The Night Is Mine (+also in audio)

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The CNN film crew had made it fun. But now…
The laptop stood balanced on a couple of empty, dull green ammo cases for the Minigun. Sweaty pilots and crew stood gathered around the computer, waiting for the network to roll the clip.
Captain Emily Beale and her team rushed into the tent from the Black Hawk helicopter landing area, still in their hot, sticky flight gear, helmets clutched under their arms. Just past dawn here in Pakistan, late-evening news back home.
A dozen guys who hadn’t been lucky enough to fly that night packed the already baking tent. They wore shorts and army green, sleeveless tees revealing a wide variety of arm tattoos. Some with girls’ names, several snakes, and a small fleet-worth of helicopters—all with feathered wings. The men squatted on the packed sand that passed for a floor, perched on benches, or stood feet wide with arms crossed over muscled chests.
The observation jolted Emily a moment before she shrugged it back into her mind’s dustiest footlocker. Simply another reminder that the entire female roster of this forward deployment included only one name—her own.
Brion Carlson came on and flashed his famous scowl, cuing his multimillion-person audience that the next clip would be fun, not war-torn hell, not drowned mother of twins, not car pileup at 11.
Emily’s free hand rested on the M9 Beretta sidearm in her holster. Tempting. A couple of 9 mm rounds through the screen might cheer her up significantly. But then they’d all know how she felt. Be hard to laugh it off after that level of mayhem. She knew hundreds of ways to kill a person but how do you kill a newscast? Smashing a laptop met the ultimate criteria for complete suppression. She scanned the intent faces of her flight mates. Still, a bit of localized destruction held its temptations.
She’d only been in the company for two months. The first week or so, she’d been a total outsider. But as she’d proved herself on mission after mission, she’d gained acceptance—grudging at first, then not.
Now, on the precarious cusp of true welcome, this.
“Hot from the fighting front, at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, CNN caught up with Black Hawk pilot Captain Emily Beale as she cooks up a storm for her flight crew. She’s the first, and so far the only, female pilot to qualify to fly helicopters for SOAR, the elite 160th Airwing.”
“Aviation regiment,” Big John called out. Someone shushed him.
“With the Night Stalkers, as the Special Operations Aviation Regiment call themselves—”
“Damn straight,” John answered and then turned to scowl at whoever had been foolish enough to try and shush him before.
“—she flies, literally, where no woman has flown before.”
The clip rolled a close-up of four steaks sizzling on a surface so black that it didn’t reflect the scorching, midday sun.
Odd place to start, but what the hell.
The Black Hawk’s nose cone covering the terrain-following radar assembly had been plenty hot to sear a steak. And the meat had tasted damn good. A humorous opening. So far she could live with this.
Then the camera pulled back.
First the nose of her helo, which was kind of cool. Made a nice surprise for the viewer who wouldn’t recognize it from the curve of the Kevlar composite.
Then the camera swung toward the person wielding the cooking tongs.
She groaned…silently…but, damn! She’d given them loads of footage about why she flew, had answered a thousand probing questions about a female warrior in a man’s world, and this is how they started?
Ray-Bans. Blonde hair running loose over her shoulders. A trick only Special Operations Forces and SEALs could actually get away with in all the US military. The elite fighting teams were supposed to wear non-military long hair, even mustaches and beards, to blend in wherever they were inserted.
SOAR pilots usually did the close-cropped military thing, but not her company. She liked the sound of that, her company.
She’d made it into the Black Adders, the nastiest and toughest company that SOAR had ever fielded. They belonged to the 5th Battalion, which was the nastiest and toughest battalion, no matter what the other four claimed. That’s why the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) 5th Battalion D Company wore their hair long. It made them more like their SOF customers, the Special Operations Forces action specialists they transported to and from battle. Of course, none of them minded the added bonus of being able to thumb their noses at the establishment they’d give their lives to defend.
The laptop image scanned down her body as if she were a model for Playboy or Hustler. Army-green tank top. Running shorts and army boots. Standard desert camp gear. She was soaked in sweat, and the clothes clung to her like Saran Wrap. A point the cameraman had made the most of, both on his pan down and back up.
But this wasn’t who she was. It wasn’t the point of the interview. She flew the most lethal helicopter ever devised by man, and they were turning her into a porn star. Her grip on her still-holstered M9 sidearm grew painful, but she couldn’t ease off.
At least it would be uphill from here.
Wouldn't it?

Initial Publication: February 1, 2012
Edit / Re-release: November 20, 2021
Print pages: 456
Audio length: 11:28
Narrator: Read by Author

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