Way of the Warrior (Troubleshooters #17.5)(84)
She smiled through her tears. “I have a feeling I can stand you for a good long time.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tina Wainscott has always loved the combination of suspenseful chills and romantic thrills. She’s published fifteen romantic suspense novels, as well as fourteen paranormal romances as Jaime Rush. Losing her nephew, a Marine, in the war made her realize that our military men are the perfect heroes. Not only during the war but afterward as they try to stitch their lives and souls together once they’re home. And so was born her series for Random House about five Navy SEALs who take the fall for a covert mission gone wrong and join The Justiss Alliance, a private agency that exacts justice outside the law.
As Jaime Rush, she is the author of the Hidden series, featuring humans with the essence of dragons, angels, and magic, and the award-winning Offspring series, about psychic abilities and government conspiracies.
Tina lives in southwest Florida with her husband, daughter, and cat.
For sneak peeks and more, visit www.TinaWainscott.com. For more on her paranormal romances, go to www.JaimeRush.com.
NSDQ
A Night Stalkers Novella
M.L. BUCHMAN
U.S. Army Captain Lois Lang circled her Black Hawk helicopter five miles outside the battle zone and ten thousand feet up. Usually height equaled safety in countries like Afghanistan where the Taliban had no air power, especially in the middle of the night. Get above the reach of most of the cheaper weapons—rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and the like—and you were generally safe.
But the Lataband Pass, visible as a thousand shades of green in her night-vision gear, deep in the heart of the Hindu Kush Mountains, was at eight thousand feet and the surrounding peaks cleared ten easily. Even at night in the mountains, ten thousand was pushing the high-hot limit of the helicopters. The high altitude and midsummer temperatures gave her chopper’s rotor blades thinner air to push against. To get higher, she’d have to really burn fuel; never a good bet on a long mission.
So, she and her crew circled wide and low, and watched their threat displays closely. Not a soul this far from the pass, not even a goatherd. Nothing to do but wait. Their job was CSAR—she always thought of a seesaw whenever she heard the acronym for Combat Search and Rescue, every time—which meant their night would be quiet and routine, unless something went wrong with the attack the U.S. Army’s 160th was about to unleash at the heart of the pass.
A ground team, probably from the 75th Rangers, had been dumped in this barren wasteland a week before to do recon. And for tonight, they’d reported a massive convoy of munitions crossing this disused pass from Jalalabad, Pakistan, to supply the Taliban forces inside Afghanistan. With the drawdown of U.S. troops, the Taliban were gearing up to hit the Afghani government forces and hit them hard. Special Ops Forces’ job tonight was to make sure they didn’t have the supplies from the ever-so-innocent Pakistanis to do so.
“Keeping chill?” she asked her crew.
“Chill,” Dusty replied from his copilot’s seat beside her. He’d been a backender, only recently jumped from a back-seat gunner crew chief to front-seat copilot, and they were rotating him through the different choppers for cross-training. He normally flew troop transport but had logged time in the heavy weapons DAP version of the Black Hawk, as well. Now that it was nearing his last flight in CSAR, she’d definitely miss him. It was tradition to scoff at backenders who aspired to be pilots, but Dusty definitely had what it took.
“We be very cool, Superwoman,” Chuff and Hi-Gear answered from their crew chief positions right behind the pilots’ seats.
Her nickname had been inevitable. Being named for both of Superman’s girlfriends, Lois Lane and Lana Lang, had labeled her for life. Her mother had always been a crack up, right to her last comment from her death bed, “Flying out now, honey.” The fact that Lois had the same light build, narrow face, and straight dark hair as Margot Kidder—who’d played Lois in the old Superman movies—didn’t help matters.
The two crew chiefs sat in back-to-back seats facing sideways out either side of the chopper. Steerable M134 miniguns were mounted right in front of them.
The days of the UH-1 Huey medical choppers with the big white square and red cross painted on their unarmed bellies were long gone. Bad guys now thought the red crosses made for good targets. And in the modern world of strike-and-retreat tactics, there was no quiet after-the-battle moment when it would be safe to go in and gather the wounded.
Rescue ops now happened right in the heart of the fray, and a medical chopper arrived ready to both save lives and deliver death. Some of the old guard guys complained about that but not SOAR. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment had flown into Takur Ghar, bin Laden’s compound, and a thousand other hellholes, and CSAR crews like hers had been there to pull the lead crews back out when things went bad.
The two medics, a couple of new guys, checked in with her, as well. They were the real crazies: Chuck and a new woman named Noreen. They went into a hot battle zone armed with a stretcher and a medical bag. Beyond crazy.
“Thirty seconds,” she called as the mission clock continued counting down to 0200. The Night Stalkers, as everyone called the 160th SOAR, ruled the night. “Death Waits in the Dark” was their main motto, and it did. They were the most highly trained chopper pilots on the planet, and she’d busted her ass for eight years to fly with them, spent two more years in training, and had now been in the air with them for two more. It was her single finest achievement.