By Break of Day

Chapter 1-1

1

US Army Captain Kara Moretti sat in her coffin and flew. She had the best damn job in this woman’s Army. The boys from back in the neighborhood would crap a load in their pants if they could see her right now.

Her coffin—technically a GCS, ground control station—looked like a steel cargo container from the outside. Tucked away in the corner of the hangar deck of the supposedly retired helicopter carrier, USS Peleliu currently stationed off the coast of Turkey, it appeared wholly unremarkable. Which was awesome.

Inside, past the combination and biometric sensor locks, was a whole other world that bristled with the latest technology. It was her kingdom and she loved it. One side wall inside had a rack supporting a pair of white transit containers that actually did look like coffins, big ones. One was empty, but inside the other eight-meter-long white box rested a disassembled General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle worth a cool thirty million.

As remotely piloted aircraft went, it was about the hottest RPA flying anywhere in the world. The one normally in the empty box—she’d named it Tosca after a not bright but very loyal opera heroine—was now climbing up into her sweet spot at the base of the stratosphere. Twenty-nine thousand feet up and looking down, that’s what she was good at—among so many other things. Tosca was a talented lady and Kara was the girl to fly her. She was the brains behind the RPA…or maybe the opera conductor…or… She’d think about that later.

At six miles up, the RPA would appear to be the same width as a single human hair held out at arm’s length. And not a thick hair like one of Kara’s own long brunette ones, but rather like a fine blond one that belonged to Justin Roberts—not that she’d notice such things, especially not on him—presently flying his helicopter at the other end of this exercise’s battlespace domain.

The orders for this training scenario had been simple: Show them what we can do, but not how we do it.

US Special Operations Forces held cooperative international trainings to serve one of two functions.

Usually it was to enhance an ally’s skill while scaring the pee out of a nearby enemy. Under those conditions, the SOF worked patiently to transfer knowledge and skills. They’d recently run a major exercise with the Polish JW Grom counterterrorism unit. The three-day simulated fast-response invasion had been staged close to the Ukrainian border to put Russia on notice that US and Polish forces were nearby and watching closely.

Other times—like this one—the goal was to humble the ally when they weren’t trying hard enough. Sharing borders with Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the Turkish forces should not be playing favorites. Despite that, their attitude was, We may hate the people doing the g******e and destabilizing the entire region, but we hate the people that they’re killing more. So we don’t see a thing.

It was worse than the neighborhood rivalries that used to sweep through Kara’s part of Brooklyn. Sometimes it was gangs, but sometimes it was way worse. She wasn’t in one of the Five Families but that didn’t mean she was stupid or something. The garbage cartel. The cheese cartel. Liquor cartel. Restaurants. The list went on, and that didn’t include the drugs, gambling, and prostitution. It was quieter now—the New York Mafia had mostly turned to the business of doing business—but that didn’t mean the past was forgotten or that flare-ups didn’t occur.

There were times when Kara wondered why she was out here fighting other people’s wars, and not being a Brooklyn cop like two of her brothers and Papa.

’Cause then you wouldn’t have the coolest job in the Army, that’s why.

She and her assistant, Sergeant Santiago “Tago” Marquez, sat side-by-side in the coffin at their GCS stations. Two big, comfortable armchairs faced the flight and sensor controls of the Tosca. Ahead and to either side they each had three large screens that fed all of the visual and remote sensing data from the Gray Eagle. Below it was flight tracking and a full array of flight instruments and controls. A third chair, presently empty, sat close behind her when there was too much happening and they had to pull in a third operator.

She and Tago each held dual joysticks. Her controls included flight and weapons. He was the grand master of the sensor arrays, constantly twisting and tuning them to give her the information she needed before she knew she needed it.

“Hell of a team!”

She held up a hand for a moment and received a high five as they did before every mission.

Tago didn’t speak, of course. In a full year he’d probably spoken ten words during an actual operation, and not more than twice that out of one. But he didn’t need to; he was that far inside her head. It worried her somewhat, like what kinda muck was he gonna find in there that even she didn’t know about? Never worried her for long though; he was too much fun to fly with.

The other great thing about Tago was that he was a foot taller and much wider than she was. The run-of-the-mill assholes would take one look at him, hovering close beside her like a big brother, and scoot for the hills.

There were a whole lot of suckers back at Cannon Air Force Base sittin’ on their ever-widening butts with their McDonald’s coffee and McGut-bomb breakfast. All doing their time in godforsaken Clovis, New Mexico, suburbia-hell so they could fly a Predator RPA over Afghanistan or Yemen from Cannon AFB’s deep bunkers. It was good work if you could get it and didn’t mind cooking your ass in the Southwest desert.

Two years ago, she’d been one of a kajillion other flyboys and gals working the command consoles.

Then the Night Stalkers’ recruiter had showed up and her life had changed.

“We fly for the US Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment,” the Captain had said. “We have been over-reliant on US Air Force and NSA satellite intelligence assets.”

A pretty ballsy statement in the middle of a USAF base. She liked that plenty for starters.

“We’re going to be integrating a dozen Gray Eagle RPAs directly into our operations.” They had her right there.

First, SOAR was so seriously cool that they called themselves the Night Stalkers, which rocked. One of the best nicknames in the forces.

Second, they hadn’t said drone or UAV—unmanned aerial vehicle. She wasn’t a lame-assed drone pilot. And her craft wasn’t unmanned or it wouldn’t need a pilot. The pilot simply wasn’t aboard the aircraft. The Gray Eagle was a Remotely Piloted Aircraft, and, by God—Third—she was the woman to fly them.

“We’re seeking specialists for transfer from remote pilotage here in New Mexico to being embedded directly with our helicopter units. Would all those interested please—”

There’d been advantages to being five-foot-five and having three older brothers. You learned to be quick. She headed the sign-up queue before the guy had finished the briefing. Tago had been her shadow.

True to the captain’s word, after two additional years of training, she was sitting on a warship in the Mediterranean and kicking baddie-guy ass—usually. That she was using her skills to spook an ally tonight was one of those changeups that kept life interesting.

Interesting, hell. Super sweet!

“This is May. Ready for my run.”

“Roger, May,” Kara answered Trisha in her MH-6M Little Bird helicopter. Short for Mayhem, the name of the tiny, heavily armed attack helo was a perfect match for its petite female pilot. They were both hyperactive and both lethal.

The entire company was on hold five minutes to target awaiting Kara’s Go signal.

It was weird that it was hers to give, but then a lot of things were odd in the 5th Battalion, D Company of SOAR. Everywhere else, an RPA pilot was merely another pilot—and one often looked down on as an NFO, non-flying officer.

The 5D was trying out having the RPA flier also be the AMC.

Archie Stevenson, the former Air Mission Commander, had departed for the States with his wife and kid. Something about them all working at the White House, which had a coolness factor of its own.

Turnover had been as odd as everything else in the 5D. Rather than pulling someone else off the birds into the AMC role, they were dumping it on their new eye-in-the-sky person as a trial.

For seven days without break she’d sat at tactical displays as she and Archie tore apart every single mission he’d ever commanded—at least the ones she was authorized to see. With an unusual candor for an airjock, he’d spent the entire time showing her every single thing he’d done wrong.

“The things you do right will come from your instincts. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.” He’d had crews shot down, good friends shot down—some recovered intact, others crucified by hostiles.

Finally, Good luck! and he’d been gone.

Well, Kara sure liked the sound of being AMC. And she had no intention of letting such an opportunity slip out of her grasp.

The other helos reported in.

Merchant and Maven II flew with May.

Vengeance, the lethal DAP flown by Lola Maloney, hovered close behind. Where a Little Bird attacked, a DAP Black Hawk helicopter weapons platform demolished.

“Ah’m ready as can be, little lady.” And that would be the big hammer for this operation, the massive twin-rotor MH-47G Chinook Calamity Jane. No need for Justin Roberts to identify himself—his Texan dripped off him like…

Like you’re not going to be thinking about in the middle of your first solo mission as AMC, girl!

But she’d caught him working out in the weight room on the lower decks a few times, sweat sheening his face and arms, drenching his t-shirt until it clung to his muscled chest. Damn, but he was a handsome one.

Knuckle down!

Kara had each of the helos located clearly on her screen. Not because they were visible, but rather because of their encrypted locator beacons. Except for the Chinook, they were stealth-modified helicopters so they didn’t show up on her radar or, except for scattered moments, on her infrared imaging. Normal vision showed nothing at all either, since it was three in the morning in the Turkish wilderness and the helos were all painted black and running without lights.

The Turkish Special Forces, the OKK, on the other hand, showed up brilliantly to the advanced sensors aboard the RPA. Tago had them zeroed, both on infrared and through their radio transmissions as backup.

Kara didn’t speak Turkish, which didn’t matter because their radios were encrypted. But they didn’t have the American ability to distort a signal’s transmission so that it looked like it was coming from somewhere else. Tosca wasn’t smart, but she had Electronic Intelligence down.

The Turkish Special Forces would think they were well hidden—nope!—and knew where the attack was coming from—wrong again!

Now to kick their heinies good and hard with a lesson in true stealth.

She leaned forward and whispered into the headset mic, not that it mattered how loud she spoke in the coffin. “Go!”

And like magic, two hundred kilometers away from where she floated in the Mediterranean aboard the USS Peleliu, the tiny indicators that were the Night Stalkers’ 5th Battalion, D Company went.

Captain Justin Roberts gave the cyclic control between his knees a slight nudge forward. Fifteen tons of helicopter carrying a platoon of US Rangers and their gear eased forward as smooth as a baby’s behind.

Every single time he flew his big MH-47G “Golf” Chinook helicopter, it was a surprise—a surprise of how much fun it was. Like they were meant for each other since long before they met.

SOAR only flew three primary types of helos, all deeply modified to the 160th’s specification. The Little Bird, the Black Hawk, and the Chinook Golf. His girl was the monster of the outfit. Calamity Jane was definitely a Texas-sized lady: big, powerful, and dangerous.

“I feel the need for a song.”