappointment lay down that road, one he’d vowed never to walk again. He liked women, enjoyed being with them. But when someone hit the inner ring of his “attracted” button, he became a mute. Patricia in high school. Mary Ellen in college. Most recently, Lorenna, the medevac trainer, who he managed to never speak with directly during the entire two-week course.

Well, if any of those women had hit the inner target ring, Sergeant Smith had now whacked it in with a bull’s eye shot. Despite her small stature, there was a force of nature, a power that wrapped and curled around her filling up far more space.

He’d wasted far too much of his life thinking about women who would never be his. He should pay more attention to the ones who wanted to be with him, but they never bull’s eyed that button in his brain.

“What are you staring at, Bucko?”

“That’s captain to you.” His response was instinctive as he blinked a couple times to clear the vision. Kee Smith stood right in front of him. His eyes had tracked her, even if his brain hadn’t. And this time they were focused where no decent man’s should be, on that delicious double curve where chest rolled into that mysterious crevasse between her—one more blink and he returned his eyes to her face.

“Nothing. Simply observing.”

“Well, Captain.” Amazing that she could pile so much sarcasm into a single word. “Have you observed where my billet is, Captain Professor, sir? I need a dose of sack time.”

Professor? The nickname that had nearly made him insane during Green Platoon training didn’t bother him in the slightest at this moment. And that made for an interesting observation in itself.

“Professor?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face.

Now she’d think him a complete dolt. “This way. I’d be glad to show you.”

“No thanks. Can you point the way? I need to sleep, not to wrestle off a guy.”

That snapped him out of it. “Stow that, Sergeant!” Came out harsher than he intended. A bit of flirting, that is all she was doing, and now he’d shut her down hard. Not particularly smooth.

She actually blushed and looked down. “Sorry, sir!” About the cutest damn thing he’d ever seen, that a woman so clearly a primal force could blush. No longer trusting his tongue, he pointed at the small tent set aside as women’s quarters.

“Thank you, sir.” She headed away without a backward glance. No teasing sashay of the hips, no coquettish glance over the shoulder. Had his own thoughts misinterpreted her comment? Had she thought he was suggesting…? He’d never… But she wouldn’t know that, so he was merely another guy to her.

He watched the diminutive juggernaut heading for her target.

He headed for the showers, hoping his common sense would catch up with him somewhere along the way.