Free I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers by M. L. Buchman

earned the Silver Star, third highest combat decoration of the military, fetching a D-boy colonel out of a hellhole perched a thousand feet up a sheer cliff. Made me wanna crap my pants. Me!” He thumped a fist against the flying horse on his chest.
    “We took over two hundred rounds in the twelve seconds she saved his life. And if the towel heads had been decent shots, we’d have taken ten times that many. A friggin’ sheet of lead was raining down and she just sat there, holding the chopper three feet from rotor to cliff on two sides crammed up this narrow-ass ravine and waited for him for the longest twelve seconds of my life.
    “She is the best pilot you will ever fly with, even Henderson says so. You strolled into the most coveted berth in all of SOAR because you’re a woman. Crazy Tim…” He jabbed a finger in the direction the man had gone. “He got shoved aside to make room for you. You can’t believe how hard that man is working every time he even talks to you without going nuts. His gettin’ moved to Henderson’s bird, because Henderson’s gunner took a round, is the only reason he ain’t beating your ass every damned day. And if you cross Major Beale, if you so much as let her down one tiny inch, I will pound the shit out of whatever she leaves of your carcass. Then Crazy Tim will start in. Clear?”
    Kee’s mind struggled to shift against the hammerblow of his sudden rage and disdain, not that she’d let it show. She’d answer his anger the same way she always did. With anger burning up from deep inside, a deep well roiling with a heat and fury she understood all too well.
    She shoved up from the bench until they stood toe to toe. She craned up her neck to stare at him. She’d been through too damn much to get here.
    “I earned that seat, Mr. Big Bad. I didn’t stroll in. Clear? I’m the best gunner you’ve ever seen.”
    “Words, Smith. Prove ’em!”
    “If we stopped flying back patrols, I would.”

Chapter 8
    Forward patrol. About time. Kee almost skipped chow after briefing to go and check over her gun and the rest of the chopper’s armament. She wanted to do the preflight check now, even though it would be over an hour early.
    She forced herself to go find Dilya. The little girl was asleep in her cot, curled up in the tight ball she always slept in. She looked so small that Kee could almost imagine picking her up and putting the girl in her pocket to keep safe.
    Kee had to shake Dilya awake, and she dragged her feet all the way to the mess tent and through the chow line. Kee could feel her own nerves climbing toward that high, steady plane of a pending mission. She always felt calmer when they were headed into a storm. What drove her crazy was all the sitting still in between.
    “Sergeant Smith?”
    “Yes, sir.” The Professor’s tone set her back on her military heels for a moment. She’d been trading firefight stories with Crazy Tim, trying to make up a bit for pissing him off. She only belatedly realized that Lieutenant Stevenson had called her name twice. Had she forgotten something?
    He tipped his head toward Dilya, who drooped beside him, no other word fit her look. She drooped. The hamburger on her plate had only a single bite out of it. And she hadn’t taken any fries or salad. Up until now, her appetite hadn’t slacked for a moment in the four days since they’d rescued her.
    “Dilya?” The girl looked up at her. Her eyes half closed. Sweat stood out on her forehead.
    Sick. What was the word for sick? Kee groped in her pocket, but the phrase book was back on her cot.
    She imitated throwing up. Placed the back of her hand against her mouth, making the ralphing sound that had once bought the girl’s laughter.
    “Dilya, ha ?”
    Dilya nodded her head, then pushing her food aside, laid her head on the table.
    Before Kee could do more than rise to her feet, Archie scooped up the little girl.
    “Go find Mackenzie. I’ll take her to the hospital tent.”
    She found