Target of Mine

Chapter 3

3

“What the hell are we here for?” A big voice boomed across the twilit airfield, making Drake break off in mid-clip to see what was going on. They were deep in the tall grass, so he actually had to rise up on all fours from his prone position beside her in order to see.

Nikita sighed—the man had the attention span of the goddamn gnats that kept hovering about them. Even for someone who was hurting, he was being chaotic. That he had hit the target at all over the last hour was a testament to his skill.

Ever since she was a child, she’d always found shooting was a great way to relax, giving her a simple focus that cleared her mind of other problems.

Not Drake.

“Come on, Roman. I thought you were serious about learning this shit.” Drake was a seriously decent shot for a helicopter crew chief. She felt that there was hope of training him to be actually good. Maybe not SEAL Team 6 sniper good, but definitely operator level.

“I am.”

“Well, then you’re gonna have to learn to focus. You can either be a sniper or see what shiny objects are glittering nearby to distract you.”

With practiced speed, the hangar doors were being raced shut before the intruder could round the corner of the hangar and see the line of stealth helicopters.

“Right. Sorry.” He turned back and caught her looking toward the stranger continuing to shout out his impatience.

“Chief Petty Officer Nikita Hayward!” Drake’s voice was soap opera dramatic. “I’m shocked. You call that maintaining focus?”

“Screw you, Roman.” At least she’d stayed lower, looking between stalk and seeds so that she’d be less visible. Drake’s head was popped up like some stupid gopher just asking to be shot in the head.

“Anytime.”

“Yeah, I already knew that about you.” Sergeant First Class Drake Roman was a damn handsome flyboy and knew it. It had taken him under thirty seconds into their first mission together last year to make it clear that the offer was open whenever she was interested. Absolutely not! Though, oddly, he’d never renewed the invitation and that bothered her at times. It was as if he was up to something, but she couldn’t figure out what. Normally she had to beat guys like him back down more times than kudzu vines crawling into the vegetable garden.

Her attention stayed on the newcomer standing in front of the now sealed hangar that housed the 5E’s four helicopters. Strangers were not supposed to come to this corner of Mother Rucker. This was exclusively the territory of the Night Stalkers 5th Battalion E company. Outsiders not welcome.

He was a big guy, classic broad-shoulder type. Walked with the arrogance of a US Army Ranger, but there was something else about him. Something that didn’t fit—completely—aside from the babe at his side.

The babe would have looked like an over-built sidewalk hussy with her leather clothes, long brown-black hair, and come-f**k-me boots, if it wasn’t for where she was. Mother Rucker was one of the most secure military bases in the country, and Ech Stagefield was perhaps the most secure part of the fort—it was a seriously long way from the Miami strip. Besides, what crazy-as-s**t person wore leather this far south of the Mason-Dixon line?

Nikita unclipped the Leupold telescopic sight off the rail of her MK11 rifle and turned to inspect the guy.

He was ignoring Pete and Danielle—the 5E’s commander and chief pilot—standing right in front of him. Instead, he was looking right at her. He shouldn’t even be able to see their position. They hadn’t dug in their shooting site, but the sun was down and the light was getting iffy. Besides, she and Drake were fifty meters out into the tall-growing grass.

The smile he sent her way was chilly at best. It made her wish she wasn’t merely using the scope, but had swung her entire rifle his way just to chap his ass. Then he turned his attention to Pete and Danielle. The leather-clad babe had followed his line of sight and now she was watching them.

Nikita checked the parking lot. Latest model Ford Expedition SUV, black, top-of-the-line, windows all tinted, fancy chrome wheels—all the geegaws. It fit right in with their flashy style.

“Should we go over?” Drake didn’t yet have the sniper instincts that would have made it a whisper. Thankfully, the light breeze was blowing from the hangar toward their position, so their voices weren’t likely to carry in that direction.

“You that desperate to get near a busty woman in leather, Roman? Besides, we’d just be sent away again if it’s anything important. Command talks to you when they’re good and ready—not a moment before.” She felt foolish for stating the obvious. After snapping the scope back onto the rail, she double-checked the alignment marks.

“We’ve got incoming. Whoo-doggies, do we ever,” this time Drake whispered, but it sounded more like awe than caution.

“You’re not from Texas, Roman, so cut that out. Your Southern sucks even worse than your Yankee.”

Nikita glanced over and saw the woman was coming their way with a swing of hip like she really did belong working the Miami strip—though definitely the high-rent end. Drake was gonna be useless until she was gone, so Nikita waited her out.

“Hi, honey. Aren’t you the cutest thing?” The woman laser-focused on Drake. Her voice had that sexy, breathless quality that always seemed to grab men by the balls. She had long sleek hair that defied the humidity, fair skin, and dark blue eyes.

Drake really was a goner. For a reason that eluded her, Nikita found that irritating. Not that she had any claim, but they had fought together and this woman was—

“You can call me Sugar.”

She had to be kidding. Even her honey-smooth words were lipsticked carmine red. The accent was real though. Maryland or maybe Virginia—somewhere up north.

“What are you shooting today?”

Like the overeager puppy dog he was when faced with a large set of breasts, Drake held up his MK11. “It’s a sniper rifle.”

“I can see that, Sweet Cheeks. May I?”

Before Nikita could protest, Drake had handed over his weapon. No SEAL in their right mind would ever relinquish their weapon short of a court martial. He was only a Night Stalker, but still it was no damn excuse.

“Sugar” gave the rifle a quick inspection that showed more familiarity with weapons than Nikita would have expected.

She shouldered it without asking permission.

Nikita jerked her sidearm, but Sugar was aiming downrange toward the target. If she turned it anywhere else, Nikita would take her out first and ask questions later.

Sugar snicked off the safety and unleashed five rounds, two heartbeats between each shot. Nice and steady. Good weapon control. Absorbed the kick of the 7.62 mm round through her shoulder and down into a back-braced leg. Her stance wasn’t military, but it was good.

Nikita ducked her head to her own scope and checked downrange. First shot high, the other four rang steel—near enough to dead center to make it impossible to tell if there was any drift. The target was six inches at six hundred meters, so it wasn’t a hard shot, even in this light, but it was far better shooting than most civilians could manage. As good as Drake had done.

Sugar handed the rifle back to Drake. “Your scope is set a half mil too low. Watch out for the catch on the trigger at the last pound of pull. If your shots are drifting to the right, that’s why. You should have it fixed. I’ve seen that in the MK11 Mod 0s before.” Her accent almost disappeared when she was talking weapons; in its place was a sharp professional.

Drake was clearly past noticing such nuances, or perhaps even past speech.

Sugar looked at Nikita and probably would have cracked her bubblegum if she’d been chewing any. Instead, she slapped a hand on her own leather-wrapped behind with a loud smack as she turned back toward the field. “Book and its cover, dearie, book and its cover. Y’all c’mon in. There’s gonna be a powwow if I know my man.” And she strode back the way she’d come, hip swing and all.

Drake didn’t look aside for a single second—total brain death.

“She sure got your number, Roman.”

In the past, Sugar most certainly would have gotten his number—in a past before Drake had met Nikita Hayward. Built babes in leather shooting high-power rifles were definitely his idea of seriously hot—wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t agree. But it was no longer any contest.

Sitting next to him in the tall grass was five-foot-ten of SEAL Team Six in female form. And not just female—she was Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman’s right hand. Whatever it took to be that in the male-ruled world of Special Operations, she had it. She embodied it. Nikita was the most amazing woman he’d ever met…not that he’d ever seen her give any man the time of day.

M&M’s attempt to get her attention while they were in the Philippines was so dismal it couldn’t even be called a decent try. Kenny got nowhere at all.

Himself, he’d searched for tactics, an in on the powerful Nikita. He’d even watched the movie La Femme Nikita, the Point of No Return Bridget Fonda remake, as well as both television show spin-offs about the exquisitely lethal assassin, in hopes of gaining any insight from the fictitious character that he could apply to the real-deal SEAL.

Drake had almost taken a run at her when the SEALs were along on a mission with them into Russia. Every single approach he’d cooked up had sounded stupid in his head and some tiny bit of common sense had left them all unvoiced. But to watch her shoot…it was a thing of true beauty. Lying together in the tall grass—doing nothing other than target shooting—was more of a start than he’d managed in a year.

No matter how much fun she was to watch, the hip-swinging Sugar wasn’t even in the same world. Besides, she had “her man.”

“Was she for real?” He’d always thought of himself as a great judge of women, but Nikita was slowly teaching him that he was only a great judge of the subset of women willing to slide into bed with him. Nikita wasn’t one of those. He found her wholly unreadable and that, as much as anything, had snagged his attention until even looking the other way was impossible when she was around.

“Give me your weapon.”

Nikita aimed his rifle downrange and, even though it was dark enough for the first fireflies to begin showing off, she fired a single round with hardly any hesitation. He heard the bright plink as the bullet hit steel. She handed the weapon back.

“What?”

“She’s for real. Thought you knew how to zero a scope. We can cover that next time if you want.”

“I know how to zero one. But I’m not used to shooting such piddly little guns. I just shifted down a bit instead.” At first he’d thought he’d been missing high because the distance to the target wasn’t what he thought it was or because Nikita was so distracting or… He’d run out of excuses and simply compensated by aiming lower. The pull to the right? That he’d missed entirely. Exactly what he didn’t want to do, look like a complete doofus in front of an ST6 SEAL.

“It’s better to zero the scope if you’re taking multiple shots like this. Less of a distraction. And if you don’t know how to fix that trigger, I can show you.” She flicked on a flashlight and began collecting her brass from the deep-shadowed grass. He did the same until they could account for all of their rounds, including the five that Sugar had shot.

He actually didn’t know how to repair the trigger, but he’d find someone else to show him how to fix it, then swear them to secrecy.

“A sniper in the field never leaves a trace that they were there,” and she didn’t. When they were done, there was nothing but two flat spots in the grass that would have disappeared soon enough. She leaned down to fluff up the bent grass. After admiring the view of a bent-over Nikita for a moment, he did the same. All evidence of lying close beside her for an hour, erased.

He hefted the MK11. A dozen pounds of rifle good to eight hundred meters and past a thousand in a pinch. The same basic cartridge as his M134 Minigun, though he typically fired eighty rounds per second instead of one every couple heartbeats. Being shot-perfect was less critical when he was throwing two pounds of lead per second versus half an ounce per shot. Personally, he liked the power of his M134, but there was a cleanness, a purity to what Nikita did, shot by shot, that he could appreciate.

As they walked back to the main hangar, he could see by the lights through the high windows above the closed doors that some of the others were gathering in. Most were still in the hangar working over the helicopters and their gear, preparing for whatever came next.

The 5E’s commanders Pete and Danielle, who flew the big Chinook, were front and center. Rafe and Julian, the two pilots from his own Black Hawk crew, also came over. The drone’s copilot, Zoe DeMille, rounded out the gathering.

With just four helicopters and one drone, the 5E was the smallest company in the Night Stalkers by far. But they were the only team to be a hundred percent stealth equipped, garnering them the edgiest assignments. Drake wished he knew quite what he’d done right to be here so that he could make sure to keep doing it.

They’d flown against the 5th Battalion D Company in a training exercise, and beat them more by luck than anything. It hadn’t hurt that they had “borrowed” two of the 5D’s mechanics for their first missions, but the “loaners” had been shifted back to Fort Campbell to take over the future-tech group for all of SOAR. That’s when he’d switched to the Black Hawk, to fill in the gap left by Connie Davis. Now with Carl down, there were going to be even more changes.

A massive black SUV with tinted windows was the unknown vehicle in the parking lot.

“Wondered when you’d notice. Now you’re going to have serious truck envy too,” Nikita sounded thoroughly disgusted.

He just shrugged nonchalantly, but he thought it was seriously cool. Way better than his ten-year-old battered-blue Ford Ranger.

Another vehicle rolled in, a base Hummer.

“When it rains…” Drake recognized the passenger before he climbed out: Colonel Cass McDermott, the commander of the entire Night Stalkers 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Drake hadn’t seen him since the night the 5E was formed up right here at these picnic tables a year ago.

“…Oobleck falls from the sky.”

Drake looked over at Nikita.

“I’m a Dr. Seuss fan. So sue me.”

He laughed at the sudden image of Nikita Hayward as a little girl intently studying a book about a boy trying to save his kingdom from sticky green goo falling out of the sky. The mission to save the kingdom made sense for a future DEVGRU SEAL, but Nikita as a young girl was almost impossible to imagine. Though if she’d worn pigtails as a kid, he definitely wanted to see a picture.

It was difficult reconciling her looks with who she was. By her looks she could have been the nice girl next door. But he’d seen this “girl” swing on a sixty-pound pack as easily as he could sling a rifle, and he’d watched her shoot to kill.

The casual ease of her soft Southern accent would never have flown at Andover Prep—whereas his own moneyed Boston had fit right in. She was like an education in how narrow his world had been before joining the military. But any thought that Southern meant slow or mild was blown away by one look in her brown eyes—she missed nothing of what was going on around her. He could see her mind working every moment behind those eyes.

At the picnic table, Pete and Danielle sat facing the two strangers. The two couples were eyeing each other in silent suspicion. Even Danielle’s unflappable Quebecois politeness appeared strained.

“Who are—” Major Pete Napier and the big guy snarled at each other almost in unison. Then they held a glaring contest before both turned their ire toward the Colonel.

Colonel McDermott pulled up a chair and sat at the end of the table as if joining a jovial party.

Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman, Nikita’s boss, came to stand on Drake’s other side. Not many men could make him feel small, but Altman was even more physically imposing than the stranger. Luke Altman wasn’t even the sort of guy you’d eventually call by his first name—he’d never be “my buddy Luke”, he’d simply be “Altman” or maybe Lieutenant Commander.

By the time they were all gathered around the table—five of the fifteen Night Stalkers who made up the 5E, two SEALs, the pair of strangers, and the colonel—full dark had descended and, along with it, an Arctic chill that had nothing to do with the balmy September night. The cicadas and frogs seemed to be the only ones happy at the moment.

Drake did his best to pretend that he wasn’t trapped between the two ST6 SEALs, but was standing there because he belonged—lined up like they were a Greek chorus to narrate the drama about to unfold. Someone fetched a Coleman lantern and dropped it on the table, lighting everyone in strange shadows. Someone else dropped a case of beer on the table—which meant no flights tomorrow, no battle flights anyway. He wanted to step forward to take one, but neither of the ST6 operators moved, so he stayed put.

“So tell it,” Colonel McDermott said to no one in particular as he twisted a cap off a beer.

“Why?” The big guy snarled back. And in that moment, Nikita knew what he was because no one who was still military would talk back to a bird colonel that way. He wasn’t a US Army Ranger, he was a former US Army Ranger.

“Mercenary,” it came out as no more than a whisper, but his gaze shot to her. His smile built—it was not friendly.

“I’m a contractor. Always on behalf of my country. My Titan team takes on the messes you military types couldn’t handle if your lives depended on it. What are you, missy?” He grabbed two beers, opening one for the woman beside him. Then he tipped his own toward Nikita like he was aiming a gun.

Titan. Probably the toughest military contractors in the business. They were the baddest-ass door-kickers out there. Their rep was good. But still goddamn vigilantes—just ones with a big budget and a government sanction.

Nikita wouldn’t mind telling him exactly who she was, but DEVGRU operators didn’t go around announcing themselves to the general public—except for a couple of the guys on the bin Laden raid with no sense of silence. Luke Altman had never even said a word about it, though she was fairly sure he’d been in on that mission.

This guy needed a different answer.

“I can tell you what I’m not.”

“Oh, bring it on,” he thumped his beer on the table, then crossed his arms over his big chest and glared at her. In a pissing contest, you didn’t look away, so she couldn’t see how the others were reacting except for Sugar. She sat close beside the big man and was slowly shaking her head in amusement—as if she knew what was about to land on her companion’s head and couldn’t wait to watch. Nikita could almost like her for that.

“I’m not from a team that levels an entire South American villa in a bang so big that I could hear it while stretched out all comfortable in my bunk at Fort Bragg,” which was not her real base. That was at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach along with the rest of DEVGRU.

That got his attention. He clearly didn’t like that she knew that about him. She’d always kept track of the main “contractors.” Ever since— No! She wasn’t going to think about that.

“No running attacks back and forth across the hills and hollers outside Charlottesville, Virginia. No gun battles shredding up multiple floors of an Abu Dhabi hotel. Y’all Ranger types are great at kicking down them doors. When I go through one, nobody—and I mean nobody—knows I’ve been there, asshole.” Name calling was lame, but she couldn’t stop herself. And where the Southern hick was coming from she had no idea. But Nikita knew where her emotional heat was coming from, had spent most of her adult life trying to ignore it. Now she had her past chilled down to the point where it took someone like this over-confident bastard to drag it back to the surface. She didn’t appreciate it.

“How the hell do you know all—” The guy shut his trap and glared at her, his eyes momentarily shifting from merely black to carbonized steel. Then he glanced around the circle and she could see him start thinking—finally. She didn’t look aside, but had the impression that all of the others were remaining impassive, revealing nothing.

Sugar started to giggle. She tried to hide it in a swallow of beer but didn’t make it.

He glared at her.

Sugar broke into laughter and began poking at the man’s ribs with a red manicured nail. “She got you, J-dawg. She so got you. That’s exactly who you are.”

“s**t!” J-dawg scrubbed a hand over his face. A smile actually cracked his stern features. “Between Sugar and Nicole, you think I’d have learned about women who know how to fight.”

“Just wait until Asal grows up. Our girl will teach you a thing or two about warrior women.”

He pulled his companion in and kissed her on top of the head with a surprising tenderness. “She already has, damned kid.”

He eyed the circle of people once more, keeping his arm around Sugar’s shoulders a moment longer.

This time Nikita let herself look around as well. Of the five Night Stalkers present, two were women and neither of them looked any happier with this guy than she felt.

“Not my best meet and greet, I suppose.”

“No s**t, J-dawg!” For a moment Nikita wished she was her movie namesake rather than a SEAL. La Femme Nikita wouldn’t hesitate for a second to unsling the rifle over her shoulder and see how a mercenary liked staring down the barrel from two meters out. That’s how welcome he was.

“Only Lily gets to call me J-dawg. Name is Jared. And I’m the only one who gets to call her that. She’s Sugar to the rest of you.”

“Lotta rules there, J-dawg.” Not a chance in hell of her cutting a mercenary any slack.

He inspected the circle again, then pointed at the line of her, Drake, and Altman. “What are you three? You sure aren’t flyboys.”

“Hello! Not a boy!”

J-dawg ignored her and looked to Colonel McDermott, who had apparently been enjoying the whole scene.

“Who the hell are they?”

“The two on the outsides are the reason you’re here.” Then McDermott scowled at Drake, “The guy in the middle? We’ll be damned if we know what he is.”

She couldn’t tell if Drake was unhappier with McDermott’s tease or her laugh right in his face.