Uniform Desires (Make Mine Military Romance) (30 page)

A young PFC stepped through the doorway. "Your presence is required in the Ops tent in fifteen minutes."

Delaney thanked the PFC and waited until he left before groaning.
 

"Holy smokes, you’ve barely been here half a day and they’re sending you out?"

Delaney didn’t care. Anywhere was better than staying in the same camp as Tuck. Vowing to be tough, she suited up, grabbed her flight bag, and marched to the Ops tent.

The next couple days passed in a blur of flying sorties and getting back up to speed on the ongoing effort to suppress the Taliban insurgents wreaking havoc on nearby villages.

She didn’t see Tuck, nor have anything to do with SEAL operations during that time frame. Two weeks passed, and she still hadn’t run into Tuck. She figured he was avoiding her. Accepting the fact he didn’t want anything to do with her, she went about her business, flying sorties of troops and supplies to the hard-to-reach or dangerous locations in the enemy-infested hills.

During the second week she was back, she got orders to conduct a night mission heading north into cave-pocked hills. The operations hut had been sweltering hot and tempers had been short. She and her crew were supposed to deliver a small squad of highly trained troops to a building. Then she was to hover nearby until she got word from the soldiers to extract them. She’d done this type of maneuver so many times, she could almost fly it blind, although that wasn’t advisable.

That evening, she showed up at the chopper, performed all her flight checks, and settled into the pilot’s seat.

The crew climbed on board, checked their weapons, and gave her the verbal "thumbs up". A group of men showed up dressed all in black, including their black Kevlar vests and helmets. Each face was smeared in black camouflage, unrecognizable, but by their sizes and shapes, she recognized the members of the SEAL Unit, assigned to Camp Leatherneck.

Delaney’s heart thumped against her chest. She wondered if Tuck was one of the SEALs dressed in black. Would he speak to her, if he was? Perhaps not knowing and not talking to him was better. He was just another troop who needed a skilled pilot to insert and extract him from the designated locations.

Keeping her focus forward, she checked her gauges and waited for her cue from the gunners in back.

"Take her up!" Mac called out.

Easing back on the control, she lifted off the ground and sent the helicopter toward their destination.

The flight went smoothly with little radio chatter, and soon Delaney hovered low over the drop zone.

SEALs fast-roped to the ground and ran toward what appeared to be dark holes in the sides of the hills.

Before they’d gone twenty yards, the bright flare of tracer rounds lit the insides of one of the black entrances to the mountainside.

Delaney had been briefed to take off immediately and retreat to a safe location away from the firefight. Yet, she hesitated, afraid the bullets being fired would hit one of the SEALs rushing toward the caves.

She started to pull up when the door gunner let loose a round of fifty-caliber bullets. "Man down!" he shouted into his mic. "Man down!"

Delaney lifted off the ground and swooped in, aiming at the opening where the tracer rounds blinked in the dark.

"What are you doing?" her co-pilot asked.

"Rescuing an American," she said, her fingers tight on the controls, her insides quaking. The man down could be Tuck.

"They have to take out the gunner before we can pick them up. We’re one giant target out here, captain."

"We can’t leave a man down."

"No, but we can’t help if we’re shot down."

Hovering a moment longer, she forced her hand to move. The helicopter pulled up and back, flying away from the action.

Delaney goosed the fuel, sending the chopper leaping upward.

"Incoming!" Mac cried.

An explosion rocked the entire craft and it pitched to the starboard, heading straight into a rocky hillside.

Delaney fought for control, righting the blades at the last minute, but not soon enough to miss the bullets strafing the fuselage.

"Shit! I’m hit," Jones called out.

Not only was Jones hit, the helicopter shuddered, the engine shut down, and they plummeted toward earth.

"Brace yourselves for an emergency landing!" Delaney said into mic. With the power off, the blades slowed and gravity did the rest.

Chapter 9

Tuck was halfway up the hill to the cave where the RPG had launched a grenade and the machine gun was hammering his men. He refused to look back, his goal was to stop the bleeding and neutralize the threat.

Positioning himself close enough to make the enemy think twice, and also close enough to be shot at, Tuck laid down suppressive fire while Big Bird aimed his grenade launcher at the cave entrance and lobbed a high-explosive grenade into the gaping maw.

Tuck took cover.

The explosion spewed debris in a thirty-foot radius outside the cave entrance, raining down gravel. With a shake, Tuck picked himself up off the ground and rushed the entrance, slipping in the side.

The machine gunner lay in the rubble, the gun nothing but parts and scattered unexpended rounds. Movement at the back of the cave and a moan sent Tuck deeper.
 

"I’m behind you," Big Bird’s voice whispered through the headset affixed to the inside of Tuck’s helmet.

With his teammate at his back, Tuck adjusted his NVGs and eased toward the back where tunnels branched off the main entrance. Great, which way? His goggles picked up green dots of
 
a warm trail on the ground. Fresh blood, leading to the right.

Tuck waited for Big Bird to catch up, then he followed the trail deeper into the mountain.

A flash of green ahead kicked up his pulse. He ducked lower, aimed his weapon and charged forward to catch up.

Sounds alerted him to more than one enemy ahead. He slowed, dropped to his belly and low crawled, using his elbows, around the corner. Six rifles pointed where his chest would have been.

He fired at their knees, expending all thirty rounds in his clip.

Big Bird lay down beside him and fired.

Tuck jettisoned the clip and slammed another in its place. Before he pulled the trigger to continue his assault, he focused on the six men lying on the ground in front of him. Two still moved; the others lay still.

Bringing his knees up beneath him, Tuck hurried forward, ready to dive to the left or right should one raise a weapon.

The two still alive thrashed and moaned.

A grenade rolled out at Tuck’s feet. "Get back!" he yelled.

Big Bird, still holding the corner, scooted back around the rock wall.

Tuck sprinted and dove into the tunnel, then rolled around the corner as the explosion erupted around them. The ground beneath him bucked and rocks from the ceiling pummeled his back. Dust filled the air and choked his lungs.

Tuck’s ears rang and he could barely stand without staggering.

Big Bird was around here somewhere amongst the rubble.

His NVGs lost in the stones and dust, Tuck felt in his pockets for the mini flashlight he carried, praying it still worked, or he’d have a helluva time finding his way back out of the tunnel. A click sounded near him, and light caught the flying dust particles, making a strange glow.

"Tuck?" Big Bird’s voice sounded like it came through the thick glass bottom of a soda bottle. He shone the light in Tuck’s eyes, his M4 aimed at Tuck’s chest.

"Yeah, I’m okay, but I can’t hear worth a crap. Don’t get trigger happy." Tuck pushed away the nose of his weapon and clicked on his own flashlight. "Come on. We need to find the rest of the men."

They retraced their steps back to the cave entrance.

Fish, Gator, and Dustman were nowhere to be seen. Flames rose from a dark structure lying on the ground halfway across the valley.

For a moment, Tuck didn’t make the connection.

Big Bird backhanded him in the gut. "Ain’t that our chopper?"

Tuck leaped off the ledge of the cave and ran, slid, scooted down the steep hillside to the bottom. Without slowing, he ran, all out, across the desert valley.

Big Bird yelled behind him. "Tuck! Don’t be stupid. You’re of no use to anyone dead."

Tuck barely heard him, the humming in his ears blocking most sound from reaching his brain. The chopper was down, on fire, and Delaney had been the pilot. "Fuck!" He ran faster.

Behind him, Big Bird yelled, "Don’t shoot! It’s us!"

Gator and Fish stepped out from behind the wreckage as Tuck reeled into the light from the burning aviation fuel. "Survivors?" he gasped.

"The door gunners took bullets and they’re pretty banged up, and the co-pilot busted a leg."

Tuck grabbed Gator’s Kevlar vest and jerked him close. "The pilot?"

Gator shook his head.

His heart plummeting, Tuck shoved Gator away. "Where is she?"

"Tuck, she’s alive, but she must be bleeding internally. She’s been unconscious since we pulled her out of the helicopter."

"Where…is…she?" He rounded the craft to the other side where the injured crew members and Dustman lay scattered across the ground. All of them greeted him with a raised hand, except one.

She lay on the hard-packed dirt, her helmet and electronic kneeboard on the ground beside her.

Tuck dropped down at her side and placed his ear near her mouth, listening for breathing, feeling for the blessed release of air from between those beautiful lips.

A hand settled on his shoulder. "Tuck, she’s breathing and her pulse is slow but steady."

Tuck glanced up at Gator. "Dustman?"

"Took a round in the thigh. He went down, but was up again a couple minutes later."

"I think she hesitated when I went down," Dustman said.

Tuck brushed a long sandy blond hair off her cheek and said softly, "Knucklehead."

Gator, the big man from Louisiana, with the tattoos of an alligator and a swamp rat on his biceps and hair down around his shoulders, looked like a wild man from the swamps. But he was one of the best SEALs Tuck had ever had on his side. He stood straight, weapon ready, scanning the hillside above him. "I’ve radioed for backup. We’re to sit tight, hold our position, and keep these guys safe."

Fish asked, "Did you get ‘em?"

Tuck nodded, the attack’s success inconsequential compared to what had happened outside the cave.

He stayed with Delaney while Gator and Fish set up a perimeter around the crashed helicopter. Each minute ticked by like hours until finally the whopping sound of helicopter rotors rose in the distance. Minutes later, two helicopters landed. Medics leaped to the ground, carrying bags of medical equipment and stretchers.

A very short time later, they were on their way back to Camp Leatherneck.

After Tuck saw to the safety of his team, he gave the medics all the room they needed, but insisted on riding in the same aircraft as Delaney.

They’d strapped her to a board, immobilizing her in case she’d suffered neck or spinal injuries. An I.V. drip fed fluid into her veins and an oxygen mask was secured to her face. She looked small in the mass of equipment and crowds of men in uniforms.

Tuck had never felt more frustrated and useless than at that moment. He wanted her to wake up so he could tell her to hang on. That he loved her and that if she didn’t marry Cory, and married him instead, he’d be the happiest man on the planet.

He managed to hold her hand the entire flight back and helped carry the stretcher to the camp’s hospital where the doctors and nurses took over.

Once Delaney was out of sight, Tuck checked on Dustman. He’d been giving his female surgeon a hard time, refusing to have her administer a local anesthetic while she fished for the slug. He insisted on being strapped down and then proceeded to tell her he was enjoying it. Not amused, the surgeon fished the bullet out of his leg, sewed him up, and pumped him full of fluid and antibiotics.

"And get the hell out of my hospital in the morning."
 
After giving him strict instructions to stay off the leg until then, she left his side, tossing a wink over her shoulder.

"How’s Delaney?" Dustman asked, wiping the sweat off his brow with the white sheet gathered around his middle.

"I don’t know."

Dustman’s hand stilled. "You don’t know? And you’ve parked your raggedy ass here? What’s wrong with you?" He leaned over, shoved Tuck, and winced. "Go, before I bust a stitch and get Brunhilde von Shaft riding my ass again."

By the time he got back to the door Delaney disappeared through, Captain Lindsay Swinson was there, worried wrinkles on her forehead. "You’re Tuck, aren’t you?"

When he nodded, she smiled, hooked his arm, and dragged him to another section of the hospital where beds lined the walls, many of them empty. At the far end of the room, one had a body in it. As he neared, he recognized the sandy blond hair.

Delaney lay as still as death, her face pale, almost chalky in appearance.