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- Herausgeber: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
-a Night Stalkers romance story- The heart-warming sequel to The Ghost of Willow’s Past. Helicopter pilot Amy Patterson-James attacked the future love of her life the day she met him, but those had been special circumstances. She’d punched him out over the remains of a willow tree in the Portland, Oregon rose garden. Two years later, on their first day in combat together, she’s shot down deep in enemy territory. Wounded and on the run. She banks it all on her love for Chief Warrant Dusty James and another old willow tree just as she did that First Day, Every Day.
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First Day Every Day
a Night Stalkers Romance Story
M. L. Buchman
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Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy
Ghost of Willow’s Past
About the Author
Also by M. L. Buchman
The events in this story occur 2 years after
Ghost of Willow’s Past
(The Night Stalkers Story #1).
Chapter 1
Chief Warrant Officer Amelia Patterson-James felt the jarring impact before she spotted its origin. Standard 9mm rifle rounds would ping off her helicopter’s windshield and armor with little effect. The only thing heavy enough to make the Menace jerk like this were anti-aircraft rounds, perhaps 23mm. Anything less wouldn’t have jarred the helo; anything heavier and they wouldn’t still be flying.
The Menace was an MH-6M Little Bird helicopter loaded for bear. Twin mini-guns and two seven-rocket tubes mounted outside on stub wings—the coolest office a girl could have. Inside there was room enough for only the pilot and co-pilot, and barely that. The cabin was so tight that the Little Birds were flown without doors, only the large front windshield offering any forward protection and not much of that.
Pilot? Amy felt the controls go loose in her hand. She’d been mirroring Bernie on her set of controls, and learning quite how good he was. It was her first sortie as co-pilot for the 5th Battalion D Company of the U.S. Army’s 160th SOAR, day one on the job after two years of training and five prior years of flying for lesser outfits.
Bernie, the pilot, wasn’t reacting, which was a bad sign—no time to think about that.
Amy slammed the cyclic joystick that rose between her knees hard to the left and let Menace tumble into a sideways roll to get clear of the attack. It would make her harder to hit again; she just hoped that the helicopter was undamaged enough to recover from this roll or she was a dead woman. Her body alternately floated off the seat and slammed back onto it as the helo exchanged right side up for upside down and continued over.
Bernie flopped against her.
A very bad sign.
Pinning the cyclic between her thighs for a moment, she reached up and flicked the setting on his seatbelt harness that attached to the back of his vest. Now it was set to retract-only, like a car seatbelt, locking up during an emergency stop.
Grabbing the cyclic again in her right hand, she gave it a twist during the next tumble. Bernie flopped back against his seat, the harness retracted, and pinned him in place.
A quick glance revealed a hole punched through the left center of his visor. By the size of the hole, her estimate of the 23mm round was right on the money. The ultimate bad news for her pilot.
On your own, girl.
She didn’t even have time to add a heartfelt, Shit! for Bernie’s epitaph.
Amy returned her attention to the sharp granite mountains leading to the narrow mountain pass between Soran, Iraq and Piranshahr, Iran.
U.S. military forces weren’t even supposed to be here. This was a classic mission for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment: Get in, hit the target, get the hell out.
Don’t be seen.
Something the Night Stalkers of the 160th specialized in…usually.
The don’t be seen part was easy. It was straight up midnight, two hours before moonrise. The anti-aircraft had caught them as much by chance as anything, firing wildly aloft after the two other helos ahead of her in the flight had roared by. They’d stirred up the hornet’s nest and she and Bernie had walked right into it.
The three-bird flight had been flying down the gut of a river canyon. Now Amy was falling out of the sky into a river canyon and the rock walls were impossibly close through her night-vision goggles, glowing in a dozen shades of dull green in her infrared view.
She stomped on the left rudder and dragged the cyclic back to the right to break the roll.
The roll lashed back the other way and—once her eyes uncrossed from the g-force that drove her against her harness—she was able to focus on the fast-approaching rock of the steep canyon wall.
Menace groaned in protest, but responded.
Her baby wasn’t supposed to groan.
Up on the collective with her left hand, craving a right turn through the sky with the cyclic in her right, she managed to skim along the wall with her skids barely a half-rotor diameter above the ground. Ripping along at a hundred-and-thirty knots—with rotor blades only twenty-seven feet in diameter—half a rotor was far too close for comfort.
That’s when she spotted the attacker.
Her attacker.
The bastard nasty enough to think shooting her was a good idea.
Guess again, Jerkwad. You messed with the wrong girl.
Racing down the center of the narrow two-lane Iraq Route 3 that followed close beside the river was a white Toyota HiLux, the favorite vehicle of the world’s rebels and terrorists. It was reliable as a rock and plenty powerful to carry the ton of weight of the twin-barrel, Russian ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun—that was even now trying to get a bead on her as the driver bounced and careened over the rough-paved road. There were two other gunmen in the back of the vehicle firing rifles in her direction. Bright sparks flashed before her as their bullets bounced off her windshield.
Without thought, courtesy of long training, Amy unleashed a pair of 70mm Hydra rockets up their tailpipe.
The first one creased the side of their truck and punched a hole in the hillside above the next curve in the road.
The second one delivered eight-point-seven pounds of high explosive as a direct hit on the tailgate. The rocket punched through the thin metal and delivered its full charge against the substantial anti-aircraft gun.
A fireball bloomed in a blinding green-white flash on her night vision gear, completely overloading the electronics and her optic nerves and obliterating all visibility.
Pull back on the cyclic.
Still dazzled by the explosion, she climbed to clear the aftermath and tried to recall if the thin power lines were on the north side of the road, or south.
North, she hoped, but wasn’t sure. After the tumble she wasn’t even sure whether she was flying east or west.
Toss the coin.
She pulled up and to the right. South.
Everything came apart at once.
Amy’s vision came back in time to see and avoid the telephone pole and line. It was also in time to witness one of her shot-up rotor blades break off at the midpoint. Instead of breaking away free, and giving the other five-and-a-half blades even a slim chance of survival, the titanium leading edge hung on long enough to slam the broken piece into her rear rotor.
