Take Over at Midnight

Chapter 3

3

The mess tent was, well, a mess.

Lola dumped her gear by the tent flap and followed Tim toward the chow line along the back wall. She could see the territorial boundaries laid out like an airstrip.

Far right taxiway belonged to the US Army Rangers. Crew cut and muscled up. A lot of them had their green berets on in the desert heat. One guy had a t-shirt that proclaimed, “Rangers—often mistaken for the wrath of God.” They were a rowdy lot with a lot of back slapping and stories flying between them. Good guys when you needed a hammer blow.

Down the left taxiway guys huddled around a couple of quiet tables. Three things made them stand out. Their motions were small, precise, tightly controlled. Several had long hair, others a beard or mustache. And they were speaking in whispers that wouldn’t carry to the next table, even if the rest of the tent were tomb silent.

D-boys. No mistaking them anywhere, except in public where they were frickin’ invisible. You’d pass them on the street and never notice them—hard to remember them even if you did. She hadn’t known Delta Force was encamped here. That meant there was seriously nasty s**t going down here.

Lola was good with that.

Deltas weren’t muscled like Rangers, though they trained longer and harder. Tricycle and NASCAR again. Rangers might rock ‘n’ roll, but D-boys were the best warriors in any military.

SOAR made a career of moving Rangers into battles, D-boys and SEALs into clandestine tactical situations, and getting all of them back out. It’s what she’d signed up for. And after two extra years of training required after making SOAR, she was ready. Beyond ready.

Down the middle of the chow-tent’s main runway: SOAR. No more chance of mistaking the Night Stalkers than the Delta operators. Many had arm tattoos of a sword-wielding Pegasus, the unit’s flying horse of death with laser-vision eyes because Night Stalkers ruled the night. Quieter than Rangers, of course everybody was, their storytelling was more focused but still physical, planed hands swooping to demonstrate a flight path, a jabbed finger to indicate rocket fire. Several were crew cut, most not.

She liked that about SOAR and had let her hair start growing the day she’d signed up. She liked the implied companionship with the D-boys. The most lethal fliers carrying the most lethal fighters.

“Hey, c’mon,” Tim snapped his fingers in front of her face to get her attention.

Lola had come to a stop to observe this first assignment card she’d drawn. There’d be a thousand missions and a hundred camps and bases in her career, but this was her first as a SOAR copilot and it looked as if boredom was not going to be an issue.

She followed Tim down the chow line. He loaded up on dinner. It was the end of their day after all, but Lola had always been a fan of breakfast for dinner. She also didn’t feel right eating a burger and fries at six in the morning. Despite the base’s remoteness from any other signs of Western civilization, the cooks here obviously tried, since they were serving both meals. She went for a short stack, bacon, juice, and fruit.

Tim led her over to a table where she recognized most of the two crews. Clearly this was where the DAP Hawks chowed down together. She counted seats and came up one short. Nowhere for her to land without taking someone else’s.

Tim must have read her mind, he nodded to the corner. Not far from the D-boys, the two majors sat at a table with one of the D-boys. She watched from the corner of her eye long enough to observe everyone giving that table an extra-wide berth. Even the Delta operators swung wide.

“Who?” she mouthed at Tim. The extra guy looked rugged and tough. Then he smiled at something Henderson said. The rugged remained, and the tough, but it looked right on him.

“Colonel Michael Gibson. Medal of Honor and all that.” Lola glanced over at him one more time. They had a D-boy colonel stationed in a tiny camp like this? Clearly they were not in any normal place. Duh, Lola. You’re at an unreported camp in the middle of the Pakistani desert, fifty miles, about fifteen minutes, from the Afghanistan border.

Without the Majors they’d have a chair to spare at the SOAR table. Not sure where to land, she ended up at one end of the table across from Tim, shoulder-to-shoulder with Big John. Connie Davis, the mechanic she’d flown with in Poland, sat on John’s other side. Might as well be a mile away with that wall of man-flesh between them.

A tall and lean man slid in next to Tim and began setting his table: taking napkin and silverware off his tray, setting knife and spoon to his right, fork on napkin to his left, with plate and water glass in place. No insignia, already showered, and wearing civvies. Uptight priss by the look of it.

A hardback book thumped down on the table beyond him. A small, dark girl in white native garb jumped onto his back and wrapped her slender arms around his neck.

He ignored her. Continuing to set his place as if he sat alone in the whole tent.

The girl covered his eyes. “Guess who?”

The guy stopped, tilting his head one way and then the other, not trying to shake the small hands loose, rather considering. Then he proclaimed solemnly, “President Peter Matthews. What are you doing in Bati, Mr. President?”

Lola recognized the voice. Took her a moment to place it. Air Mission Commander. Wrench. The voice that had called them about Major Beale’s flight being in trouble. The married AMC who’d effortlessly guided the long battle. Well, he’d gone native and his kid had completely favored her mother, there was no sign of the AMC in the elfin face grinning over his shoulder.

“Need see my best peoples.” She lowered her voice as far as a young girl’s could go.

“People.”

The girl repeated it dutifully but still in her pretend-adult tone.

A woman arrived bearing two trays. Must be the AMC’s…

Lola looked at Sergeant Kee as she ground to a halt toting two trays of food. Glaring at Lola as if she shouldn’t be there. Kee stayed still long enough that the little girl took one of the trays from her hands and set it beside her book, The Secret Garden.

The Sergeant finally set her tray down with a sharp snap.

Lola was glad Kee sat at the other end of the table, down with Connie Davis and Henderson’s silent copilot, Richardson.

“Where’s Terry?” Kee asked loudly.

“Packing his gear,” the mountain man next to Lola rumbled out. “Now that we got our new copilot, he’s stateside for R-and-R, then refresher training.”

So Lola had counted the number of seats and crewmembers right, but she hadn’t known about the kid.

The kid. She’d arrived with the Sergeant but latched onto the AMC. They were a family. What in the hell was the kid doing on a forward air base?

Lola bit down on her tongue to avoid making whatever was between her and the Sergeant worse than she already had.

Besides, a forward, secret air base in one of the nastiest wars in recent history was probably safer than the house Lola had grown up in.