Bring On the Dusk

Chapter 1-3

Though they were already moving at over fifty miles per hour, Claudia could see the bad guy on the ground convulse. His shot went wild and a rocket-propelled grenade blew up the face of a dune.

Damn, she didn’t know anyone could shoot like that. She was good, but that shot was insane.

Not wanting to hang around and see who else was lurking in the dunes, she rolled right to cut the shortest route back to the coast and laid down the hammer. Only a few RPM below the engine’s redline, she was outta there. Behind her she could see the bright flashes of the DAP Hawk and the attack Little Bird tearing up the camp. Merchant was only two rotor diameters off her port side.

Ripples of adrenaline raced through her body like shock waves from a bomb blast. Her old Marine SuperCobra was a pure attack helicopter. She’d flown plenty of protection runs during an exfiltration, but she’d never flown transport right down in the thick of it. It was a whole different up-close-and-personal kind of ride that still had her heart pounding and her breath running short.

The man beside her didn’t say a word. He simply sat back with his rifle laid across his chest.

He kept his hands lightly on the weapon but closed his eyes as if he was perfectly comfortable and not thirty seconds from a life-or-death mission. He’d been the one actually in the battle, and she was the one being wound all the way up.

He began tapping the back of his helmet lightly against the back of his seat. It wasn’t frantic, like nerves. It was slow, relatively gentle; a stark contrast to the shooter of a moment before.

“You okay?”

“Sure.” He kept up the tapping.

She found herself echoing the rhythm with one finger tapping against the cyclic control in her right hand.

“IMF,” he added softly.

IMF? I am fine. Probably. Everything in the military was an acronym.

Though the IMF was also the Impossible Missions Force—the secret branch of the military in the Mission Impossible movies—and Delta specialized in impossible missions like the one falling rapidly behind them.

“You and Tom Cruise.” She kept her tone neutral. “Both fine.”

He stopped his tapping and turned to stare at her. She ignored his searching attention.

In the exchange, she’d found his quiet rhythm. It was…the way an evening breeze might move through the Sonoran Desert of her youth in Arizona. Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap. Gods, she could feel the harshest layers of the adrenaline draining slowly out of her system. Tap. Pause. Tap.

Time, which had been compressed out of all recognition, began to have meaning again.

Her heart rate had returned to normal by the time she crossed a final berm and was once again feet wet over the ocean. She climbed back up to fifty feet and trailed Merchant. The other two aircraft, finished with the camp, were formed up behind them. Now she could finally spare the attention to look at her companion clearly for the first time.

He’d finally turned back to watch forward. He seemed small only when compared to the big soldier who’d been with him and was perched on the outside bench. Sitting next to her, he looked to be her height, perhaps another inch or two taller.

MICH helmet, not a lot of heavy armor like she wore, and enough ammo stashed in his vest to suppress a mid-sized city.

Four guys attacking an entire terrorist camp at sunset. Coming away with seven hostages and what she assumed were large sacks of intel.

Only one group was that bug-s**t crazy. She’d never flown with them, only knew them by myth and rumor. In eight years of service, Claudia couldn’t be sure if she’d ever met one of them before.

Delta Force.

Scary bastards, making her damned glad they were on her side.

Still, Claudia made it a personal policy to steer well clear of scary bastards who were bug-s**t crazy.

A policy she had no intention of changing.

Michael registered many things about his pilot.

Female by her voice.

She flew well, with a smoothness that he liked, as if she knew exactly who she was and where she was going. It was a trait they looked for in Delta operators; only the ultimate operators had it. And no one but the best made the Delta grade.

There was nothing to see. Flight suit, armor, and vest. Flight gloves, full helmet with projection visor, and her lower face covered with a breathing mask and radio mike that let pilots breathe and be heard in the dustiest and noisiest environments.

But he couldn’t stop glancing over.

No one understood his jokes. The few who noticed them go by did so only after painfully long pauses. Most wouldn’t get that IMF could be “I’m fine.” But to make the jump to Mission Impossible and then answer with the next step— he hadn’t seen himself—the name of the character he would be parallel to… Damn! That impressed him nearly as much as anything else she’d done in their brief acquaintance.

He’d heard another female pilot was incoming into SOAR’s 5th Battalion, D Company, so this must be her. Making it into the 5D said she was already an exceptional pilot. She hadn’t harassed him about his tapping thing; she checked in with him and then moved on, which said she knew to trust a soldier’s self-assessment. For some reason, his tapping drove a lot of people nuts.

It wasn’t like the jittery leg that so many soldiers had, though that was trained out of Deltas. The reality was not all that many guys with those kinds of nerves made it into Delta to begin with.

The gentle tap, tap was how he let the adrenal rush of action run out of him. The gentle rhythm reminded him of climbing trees in his childhood when he’d been seeking somewhere no one else could go. It wasn’t escape; it was going higher and farther than anyone before him that charged him up.

Right now he shouldn’t be thinking about her; he should be assessing the team’s performance. What could they have done differently to capture all eight unfriendlies? How could they have anticipated the arrival at the camp of four Tier One targets or the presence of so much unexpected intel? If there’d been anything to gather in the other rooms, there simply hadn’t been time to look. They definitely should have had another bird in deep backup; pure luck they’d gotten this one. The entire camp had erupted in blazes of gunfire from the trainers, answered by dragon roars from the hovering attack platforms responding with rockets and Miniguns.

But that didn’t reorient the direction of his thoughts. This pilot simply allowed him to be, which he appreciated. Emily Beale, as well as they’d gotten along, had never understood his jokes. Or quite known what to make of him.

Not surprising, Michael. You’re not the most accessible dude in the Force.

That he knew for damn sure.

He liked this woman sight unseen.

He also knew that, which was surprising.

The prisoners’ knockout shots wore off as they arrived on deck at the USS Peleliu, making the unloading a touch chaotic. Michael was on the verge of dosing them again when the CIA team arrived from the carrier to take custody. He sighed; they did so love their debriefings. It would take the next four hours to cover a sixty-second actual engagement. About normal.

Then he’d noticed the new pilot, still sitting in her Little Bird. No, sagging in her seat.

He touched her on the arm and she startled.

“When was the last time you slept?” He slid up her visor and removed her breather mask. She had a nice face that he decided fit her well, though he knew essentially nothing about her.

“Uh”—she blinked at him—“last time I what?”

“Okay.” He’d certainly seen this enough times. She’d held it together for the flight but was wholly tapped out now that it was over. It took four, perhaps five, days without a full sleep—depending on the person and the number of catnaps they’d managed to steal—to make them like this.

Michael unbuckled her harness and eased her out of the helo, taking most of her weight by lifting the big D-ring attached at the center of her vest. The D-ring was there in case she crashed in somewhere and needed a rope rescue. Well, this was a type of rescue, and the heavy vest and flight suit eliminated the feeling of grabbing her between the breasts—mostly.

He leaned her against the side of the helo, tugged on her rucksack after letting out the straps a bit, and slung her duffel over one arm.

One of the CIA guys was hustling over to drag him off for debriefing.

“I’ll be right back.”

The guy got all officious. Right until he spotted the look in Michael’s eye and scurried back to wherever he’d been.

Michael had thought to coax her along, but she was out cold standing up.

He slipped an arm around her waist and guided her down through the ship. Flight deck…hangar deck… down to second deck. He stopped a Navy orderly who knew where to aim them.

Her bunk was right near the other SOAR women.

When he got her there, she simply stood in the middle of her quarters, weaving and staring down at the bunk.

Michael dumped her duffel and pack.

Since she was clearly unable to manage for herself, he undid her helmet and pulled it free. Then the fire-resistant inner hood. A shower of shining blonde hair cascaded over his hands, reminding him of silk and water.

Her FN-SCAR rifle, survival vest, and Dragon Skin underneath. Smart woman. He was not about to undo the front of her flight suit as he had no way of knowing what she did or didn’t wear under there, and she was already giving him trouble.

He never had problems concentrating around women. But something about this one…

Exhausted, travel-worn, and battle weary she smelled of the desert night and—

Cut it, Michael.

So he did. “You okay from here?”

She nodded vaguely, which he’d take as a yes.

He was a step from making good his retreat when her hand rested lightly on his arm.

Turning to face her was the big mistake.

She stepped into his arms and wrapped her arms around his neck for a moment, ignoring all the spare magazines pocketed across his chest, the two rifles over his shoulder, and both of his sidearms. She simply rested her head on his shoulder a moment and whispered, “Thanks.”

Then she turned away and, knees buckling, collapsed face-first onto the bed.

When she didn’t move, he turned out the light and closed the door—not bothering to remove her boots—shutting himself away from her.

Then he hurried off to lose himself in the clutching grasp of the CIA debriefing team.

Better that than to face his thoughts about her warmth and the soft hair that had brushed his cheek and the gentle, female scent of the most attractive woman he’d ever held in his arms, no matter how briefly.