Free By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers) by M. L. Buchman Page B

noses, they wouldn’t dare let out a peep.”
    She leaned forward, and for a second, he thought she was going to hug him right in front of everybody. Instead she slapped his knee harder than he’d whack a reluctant horse.
    “Well done, Cowboy!”
    He wished he could read her better to know if there had been a hug there. It was one of the strangest things he’d ever done—kiss a woman and then not have even a single second of privacy for three straight days together.
    There’d been a few moments, sort of, where Michael and Willard had wandered off to get some food and Tago had rushed off to the head. But they still hadn’t been alone because Kara Moretti had been so connected to the Gray Eagle that she was barely in the room.
    She was one focused gal when there was a mission on. And he was finding that was something he really appreciated in a fellow officer, even if the woman was frustrating the hell out of his libido.
    “So…” He really needed a mental subject change. “If they are tucked down so tight—”
    “—then there’s no way they’d risk a high-power signal sent to reach my Gray Eagle.”
    “Why—”
    “—doesn’t matter. That they don’t dare transmit a strong signal is all we need to know.”
    “We need—”
    “—my little ScanEagle. We take it in fast and low, below the Israeli radar sweep. We nestle in so close to Ramon Airbase that we could hear the guys whisper.”
    “But—” Justin wondered if it was even worthwhile trying to finish a sentence when she was in this mode.
    “But”—she smiled at him to prove that she knew exactly what she was doing to him—“we’re too far away for my little bird. Michael, you have to get Ramis to move the Peleliu . We have twelve hours. I need to be five hundred kilometers closer. They can do that in a high-speed run.”
    Michael was shaking his head no.
    “What the… Why not?”
    Michael raised his eyebrow at Justin who grinned back at him.
    “Because, Kara”—Justin turned to face her, wondering how much of a clue she’d need—“that’s—”
    “—RPA thinking, not Air Mission Commander thinking.” She thumped him on the arm hard enough to really sting.
    Apparently “not much of a clue” was the answer. Damn but she was impressive.
    “You’re absolutely right. I’m outta here. Gotta find Ramis. Tago, don’t crash while I’m gone or we’ll both be in a heap of hurt.”
    And just that fast, the men were left alone in the cargo container.
    “That woman is something else.” Willard shook his head. “And, brother, she likes you even more than she hates me—and that’s saying something.”
    Justin massaged his arm and wondered if that was true.
    Michael’s thoughtful nod made it hard to doubt.
    Tago’s flinch and the resultant tumbling of the RPA’s view of the world confirmed it. Perhaps not in a good way there; his big brother protectiveness of Kara was pretty transparent.
    What did that make him?
    The RPA lost over three thousand feet before Tago regained control.
    Justin knew exactly how the poor little Gray Eagle felt, like someone had just hit his cyclic control—hard.

Chapter 8
    All day the Peleliu had raced south, the poor old ship proving that her bones were still good and powerful. Kara had avoided the many questions from SOAR and Navy personnel alike by retreating to her cabin and doing a face-plant that didn’t begin to recover what the last three sixteen-hour days of flying had taken out of her.
    When she finally climbed out of the sack, Lola and Trisha were headed for a pre-breakfast run…so Kara headed for the showers. She really didn’t need questions at this point, especially ones she suspected she wasn’t allowed to answer. She swept through the breakfast line taking anything portable—carefully not looking toward Connie and Claudia at one of the half-filled mess tables—and headed for the GCS container.
    Once inside, she pulled down the black case from the top shelf, keyed in the security code,