Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) by M. L. Buchman Read Free Book Online Page A

her body well below any radar and her rotors just clear of the wire.
    Steve called the booth. He didn’t even have to ask the question.
    The guards answered with, “They told us we had a choice—be tied up, face down out in the snow, or keep our mouths shut until you called us. We chose the latter, sue us.”
    Steve hung up on them without responding.
    He was used to SOAR’s pilots trying to outsmart Fort Campbell’s security, an old game. Strictly against the rules, but most rules didn’t really apply to the highly secretive 160th Air Regiment. One rule did though, always. Never, ever be seen. All else came second. And the tower worked hard to make that first one a real challenge. Very few got by them.
    “You know what I’m thinking?” Jeff picked up his night-vision binoculars.
    “Helicopters always travel in pairs?” Steve concentrated on the low clutter at the bottom edge of the field’s radar sweep.
    “And that just had to be Emily Beale’s team. Had to be. So goddamn smooth.”
    The two of them shared a smile. That pretty much identified the other bird.
    It took two more minutes, but their vigilance paid off. Not that they could have missed it. The low-sweep, outer-perimeter radar gathered up the second helicopter with ease.
    Steve snapped on the infrared searchlight and swept the second DAP Hawk as it hopped over the fence, clearing the razor wire by no more than two feet.
    “Greetings, Viper!”
    “Get that damn thing out of my eyes!” Major Mark Henderson snapped over the radio.
    Steve doused the light. “Welcome to Fort Campbell. Haven’t seen you in a while. When did you get stateside?” He tried to sound sassy, but he couldn’t figure how the Major had gotten past the first three levels of threat detection that surrounded SOAR’s home base.
    And how the Viper’s wife had gotten past all six.
    ***
    Connie spilled out of the Hawk with the rest of the crew to crow a bit over Viper being caught. While waiting, from forty-eight minutes to fifty-four minutes into the exercise, they’d scrambled to shut down the bird and strip helmets and vests in the cramped space. John handed around warm hats. They’d all hustled to tie down the blades and cover the key components.
    Now, with shouldered duffels, they tried to look unhurried, even bored as Viper landed.
    The message was clear: “We’ve been here a long while. Where the hell have you been?” They were both under the one-hour limit mandated by the exercise, but it provided a fine chance to rub in the victory.
    While they waited in a loose line for Viper’s rotors to spin down, Connie edged up to John. “What did you do to the outer fence?”
    “My first gig at SOAR was testing flight against the perimeter security. I found the backdoor password. A quick downlink over our new wideband and I hacked the system. I told it to look anywhere except where we were. Then I instructed it to reset after thirty seconds. Viper walked right into it.”
    She nodded, filing the information away.
    “LtCGrimm1981.”
    Connie looked at him. Sharing an insider secret like that. He did it without thought, consideration, or negotiated trade. He shared the password because he had it to share and trusted her.
    LtCGrimm1981.
    Easy to remember, probably one of the more logical passwords in SOAR. Lieutenant Colonel Michael C. Grimm, one of the founders of the Air Regiment and one of the first to be lost, pushing the envelope that night-vision technology hadn’t yet learned how to fill. The Night Stalkers’ passion to develop night-vision gear now in use by the military worldwide could be traced directly to the night Michael ate a power line flying an MH-6 Little Bird at full throttle in a narrow river valley while leading a flight of twenty-two choppers on a nighttime training exercise. His was just the fourth of the hundred names on the Memorial Wall outside Grimm Hall. Lt. C. Grimm. Died 1981.
    When Connie was standing quietly shoulder to shoulder with John like