Take Over at Midnight

Chapter 1-2

“Well done, Chief Warrant. Welcome to SOAR.” His words now sharp and crisp, untraceable except as Army.

Lola had to bite down hard on the sharp retort she had loaded in the chamber and ready to fire. Best she managed was an “Uh, thank you, sir.” A test of her patience—or messing with her head for the hell of it?

Tim cut back in using an airline steward’s voice, “Your pilot tonight is Major Mark Henderson, lovingly called ‘Viper’ by his crew and the few unfortunates who survived—”

“Very, very few,” the pilot offered in his normal voice.

“—facing,” Tim continued without missing a beat, “the wrong end of this bird.”

Major Mark Henderson. Holy crap! This wasn’t a muscle car; this was a notorious weapon of death wielded by the most decorated officer of SOAR. His reputation was sterling. He must have been teasing her, though he wasn’t known for a sense of humor—at all. Definitely testing her.

“Your copilot,” Tim continued as if he were addressing a 787 full of tourists, getting that bored flight attendant tone so perfect that she had trouble not laughing, “is the famous and dashingly handsome Captain Richardson. For your entertainment in the cabin you are joined by Mr. recently married Big Bad John, this is his real name. Scout’s honor. And you thought Lola LaRue was bad. I’m called, by those who know me, Crazy Tim Maloney. John and I are the best crew chiefs in the sky.”

“My wife might have a thing or two to say about that. And those who don’t know you call you odiferous.” John’s big, deep voice wrapped around a low laugh. Must belong to the massive dude seated before the starboard-side Minigun. How did someone that big fit into a Black Hawk gunner’s seat?

“Ignore him, Ms. LaRue. John’s awesome. It’s that his wife is plain scary. You’ll be meeting her later. Tonight the Viper, that would be this finest helicopter in the US Army, not to be confused with ‘Viper’ your pilot, will be flying you over such scenic sights as the village of Mehtar Lam…”

“Which you won’t see because,” Big John explained, “though they have electricity, it’s been offline for three days.”

“The pleasant little hornet’s nest of Loy Kalay will be given a wide berth…”

“As they tried to fry our behinds last time we flew over there,” the major filled in. She could hear the easy closeness of the crew. A team that flew together and fought together.

“We anticipate a quiet flight over Asadabad,” Tim continued, “because we’re going nowhere near it.”

Lola waited for a comment from the copilot, but he apparently flew quieter than the rest of the crew. He had yet to speak.

“Estimated time to arrival is thirty-five minutes, so food and beverage service will be preempted for this flight. Our in-flight movie is an oldie but a goodie about an invisible six-foot-tall heli-pilot who—”

“Viper, this is Wrench.” A radio call came over the headset in her helmet as clearly as if someone had been sitting right next to her, except the high end was missing. Encrypted transmission.

“Air Mission Commander Archibald Stevenson III, how’s married life, you old cuss?” Major Henderson’s voice, now filled with bonhomie, didn’t quite hide the professionalism.

“You tell me, Major. Your wife is in it again.”

Were all of these guys married? Slim pickin’s for a girl fresh from training.

“Crap!” The humor was gone. “Heading?”

Already the twin GE turboshaft engines were winding up closer to the yellow line.

“310 will get you on the right track…”

The helicopter twisted to the left and roared to life as five thousand horsepower poured into the main rotors before the AMC had finished speaking.

“…you’re twenty minutes out.”

“Not for long,” she heard the major growl over the intercom.

“The nearest fast mover is thirty minutes out,” the AMC finished.

That meant all of the jets were on the ground tonight. Lola heard the rotors deepen another couple notes of pitch as he twisted them for more speed, and the turbines spun up to a pitch that she knew was well into the yellow zone. Barely below redline.

“LaRue, you wearing armor?” Any sign of banter gone from his voice. Pure steel remained.

“Full vest, sir, but not loaded into the flight suit.” Kevlar plates front, back, and under the arms. They itched and rubbed when you were traveling but she’d pulled them on before landing in the “zone.” Armor was simply what you did in Iraq and Afghanistan—all the time. She tugged up the back collar so that no one slipped a nasty surprise between the vest and the back of her helmet. But her arm and leg armor was stacked in the bottom of the duffel clipped to the net behind her.

“Best we’ve got. Tim, get her up and running on the M60. Set it on your side. You’re responsible for her.”

Lola considered responding that she was responsible for herself and had been since she’d run away from home at fourteen. But the major’s current tone of voice made it clear why he was nicknamed Viper. At the moment he sounded bloody dangerous. She wasn’t going to mess with that.

The shadow that had helped her aboard was beside her in an instant, working on the cargo net. She grabbed Tim’s arm to help keep him steady so that he could work with both hands. She’d been right. Serious weight-lifter’s muscle. Warm too, a heat against her hand that had chilled unnoticed with the night and the altitude. He was probably married like all the others, which would explain the politeness. A woman had trained him well.

Too bad. She liked strong. Appreciated a muscle man in her muscle car. She liked funny too. Mixed in with polite, which could be fun, as long as he wasn’t too polite.

The rest of the story came in by the time they had the big machine gun set up on a swivel in the middle of the cargo-bay door. They also rigged a strap so that she had a chance of remaining in place behind the M60 during sharp maneuvering.

Major Emily Beale, flying protective escort on a “meat” mission, a pick-up-a-load-of-troops-here-and-dump-them-off-over-there maneuver, had watched her load of meat be dumped right into a grinder. Despite the best intelligence, they’d landed two full squads of US Rangers a hundred meters below a dug-in Taliban camp along the front range of the Hindu Kush mountains. The ground-pounders were taking heavy fire from a seriously armed enemy. Emily Beale was trying to break it up, but one of the transports had been hammered out of the sky and the whole operation was going to hell.

“Popping one,” Lola called out and kicked a single round out of the M60. A satisfying jolt against her palms as the hammer pounded home and drove a single round into the side of a passing mountain. The belt of ammunition jerked forward one position so fast she probably wouldn’t have seen it in broad daylight, never mind at night.

Been a long time since she’d sat in back, at least a year, and that had been a training flight. She’d always been hot for the pilot’s seat, ready to rock and roll, not merely the shooter for targets picked out by the pilot.

Tim had also patched in a data feed for her helmet. She swung her head around to get used to the tactical display across the inside of her visor. The camera system projected an all-around view outside the helicopter in a thousand shades of gray. It sensed the direction she was looking and projected the image from outside cameras in precisely that position, both horizontally and vertically. On top of that were scores of symbols that she’d need for fire control.

A whole sector of information was missing. The blankness irritated her until she realized it was the piloting information that she didn’t need until she was in her proper seat.

Dead of night, and she could see the rolling hills that had surrounded the airbase quickly shift into towering mountain terrain. She’d certainly seen it enough during CSAR flights, but search-and-rescue was about cleanup, not about bringing the hammer.

Tonight, they were the DAP Hawk hammer.

Lola cursed under her breath when they were close enough to see the battle. Constant streams of tracer-green death hammered down from a helo that danced and twirled like a ballerina gone mad. The bright streak of a rocket-propelled grenade slithered upward, but the helicopter wasn’t there and the RPG went wide. The dancing helicopter had to be the other DAP Hawk.

She cursed again.

Lola had thought she was a top pilot now, knew she was. But no way could she do what that other DAP pilot was doing. Hell, she could barely keep track of it. That had to be Major Beale. While her husband Viper Henderson was the most decorated SOAR aviator, she had the reputation for being the best.

A nearby hiss, one notch below a roar, brought Lola’s attention back to their situation. Four rockets shot forward from the Viper’s own Hydra 70 rocket pod with a sharp sizzle. Her makeshift gun mount was not limited like the Miniguns. The minis had stops so that you couldn’t shoot your own armament where it stuck out on the helicopter’s side pylons or chop up your own rotors spinning above you like a room’s ceiling. She had to remember to be careful. A glance showed the rockets raining down around the origin point of the RPG.

The explosion bloomed and sent a small fireball flowing skyward.

“Whoo-eee!” Crazy Tim yelled out. “Who brought the weenies? Time for a roast.”

A couple of dazzling bursts as the baddies’ armament blew up. She saw three, four, five figures running or crawling away from the center of the explosion.

“Kick ’em in the buns!”

She and Tim opened up at the same time. His tracer-laden green buzz-saw of destruction and her own steady hammer pounded into bad guys, cleaning up the work begun by the rockets.

Big Bad John’s Minigun pounded out the other side of the helicopter at more targets. The minis didn’t have the ta-ta-tat sound of her machine gun. They howled like the largest and meanest vacuum cleaner ever built. Their electric motors wailing and the fifty supersonic rounds a second roaring like a freight train. It was an eerie sound, the unleashing of death.

Causing the demise of at least one RPG nest, they too were now a target of interest to the baddies. Her tactical display started showing gunfire coming their direction. The array of microphones around the fuselage gathered and computed the most likely point of fire. She pounded short bursts down into the dark at target after target identified merely by crosshairs and a small circle on the inside of her visor.

At one point she blinked and her vision shifted to the outside world beyond the display. A nightmare landscape of soaring peaks, impossibly narrow valleys, and the flashes of attack and counterattack filled her vision. A vertical terrain shrouded in moonlight, black shadows, and a hundred sparks of fire from the muzzle flashes of hand weapons.

Another blink returned her focus to the inside of her visor, and she saw a mortar track across the tactical display as it launched skyward. While the shell was still descending, Tim wiped out the mortar crew. The explosive landed against the downed transport bird. Figures dove out the other side of the bird and into the night. Figures with the small infrared reflectors on their shoulders indicating they were friendlies. As the bird caught fire, the pilot and copilot scrambled clear, one more dragged than moving under his own power.

“Major,” she started to call out. Every instinct of her CSAR background was driving her toward that spot, no matter how ugly the battle.

“I see it. Can’t!” was all he replied, his voice tight as he rolled them through a high-g maneuver. He flung them down into the canyon where the latest attack had come from.

She shut up and followed the flow of battle as well as she could with only a back-ender’s tactical display. As copilot she was used to receiving far more information in overlapping graphics and visual enhancements. She was also used to having a broader view of the overall scope of the battle with a front-seater’s view.

As a gunner, she had to simply trust that the pilot was making the best use of his assets by the targets that he made available to her side of the craft. Of course, as a pilot, you had to trust that your back-enders could follow through on what you gave them. The major was giving their side of the Black Hawk a lot of opportunity. At first she’d thought it was because of having two guns mounted on their side of the craft.

But the more she watched, the more she understood that Tim was a master with his M134, wielding the Minigun with brilliant acumen and immense effectiveness. He compensated for the major’s twists and turns as if he knew what was coming before the major did. His lead for the helicopter’s airspeed was flawless. She felt as if she were better and more competent simply for gunning alongside him.

Despite the two DAP Hawks and the one transport bird still aloft, it took another half an hour or maybe an hour more to scour the area clean. Time blurred with firing, reloading. Dodging out and back. Waiting for someone hiding to foolishly make a break for it.

Wrench, the married Air Mission Commander Archibald somebody, guided the air and ground troops on threats and opportunities that could only be seen from far above. Whoever he was, he too was damn good at his job. A master of tactics, he anticipated the enemy’s moves as easily as Tim anticipated the helicopter’s.

Lola let herself settle into the adrenal-hyperawareness where a thousand hours of training had taught her to blend tactical displays, helicopter motion, the AMC’s guidance, and her own judgment into a single lethal flow.

At long last, the transport Hawk ducked in and took out the injured, but the ground-pounders stayed. The squads faded into the landscape and were moving fast before the local militia could recover and reinforce.

The major sent a final rocket salvo into the burning transport helicopter, ensuring its complete destruction. Nothing left for any bad guys to salvage.

“Thanks, honey.” A smooth voice, so calm that Lola, for a moment, thought it might be a recording of a woman’s voice.

“My pleasure, babe,” the major replied.

“We should do this more often.” Major Beale. That had to be Major Emily Beale, the top female combat pilot anywhere.

But do this more often? Lola was limp as a rag from the pounding of battle and the shaking of the gun. Always knowing that the next round could find her and not leave her any spare time to worry about it. The adrenaline letdown was already making her hazy.

She dug an energy bar out of a thigh pocket as the major leaned the helo on its side and turned for what must be home. The move was so abrupt that the bar floated above Lola’s palm for a moment. Before she could grab it, the sharp turn and dive sent it tumbling out the open cargo door and falling toward the dark landscape below.

She watched the bright foil catch the light of breaking dawn she hadn’t noticed sneaking over the horizon.

Checking one pocket and then the other unearthed nothing useful. She hadn’t restocked after pilfering from her emergency rations during the forty-three hours in transit from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Without food, she knew the adrenaline rush would descend into a nasty headache. Great. Exactly what she wanted on her first day at a new post.

She set the safety on the M60 and locked it into resting position with more violence than necessary. The gun had performed fine. Her sudden peevishness wasn’t its fault. Lola had been in transit too long, then flown into battle as a gunner, not a pilot. Back-enders didn’t trust officers, ever. And here she was on Day One treading on their sacred turf. They’d probably turn out to be territorial, hazing, never-forgive-you-for-intruding-on-their-space types who—

A bright paper packet was floating in front of her visor. For a surreal moment she thought the energy bar she’d dropped had come back to her, somehow falling up as the major beelined for base.

Then common sense intervened. Tim Maloney had noticed her actions and offered one of his own bars. Paper wrapped, not foil. Right, foil might have too big a radar signature.

She took it. Too wiped to do more than nod her thanks. He wasn’t a total nasty heel of a back-ender. Weird.