Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) (21 page)

Connie felt wrung out, drained to the very core, as she lay in John’s arms with her head resting on his shoulder. She considered adding embarrassed to the list but finally rejected it. In an odd way, she felt good, light even. Free of the burden she hadn’t known she carried, didn’t know what it had been. She simply felt free from beneath its pressing weight.

She slid from his lap until they sat side by side with her leaning safe inside the protective curve of his strong right arm. They held hands across, his left to her right, and gazed at St. George and his golden sword raised high before the final deathblow to the serpent below.

They sat quietly for a long time in the pew. Just at peace. Stopped. She’d leaned her head on his shoulder and he’d rested his cheek on her hair.

When the night could get no quieter, Connie finally found the space inside to speak. Though she kept her voice to little more than a whisper, it seemed to fill the cathedral. Not with long, creepy echoes, but as if it enjoyed traveling about the space.

“I’m sorry, John. I shouldn’t have left, but I didn’t think I had a choice. I couldn’t get far enough from the memories. Everywhere I went, there was someone talking about Grumps. When I went out to stand by the fields, I’d remember the three mornings we had stood there together in silence and watched the sun come up over those beautiful fields. In the barn…” She let her voice trail off because she couldn’t find the heart to speak of it.

It seemed wrong to compare the ornate and golden wonder of Stockholm Cathedral with an old barn, but standing in the latter was as close as she’d ever come to a religious experience. In the empty tractor bay, with the sun still shining down from the barn’s high windows, she could hear Grumps’s easy laugh. The old pine walls whispering with his stories. The air even more quiet than when he napped in the sunlight.

“You have an amazing family. Grumps. Your mother and father—”

“He’s not my father.”

Connie could feel the tension shoot into John even as he bit off the last word too late.

His cheek came off her head. She had to grab quickly to keep his arm wrapped around her. Trap it there to keep him in place.

“Whoa, John. No, you don’t. You don’t get to give me this monster lesson in not running away and then do the same yourself. Especially not after a statement like that. What do you mean Paps isn’t your father? You’re so much like him.”

The silence lasted a long time. The rigid tension that she could feel in his arm no longer held her close but rather stayed frozen where she’d pinned it across her shoulder. She could see his jaw clenched against the words.

Finally, all at once, like an old keeper nut finally letting go of its rusty bolt, the tension drained out of him.

“A drunk killed my father. Ran him over outside a restaurant in Tulsa.”

“How old were you?” She could see him swallow hard. She blinked hard. They’d both lost fathers. Her heart bled for him.

“I wasn’t any age. I wasn’t born yet.”

“But how…” She could see it hurt him just as much as it had her, maybe more. He’d never even known his own father. At least she’d had that before she lost him.

“My mama loved my father, she told me that often. And like you, she loved my family. Grumps and Liza took her in, as if there were any question, though she’s still surprised to this day. And Paps, apparently he was mad for her since the first time he saw her on John’s arm. I’m named for my father. Paps convinced her to marry him even before I was born. She says it took a goodly while, but she’d learned to love the man who she’d thought only showed her kindness. A proposal and kindness she’d accepted in a ‘fit of common sense,’ as she called it.”

Connie twisted a little in the pew until she could rest her hand on that beautiful broad chest of his. Until she could feel his heart beating through the heavy flannel shirt that showed through his open jacket. Until her own heartbeat echoed his.

“Mama belongs there. Bore Paps three more children. She’s family. I’ve always felt outside of that. Not my family.”

Connie jerked her hand back, felt as if she’d been burned. This man, so loved by his family, so in love with his family… And he thought he didn’t belong! She’d never had family. Not since the day her father burned and fell out of the sky.

How could he foreswear such a gift? How could he be so thoroughly and completely wrong?

Her fist clenched, curled tighter than any knight grasping the pommel of his golden sword.

And she pounded that fist against John’s chest hard enough that the air whooshed out of him.

His curse would have echoed around the church if he’d had enough air to create more than a whisper.

She half rose to drive another blow.

John caught her fist just inches from his chest. She managed to drive home anyway and he grunted.

Before she could attack him again, he finally leveraged his much greater strength to pin her hands together.

She considered head-butting him to see if that would drive some sense into him.

“What the hell, Davis?”

Connie rose and jerked her hands free. She took a half-dozen steps away. Stared down at the gravestones that carpeted the floor. That were the floor. A thousand years of family spread below her feet until the names were erased, worn away, and forgotten with age.

She strode back to stand in front of him. When she raised her hands he flinched. She paused for a moment, hands open until they both relaxed a bit, then she rested her palms on his shoulders. Sat across his knees.

Not knowing what else to do, she kissed him lightly and looked deep into those wonderful, dark, pained eyes.

“Paps is so goddamn proud of you. You’re his favorite. Can’t you see that? I don’t know why. I mean you’re so goddamn stupid. But he worships you. Your whole family does.”

John tried to shake it off, but she rested her hand on his cheek to hold his focus on her.

“You didn’t see it. When you drove the tractor into the Night Before the Night Before, your mama had to wipe Paps’s eyes so others couldn’t see he was crying. He’s that proud of you. Larry wishes he could fly like his big brother but he loves the farm too much. Your little sister is a U.S. Army officer because of you, for crying out loud.” She dug the silver dollar out of her shirt pocket and held it right in front of him. So close his eyes crossed as he tried to focus on it.

“Here’s proof.” She looked at the coin herself. Still couldn’t make sense of how it made her feel and she rammed it back into her pocket, careful to button the flap over it.

“I’ve never seen someone who belongs so deeply. I don’t know how you could ever leave. I doubt if I could if I had that.”

John studied her a long time. Looked at her until she removed her hands from his shoulders, though she resisted the urge to wipe at her face to check it for bearing grease or some other smudge that made him study her so.

“They’re the reason I left,” John whispered. “I fly to keep them safe.”

Connie could only blink as she sat across his knees and saw the truth in his eyes. His heart was bigger than the world. The amount of love it held was something she could only pretend to understand.

At long last, he raised his hands, cupped her cheeks, and pulled her forward. He kissed her on the forehead, a kiss befitting the magnificent cathedral.

Ever so gently he shifted her until once again she sat inside the curve of his arm. Until once again her head rested on his shoulder and his cheek on her hair. Without a word, they sat together and watched until the predawn light colored the stained-glass window and dappled the great, golden warrior with its light.

Caught in that moment before he slayed the dragon.

Beale ran
Vengeance
right up the throat of a fjord. It narrowed on both sides, sheer cliffs.

Connie watched astern in the dual vision her helmet afforded. In the infrared view displayed by ADAS across the inside of her visor, she could see
Viper
in tight formation, just two rotors back and off to the side.

Beyond the visor, the outside world was all darkness. Inside the Hawk, she could see the four Swedish Special Operation Group operators dressed in white and dead-branch camouflage. Even their weapons were painted white, except for the blue stocks that indicated they were loaded with nonlethal training rounds.

The SOGs were watching through the visors of their borrowed ADAS helmets. They were being fed the view only as the tactical displays were too highly classified to share, even with friendly special forces. They pointed and gestured as if they were looking out a window. Their Swedish remained soft spoken to not interfere with flight operations, but she could hear the wonder in their voices. Connie already had trouble remembering any other way to see the tactical world outside the chopper.

She was glad to be aloft. She could feel the edge coming back. A week on the ground had dulled reactions. They needed this training run far more than the Swedish SOGs. The unofficial word was that the real mission was finally coming and it was coming hot.

Time to get ready.

Connie glanced forward as Major Beale drove into the head of the fjord. It closed abruptly from a quarter mile wide to a space too narrow for even a Little Bird, never mind a Black Hawk. The passengers in the back became quite excited, shifting toward the rear of the chopper as the head wall rushed at them, filling their visors with the minute details of what they appeared to be about to crash into. The four SOGs were finally pressed back against the cargo net to which they were clipped.

They stopped talking entirely as Major Beale pulled up the nose and converted speed into climb, cresting the headwall by less than a dozen feet. Her rotor stirred a cloud of snow as did
Viper
’s, who’d shifted left to fly beside her. That brought many sounds of relief in Swedish.

“Drop in twenty,” the Major announced.

The commandos scrambled to change out the ADAS helmets for their own more familiar gear.

“Ten.”

Connie popped her harness and snapped in a monkey line. She slid open the cargo door on her side and kicked out a fast rope as John did the same on his.

The Major yanked the chopper to a halt.

“Go!”

The guys didn’t hesitate; this was more familiar territory than riding in a helicopter flown to the very edge by SOAR. They jumped out the doors and wrapped arms and legs around the inch-and-three-quarters, heavy-woven rope. In seconds they’d slid the twenty meters to the ground. Not bad, they were down clean in less than ten seconds from the “Go.”

“Clear,” she and John called in unison.

The Major slid back the way they’d come as Connie hand-over-handed the rope back aboard. In combat they’d just slap the release and be shed of the things. In standard training exercises, they’d send a cleanup team later to gather the ropes. But this time they’d decided not to litter a foreign country or risk losing them in the falling snow, and hauled them back aboard the chopper.

John slapped her on the shoulder, job well done.

She did the same to him.

By the time the ropes were coiled and stowed, and the cargo doors closed, the chopper hovered once again below the ridgeline of the fjord. The sound of the stealth rotors bounced oddly off the steep canyon walls. Not the heavy thop, thop, thop of a four-blade Black Hawk. Faster, softer, smoother. It made more for a feeling of floating than flying.

A little woozy from lack of sleep, Connie slid back into her seat and snapped in. She knew how to compensate for it. Had been trained in the required extra attention to detail, to drink juice in little sips to keep the blood sugar up. If they did any weapons work, she’d need to lead her target just a little more to compensate for slower reactions on the trigger. But she didn’t begrudge the loss of sleep.

They’d spent the day planning and briefing for tonight’s mission. Giving the two SOG squads daytime training rides to familiarize them with what a SOAR Black Hawk was likely to do. Though it still hadn’t prepared them for Major Emily Beale in combat mode.

And last night. She’d always cherish last night.

She and John had sat quietly a long time. Just at peace. Stopped.

With the dawn, she told John about her father. How they’d fit together. Belonged together. She could see now that her father had not been a man filled with joy like Grumps. But he was filled with dedication. To his country and to his daughter. And that too had been a fine gift.

The priest had found them there, still leaning against each other, more asleep than awake. And the cathedral, a dark shroud of mystery in the night, now glittered with the morning light streaming through the stained glass. In the daylight, the dragon was less fearsome and the horse and knight were bolder and even stronger.

They’d arrived back at the airfield with barely time to eat and shower before the first briefing, but it had been worth every minute of it.

***

The Majors landed the helicopters in a small cove near the head of the fjord for thirty minutes. Connie had flown with commanders who would use the opportunity for a break, start a snowball fight or something. But that wasn’t standard practice aboard
Vengeance
or
Viper
. Even on a training flight, Beale kept the rotors ticking over, ready to respond instantly to any emergency call. Thirty seconds faster off the ground could mean someone’s life in combat.

Normally they simply sat and waited, a skill any Special Forces operative had long since mastered.

Connie was just settling into a systems check when Major Beale spoke over the intercom. “Sergeant Davis. Let’s take a walk together. Clay, you’ve got the ship.”

Connie glanced forward, but the Major had already peeled her helmet and was out her door. A glance at John simply revealed a shrug. Connie peeled her helmet and popped the cargo bay door. John tossed her his ridiculous red-and-orange woolen hat as she exited into the slap-cold of a Swedish winter night. She pulled it on and almost face-planted in the snow as it slid down over her eyes.

She shoved it back on her head and followed Major Beale into the night. They walked half along the hard, tide-packed sand beach of the little cove, the clouds blotting out any hint of light. Only the faintest hint of white from the small breaking waves kept Connie on track.

“I asked you a question two weeks ago.”

Connie didn’t have to ask for clarification. Could the Major trust her? No one had ever asked her such a question before. She’d always been able to prove herself. But Major Beale operated at some higher standard than any of Connie’s prior commanders.

“I remember, ma’am.”

“I’m still having trouble answering that question.”

Connie tried not to feel the slap. Even though she knew she wasn’t good at it, Connie tried to see it from the Major’s point of view, just as John had explained military risk using the President’s point of view.

They had flown together for just over a month. And during that time the Major had seen Connie run from the hangar panicked that John might like her. Next Connie had offered a horrid rift in the Major’s crew when she and John had fought so. But they were past that now. That should be obvious.

“As I said before, ma’am, trus—”

“I know. I know. Must be earned.”

The silence stretched for another hundred meters down the beach.

“Last night’s poker game was one of the nastiest, most spiteful things I’ve ever seen. The two of you battering at each other’s defenses until it was too painful to watch. I almost cried out in relief when Mark ended it.”

They’d fixed that.

“I half expected one or both of you to come back bloody. I sent Tim after you, but you were too fast and he couldn’t find you.”

Connie was thankful for that little bit at least. Barfing herself senseless against a church wall was not a side of herself she’d like many people to see.

“That you somehow resolved that without bloodshed makes me feel much better.”

Again the silence continued until they neared the end of the strand.

“I considered aborting the mission for personnel reasons until I could get a crew replacement. I actually had them spooling up a jet to get Kee here, but she’s not ready. Now I have to decide if you are.”

The footsteps in the darkness stopped beside her. Connie stopped and turned, able to see the Major as the faintest of outlines against the waiting Black Hawks.

The silence stretched until Connie caught herself shifting foot to foot to stay warm.

“I flew once with your father.”

Connie gasped. It was all she could do.

“What was he like?” Connie had never had anyone to tell her. She’d imagined him a thousand ways in combat versus at home, but never found anyone to ask.

“Quiet, like you. Brilliant, like you. Dedicated, like you.”

Connie liked that. Liked honoring her father by being like the best parts of him.

“I keep thinking of a piece of advice he gave me just weeks before his death.”

Connie held her breath so that she wouldn’t miss a word, unable to believe that she would get words from somewhere other than her memories.

“You’re a natural mechanic, Connie. I’ve never seen the like, nor has Mark, nor has John.”

She nodded for the Major to continue. Connie knew the gesture was invisible in the darkness, but she couldn’t have managed to speak if her life depended on it.

“He was also a man of great heart. A man I’d have been proud to have on my crew. He cared about those he flew with. Perhaps more than he cared for his own life. I don’t know what happened to him. I also still don’t know if among all that you’ve inherited from your father, you also inherited his heart. That’s what I need to know.”

The major didn’t wait for an answer. She turned and began walking back to the choppers.

Connie finally whispered into the empty darkness, “I need to know, too.”