“Both.”
He tried to look hurt and ended up looking cute—at least for a scary-as-shit D-boy.
“Wait! You’re the one who prompted me to connect to the CCA. Would you allow an unknown drone to integrate with your comms network during a mission? I didn’t know it was a trap until later, but it was all a little too convenient in retrospect.”
“Sam said you were smart.” So, he’d been checking up on her. She needed to have a chat with her crew chief about doing that—like never again.
Then she spotted Trisha’s expression. “You had a plant on each flight to suggest that connection to the CCA’s data feed.”
“That wasn’t a question.” Trisha laughed. “Can’t wait to tease Emily about slipping that past her, but I can’t find her. Bitch is probably asleep.”
“No, I guess it wasn’t a question.” Abby knew that, in addition to being top-flight SOAR officers, Emily and Trisha were close friends, but it was still kinda shocking. She couldn’t imagine anyone calling the austere Colonel Beale by her first name, never mind by a curse. That woman was more daunting than a whole squad of D-boys.
“Emily dumped the debrief on me, but that won’t be for a couple hours. At the moment, I’ve got Chinooks spread across six states. Time to go sweep them up. Captain Kylie, we do have a planned exercise for your teams here at Fort Campbell tomorrow night. And yes, you’ll get a pre-mission briefing and time to plan for a change, but that’s tomorrow. We want the Night Stalkers to fully experience what you guys can deliver.” Then that evil grin flashed again. “And vice versa. Until then the corporal can set you up in Transient Quarters.” Trisha waved at the person who’d been lurking in the background.
Abby made a point of thanking Ethan and each of her crew chiefs before releasing them. Derek did the same, sending his team and the DAGOR off with the corporal. Soon it was just the two of them standing in the dark together. Trisha had mounted her broom and flown away when Abby wasn’t watching.
“Food?” Her constitution was feeling the one-hour planning and five-hour op badly.
“Derek.” He tapped his chest and grinned at her. Then hooked a thumb in the direction of the departed DAGOR. “However if you want to share room service?—”
She sent him a look.
He grimaced. “Yeah, bad line. You’re throwing me off my game, Abby. Food sounds great.”
“I’ve got no use for someone playing games.”
“One strike I’m out?” He actually looked worried that might be the case.
“Usually yes, but we’ll call that one as just a stinky-foul hit.”
Derek nodded his thanks and waved for her to lead the way. She didn’t hold out much hope. Unit operators were known for being the unruly renegades of the US military. Perhaps not as bad as SEAL Team 6, but close.
But she was tired, hungry, and it had been a long time since she’d found a decent man outside of her chain-of-command to even consider.
Counting herself as weak, she even slowed down her usual fast stride to let him keep up with her.
10
Emily made it back to the ranch even more slowly than usual—sixteen hours to cross half the country. With no military flights headed in the right direction, she’d fought through inconvenient airport locations, a broken plane, and a drunk who should have been ejected at altitude instead of merely cornered—the not-so-gentle application of her hand-to-hand combat training had definitely garnered his attention and cooperation—and ended with him zip-tied to an attendant’s seat in the aft galley. The flight attendants had appreciated the help, but it had led to interviews and paperwork once they’d landed which made her miss the connector flight of an already bad layover—winter-time flights to western Montana simply weren’t very common.
The flights themselves were consumed by paperwork she’d fallen behind on and planning she hadn’t had time to do in Fort Campbell. Trisha’s after-action report had made her laugh. She’d never considered planting a key friendly aboard each helo to unwittingly sabotage their systems. How Trisha managed to get a CCA from the Air Force testing and qualification teams was an addition to her never-ending mystical collection of skills.
The results had her frowning until she read the detailed accounts by the various pilots. Trisha had slammed them up against a helo pilot’s greatest fears.
During her own time in Afghanistan, their greatest fears were RPGs and surface-to-air missiles. Drones back then had been strictly US hardware, large birds flying high on surveillance or kill missions. Now they constituted a whole new level of ugly. Small, incredibly maneuverable, and—with the innovations of the Ukraine War—lethal. No one had missed the recent downing of a twenty-million-dollar Colombian military Black Hawk by a three-thousand-dollar Russian drone used by the extremist guerilla drug- and kidnap-runners still operating in the deep jungle.
Only one Chinook had made it through last night’s test, captained by Abigail Rose and Ethan Merced. Digging deeper into the debrief, Emily spotted Trisha’s note.
Capt. Abby Rose and D-boy Capt. Derek Kylie showed strong connection and cooperation.
Leave it to Trisha to bury it in an after-action report. She knew they represented the sort of people Emily was looking for. Her husband Mark and Colonel Michael Gibson, then Trisha and her husband Billy, Emily knew the power of that deep integration offered by the inclusion of a permanently embedded Delta Force liaison within a Night Stalker operation. Surely, Trisha hoped that Emily would miss it so that she could lay a massive tease trap for later.
Emily sent a simple text: Push them hard in tonight’s exercise. Trisha would definitely know who she meant, and her own nonreaction would be a tease back.
The jolt of the landing in Great Falls, Montana, came as a complete shock. She’d been so deep in the report, she’d completely missed the passenger jet’s descent and final approach. She rubbed her eyes. Were her piloting instincts failing her?
The more likely answer, of severe sleep deprivation, came home to roost the instant after climbing into the ranch’s helicopter that Mark had flown down. She didn’t even stay conscious long enough to kiss him before sleeping through the twenty-minute flight out to Henderson’s Ranch.
