The Night Is Mine

Chapter 1

1

The CNN film crew had made it fun. But now…

The laptop stood balanced on a couple of empty, dull green ammo cases for the Minigun. Sweaty pilots and crew stood gathered around the computer, waiting for the network to roll the clip.

Captain Emily Beale and her team rushed into the tent from the Black Hawk helicopter landing area, still in their hot, sticky flight gear, helmets clutched under their arms. Just past dawn here in Afghanistan, late-evening news back home.

A dozen guys who hadn’t been lucky enough to fly that night packed the already baking tent. They wore shorts and army green, sleeveless tees revealing a wide variety of arm tattoos. Some with girls’ names, several snakes, and a small fleet-worth of helicopters—all with feathered wings. The men squatted on the packed sand that passed for a floor, perched on benches, or stood feet wide with arms crossed over muscled chests.

The observation jolted Emily a moment before she shrugged it back into her mind’s dustiest footlocker. Simply another reminder that the entire female roster of this forward deployment included only one name—her own.

Brion Carlson came on and flashed his famous scowl, cuing his multimillion-person audience that the next clip would be fun, not war-torn hell, not drowned mother of twins, not car pileup at 11.

Emily’s free hand rested on the M9 Beretta sidearm in her holster. Tempting. A couple of 9 mm rounds through the screen might cheer her up significantly. But then they’d all know how she felt. Be hard to laugh it off after that level of mayhem. She knew hundreds of ways to kill a person but how do you kill a newscast? Smashing a laptop met the ultimate criteria for complete suppression. She scanned the intent faces of her flight mates. Still, a bit of localized destruction held its temptations.

She’d only been in the company for two months. The first week or so, she’d been a total outsider. But as she’d proved herself on mission after mission, she’d gained acceptance—grudging at first, then not.

Now, on the precarious cusp of true welcome, this.

“Hot from the fighting front, at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, CNN caught up with Black Hawk pilot Captain Emily Beale as she cooks up a storm for her flight crew. She’s the first, and so far the only, female pilot to qualify to fly helicopters for SOAR, the elite 160th Airwing.”

“Aviation regiment,” Big John called out. Someone shushed him.

“With the Night Stalkers, as the Special Operations Aviation Regiment call themselves—”

“Damn straight,” John answered and then turned to scowl at whoever had been foolish enough to try and shush him before.

“—she flies, literally, where no woman has flown before.”

The clip rolled a close-up of four steaks sizzling on a surface so black that it didn’t reflect the scorching, midday sun.

Odd place to start, but what the hell.

The Black Hawk’s nose cone covering the terrain-following radar assembly had been plenty hot to sear a steak. And the meat had tasted damn good. A humorous opening. So far she could live with this.

Then the camera pulled back.

First the nose of her helo, which was kind of cool. Made a nice surprise for the viewer who wouldn’t recognize it from the curve of the Kevlar composite.

Then the camera swung toward the person wielding the cooking tongs.

She groaned…silently…but, damn! She’d given them loads of footage about why she flew, had answered a thousand probing questions about a female warrior in a man’s world, and this is how they started?

Ray-Bans. Blonde hair running loose over her shoulders. A trick only Special Operations Forces and SEALs could actually get away with in all the US military. The elite fighting teams were supposed to wear non-military long hair, even mustaches and beards, to blend in wherever they were inserted.

SOAR pilots usually did the close-cropped military thing, but not her company. She liked the sound of that, her company.

She’d made it into the Black Adders, the nastiest and toughest company that SOAR had ever fielded. They belonged to the 5th Battalion, which was the nastiest and toughest battalion, no matter what the other four claimed. That’s why the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) 5th Battalion D Company wore their hair long. It made them more like their SOF customers, the Special Operations Forces action specialists they transported to and from battle. Of course, none of them minded the added bonus of being able to thumb their noses at the establishment they’d give their lives to defend.

The laptop image scanned down her body as if she were a model for Playboy or Hustler. Army-green tank top. Running shorts and army boots. Standard desert camp gear. She was soaked in sweat, and the clothes clung to her like Saran Wrap. A point the cameraman had made the most of, both on his pan down and back up.

But this wasn’t who she was. It wasn’t the point of the interview. She flew the most lethal helicopter ever devised by man, and they were turning her into a p**n star. Her grip on her still-holstered M9 sidearm grew painful, but she couldn’t ease off.

At least it would be uphill from here.

“Em-i-ly!” “Whoo-hoo, Captain!” “Now that’s what we’re talking about!” The catcalls in the tent overrode the voiceover. Attracted attention from outside. More air jocks drifted in to see what was up. Is that how they thought of her every day?

To react would only admit her intimidation. And that door wouldn’t be opened for anybody.

Even on the tiny laptop you could see good muscle definition. Emily had never been a bodybuilder but she lifted enough weights to hang right at her best fighting weight. And though the guys were still hooting over the narration, she wasn’t particularly happy with how she looked. She’d never met a woman who didn’t feel that way and ignored it as well as she could.

Did guys feel like that? This crowd seemed pretty pleased every time the camera caught one of them. A lot of macho shoulder punching, hard enough to bruise, each time one of them made national television.

The next clip showed her pulling out an emergency foil blanket, good for reflecting away the worst of the sun if you were smacked down in the middle of sand-dune nowhere. She’d demo-ed how to use one to hide from the sun, digging it into the sand before disappearing beneath.

But in the next instant, she knew this broadcast didn’t go there. Instead they went with her quick origami moment to create a decent solar oven from the foil. It had taken her a while to figure that one out back when she flew for the 101st. They jumped to a finished loaf of sourdough bread, from a starter she’d smuggled in. Not bad. She could live with this, too.

Somehow.

And then the next image rolled.

Not a helicopter or flight suit in sight. How long was this stupid clip anyway? They’d dogged her heels for a full day and this was the best they could do?

Back to the solar oven. The soufflé. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t. They did.

A whole circle of broad-shouldered, bad-assed flyboys standing around her with their arms crossed over bare, serious-workout chests. A solid wall of shirtless, obviously posed male flesh she’d hadn’t noticed the news crew setting up.

Then her tiny image on the screen lifted the chocolate soufflé from the makeshift oven. Perfect. And the desert was so frigging hot that the soufflé didn’t start its inevitable collapse from cooling until after the camera moved on. The round of applause had tickled her at the time. But on the squidgy, piece-of-crap laptop, it made her look like a half-naked Suzy Homemaker in shades.

“Flying into battle, you know her well-fed crew will follow Captain Emily Beale anywhere because she’s the hottest chef flying.” In the parting shot, a helmeted pilot, visible only as a silvered visor and blue-black helmet, lifted off in a swirl of dust.

Her helmet was purple with a gold-winged flying horse on the side, and everyone in the tent knew it. It remained clamped under her arm at this moment in case they wanted to double-check. She’d had no missions the day the film crew was in camp so they’d shot that dweeb Bronson, of all useless jerks.

That couldn’t be the end of the clip. But the wrap shot was perfect, the camera following Bronson high into the achingly blue sky.

All those interviews about her pride as the first woman serving in The Night Stalkers.

Not one word made it in.

Descriptions of nasty but declassified missions that she had been authorized to discuss.

All cut.

Actually, they hadn’t used a single word. She’d never spoken. Just cooked and been ogled.

And finally, to drive the hammer home, they’d used Bronson in his transport bird, not her heavy-duty, in-your-face, DAP Hawk gunship for the closer. When you wanted a joy ride, you called Bronson. When you wanted it done, you loaded up her MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator Black Hawk.

They had to include at least one—

“In New York’s Bryant Park today…” The laughter in the tent drowned out the parade of anorexic women who probably couldn’t shoot a lousy .22 without getting knocked on their narrow butts.

She pulled her pistol and let fly at the laptop. The first shot shattered the screen and flipped it off the empty ammo case. The second spun it in midair, and the third punched the computer into the sand.

The guys inspected the smoking laptop in the ear-ringing silence and then Emily’s face as she reholstered her sidearm. More mayhem than she’d intended, but she was a pilot first, dammit.

Then, as if on cue, the crowd almost as one fist-pumped the air.

“Sexiest chef flying, Captain!” “They got that right!” “Whoo-hoo!”

“Well, your next thousand meals are gonna be damned MREs.” She shouted to be heard over the rabble.

They hooted and applauded in reply.

“Cold egg burritos!” The worst of the Meals Ready-to-Eat menu.

“Ooo!” “We’re so scared.” “Show us how to make an oven.” “Sexiest chef!”

She opened her mouth to offer a few uncouth words about how much they’d enjoyed watching their own lame selves—

“’Tenshun!” The deep voice sliced through the chatter like the rear rotor of her Black Hawk through a stick of softened butter. A voice that had sent a shiver down her spine ever since she’d first heard it two months before.

They all snapped to their feet as if they’d been electrocuted. Some part of the laptop still functioned; Carlson’s voice sounded into the sudden silence, “At a recent concert, the Rolling Stones—”

A booted foot smashed down and delivered the coup de grâce to the wounded machine.

Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson stood two paces inside the rolled-back flap of the tent, one foot still buried in the machine. Six feet of clichéd soldier. Broad shoulders, raw muscle, and the most dangerous looking man Emily had ever met. His straight black hair fell to his squared-off jawline. His face clean shaven, eyes hidden by mirrored Ray-Bans. Rumor had it they were implanted and the Major no longer had eyes.

After two months, she couldn’t say otherwise. He always wore the shades when he wasn’t wearing a helmet for a night mission.

Even the first time they’d met, as purported civilians at Washington state’s Sea-Tac Airport, he had worn them. Coming out of security, newly assigned to the 5th Battalion, she’d known instantly who waited for her. She doubted another person in the crowded airport would recognize him as a soldier; they’d both been trained to blend in. But she’d recognized Major Mark Henderson as if part of her body had known him for years.

In the tent, he swiveled his head once, the sunglasses surveying the crowd. Every man jack of them knew the Major had memorized exactly who was there, what they’d said, what they were about to say—and probably knew what they’d been thinking…at the precise moment they’d exited their mothers’ wombs. If they weren’t careful, he’d start telling them what they would be thinking about during their last moment on Earth, and none of them, not even Crazy Tim, wanted to run head-on into that level of mindblower.

“There will be no gender-based commentary in this unit. Understood?”

“Yes Sir!” Rang out so loudly it would’ve hurt Emily’s ears if she hadn’t been shouting herself.