Night Is Mine Read Online Free Page A

Hawk.
    Nudging the chopper forward, the sound of her rotors echoed off the walls, walls far too close on either side. The rope still hung twenty feet shy of where the D-boy crouched, now facing her from under the cave’s protective overhang. Small-arms fire from above hemmed him in on three sides, the cliff wall on the fourth. In moments, someone would find the right angle and he’d be done for.
    She edged in until the tips of her rotor blades couldn’t be more than five feet from the cliff wall on either side, still too far.
    “Spot the rear rotor for me.”
    Big John swore over the headset.
    Emily leaned into the right foot pedal as softly as she could. The defile was too narrow for the Black Hawk to fit sideways, but she could swing the rope a little closer to the cliff wall by twisting a bit.
    “Fifteen, ten, five. Damn it, Captain. Trimming trees.”
    For an instant she stared down through the Plexiglas window by her feet at the D-boy perched on the cliff edge ten feet from the rope and twenty feet below her. The rocks around him sparked with rifle fire from above.
    It was Michael. She was close enough to recognize him with her night-vision goggles. He stared at her for a long moment before turning to finish whatever he was doing.
    An RPG passed between them, somehow missing the spinning rotor blades as it passed close enough for either of them to reach out and touch. A rocket-propelled grenade would be death for all of them. It blew when it hit the slope hundreds of feet below, but she didn’t flinch. Kept the rope steady ten feet off the cliff.
    He finished and turned to face her. She knew he’d be assessing her as well as the tactical situation. It had been clear enough in the briefing that he didn’t trust her, but she’d been assigned anyway. That meant Henderson did trust her. Well, she wouldn’t let him down.
    A spate of fire chased the D-boy back for a long three seconds, rattling like buckets of hail across her windshield. When it eased for a moment, he nodded his head once and leapt.
    She held steady against her own downdraft swirling between the cliff walls. If he missed, he’d smack rock in three hundred feet and fall a thousand more before stopping.
    “John?” Emily didn’t dare break her concentration long enough to look down.
    “We’ve got him.”
    She pushed her left pedal to get the tail rotor clear of the wall. Then backed up on the cyclic control and, raising the nose ever so slightly, slid backwards out of the defile. A dozen more rounds hammered against her windshield. Small arms mostly, but one big crack appeared from a heavier weapon finally brought to bear. Hopefully the Hawk’s bulk shielded the D-boy, because she couldn’t do anything for him dangling below her.
    Then Mark Henderson roared by, almost close enough to enmesh their main rotors. He pulled his bird near vertical, giving his gunners the best line on the ridge. A stream of minigun fire burned into the baddies. In moments, the fusillade that had pounded her Hawk cut off, concentrating on the more hazardous target now close at hand. Mark gave them a quick round of rockets, and the distinct hammer of the 30 mm cannon could be heard echoing off the canyon walls.
    Damn but the man was a joy to fly with. She could always count on Mark Henderson in the air. Always. And that wasn’t something you could say of most men, or many at all really. Now if only he didn’t insist on chapping her ass every single second they were on the ground.
    She kept easing back, watching the rotors to make sure she didn’t catch a tree and send them all plunging to their deaths. Once she was clear, a tongue of flame roared out of the defile right where they’d been hovering ten seconds earlier. The concussion knocked her chopper farther back.
    “Damn, did we lose him?”
    “Nope, he’s on tight,” Big John called. “Looks like he’s pocketing something. Remote detonator maybe. Guessing he stayed behind to set the mines.”
    Dangling by