Wait Until Dark

Chapter 3

3

Connie looked at the crews of Viper and Vengeance across the mess tent, then down at the tray in her hands. Burger, fries, salad, and a large bottle of fruity electrolyte drink. An apple crisp in the corner. The Army fed you well when it could, even at a forward air base like Bati. All of it looking so normal and homey in an Army-base sort of way.

When she looked up, nothing was normal at all.

Bati was a town in northwest Pakistan where, as far as anyone other than the locals and a few government officials knew, this SOAR air base did not exist. Fifteen helicopters that were secretly located in a country that postured as unfriendly to America. The squatting rights were never mentioned, all part of an arms deal that was also kept quiet.

No helicopters here, folks. And no Rangers or Delta Force operators being launched nightly into the battles raging across the Hindu Kush mountains of northeast Afghanistan. No, sir. No, ma’am. No base that showed up on any part of any world map except ones inside the Pentagon.

The helos hunkered down in an abandoned soccer stadium of sprawling concrete and flaking whitewash. The same whitewash swirled about in bright flurries among the brownout dust cloud kicked up by the rotor’s downwash every time anyone fired up a helo.

The chow tent was equally foreign as she moved through it heading for where she knew she’d land. Where she had always landed in the two months since her arrival here.

The place felt cramped with the day staff fresh from their racks, eating breakfast, and the night fliers eating dinner before watching a movie or writing a letter home, then crashing out through the daytime. They jostled, crowded, rubbed shoulders. Most had their turf staked down and staked down hard.

She headed away from the Rangers. All noise and bravado down at the far end, half of them moving out into the dawn light to eat on the soccer stadium tiers, plates in one fist and a tale of glory in the other. D-boys, the most dangerous fighters on the planet, were silent ghosts as always, briefly visible at mealtimes and then fading away as if they’d never been there. The only people they spoke to between missions were the Rangers who were stupid enough to bait them—a sport no Ranger could resist despite decades of failure.

The Chinook heavy-lifters, the masters of the giant twin-rotor helicopters, always took the corner at the front of the tent by the entrance flap. Shoulder-to-shoulder, each team snagged an extra chair to fit their five-man crews at a four-top table. Closed circle.

The pilots of the five two-seater Little Birds had a long table where they sat in neat pairs across from each other, pilot and copilot, though who sat on which side varied. Perhaps the pattern was unconscious. Connie considered their alternation as she moved past but could find no particular sequencing of either a mathematical or a psychological nature. Four of the Black Hawk crews, the transport versions of the birds, intermixed at random tables. Then there were Viper and Vengeance. Supposedly her crew. The six members from the two DAP Hawks always ranged around a double table. DAPs were always a crew apart. Like police or nurses in the civilian world.

The two Majors commanding the Direct Action Penetrators typically sat off by themselves at one of the back tables. On the rare occasions when they ate with their crew, another table was dragged in. But typically two copilots and four crew chiefs ate, shared, and joked together. Captain Stevenson had been out for three months on med leave, and Chief Warrant Clay Anderson had taken his seat both in the air and at the table. And though she’d taken Dusty James’ place on Viper when he’d taken a round, she’d never felt welcome in his seat at the table.

She’d not taken it while Dusty was gone. That was proper, it was his seat and now he’d come back to fill it. Had the bullet that found him that night flown six inches differently, she would be the one hit and would now be the returning comrade welcomed. Well, perhaps welcomed.

There’d been no spot at all for a week, and she’d been assigned to a ground maintenance squad. They hadn’t put her in another bird because Kee Smith had upcoming marriage leave. Now Kee, the only person on the base she’d ever spoken much with, was gone. In two weeks she’d be back and Connie would be reassigned again.

Should Connie take the seat that would only be hers for fourteen days? Would she know what to say if someone spoke to her? Everything she said always came out wrong.

Her brief moment with Staff Sergeant John Wallace this morning being a prime example. Something she’d said had been wrong. She could see his face change, but though she studied it carefully, she couldn’t read his expression. Had he meant the compliment, or had he been angry that she’d noticed the failing rotor blade before he had? She didn’t know anyone well enough to ask.

He hulked at the table, perfectly at ease, with that big, welcoming laugh of his flowing across his friends as he told the story of their roll, holding his arms out and tipping them sideways, making everyone duck.

When he retracted his arms, his broad shoulder still intruded deep into the space where Kee always sat. Kee was small enough that it didn’t matter. And fierce enough that she didn’t care.

But there was no room for Connie Davis.

She turned for her usual table and sat with her back to the crew so that she wouldn’t have to watch yet another place she didn’t belong.