Night Stalkers: By Break Of Day Part 5

Kara snagged his shirt before he could move off.

"Now what the f.u.c.k, Brooklyn?" Not the Heights. With his prep school and fancy college overtones, he really was Upper West Side and was just playing at belonging onboard here.

Sometimes fate served up a dish even sweeter. She offered her best smile and a sharp salute.

"Regret to inform the Major, but he's going in the wrong-a.s.s direction."

Justin watched them turn and approach him with Kara leading the way along the corridor.

She flashed a low hand signal for Justin to fall in beside her as she approached. The Major had fallen behind with Michael, but Kara kept her voice low.

"You ever think about the fact that you're one of the best Chinook pilots in existence or you wouldn't be with the 5D?"

He'd have stumbled to a halt if Kara hadn't been busy moving down the corridor in her typical faster-than-a-quarter-horse-in-the-last-hundred-yards fashion. His legs had to be twice as long as hers and he still had trouble keeping up.

"No. Can't say as I had. Knew you were the best RPA there was or they wouldn't have tagged you for AMC as well. How in the Lord above did you do that anyway? But I hadn't really thought-"

"-the other way around. I know. I just told Major j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. that you were the very best, then realized that you must be or you wouldn't be here. Pretty wild ride, huh, Cowboy?"

"Saddle up, girl. The ride-"

"-is just beginning. I know."

Justin wondered how many people she ticked off with that sentence-finishing thing. He always hated when a Yankee acted as if he didn't speak fast enough. But with Kara Moretti, it felt more like they were in fantastic sync, like when you shifted from a rough trot to a smooth canter.

He wanted to say something else to see if she'd keep doing it. But his mind was a blank. He'd never had trouble coming up with words around pretty women, but with Kara Moretti-especially this version of her switched over to some hyperintense AMC gait-he didn't know what to do.

Except try to keep up.

Kara braced her arms on the ladder's rails, lifted her feet, and slid down a full deck. She opened the hatchway to the hangar deck...and then had to wait for the three guys to clamber down the steep steps to join her.

The white cargo container of the ground control station was tucked back in the corner of the echoing s.p.a.ce. The hangar deck filled the rear half of the ship for three decks high. Being capped by the steel underside of the flight deck and walled by the ship's steel hull with only a few gaps in it made a dropped screwdriver echo like a gunshot and a whisper audible down the entire length of the deck. When maintenance was test firing a Black Hawk's T700 turbines, the sound could blow the top of your head off despite safety m.u.f.fs.

At the moment, the deck was empty. No lights were on, so only the sharp edge of the early morning sun sliced in through the various openings like the aircraft elevator. The light was so bright, it almost hurt, the shadows so thick that they were black and mysterious. The silence was deep enough that even their rubber-soled footsteps sounded clearly and left rippling echoes like waves on a pond.

She glanced down.

Justin wore Army boots, not cowboy boots. For some reason that struck her as one of the oddest things in an already odd day. She'd had Captain Justin Roberts all neatly slotted away in her mind-Texas, macho, clumsy around women. Your basic goofball.

And in the last few hours he'd flown a mission immaculately, delivered and retrieved his customers in difficult terrain, and given her one of the sweetest kisses of her life.

And it had finally worked its way through her thick skull that he'd been a.s.signed to the 5D fresh out of Fort Campbell training. That meant the instructors had really seen something in him. h.e.l.l, SOAR only had sixty Chinook pilots out of the more than twelve hundred of the craft out there across the various services. That alone meant the man was d.a.m.n good at what he did.

And if SOAR only took the best, the 5D skimmed off the absolute top fliers, something the mythical founders of the company, Majors Beale and Henderson, had inst.i.tuted right from the beginning five years earlier.

Well, she'd always found having a standard to live up to was a strong motivator. And if Beale's copilot had gone on to be the company's first AMC, it was time for Kara to step it up if she was going to hang on to being the second one in the company's short history.

The GCS coffin itself was crowded up against the forward bulkhead of the hangar deck. Heavy cables snaked out of the side, one into the ship's power, the other into the communications array to emerge at the six-meter dish she'd rigged high aloft for communicating with her RPAs. It auto-tracked the Gray Eagle when it was in line of sight and switched over to the Peleliu's satellite feed when the RPA went out of range, like during her dive last night.

At the door of the GCS coffin, Kara halted and looked back at Colonel Gibson. "You're sure about this dude?" She didn't wait for an answer. Kara already knew that there would be few higher stamps of approval than Michael's; she just wanted another shot at Major Willard Wilson. She resisted tagging him aloud as Limp w.i.l.l.y, but it was a close thing.

She keyed the code and then leaned in for the retinal scan. The heavy bolts thunked open and she led the way in, turning on the internal lights.

Justin was last in and stumbled to a halt. He'd seen the outside every day for two months. It looked like a white-painted cargo container, barely worthy of note if not for the heavy locks. But he'd never been in the GCS before, and it was like seeing a whole new side to Kara Moretti.

How much did he know about this woman?

"Not much" was the answer staring him in the face.

One wall was dominated by a pair of long white boxes that he recognized as Gray Eagle coffins. He'd been responsible several times for transporting one of them to an appropriate airstrip, because the MQ-1C Gray Eagle needed a couple thousand feet of runway, more than twice the length of the Peleliu. So, when the 5D and the ship were on the move, the ground team would box up the Gray Eagle RPA. Then he'd fetch it, and them, for the move. Afterward, he'd deliver them to some handy Air Force base for launch and recovery.

How odd to fly an aircraft that you almost never saw. It's what those guys at NASA must feel like. He remembered a trip he and his siblings had made to Florida when they were all kids. His parents had taken the three of them to Kennedy s.p.a.ce Center for a shuttle launch. Rafe only ever cared about the horses, but Bessie Anne had wanted to be an astronaut. Sister who was an astronaut had sounded pretty cool to a nine-year-old. She'd gone U.S. Air Force, but hadn't made it into the program before the shuttles went away.

But he'd remembered that launch and the tour Ma had arranged of the command-and-control center. Granted there had been like sixty gals and guys there, but you could just feel that everything had a purpose and it all had a single focus-launching a rocket into s.p.a.ce.

Kara's coffin was like that; it was immersion in an absolutely focused s.p.a.ce.

On the first stretch of the wall opposite the Gray Eagle's containers were a long workbench and three much smaller coffins. They were barely two meters long each and as big across as his forearm. These would be the ScanEagle RPAs. They could be launched off a patrol boat or any ship with a little open s.p.a.ce. He'd seen Kara use the little craft a couple times for simpler sorties or as a communications relay when the Gray Eagle was over the horizon and there wasn't a satellite channel handy. Even now, one was out on the bench, clearly taken apart for service.

It was the back end of the container that really drove home how different Moretti was. The Gray Eagle's ground control station was a full pilot-and-copilot rig, but Kara's only view of the world was through screens.

And for such a seemingly simple craft, there were a whole lot of screens. Big ones where he had windows on the Jane, secondaries that must include sensor data when active. Then a full set of flight instrumentation and controls.

On top of that was a bank of radios even more daunting than on his Calamity Jane, which was saying something. SOAR's MH-47Gs had a whole lot more tech rigged up to them than your average Chinook: terrain avoidance, signal jamming, and advanced threat detection were only the start of what he'd had to learn when he transferred into the 160th Regiment. But the Gray Eagle specialized in signal interception and location, and had the hardware on show to back it up.

He looked over at Kara to see if she'd changed somehow. No and a little bit yes. Still beautiful and with a dancer's upright posture-ballet as a kid that had never worn off, maybe-that could just kill a man. She walked like a confident soldier and stood like one. Her expression didn't look any different as she baited the newcomer over what flavor of soda he wanted from the small fridge beneath the workbench.

But with this high-tech world wrapped tight around her, Kara looked as if she belonged. He supposed it was like how he felt when he settled into the pilot's seat of the Jane; everything just kind of fit.

This high-tech dungeon looked good on her, d.a.m.ned good.

"Don't!" She aimed a finger at him and he knew exactly what she meant, though clearly the other two didn't.

Justin couldn't help himself, didn't even bother to try.

He just kept smiling at her.

Chapter 6.

Kara forced herself to look away from Justin. She could see by Major Wilson's face that he'd been inside RPA coffins before. A sweeping glance, and no more. It told her something about his security clearance at least.

His eyes hesitated only twice: once on the poster of an MQ-1C Gray Eagle soaring among the clouds, and once on her Fordham University Rams banner. She made a guess based on his hesitation.

"The Lions suck, by the way."

Wilson's frown was as instantaneous as only a true Columbia University Lions football fan would have.

"And we're going to kick your b.u.t.ts this year too."

He actually growled, but it was hard to argue with Fordham's winning streak. Reality sucks, dude! But she kept the last to herself, figuring that she'd pushed him hard enough.

She could also see Justin looking like a kid on Christmas morning, finding a new colt under the tree or something. She still wasn't sure what instinct had made her force Wilson's hand to let her bring Justin along.

It had been a hard-learned lesson to trust that instinct. But once she'd learned to listen to it, she'd graduated top of her ROTC cla.s.s and eventually ended up sitting in this box in the Mediterranean.

Good little Instinct! She gave it a mental pat on the head and then shoved it aside. She was busy now.

"So, talk." Kara gave it the full Brooklyn tawk, spun around her pilot's chair, and dropped into it. At her nod, Justin took the copilot's seat.

The Major dragged over a stool from the workbench; Michael remained standing.

"I can't tell you who I work for and, no, pestering me isn't going to-"

"Well then, I guess we're done here." Kara made to stand up. "C'mon, Justin."

Michael watched her blandly, but she ignored him.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" Wilson cursed. "Will you sit still for a G.o.dd.a.m.n second, Moretti?"

She held out her hands as if intending no offense and dropped back into her seat. Kara had no intention of leaving, not when there was clearly something intense going on here.

"I'm-"

"-with The Activity," Kara cut him off. She had no idea where that shot in the dark came from, but now that she'd said it, it made perfect sense.

Wilson's blink of surprise was the only confirmation she needed.

"The Activity" was just one of the many nicknames for the former U.S. Army Intelligence Support Activity, which had been supposedly disbanded in 1989 and gone through a dozen incarnations since as it was vastly increased in size.

"Centra Spike, Gray Fox, Cemetery Wind...I'm guessing that you won't be telling me your outfit's current name."

"How the f.u.c.k?" Wilson exploded.

Justin was smiling, so Kara nodded to him.

"Clue one." Justin slouched down farther in the copilot's armchair beside her as if he'd been here a hundred times before. He crossed his booted feet just as if he were wearing cowboy boots out on the range.

She considered being ticked, but then decided that she'd rather have Justin sitting so close in the copilot's seat than Major Wilson. Bring it on, Cowboy.

"You won't identify your unit, not even in this location."

"Two," Kara joined in, "arrogant beyond belief."

"Three-" Justin continued without hesitation.

She was really starting to appreciate more about him than just the way he looked and the way he kissed.

"-you didn't even blink entering this container, which is one of the most secure areas aboard the Peleliu."

"Four, rude too."

His growing scowl was awesome.

"Five"-Justin made it sound as if the two of them had been tag-teaming idiots forever instead of this being their first run together-"you went directly for her, the 5D's RPA pilot. That points to something very clandestine."

"Six-" Kara hadn't thought of that one, but it was a good point.

Justin was proving that he had a brain despite being from the wrong side of the Hudson River-by about twenty-five hundred kilometers.

"-Colonel Michael Gibson," Kara continued, "knows exactly who you are, and I know that The Activity's primary mandate is actionable intelligence for Tier 1 a.s.sets. Which includes: Delta, DEVGRU, and the Air Force's 24th STS. Now, while the Colonel here might be the number one Tier 1 a.s.set warrior there is, I'm not any of those. Yet you came to me. So can we cut through your Upper West Side ego and get on with it?"

Major Willard Wilson turned to look a question at Michael, but it was clear that he hadn't said anything beyond greeting good old w.i.l.l.y.

"And seven." Kara wanted to crow with triumph as the last piece clicked into place. "You're a support guy. Admin. Logistics and liaison for a field team. Probably washed out and couldn't make the grade."

"It spares the action teams from having to deal with nut jobs like you." But his tone said her last guess had hit too close to home.

They shared a grin for the first time.

"Could get to like you, Major Willard." Fat chance in h.e.l.l, Kara told herself.

"You won't find me banking on that any time soon, Captain Moretti."

"Hey"-she turned to Justin-"he's not as dumb as he looks."

Justin didn't try answering; he was still trying to catch his breath.

Lord above. The Activity?

Meeting one of them made it feel normal that there were a half-dozen stealth helicopters parked on the deck close above his head. Or that he was sitting inside Kara Moretti's top secret domain.

These guys made the CIA's Special Activities Division look like they were using billboards to advertise their most clandestine operations. The Activity were the ultimate spooks of the military intelligence community. The CIA and NSA specialized in regional and national intel. The Activity pinpointed individual cell phones and could tell you the layout of bin Laden's compound before you went busting in the front door.