Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) (24 page)

Connie had never been to the places John had sent her.

“Nice.” Who the hell had she been kidding? “Nice” belonged on the same scale as “interesting.” Her mind just went to stupid when trying to describe how John made her feel.

John had rolled them over so that she lay atop him, a good trick on a narrow Navy bunk. As sleep overwhelmed her, she slid to the side, still inside the curve of his arm, one leg thrown over his hips. A closeness necessary due to the narrow bed, a closeness mandated by how it felt when their bodies were touching.

Once again her head rested against his shoulder. Through narrowing eyes she could follow the slow rise and fall of that miraculous chest of his. Her own personal place of safety.

Together in so many ways, they slid down toward the sleep they so desperately lacked.

His hands, which had dragged a blanket over them and then delightfully traced her from shoulder to buttock and back and again, slowed, and finally hooked over her waist.

Her head, ever so gently raised and lowered by his chest as his breathing slowed, left her feeling light-headed, dreamy.

As she drifted off to sleep, a voice spoke from the darkness of her drifting thoughts, a voice from the past perhaps, ever so softly.

“I love you, Connie.”

She slept without dreams.

Connie awoke with no questions about where she was. John’s gentle breathing was still regular with sleep. She knew how much time had passed, could tell by how she felt and her internal clock that it was late afternoon, despite the heavy gray out the porthole glass.

She had never been one to lie abed. Her father had called her his “personal alarm clock” because of how she simply sat upright fully awake.

This afternoon she didn’t want to move an inch. John lay warm beside her. His arm still draped lazily around her, he’d held her even in his sleep.

She rolled until her nose rested against his skin and breathed him in, deep and warm. She could really, really get used to this. John had definitely spoiled her for any other man.

What was she thinking?

There was only one man she wanted. And he lay here beside her, holding her in his sleep.

And how long would that last?

She didn’t have to consider that for very long. She knew John. Knew his heart and the way he gave it to his family was the same way he’d give it to her. He would be true and loyal and everlasting, right until the moment one of them died. Knowing him, probably long after even that if she were first to go.

Connie blinked against the harsh afternoon light.

There was no way to go there. Happily ever after didn’t exist for the likes of them. Death was too imminent an acquaintance. She knew what she wanted, didn’t she?

She breathed in the heady, rich, dark scent of a man grounded on the earth who merely chose to fly.

Her body answered, it certainly knew what it wanted. At least that she understood.

She slid a hand down and teased him awake, so slowly, so gently that he didn’t truly wake, not even a flutter of eyes as she shifted over him.

A soft groan as she slipped him inside her.

Then, as she worked her hips back and forth, his hands drifted up to hold her hips.

She rested her hands on his chest and leaned down to kiss him until he truly awoke, her tongue on his, and every bit of him reaching deep inside her.

His cresting and release was as gentle as a dream that carried her along for the ride.

And when at last they were both sated, she lay down upon his chest, knowing his hands would wrap about her and keep her safe.

“Okay,” Major Henderson was slapping his fists together on the flight deck.

John noticed he was doing the same and did his best to stop. Throughout the day, while he’d slept, the ship had driven south and right into a cold front. Now the sun was setting and the Baltic Sea was tossing a fit that rocked the ship actively enough that he had to brace his feet wide to keep his place. The merest hint of land graced the southern horizon. It wouldn’t have been noticeable except it was the one thing not moving in the rolling sea.

All the while they’d been steaming south, he’d slept with the woman of his dreams curled about him.

The woman he loved.

Once he’d admitted it to himself, it was completely obvious what Paps and Grumps and Mama and Noreen had all been talking about. He’d been crazy for Connie for a long time, he just hadn’t known it yet.

As he lay there before they’d slept and realized that there was only one woman for him, ever, it had been so simple to say “I love you” for the first time in his life. He’d never been one of those guys who offered the words to each woman he was with. In his book there were a few things you just never joked about: how a woman looked, that you loved her, and marriage.

He blew on his hands to keep his fingers warm.

Dangerous territory there. Once he told the sleeping woman that he loved her, the next piece had been obvious. When you loved someone like this, you married her. You shared your life and your dreams, your successes and your failures.

He considered saying so to Connie when she woke in his arms as if she’d always been there. And again after they’d had splendidly delicious wake-up sex. But some part of him hesitated. Perhaps it was the wiser part of John Wallace telling him to keep his mouth shut for the moment.

It had almost burst out of him when she’d come out of the tiny shower with water drops still dancing on her skin. She moved with that loose-hipped walk of a woman well satisfied, wearing nothing but her dog tags and her radiant smile.

“I do so love looking at you.” He’d had to say the word in one way or another, and it came out almost as a wheeze. “You’re magnificent.”

“John!”

“Hunh? What?”

Tim elbowed him sharply to draw his attention back to the briefing.

John blew on his hands again and faced Major Henderson. “Sorry. Not awake yet.”

Mark offered him the thinnest of smiles. He wasn’t buying John’s excuse for a second.

“Okay, in review from yesterday’s briefing. Sunset in about twenty minutes. We need to be done in fourteen hours, though twelve would be better. Poland is allowing an overflight, but they’d rather we didn’t show up officially, so we’re staying below two hundred feet the whole way to Kraków. Refuel there, they’ve promised us a tanker truck in a farmer’s field less than twenty klicks from the Ukrainian border. Four hours in-country max, come out with two nuclear weapons in sling loads.”

He pointed to the crew readying the CSAR bird on the other end of the freezing deck.

“That’s our only backup. They’ll be flying in formation with us but holding at the border. They’re on need-to-know basis and are not presently privy to mission details. Any questions?”

They all looked over to watch the third crew. Unquestionably SOAR. The way they moved, the gear they wore. Not stealth, no ADAS, but these were not folks to be underestimated. They flew into full battle with a gun and a stretcher and were notorious for getting their people back alive.

They didn’t have the heavy weapons of a DAP, but they had door guns and an underslung chain gun and Vulcan cannon. The kind of medic you’d want coming for you.

“Their pilot,” Tim yelled just loud enough for John to hear him over the wind. “Damn, but she’s hot.”

“Don’t get your heart caught.” It was an old line they used to bandy about.

“Not like you. No woman is gonna trap this boy.” Tim elbowed him again and directed a nod across the deck. “But see this one.”

One of the CSAR crew pulled off her woolen hat. A cascade of mahogany hair spilled down the woman’s back. For clearly it was a woman. A long, slender one. Major Beale had said there was a fourth, another woman in SOAR. Without turning their way, the woman pulled her hair back into a rough ponytail and pulled on her helmet. She climbed aboard to copilot.

A glance showed Tim completely mesmerized. John elbowed him to bring his attention back to the briefing, adding enough extra oomph in payback that he almost sent Tim sprawling to the deck. Only the driving wind kept him upright as he staggered for a moment.

Connie raised a hand.

Mark nodded to her.

“And if the weapons aren’t there, sir?”

Mark looked grim. “That’s a thought we aren’t going to follow right now.”

***

The flight through Polish airspace was uneventful. They’d been given clearance for the primary training corridor of Poland’s largest helicopter manufacturer. It ran from Gdansk on the Baltic to Kraków near the Ukraine border. Neither PZL-Swidnik nor the Polish Air Force were flying any missions tonight, so the corridor should be quiet, and it was. By nature of being a training route, it avoided city and towns, even houses when possible, making it ideal for their current mission.

Connie wished Colonel Michael Gibson and Chief Warrant 3 Dave Grant weren’t sitting in the two seats against the cargo net. Not that they were paying her any attention. They were doing what Delta Force operators always did on boring flights—they slept. It didn’t matter that the Major was following a high-speed, low-altitude slalom course between hills and down rivers. It didn’t matter that they’d just had a full day’s sack time. D-boys always slept while flying into action, probably because once they hit the ground, it might be days before they’d have another chance.

She wished she could talk to John. Not about anything much. About how well she’d slept, about how worn and loose her body felt, about what she’d like to do to him next time.

There was some girly part of her that wanted to go back to the moment before they’d fallen asleep and simply wallow. It might be the most contented she’d ever been. And the memory of her dad’s whispering, “Love ya, short stuff.” A phrase that had tucked her into bed every night he was home from assignment.

Except last night it had changed. Her memory was unsure, tentative, clouded by how her body had gloried under John’s devout attention. But the phrase had shifted, she was sure of it.

“I love you, Connie.” The voice a soft rumble against her ear. He hadn’t repeated it this morning. He. John. It had been John’s voice.

Connie almost choked herself on her harness as she spun to look at John.

His attention remained focused outside the chopper. She could tell by his head motion that he was performing slow sweeps of the area using his ADAS visor.

Colonel Gibson had opened one eye to watch her, his hand resting as lightly on his M4 sniper rifle in wakefulness as it had in sleep.

She forced herself to turn back and do her own scan. Nothing to see except the night and the countryside that could have been anywhere. Fields and farmhouses, livestock showing as clustered groups of heat outlines. The cows were the brightest thing visible, even more than the carefully shrouded heat signature of
Viper
running clean and true just three rotors ahead or the CSAR crew running three rotors behind.

John’s words meant nothing. Men always said such things, whether it was to get sex or after sex. “Love” was a word that slid easily off their tongues. Yet it didn’t seem like something John would say idly.

They were going to have a serious talk at the end of the mission.

Assuming they made it back alive.

The Polish Army had provided a fuel truck where and when promised, but it didn’t have the fastest pump on the planet. John took off his helmet and scrubbed at his hair while they waited. The cold air felt good against his scalp. They had at least ten minutes with nothing to do but wait.

He didn’t have to see Connie’s face to know he was in trouble. She grabbed his arm and guided him out into the night over the sharp crackle of the corn-stubble field. Her fingers would be digging in painfully if not for the padding of his flight suit.

A few dozen paces into the dark, she jerked him to a halt and turned him to face her by leveraging the grip on his arm. The two choppers and the fuel truck were bathed in a soft red glow that did little to light the darkness of the overcast and moonless night. The building rain sparkled a bit, reflecting the red.

“You can’t!” Her voice was a hiss.

“Can’t what?” Though he could guess.

“Say what you said!”

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the lips. Too dark for anyone to see.

“What? That I love you. Yeah, you’re going to have to get used to hearing that, aren’t you? Will that be a problem?”

“A problem? A problem!” She sputtered for a moment before waving her arm at the broad fields. “Look around you, John. What do you see?”

He took his time, turned his face to let the chill rain cool his cheeks and forehead. “Beautiful night.”

She jabbed him in the ammo pouch on his vest. There was no give there, and most of the force was transmitted straight to his chest. It hurt. Of course, she’d know that.

“We’re in a Polish field on the way to the Ukraine to retrieve nuclear weapons.” She shouted it into his face.

“You could say it a little louder. I don’t think the fuel truck driver or the CSAR team quite heard that.” John knew he shouldn’t be enjoying this moment quite so much, but he was. Seeing Connie at a complete loss was simply too rare an event.

“The chances of us getting out of this unscathed aren’t high. And when you add that to the next one and the one after that… John, be reasonable. Love is the one thing a soldier can’t afford.”

“What about the Majors, or Kee and Archie?”

“They’re idiots.” She muttered it half under her breath.

He grabbed her shoulders. Grabbed her hard and shook her. “Don’t you dare say such a thing. Damn it, Connie. Have you ever really looked at them? Those are some very happy people. Open your eyes and see what they share. Don’t you want that?”

“But they could be dead tomorrow. Dead tonight.” Her voice caught, stumbled.

He almost responded with another shake. Almost told her how stupid she was being, when he realized she wasn’t. Not from her point of view. Her mother and father had died. Even old Grumps. He still couldn’t get over how deeply the old man had touched Connie’s heart. Then he’d gone and died on her. It must make for a pretty dark view of the world.

So, instead of shaking her, he pulled her into his arms and held her in the night. She went quiet. The tension didn’t drain out of her, he could feel it through all the gear that separated and protected them, but she came to rest there. It made him feel so damn powerful, as if he could fix the world, that a woman who didn’t believe in safety had decided that the one safe place for her on the whole damn planet was curled against his chest.

He whispered in her ear as she quieted.

“I love you, Connie Davis. Never said that to a woman who wasn’t family before. I’m likely to keep saying it as I like how it feels when I do, so you’d better get used to it.” He debated stopping there, knew he should, but what the hell.

“And just so you can start thinking about it, I feel that I should give you fair warning. One of these days I’m going to ask you to marry me. And when I do, your answer is going to be yes. Just in case you were wondering.”

“Not a chance.” She spoke into the curve of his shoulder. But her voice didn’t have quite the conviction that he’d bet she meant it to have.