By Break of Day

Chapter 1-3

Kara had nosed her Tosca RPA over into a dive while handing out instructions. Tosca fell from six miles down to three in that thirty seconds of full-powered dive.

Fifteen seconds to first contact.

Tago had picked up on what she was doing and marked two areas of hillside. “Clean!” he said over the intercom to emphasize that they were unoccupied sites. They wanted to spook the OKK, not kill them.

Kara targeted two of the simulated Hellfire missiles mounted on the Gray Eagle and let them loose. They went supersonic in seconds. Nine seconds and three miles later, the Hellfires slammed into either side of the valley wall high above the OKK encampment and blew up with a light-show blast from two hundred grams of R321 tracer powder that had replaced the usual warheads.

There would be a nice bright flash and a resounding Bang! that would echo through the valley.

At five seconds until the helos’ arrivals, every OKK trooper was now looking at the two flashes and wondering what was going on up on the vacant hillsides. More crucially, the blast was going to dazzle their night-vision gear and force them to blink at the wrong moment.

Kara pulled Tosca back into level flight and circled above Lola’s DAP Hawk to watch the Turks’ downfall.

Like Alexander the Great twenty-five hundred years earlier, the 160th SOAR and the US Rangers swept across the land of the Turks with the ease of a Brooklyn gelato vendor selling cones on a scorching July day.

Justin called over the intercom to Lieutenant Clint Barstowe, the leader of the US Rangers, about the change in plans.

Raymond would be dropping the rear gate and rigging the two thick FRIES fast-ropes to dangle off the stern. The forty-millimeter-diameter rope would allow the Rangers to slide down to the ground and deploy in seconds without having to land the helo. Because they’d be passing behind a low hill, the OKK might not notice the helicopter had paused to let down troops.

To emphasize that, Justin floated up into the Turks’ view for a moment, moving slow. Then he ducked down fast behind the hill, pausing only long enough to deliver the Rangers, and then raced to the far side and slowed again as he let himself float once more into brief view. It would look as if he’d simply done a slow cruise the whole way.

Now the trick was to stay completely out of sight. Kara had found him a deep notch of dry arroyo like back home in Amarillo where he’d learned to fly.

He’d been dating a cattle rancher’s daughter at the time, Francine of the long legs and not a single brain cell between her cheerleader captain ears.

One day her daddy had taken him up in his small R22 helicopter to search for stray cattle and, more likely, to scare the crap out of Justin. Instead, Justin had earned his rotorcraft license as fast as he could and flown three seasons for Hank Freeman while Francine continued to work her way through the entire football squad.

Justin had the ball now, and like the All-State tailback he’d been, he was gonna stay fast and low.

He slid the body of the Chinook right down between the banks of the arroyo. From down here only the sixty-foot sweep of each of his front and rear twin rotors stuck out beyond the edges. He kept a close eye for any growth higher than the stubbly brush or any particularly tall boulders that might be wanting to clip off his rotor blades.

Danny also rode the controls. There was too much for one person to concentrate on. Per prior training, Justin watched the arroyo and the right-hand bank. Danny kept an eye on the arroyo, but mostly watched the left-hand bank. And they both watched the threat detector like hawks in case there were a couple bad buys stationed down in the arroyo.

Should have been; there weren’t. Missed opportunity, guys!

They kept the Chinook moving along sharply, which meant the Rangers had better be hanging on as he bobbed and weaved twenty tons of helo like it weighed twenty kilos.

There was Kara’s hill.

A good choice. Nice job, sweetheart! If it were up to him, he’d confirm her as the new permanent Air Mission Commander on this basis alone. She’d known exactly what he needed and made sure he’d received it.

He slewed the Chinook sideways as he bled speed. “Unload in ten, nine…” He didn’t have to continue his countdown over the intercom; everyone would have the count now.

At five he saw by the indicator light that the rear ramp was once again open and lowered.

At two he came to a stop.

Raymond began calling distance-to-contact as Justin lowered them into position. He was still in hover, none of his wheels on the ground. Justin’s pilot seat was several meters in the air over the dry arroyo. The middle of his helicopter was above the steep side of the carved riverbed. The Chinook’s only point of contact with the earth was the trailing edge of the rear ramp twenty meters behind him, against a small flat spot he’d picked out as they slewed into place.

In ten seconds, the remaining twenty-five Rangers and their three heavily armed ATVs were out.

“Ramp clear,” Raymond called.

Justin nosed down the face of the slope to gain speed, rode the ground effect for a moment as momentum built, and then hammered skyward toward the firing position that Kara had identified.

Lola’s DAP Hawk would have been invisible, except every ten seconds or so the crew was kicking out a decoy flare. It was a perfect solution to Kara’s instruction to be visible. The flare was designed to burn bright and hot as it shot to the side so that any incoming missile would target the flare instead of the helo.

Normally Lola Maloney would fire a large cluster in every direction. But now she was firing one here and one there. No way to pin down the exact location of the black-painted helo itself.

He slid in below her—tight, quiet, and dark. Then he called to his crew.

“Remember, simulated rounds only. We don’t want to be hurtin’ their behinds any more than we already are. Weapons free.”

It was strange not to hear the jarring buzz saw of the Miniguns that usually penetrated the roar of the twin turbines mounted at the rear rotor. There was also no stench of cordite that often wound through the cabin when firing from a stable hover.

For this exercise, their weapons were firing light beams, not lead.

But that didn’t mean the Turkish Special Forces stood a chance, not with SOAR on the scene.

Kara checked her mission clock. It was all over in ninety-seven seconds.

Five helos and thirty US Rangers had taken down a hundred OKK spread across eight locations without breaking a sweat.

Kara knew that a report to that effect was going to go public, unless the Turkish military got its act together about actually helping in Syria and Iraq. Turkish pride was on the line; Kara didn’t doubt that they’d cooperate.

“Bring them dogies on home, boys and girls.”

“Yee-haw!” Justin called out over the radio and whirled down to gather his Rangers back aboard. The DAP Hawk remained on guard station above him though they were in friendly territory.

Kara jolted at the sound of the cowboy’s call and reviewed her own words. What in the world had she been thinking? Bring them dogies on home?

Captain Justin Roberts was six-two, built like, well, a cowboy, and had hair the color of wheat. He was also arrogant, as impressed with himself as a fresh-inducted benchwarmer parked in the Mets dugout, and from Texas—which all on its own was like eighteen strikes against the guy. That was two full innings worth of outs, just for one guy.

“Want some flight time, Tago?” Dumb question.

At his eager nod, she waved for him to take over flying the Gray Eagle Tosca back to the US side of Incirlik Air Base a hundred kilometers south of the exercise area. A ground team awaited her there for a rearm and refuel. She needed twice the length of the warship for a runway, so a ground team made sure that her Tosca was always ready with whatever mission package Kara needed. It was nicer this way, not having the ground team always underfoot.

She climbed out of the deep armchair to stretch her legs and paced up and down the length of the coffin. She kept an eye on Tago. He had about half the flight hours he’d need before he’d have a chance at his own bird, but he was good and didn’t need much of an eye. Once he was close enough, the software would take over for an automated landing.

“Don’t simply float along, Sergeant. You’ll never get any better that way. Shake her out a bit.”

He answered with a snap roll and a climb into a full loop that he didn’t quite manage. She considered showing him the trick, but she remembered Captain Archie Stevenson saying he’d learned more from his failures than his successes, so she’d let him be for a couple more attempts.

The rest of her attention? She’d better be using that on herself.

Bring them dogies on home? So sad!

No way was she ever going weak in the head for a handsome hunk of Texas meat.

Back home, Carlo was much more her style, though she wasn’t stupid enough to fall for his constant pleading. He too was typically arrogant and male. At least he was Italian, from the neighborhood, and had a to-die-for tenor voice that was leading him to opera houses around the world. He’d been trying to get into her pants since they were both twelve, with no success.

But better him than Captain Justin Roberts.