Target of Mine E-Book

M. L. Buchman

• Herausgeber: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

-a Night Stalkers 5E romance- The Night Stalkers 5E (5th Battalion, E Company) flies again, going where no one else dares to venture. NAME: Nikita Hayward TEAM: DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) MISSION: To prove her worth NAME: Drake Roman TEAM: Night Stalkers 5E MISSION: To enjoy the ride Nikita Hayward earned her place on DEVGRU and she proves it every day. Being female? Not a factor. Fighting alongside the very best? Absolutely where she belongs. Drake Roman flies with the most elite helicopter company, the 5E, because they fly out to the limit. And when the time comes to fly past it? His helo and his minigun lead the way. When the two of them join on a mission into the unknown, then they discover who lies precisely at the center of that Target of Mine!

Leseprobe

Target of Mine

a Night Stalkers 5E romance

M. L. Buchman

Contents

Letter from M. L. Buchman

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

About the Author

Also by M. L. Buchman

If you enjoyed this title

Don’t Miss a Thing!

Letter from M. L. Buchman

Greetings!

Target of Mine was originally conceived as a collaborative project with Cristin Harber. When we first met at a writer’s conference in 2016, Cristin and I discovered that we both love writing romance, we both love action-packed suspense, but most especially we both love plunging into projects and discovering the joy of the characters and story.

Getting a chance to play with Team Titan has been so much fun. I was captivated by the team leader, Jared Westin, and the woman who sweeps his feet out from under him—sometimes literally—Lily “Sugar” Chase. They were completely unlike any character I had ever written, and yet I so enjoyed their story that I just had to tackle them. They remain Cristin’s characters, but she has graciously allowed me to keep their sojourn in the Night Stalkers’ world.

Target of Mine takes place shortly after Cristin’s Westin’s Chase. It is also the third title in my Night Stalkers 5E series but, as with all of my books, written completely to stand just fine on its own from either series.

Thank you, Cristin and Team Titan, for letting the Night Stalkers come play!

Hope you enjoy the flight,

M. L. Buchman

2018, the Oregon Coast

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Chapter One

Rain sucked.

Philippine September-monsoon rain really sucked.

In a full flightsuit and helmet it was thick, hot, and disgustingly sweaty.

Worse, it was creating mayhem with their midnight attack plan.

Drake Roman hung on to his M134 Minigun with both hands as the Night Stalkers’ DAP Hawk helicopter Beatrix banked hard to avoid a hundred meters of island that came out of nowhere. The tactical readouts were showing nothing but a wall of water thick enough to block most radar signals, and the infrared night vision was totally useless because everything was the same temperature—wet.

His flight harness cut into his shoulders as he leaned against the turn. Levering himself forward, Drake stuck his head out the window, trying to see ahead through the unlit darkness. The rain was coming straight down, but the Hawk moved at over a hundred and fifty knots, so even in the slipstream of the hull, he couldn’t see squat as the rain drumbeat on his helmet.

The crew chiefs’ seats faced to either side from close behind the two pilots’ seats. His Minigun was on a traveler that reached out the side window and gave him a full range of fire from directly sideways to straight ahead and from level to straight down.

Right now he just wanted someone to aim it at.

On the first pass, the other crew chief had taken a hit, a bad one by the sound of it. With Carl out of action, the pilots had twisted sideways, giving Drake the primary action side, so Carl was someone else’s problem. He had an aircraft to defend.

Normally able to strike from a thousand meters away, tonight’s weather was forcing encounters to be up close and personal.

“I’m in crew chief starboard seat,” a new voice announced on the intercom, “I’ve got Carl patched and sedated.” Anyone else, he wouldn’t have registered more than the fact that the position was occupied and Carl was alive. But Chief Petty Officer Nikita Hayward spoke with a smooth, soft Southern accent that had messed with him since the day he’d first met her on a mission a year before. Never did him any good, but damn he liked that voice.

The wall of water broke—one instant in the midst of a biblical downpour, the next in clear air—to reveal a narrow beach and a high vertical cliff capped by dark jungle. Probably be dramatic as hell in the daytime. At night it was just another obstacle to not smash into. At the base was huddled a line of small boats.

Less than a hundred meters above the sea and less than that from the soaring cliffs, the tactical readout inside his helmet’s visor finally painted a clear image.

Tourist boat. Tourist boat…and another tourist boat. They were tied up just outside the surf line. Abandoned to the nightly monsoon, they’d be washed clean for tomorrow’s tourists who came to mob the dramatic beaches of Palawan Island, Philippines, along the South China Sea.

Except it wasn’t only tourist boats huddled here tonight and the Night Stalkers of the 5th Battalion E Company had been waiting for just such a night to take care of a problem.

Someone had made it abundantly clear to the Philippine military to not interfere in this region. The AFP had recently lost three helicopters, two boats, and twenty personnel before giving up.

Drug-runner, gun-runner, pirate—it didn’t matter. Tonight was the night they were going down.

Technically, the US couldn’t help, at least not in any obvious way. They couldn’t admit to attacking any Philippine nationals without putting their new military base leases at risk. The Philippine government had given the US military access to five new bases in addition to Subic Bay with the understanding that they’d help defend the country, not attack it.

Regrettably, the local criminal element didn’t feel the need to honor any such unspoken agreement. The 5E were her to give them a lesson tonight in the hazards of ignoring that.

The 5th Battalion E Company was here because they specialized in never-having-been-there operations.

Tourist boat…tourist bo—

The next boat flared with heat signatures of ten people on a night when no one in their right mind would be afloat. Hard radar returns, as if their boat was loaded with more than tourists or local fish. There was metal on that boat, a lot of it.

He saw the hot flash of gunfire from yet another boat just emerging out of the curtain-like edge of the deluge. Multiple targets.

The bastards had already taken the first shots, hitting Carl more by chance than skill—which satisfied the 5E’s rules of engagement for this mission: do not fire first. They hadn’t.

But paybacks were about to be delivered.

Big time.

Chapter Two

What the hell did you guys do to my helicopter?” The mechanic was practically screaming. Like he’d never seen a shot-up helo before.

Nikita stood off to the side of the hangar next to a long folding table, checking through her gear. It was late afternoon and the four helicopters of the 5E had just unloaded from the C-5A Galaxy transport. After the long flight home, they’d been reassembled and then hopped to the 5E’s private corner of Mother Rucker. Fort Rucker, Alabama, had gained that name for the brutal standards of the Army flight instructors stationed here and, even though Nikita wasn’t part of the 5E, she’d adopted the name.

“She only has a few holes in her,” Drake Roman protested loudly. “Beatrix done good!”

“Thirty-two,” another mechanic, this one with a clipboard, spoke up. “Thirty-two holes. Who knows how much damage to internal systems we’ll find when we peel off the skins. If it wasn’t a Black Hawk, you’d be dead.”

By Nikita’s estimation, that count was low for a standard mission with the 5E, but mechanics enjoyed whining. Besides, they didn’t count the holes that had been put in Carl.

“Told you she done good,” Drake patted the side of the damaged helicopter.

The helicopter wasn’t the only one who’d done good. Nikita had flown a half dozen missions with the 5E over the last year and they were becoming her favorite assignment. They weren’t designated as a Special Mission Unit, unlike her own DEVGRU SEAL Team 6, but they should be. Most of the time Delta Force and DEVGRU didn’t get anywhere without tapping the Night Stalkers of the 160th SOAR.

The Special Operations Aviation Regiment delivered her team wherever they needed to go, and always showed up to get them back out no matter what unholy hell was breaking loose. Of them all, the 5E was both the smallest and the most effective. They only had four helicopters: a monstrous twin-rotor Chinook, the lethal DAP Hawk, and a pair of Little Bird attack helos. And they were all stealth rigged—making them some of the rarest helicopters anywhere. They also had one of the most advanced drones yet produced for their exclusive use.

To her knowledge, the only other company who rated any stealth rotorcraft was the 5th Battalion D Company and the 5D only had two. Which was how the 5E rated their own private corner at Ech Stagefield on Mother Rucker whenever they were home. These assets were best kept hidden.

“What is wrong with those people?” Drake stood directly across the folding tables she’d set up to sort her gear. He stood only a few inches taller than her own five-ten. He was lean, but soldier fit with dark eyes and darker hair. And he was pissed.

“Why do you feel so defensive about your aircraft?” Nikita went back to sorting her ammo to determine how much she needed for restock. For some reason, which her commander Luke Altman wasn’t sharing, he and she had returned with the 5E. Usually they would do what the rest of the SEAL Team had done, just melt away after a mission. Standard protocol was to go back to the DEVGRU base at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia and do a full breakdown of the mission to extract lessons learned. Then start into skills training while waiting for the next call-up.

“Because she did great!” Drake apparently just needed to rant, so she let him. He’d get down to what was actually bothering him eventually. He turned back to glare at the mechanics.

That’s when she recognized the stain pattern on the back of his flightsuit. The outline of the crew chief’s seat back was marked across the fabric—clean where the seat back had been, dark brown where Drake’s arms and shoulders had stuck out beyond the edges of the seat.

Carl’s blood-spray pattern. There’d been a lot of it.

She’d stabilized him with a tourniquet around the stump of his mostly missing arm. And a pressure patch to the mess that was his other shoulder. Glue to close a few more holes. He was still listed as critical at the Antonio Bautista Air Base hospital in the Philippines. The chances of Drake Roman’s fellow crew chief ever leaving there except in a box were slim.

Nikita remembered what Lieutenant Commander Altman had done for her on a similar occasion.

She walked over to the unlocked weapons cabinet where the team had been stashing their mission weapons. She grabbed a pair of MK11 sniper rifles, slipped on suppressors, and took a couple boxes of ammo.

“Hey, Roman!”

“What?”

When he turned, she threw one of the rifles to him.

He caught it and looked down at it in surprise. “What?”

“You once said that you wish you could shoot like I did.”

“Uh huh.” He’d been her rear guard during a Peruvian mission a few months ago. Six targets, all out past fifteen hundred meters. She’d taken down all six before they figured out what was happening. It’s what SEAL snipers were trained for.

“Well, it’s never gonna happen.”

That earned her a perplexed smile. “Great. So what’s with the rifle?”

“I figure that I can’t make you a worse shot than you already are, so anything has to be an improvement.”

He laughed. It was bitter, but it was a laugh. He was one of the top helicopter gunners anywhere. But a Minigun wasn’t a sniper weapon—it was a blunderbuss.

“Besides,” she stepped out of the shadows into the sunlight and so-familiar heavy heat of the late Alabama afternoon, “I figure I should get you out of here before the mechanic shoots you, or the other way round.”

“Fine.”

Drake tried to shake off the tightness in his shoulders but wasn’t having much luck with it. They felt as if he was turning into the hunchback of Notre Dame. He had no idea why he was being so twitchy.

Even after a year stationed at Mother Rucker, he wasn’t used to the Alabama heat. He peeled his flightsuit and chucked it over on the laundry pile. The shorts and t-shirt he’d worn underneath weren’t much better. Alabama was a land where sweat didn’t evaporate, it clung.

When Nikita did the same, though, he could feel his mood improving.

She was the first and, as far as he knew, only woman to make DEVGRU through the front door and it showed on her body. She was of a medium build that fit her perfectly. But she wasn’t merely strong, she was carved. Not like a bodybuilder with bulging biceps and six-pack abs. She was carved the way an artist would shape her in cool stone or, better yet, warm wood—not an extra ounce of flesh, but what was there was perfect. Soft, smooth…and tough as hell. Her brunette hair was always pulled back in a painfully tight ponytail that made her look panther sleek. And her light brown eyes were always watching.

He followed her out of the hangar and onto the stagefield. Ech was designed for helicopters only. It had five short runways for practicing mass landings and takeoffs, or emergency procedures. The concrete was rough with a thousand scars from auto-rotation practice and helicopters sliding to a grinding halt on steel skids.

But not a single aircraft had landed here other than the 5E since they took over the field last year. Their four rotorcraft were never left out on the apron. Instead they were immediately rolled out of sight into the field’s lone hangar. The field purposely looked abandoned and unused, weeds growing up through the cracks in the concrete and the surrounding field in need of a good mowing. At the rate it was growing, maybe they should skip mowing and just bale the area as hay.

The only change to Ech Stagefield in the last year was that the hangar was now highly secure and there was a new two-story housing unit big enough for each of the 5E’s fifteen pilots and gunners to have their own tiny apartment in addition to a few guest spaces—those had only ever been used by the SEALs. It included a communal kitchen-dining room-briefing room, but most of their meetings were held out at the small cluster of picnic tables between the offices and the hangar.

Ech was surrounded by thick ’Bama forest on all sides: towering longleaf pine and willow oak, hickory and beech, prickly holly and sweet bay. He’d learned the trees when he found out Nikita was from Alabama—not that he’d ever had a chance to show off that bit of knowledge. Even a year here and it still smelled strange, particularly on the quiet evenings when his nose was expecting the Scotch pine, oak, birch, and maple of the New Hampshire hills where his family kept a summer home up on Squam Lake. The only entry to Ech was by air or a narrow dirt road through the forest.

He tromped along behind Nikita as she led him across the tarmac and out into the grassy field.

“Walk softly,” Nikita’s voice was barely louder than the banging in the hangar behind them as the mechanics got to work.

“What does walking have to do with shooting?”

Nikita stopped and he almost ran into her.

“What?”

“Are you here to learn or to whine like a little pissant, Roman?” Soft Southern with a razor-edged tongue.

“To whine like a little pissant!” At least that felt like he was getting something done.

“Okay,” Nikita turned back toward the hangar.

“What? No! Wait.”

She stopped.

He closed his eyes but all he could see was the blood all over the DAP Hawk’s cargo bay. Just wait until the mechanics had to clean that up. Then they’d be sorry. Maybe as sorry as he already was. He’d done what he could, swabbing out the back of the DAP during the long flight home. He’d nearly punched his pilots Rafe and Julian when they offered to help. Carl had been his fellow crew chief, so it had been his job to do and he’d done it alone.

He managed a deep breath and opened his eyes. Nikita was still standing there, as impassively as ever—more beautiful than a Grecian statue, waiting for him to choose.

“Okay. If it gets my mind off…” he couldn’t finish the sentence. “I’ll learn anything.”

Nikita nodded and continued to lead him out into the field. “To take your shooting to the next level, you gotta leave emotion behind. Emotion changes heartrate and reaction time. And it breaks concentration. Those are the obvious effects.”

“What are the unobvious?”

“Emotion blurs perception. To shoot at truly long distances, out past a thousand meters or more, your entire being must be perceiving the shot flying true far downrange or you’ll never hit your target.”

“Sounds like mysticism, but put those damn gunrunners back in my sights,”—that’s what they had to have been by the scale of the explosions when the 5E had finally destroyed their boats—“and I’ll show you what I’m perceiving downrange.”

“Look behind us.”

He turned. Through the thick growth of the late-summer-tall grass, he could only see one heavily trampled clear line, his own. Nikita Hayward had hardly left any impression at all.

Walk softly, she’d said.

Drake gazed back at the line of helicopters parked in the hangar beyond.

That’s what the 5E did: their stealth aircraft walked softly and carried a damn big stick.

“Okay. Show me how to do that.”

“What the hell are we here for?” A big voice boomed across the twilit airfield, making Drake break off in mid-clip to see what was going on. They were deep in the tall grass, so he actually had to rise up on all fours from his prone position beside her in order to see.

Nikita sighed—the man had the attention span of the goddamn gnats that kept hovering about them. Even for someone who was hurting, he was being chaotic. That he had hit the target at all over the last hour was a testament to his skill.

Ever since she was a child, she’d always found shooting was a great way to relax, giving her a simple focus that cleared her mind of other problems.

Not Drake.

“Come on, Roman. I thought you were serious about learning this shit.” Drake was a seriously decent shot for a helicopter crew chief. She felt that there was hope of training him to be actually good. Maybe not SEAL Team 6 sniper good, but definitely operator level.

“I am.”

“Well, then you’re gonna have to learn to focus. You can either be a sniper or see what shiny objects are glittering nearby to distract you.”

With practiced speed, the hangar doors were being raced shut before the intruder could round the corner of the hangar and see the line of stealth helicopters.

“Right. Sorry.” He turned back and caught her looking toward the stranger continuing to shout out his impatience.

“Chief Petty Officer Nikita Hayward!” Drake’s voice was soap opera dramatic. “I’m shocked. You call that maintaining focus?”

“Screw you, Roman.” At least she’d stayed lower, looking between stalk and seeds so that she’d be less visible. Drake’s head was popped up like some stupid gopher just asking to be shot in the head.

“Anytime.”

“Yeah, I already knew that about you.” Sergeant First Class Drake Roman was a damn handsome flyboy and knew it. It had taken him under thirty seconds into their first mission together last year to make it clear that the offer was open whenever she was interested. Absolutely not! Though, oddly, he’d never renewed the invitation and that bothered her at times. It was as if he was up to something, but she couldn’t figure out what. Normally she had to beat guys like him back down more times than kudzu vines crawling into the vegetable garden.

Her attention stayed on the newcomer standing in front of the now sealed hangar that housed the 5E’s four helicopters. Strangers were not supposed to come to this corner of Mother Rucker. This was exclusively the territory of the Night Stalkers 5th Battalion E company. Outsiders not welcome.

He was a big guy, classic broad-shoulder type. Walked with the arrogance of a US Army Ranger, but there was something else about him. Something that didn’t fit—completely—aside from the babe at his side.

She’d have looked like an over-built sidewalk hussy with her leather clothes, long brown-black hair, and come-fuck-me boots, if it wasn’t for where she was. Mother Rucker was one of the most secure military bases in the country, and Ech Stagefield was perhaps the most secure part of the fort—it was a seriously long way from the Miami strip. Besides, what crazy-as-shit person wore leather this far south of the Mason-Dixon line?

Nikita unclipped the Leupold telescopic sight off the rail of her MK11 rifle and turned to inspect the guy.

He was ignoring Pete and Danielle—the 5E’s commander and chief pilot—standing right in front of him. Instead, he was looking right at her. He shouldn’t even be able to see their position. They hadn’t dug in their shooting site, but the sun was down and the light was getting iffy. Besides, she and Drake were fifty meters out into the tall-growing grass.

The smile he sent her way was chilly at best. It made her wish she wasn’t merely using the scope, but had swung her entire rifle his way just to chap his ass. Then he turned his attention to Pete and Danielle. The leather-clad babe had followed his line of sight and now she was watching them.

Nikita checked the parking lot. Latest model Ford Expedition SUV, black, top-of-the-line, windows all tinted, fancy chrome wheels—all the geegaws. It fit right in with their flashy style.

“Should we go over?” Drake didn’t yet have the sniper instincts that would have made it a whisper. Thankfully, the light breeze was blowing from the hangar toward their position, so their voices weren’t likely to carry in that direction.

“You that desperate to get near a busty woman in leather, Roman? Besides, we’d just be sent away again if it’s anything important. Command talks to you when they’re good and ready—not a moment before.” She felt foolish for stating the obvious. After snapping the scope back onto the rail, she double-checked the alignment marks.

“We’ve got incoming. Whoo-doggies, do we ever,” this time Drake whispered, but it sounded more like awe than caution.

“You’re not from Texas, Roman, so cut that out. Your Southern sucks even worse than your Yankee.”

Nikita glanced over and saw the woman was coming their way with a swing of hip like she really did belong working the Miami strip—though definitely the high-rent end. Drake was gonna be useless until she was gone, so Nikita waited her out.

“Hi, honey. Aren’t you the cutest thing?” The woman laser-focused on Drake. Her voice had that sexy, breathless quality that always seemed to grab men by the balls. She had long sleek hair that defied the humidity, fair skin, and dark blue eyes.

Drake was a goner. For a reason that eluded her, Nikita found that irritating. Not that she had any claim, but they had fought together and this woman was—

“You can call me…Sugar.”

She had to be kidding. Even her honey-smooth words were lipsticked carmine red. The accent was real though. Maryland or maybe Virginia—somewhere up north.

“What are you shooting today?”

Like the overeager puppy dog he was when faced with a large set of breasts, Drake held up his MK11. “It’s a sniper rifle.”

“I can see that, Sweet Cheeks. May I?”

Before Nikita could protest, Drake had handed over his weapon. No SEAL in their right mind would ever relinquish their weapon short of a court martial. He was only a Night Stalker, but still it was no damn excuse.

“Sugar” gave the rifle a quick inspection that showed more familiarity with weapons than Nikita would have expected.

She shouldered it without asking permission.

Nikita jerked her sidearm, but Sugar was aiming downrange toward the target. If she turned it anywhere else, Nikita would take her out first and ask questions later.

Sugar snicked off the safety and unleashed five rounds, two heartbeats between each shot. Nice and steady. Good weapon control. Absorbed the kick of the 7.62 mm round through her shoulder and down into a back-braced leg. Her stance wasn’t military, but it was good.

Nikita ducked her head to her own scope and checked downrange. First shot high, the other four rang steel—near enough to dead center to make it impossible to tell if there was any drift. The target was six inches at six hundred meters, so it wasn’t a hard shot, even in this light, but it was far better shooting than most civilians could manage. As good as Drake had done.

Sugar handed the rifle back to Drake. “Your scope is set a half mil too low. Watch out for the catch on the trigger at the last pound of pull. If your shots are drifting to the right, that’s why. You should have it fixed. I’ve seen that in the MK11 Mod 0s before.” Her accent almost disappeared when she was talking weapons; in its place was a sharp professional.

Drake was clearly past noticing such nuances, or perhaps even past speech.

Sugar looked at Nikita and probably would have cracked her bubblegum if she’d been chewing any. Instead, she slapped a hand on her own leather-wrapped behind with a loud smack as she turned back toward the field. “Book and its cover, dearie, book and its cover. Y’all c’mon in. There’s gonna be a powwow if I know my man.” And she strode back the way she’d come, hip swing and all.

Drake didn’t look aside for a single second—total brain death.

“She sure got your number, Roman.”

In the past, Sugar most certainly would have gotten his number—in a past before Drake had met Nikita Hayward. Built babes in leather shooting high-power rifles were definitely his idea of seriously hot—wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t agree. But it was no longer any contest.

Sitting next to him in the tall grass was five-foot-ten of SEAL Team Six in female form. And not just female—she was Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman’s right hand. Whatever it took to be that in the male-ruled world of Special Operations, she had it. She embodied it. Nikita was the most amazing woman he’d ever met…not that he’d ever seen her give any man the time of day.

Jason had taken a run at her when the SEALs were along on a mission with them into Russia; he might as well have been running at a brick wall. M&M’s attempt to get her attention while they were in the Philippines was so dismal it couldn’t even be called a decent try.

Himself, he’d searched for tactics, an in on the powerful Nikita. He’d even watched the movie La Femme Nikita, the Point of No Return Bridget Fonda remake, as well as both television show spin-offs about the exquisitely lethal assassin, in hopes of gaining any insight from the fictitious character that he could apply to the real-deal SEAL.

Every single approach he’d cooked up had sounded stupid in his head and some tiny bit of common sense had left them all unvoiced. But to watch her shoot…it was a thing of true beauty. Lying together in the tall grass—doing nothing other than target shooting—was more of a start than he’d managed in a year.

No matter how much fun she was to watch, the hip-swinging Sugar wasn’t even in the same world. Besides, she had “her man.”

“Was she for real?” He’d always thought of himself as a great judge of women, but Nikita was slowly teaching him that he was only a great judge of the subset of women willing to slide into bed with him. Nikita wasn’t one of those. He found her wholly unreadable and that, as much as anything, had snagged his attention until even looking the other way was impossible when she was around.

“Give me your weapon.”

Nikita aimed his rifle downrange and, even though it was dark enough for the first fireflies to begin showing off, she fired a single round with hardly any hesitation. He heard the bright plink as the bullet hit steel. She handed the weapon back.

“What?”

“She’s for real. Thought you knew how to zero a scope. We can cover that next time if you want.”

“I know how to zero one. But I’m not used to shooting such piddly little guns. I just shifted down a bit instead.” At first he’d thought he’d been missing high because the distance to the target wasn’t what he thought it was or because Nikita was so distracting or… He’d run out of excuses and simply compensated by aiming lower. The pull to the right? That he’d missed entirely. Just what he didn’t want to do, look like a complete doofus in front of an ST6 SEAL.

“It’s better to zero the scope if you’re taking multiple shots like this. Less of a distraction. And if you don’t know how to fix that trigger, I can show you.” She flicked on a flashlight and began collecting her brass from the deep-shadowed grass. He did the same until they could account for all of their rounds, including the five that Sugar had shot.

He actually didn’t know how to repair the trigger, but he’d find someone else to show him how to fix it, then swear them to secrecy.

“A sniper in the field never leaves a trace that they were there,” and she didn’t. When they were done, there was nothing but two flat spots in the grass that would have disappeared soon enough. She leaned down to fluff up the bent grass. After admiring the view of a bent-over Nikita for a moment, he did the same. All evidence of lying close beside her for an hour, erased.

He hefted the MK11. A dozen pounds of rifle good to eight hundred meters and past a thousand in a pinch. The same basic cartridge as his M134 Minigun, though he typically fired eighty rounds per second instead of one every couple heartbeats. Being shot-perfect was less critical when he was throwing two pounds of lead per second versus half an ounce per shot. Personally, he liked the power of his M134, but there was a cleanness, a purity to what Nikita did, shot by shot, that he could appreciate.

As they walked back to the main hangar, he could see by the lights through the high windows above the closed doors that some of the others were gathering in. Most were still in the hangar working over the helicopters and their gear, preparing for whatever came next.

The 5E’s commanders Pete and Danielle, who flew the massive Chinook, were front and center. Rafe and Julian, the two pilots from his own Black Hawk crew, also came over. The drone’s copilot, Zoe DeMille, rounded out the gathering.

With just four helicopters and one drone, the 5E was the smallest company in the Night Stalkers by far. But they were the only team to be a hundred percent stealth equipped, garnering them the edgiest assignments. Drake wished he knew quite what he’d done right to be here so that he could make sure to keep doing it.

They’d flown against the 5th Battalion D Company in a training exercise, and beat them more by luck than anything. It hadn’t hurt that they had “borrowed” two of the 5D’s mechanics for their first missions, but the “loaners” recently returned to the 5D. Anything the 5E achieved from now on was completely theirs. He liked that.

A massive black SUV with tinted windows was the unknown vehicle in the parking lot.

“Wondered when you’d notice. Now you’re going to have serious truck envy too,” Nikita sounded thoroughly disgusted.

He just shrugged nonchalantly, but he thought it was seriously cool. Way better than his ten-year-old battered-blue Ford Ranger.

Another vehicle rolled in, a base Hummer.

“When it rains…” Drake recognized the passenger before he climbed out: Colonel Cass McDermott, the commander of the entire Night Stalkers 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Drake hadn’t seen him since the night the 5E was formed up right here at these picnic tables a year ago.

“…Oobleck falls from the sky.”

Drake looked over at Nikita.

“I’m a Dr. Seuss fan. So sue me.”

He laughed at the sudden image of Nikita Hayward as a little girl intently studying a book about a boy trying to save his kingdom from sticky green goo falling out of the sky. The mission to save the kingdom made sense for a future Navy SEAL, but Nikita as a young girl was almost impossible to imagine. Though if she’d worn pigtails as a kid, he definitely wanted to see a picture.

It was difficult reconciling her looks with who she was. By her looks she could have been the nice girl next door. But he’d seen this “girl” swing on a sixty-pound pack as easily as he could sling a rifle, and he’d watched her shoot to kill.

The casual ease of her soft Southern accent would never have flown at Andover Prep—whereas his own moneyed Boston had fit right in. She was like an education in how narrow his world had been before joining the military. But any thought that Southern meant slow or mild was blown away by one look in her brown eyes—she missed nothing of what was going on around her. He could see her mind working every moment behind those eyes.

At the picnic table, Pete and Danielle sat facing the two strangers. The two couples were eyeing each other in silent suspicion. Even Danielle’s unflappable Quebecois politeness appeared strained.

“Who are—” Major Pete Napier and the big guy snarled at each other almost in unison. Then they held a glaring contest before both turned their ire toward the Colonel.

Colonel McDermott pulled up a chair and sat at the end of the table as if joining a jovial party.

Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman, Nikita’s boss, came to stand on Drake’s other side. Not many men could make him feel small, but Altman was even more physically imposing than the stranger. Luke Altman wasn’t even the sort of guy you’d eventually call by his first name—he’d never be “my buddy Luke”, he’d simply be “Altman” or maybe Lieutenant Commander.

By the time they were all gathered around the table—five of the fifteen Night Stalkers who made up the 5E, two SEALs, the strangers, and the colonel—full dark had descended and, along with it, an Arctic chill that had nothing to do with the balmy September night. The cicadas and frogs seemed to be the only ones happy at the moment.

Drake did his best to pretend that he wasn’t trapped between the two ST6 SEALs, but was standing there because he belonged—lined up like they were a Greek chorus to narrate the drama about to unfold. Someone fetched a Coleman lantern and dropped it on the table, lighting everyone in strange shadows. Someone else dropped a case of beer on the table—which meant no flights tomorrow, no battle flights anyway. He wanted to step forward to take one, but neither of the ST6 operators moved, so he stayed put.

“So tell it,” Colonel McDermott said to no one in particular as he twisted a cap off a beer.

“Why?” The big guy snarled back. And in that moment, Nikita knew what he was because no one who was still military would talk back to a bird colonel that way. He wasn’t a US Army Ranger, he was a former US Army Ranger.

“Mercenary,” it came out as no more than a whisper, but his gaze shot to her. His smile built—it was not friendly.

“I’m a contractor. Always on behalf of my country. My Titan team takes on the messes you military types couldn’t handle if your lives depended on it. What are you, missy?” He grabbed two beers, opening one for the woman beside him. Then he tipped his own toward Nikita like he was aiming a gun.

Titan.Probably the toughest military contractors in the business. They were the baddest-ass door-kickers out there. Their rep was good. But still goddamn vigilantes—just ones with a big budget and a government sanction.

Nikita wouldn’t mind telling him exactly who she was, but DEVGRU operators didn’t go around announcing themselves to the general public—except for a couple of the guys on the bin Laden raid with no sense of silence. Luke Altman had never said a word about it, though she was fairly sure he’d been in on that mission.

This guy needed a different answer.

“I can tell you what I’m not.”

“Oh, bring it on,” he thumped his beer on the table, then crossed his arms over his big chest and glared at her. In a pissing contest, you didn’t look away, so she couldn’t see how the others were reacting except for Sugar. She sat close beside the big man and was slowly shaking her head in amusement—as if she knew what was about to land on her companion’s head and couldn’t wait to watch. Nikita could almost like her for that.

“I’m not from a team that levels an entire South American villa in a bang so big that I could hear it while stretched out all comfortable in my bunk at Fort Bragg,” which was not her real base. That was at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach along with the rest of DEVGRU.

That got his attention. He clearly didn’t like that she knew that about him. She’d always kept track of the main “contractors.” Ever since— No! She wasn’t going to think about that.

“No running attacks back and forth across the hills and hollers outside Charlottesville, Virginia. No gun battles shredding up multiple floors of an Abu Dhabi hotel. Y’all Ranger types are great at kicking down them doors. When I go through one, nobody knows I’ve been there, asshole.” Name calling was lame, but she couldn’t stop herself. And where the Southern hick was coming from she had no idea. But Nikita knew where her emotional heat was coming from, had spent most of her adult life trying to ignore it. Now she had her past chilled down to the point where it took someone like this over-confident bastard to drag it back to the surface. She didn’t appreciate it.

“How the hell do you know all—” The guy shut his trap and glared at her, his eyes momentarily shifting from merely black to carbonized steel. Then he glanced around the circle and she could see him start thinking—finally. She didn’t look aside, but had the impression that all of the others were remaining impassive, revealing nothing.

Sugar started to giggle. She tried to hide it in a swallow of beer but didn’t make it.

He glared at her.

Sugar broke into laughter and began poking at the man’s ribs with a red manicured nail. “She got you, J-dawg. She so got you. That’s exactly who you are.”

“Shit!” J-dawg scrubbed a hand over his face. A smile actually cracked his stern features. “Between Sugar and Nicole, you think I’d have learned about women who know how to fight.”

“Just wait until Asal grows up. Our girl will teach you a thing or two about warrior women.”