Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) (18 page)

Connie flipped the coin over and back.

She’d found a quiet place over by the park’s track-mounted, five-inch gun, a large, nasty piece of work.

A silver dollar. The payment due from an officer for their first salute from an enlisted soldier. A tradition reaching back no one knew how far—1800s, 1700s? A payment for receipt of respect due the new rank and position.

Connie twisted it in the moonlight. Fifty years old.

Noreen had whispered as they’d hugged, “It’s a half-century coin, so that we can look at it together when we’re a half-century older.”

Connie twisted it again in the moonlight.

She knew it was stupid. Knew she was digging her own pit but couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop the downward spiral.

Half a century.

Her father had been there for her just twelve short years. Her mother for three that Connie didn’t even remember in her nightmares. Death awaited her and all she flew with. She knew that. Her goal was to give as much as she could while she could.

Sergeant Ron Davis had taught her that.

And her thirteenth birthday taught her that death waited in the dark for all of them.

She could almost welcome it. But someone had thrown her a lifeline; she now held a fifty-year old coin. And there was more happening inside her that she didn’t want and didn’t understand.

As if called by her thoughts, a shadow came striding toward her through the night, outlined by the lights brilliant at the other end of the park. No mistaking the scale of John Wallace or the easy stride, even in silhouette.

He came to her as if shining with a light of his own.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t pause either. No thought of hesitation.

John simply walked up to her and folded her into his arms. She buried her face in his chest and breathed him in. Breathed in the quiet and safety.

“I can’t believe Nori. I can’t believe she did that and never told me.”

Connie didn’t need to ask his reaction, she could hear it in his voice. A sense of wonder and pride.

“She’s going CSAR, that’s why the premed. Can you imagine some poor, shot-up son of a bitch when my sister jumps out of a combat search and rescue chopper with a med kit strapped across her back? He’s gonna think he’s died and gone to heaven.”

John kissed her on top of the head.

“I’m so proud that you stood for her. I’ll never forget that. Never.”

Connie could only nod against his chest.

It wasn’t a moment she’d be forgetting soon either.

She held the coin hard in her palm.

Noreen had given her a fifty-year dream.

She’d never even had a five-year one.

They walked back toward the banquet hand in hand. No hurry. But John’s family waited for him there and Connie couldn’t hold him back.

It was easier in her uniform. She knew who she was in her camo. She’d face the crowd, both the welcoming and the jealous. She’d be strong for John’s and Noreen’s sake.

They came upon the old tractor. Grumps was sitting on her left side. There was an almost natural seat there where you could sit on a frame member and lean back against the driveshaft housing.

He looked comfortable there, sleeping quietly. A bottle of beer held loosely in one hand rested on his thigh. How many times over the decades had he rested in just that spot?

John slipped the bottle free before it could spill.

“Come on, old man. You’ll freeze if you stay here.”

He reached out and then jerked back as if he’d been bit.

Connie stepped forward and touched Grumps’s skin.

Cold.

She checked for a pulse beneath the thick woolen scarf Bee had wrapped around his neck.

Nothing.

Her ear, just a half inch from his slack mouth, felt no brush of warmth, heard no breath.

She turned to John.

“John, you need to get the truck.”

He didn’t move.

“John!” she snapped out, and he jerked back to life like a puppet with half its strings cut. “John, you need to go very quietly and get the truck.”

He nodded. Turned for the parking lot. Turned back. Turned away again.

Too much too fast. Connie stepped up to him and rested a palm against the center of his chest until his jumping gaze finally steadied on hers.

“Give me the keys, John. You sit here with him. I’ll be right back.”

He fished out the keys, then dropped them in her palm.

“Okay, John. You just sit with him, all right?” It was what was needed. She could remember the Army psychologists who always showed up whenever you lost a teammate. They spoke softly, they did their best to make it okay. And no one hated them more than the survivors of the team. Outsiders who didn’t belong there. No one outside knew the guilt of being the one still alive when your crewmate ate a round. Just part of how the dynamic worked.

“Okay, John?”

He nodded his head. Then shook it.

“I can carry him. I can’t—” He looked toward the bright lights of the park. “I can’t let it ruin their night. Paps and Mama work so hard for this all year. And Nori, it’s her night.”

Connie patted his arm. “Just wait a moment. Then we’ll take him together, okay?”

He squatted down and took the old man’s cold hand in his two warm ones as if waiting for him to wake.

Connie trotted toward the edge of the picnic and spotted Larry. Exactly who she was after.

It took a moment to extract him from the woman chatting him up.

The woman said something like, “Isn’t one enough for you?” before leaving in a huff. Connie had learned long ago to focus on what was important and ignore the chaff.

She towed John’s brother to a quiet spot near the twin propellers of the
Batfish
, despite his protests, and told him the news.

It hit him as hard as it hit John, but he recovered faster.

“John and I. We’re going to take him home. Just tell anyone who asks that’s what we’ve done. Can you do that?”

“Yes… Yes. Good plan. Good.” Then his eyes focused on her. “You’re the best, Connie, for thinking about the family like this. John’s a very lucky man.”

Connie puzzled at the statement all the way back to the tractor.

None of them understood.

Not Larry, not Noreen, and not even John.

There might be the now, but there was no future. There was no point in planning for it either. People just died.

And they did it at the worst times.

John stumbled through the day as he’d stumbled through the night. Visitors, well-wishers, helpers, family, and more family. Those handling it better gave him comfort. Those handling it worse, he comforted. No plan of action. No direction to turn anywhere on the farm that didn’t remind him of Grumps. When a little girl sat in Grumps’s armchair, he’d wanted to heave her to the floor. When Mama set out lunch, she used the bread-and-butter pickles she put up special for Grumps each year and John had to leave the room.

The house pressed in on him. The people squeezed at his heart until he couldn’t stand another moment. Another instant.

He flailed about until he found the kitchen door and bolted through. He came to a halt a half-dozen steps past the porch, blinded by the low evening sun. Without turning, he could feel all that pressure and all that noise of the people in the house. Brimming over with stories and tales and, even worse, normal everyday goings-on, as if nothing momentous had erased all other concerns from the face of the earth. It built until he thought the overpressure might bust him at the seams. It drove him a step and another farther away.

Quiet. Just a moment of peace. He needed to go find Connie and just sit somewhere. Maybe go out to the sub and sit on the deck as the sun set into the west.

He hadn’t seen her in a while, but he knew her. She’d be in the barn, fixing something. It’s what she did. She better not have touched the GTO, that was his and Paps’s project. Though at the moment, he wouldn’t even grudge her that after the way she’d taken care of them all through the long, sleepless night.

Leaning forward, like a chopper tipping nose down to get some forward motion, he managed to place one foot in front of the other.

A large pickup rolled up in front of him and came to a halt.

More people.

He didn’t need more people.

John cut wide of the hood, didn’t look at the driver as they got down.

“She’s not there, Johnny.”

His legs kept going as Nori’s words sunk in layer by layer.

“Where…” He trailed off when he looked up and saw her face.

“She’s gone.”

“Gone.” There was a word with no meaning. Connie wasn’t gone. Grumps was gone. Connie was just out in the barn. He turned again toward his goal, but Nori moved in front of him.

He tried to sidestep, but she moved again.

He tried to shove her aside, but she didn’t move as easy as you’d expect from a girl. Solid she was. Farm-girl solid. Soldier solid. Right down to her boots.

Nori placed a hand on his chest.

“She left a message.”

A message? Why would Connie leave a message?

“She said it was time for you to be with your family.” Noreen swallowed hard. “And that was no place for her.”

His next breath threatened to choke the life out of him.

“Where?” The word grated out of his throat so hard that it hurt to speak.

“The airport. I took her to the airport.”

John started for the truck. He’d just have to go get her back.

“Johnny! She’s gone!”

He turned, hand raised to wipe the words away. To smash the speaker aside, the bearer of such news.

Noreen stood square. Didn’t flinch. Just faced him.

“Yes, I took her. When I said no, she just slung on her duffel and started walking down the driveway. She did this mental thing. Her face changed. It was her, but it wasn’t.”

John knew it well. “Her blast shield. Not even you could get through that, Nori.”

He lowered his hand, one that he’d never raised against family. Never raised in anger.

“No way through that shield.” As opposed to the pain that shot through him so hard he had to rub the heel of his hand against the center of his chest. “I guess not even for me.”

Noreen stepped forward, only now did he see the tears streaming down her face, then she wrapped her arms around him.

He couldn’t even raise his own to hold her close.

“I’m sorry, Johnny. I know how you feel. I love her, too.”

Connie had been one of ten people on the flight to Chicago. Snow had trapped her there and she’d slept on the terminal floor Christmas Eve. Then the equally empty flight to Nashville and one of three, including the driver, on the bus back up to Kentucky. She’d arrived tired after twenty hours in transit to cover the six hundred miles from Muskogee to Fort Campbell.

It had an upside though. No Christmas dinner Army-style. No Christmas morning with a bunch of duty personnel who wanted to be anywhere else and were morose about it. She knew them well, having been there almost every one of the last six years. And often as a charity case before that.

She slept through the rest of Christmas and woke just fine with the next dawn. Nothing from John. Nothing from the Majors. The unknown mission must be pending soon. They’d been told up to a week. And today was day six. No word yet.

Just her and a plate of scrambled eggs and hash browns in an empty mess. Two guys sat in the far corner nursing their coffee in shared silence. A couple of singletons sat as far away from each other as possible around the hall. This worked for her. Later she’d go work out, get a quick 10K run under her belt, maybe see if there was a training flight she could ride along on.

“Hey, Connie. You the only one here? Tell me you didn’t spend Christmas here.”

She looked up to see Kee Smith, now Stevenson, set a tray down across from her. Kee looked her usual, bright self. Bigger smile perhaps. No perhaps about it. The diminutive Sergeant glowed like the newlywed she was. Her shoulder-length dark hair swirling about her face as she moved with far too much self-satisfied energy.

“No, I didn’t.” She’d spent it on the floor of Chicago O’Hare.

Kee glanced up from securing a piece of bacon.

Connie didn’t want to talk about it. Had managed for thirty-six hours not to think about it. And now… she still didn’t want to.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Captain Stevenson?” Then she made a guess. “Did you wear him out, Mrs. Stevenson?”

“Mrs. Stevenson! Ain’t that a complete laugh? Still makes me all warm and gushy inside each time I hear it. Me! Gushy! It’s so weird. Yea, I wore him out good. Army cots force a certain creativity even a sailboat doesn’t require.” Then Kee narrowed those already narrow almond-shaped eyes of hers. “And why does that feel like an illegal subject change from the master of following the rules?”

Connie shrugged and turned her attention back to her breakfast.

“Let me guess. Since you never were much of a talker.”

Other than with John over the last week, Connie had spoken more with Kee than anyone else in a long time. Maybe in years. She’d been fascinated by the differences in their backgrounds. Kee, a street kid, who fought everything around her so hard. A woman who didn’t think twice about walking up to a superior officer and telling him, “You’re a complete idiot, sir.” A master sniper and a woman comfortable with her own curvaceous form and the one-two punch it brought her of men’s attention. Didn’t faze Kee a bit to be the center of attention.

“Okay, I heard you were doing some training that Archie and I are supposed to start in about an hour. So, I’m guessing, since you’re here, that your training is over and you’re hanging out waiting for your next assignment.”

Connie did her best to simply act normal as she ate.

“Now…” Kee was clearly enjoying herself, aiming a forkful of pancake across the table. “By that iron control of yours, I can see that there are about eighteen more layers to what’s happening here. So, are you going to make me keep guessing, or are you gonna tell your tentmate?”

Connie swallowed some coffee against a dry throat.

“Big Bad John?”

Connie froze. And knew in the moment, she’d given a complete tell. The weakness of her hand of cards was now there for Kee to see.

Kee’s smile only proved the point.

Then the heat roared into Connie’s face. What could she do but nod? Now that her hand was exposed, she found she did want to talk to someone about it.

“He invited me home for break.”

“For Christmas break,” Kee clarified, as if it made a difference.

“For training break. I didn’t really have anywhere to go but back here.”

“And…”

Connie tried to think of where to go next. Too much had happened.

“So give.”

Still the heat in her cheeks, but also the warmth of it spreading through her as Connie remembered how they’d been together. She kept imagining they’d pick back up where they’d left off, but every time she tried to picture that, pieces kept falling off. Fragments and sections of the image tumbling away as she’d always dreamed of her father’s helicopter tumbling from the skies.

Kee’s smile grew wicked. “Is he as well-endowed as you’d expect?”

“A bit voyeuristic for a newlywed.” Girl talk, she could never get the hang of it.

“Newlyweds have one-track minds. Besides, a girl can dream.”

“Well, then, uh, yes.” When they’d had sex, he had filled her until she’d felt one with his body. As if they’d clambered right inside each other’s skins. “Magnificently!” So much of him that even sitting here in Fort Campbell, her body heated with a greed to once again plunge down upon him. It was also a safe place for this conversation to go.

“Good! I’m way glad for you. He’s one of the best men I know.”

“The best I’ve ever met.” And it was true. His skills, his compassion for her, his love and pride for his family. “He’s an amazing man.”

Kee sobered. “Are you being careful?”

Did she mean condoms or courts-martial? “Yes, to both.”

Her companion shook her head and poked at her food for a bit. “I’m not talking about that.”

Connie inspected her own dish, but the little food that remained didn’t look appetizing anymore.

“I’m talking about why you’re here and he isn’t.”

“His grandfather died. Sweet old man.” As if that covered even a hundredth of what Grumps was and what he had been. “I was one person too many. So I got out of the way.”

“You bitch!” It burst out of Kee like a hard slap. Her dark eyes suddenly gone black, her hands clenched into fists on either side of her tray.

“Ah, what?”

“You left him there? With a dead grandfather? He’s told me how much he loved the old man, couldn’t stop telling stories about him, and you walked away?”

“I didn’t walk.” She kept her voice calm and even. The closer people in the mess hall were looking their way.

“His sister drove me.” She would have walked and that didn’t sit too comfortably. She’d so needed to not be there. Couldn’t stand all of the well-wishers. All of those people who had come up to a thirteen-year-old Connie grieving for her father and patting her on the head mouthing platitudes about how it would all be okay. Only it never was again.

“His sister should have punched you in your goddamn nose!”

The shout stopped all conversation in the room as everyone turned to face their table.

Kee pounded to her feet, knocking her chair over backward. She grabbed her tray as fast as you’d grab a fresh magazine in a bad firefight.

“No! Wait!” Connie called out as Kee moved off.

“Wait for what?”

Connie could feel the tearing inside. Could feel something wrenching apart. But what? She’d watched how much he and his family had needed each other. He’d moved from one weeping person to another, always leaving them better, stronger for having stopped.

She’d had to leave.

At first the barn. But that hadn’t been far enough. The old horse stall no longer held a tractor. Still propped in the sun, the old milk crate Grumps had sat on looked broken down, ready to splinter and collapse.

She’d had to leave.

It hurt too much to stay.

Everyone she let herself care about died.

All she could do was fight to stay alive as long as she could. But she couldn’t do it with Grumps so present, so alive in her thoughts.

Kee Smith was glaring at her. And Connie didn’t know why. Didn’t understand. All she’d done was leave. The family was fine. They’d had each other.

All she’d done was take care of herself.

John’s family had welcomed her to their table. She hated eating alone. Always had, now that she thought about it. Now that she’d experienced how it could be to share oatmeal with Grumps while the rest of the house still slept, to sit over lunch and listen as Larry and John got into it about some pickup baseball game that had happened a decade ago, to sit across from John in the nicest restaurant she’d ever been to and feel as if she belonged.

“Please?” was all she could get past the tightness in her throat before giving up and staring down at the table. She clasped her hands and crushed them between her knees, trying to find some center. Some place where it was all as it had been before.

She closed her eyes and held on. Just held on as hard as she could. Used her tricks, learned as a scared teen suddenly afraid of the dark. First, a little layer, an old windup clock, long gone. Then a go-cart and her first ham radio. A computer. Layers of her life.

Living with her father, she’d flown before she could drive. A Huey’s rear rotor assembly, the insides of an M124 minigun, a Black Hawk’s FLIR camera in a hundred parts waiting for an eleven-year-old to reassemble them under her father’s watchful eye.

When at last she could open her eyes, she could see that a tray had been placed across from hers. Kee’s hands rested to either side. They were no longer fists.

Threat sensors. Protective flare packages. Fuel and hydraulic controls.

“You’re a mess, girl.” Kee’s voice was gentle.

Connie pulled one of her hands out from where she’d held it clamped between her knees. She tried to pick up her fork, but she’d driven all of the blood and feeling out of her hand and couldn’t make her fingers grasp, turn, hold. Couldn’t pretend everything was okay by taking a normal bite.

“He really got to you.”

“I guess.” Even the soft words hurt.

“It wasn’t a question.”

Connie rubbed at her eyes, trying to wake up. To shed all of the memories.

“Yes. I suppose he did. Time I got over it.” She sat up straight, able to take hold of the fork this time. She did her best to smile at Captain Stevenson as he came up beside his wife.

Kee accepted his easy kiss. Then she leaned forward so that only Connie could hear.

“You ever say that again and you’re going to really piss me off.”