Read By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers) for Free Online

“one rotor” out, you wouldn’t be scraping yourself off a cliff wall. On the Little Bird it meant that Trish had hovered a half ton of weaponry a dozen meters from the bad guys with no warning. She’d bet that had really bruised some egos.
    Kara would have commented on it being such a wild maneuver, but had long since learned that in addition to being a certifiable lunatic and flying like a wild woman, Trisha might well be the most skilled pilot here. Even Lola Maloney, the chief pilot of the DAP Hawk Vengeance and leader of the 5D, gave Trisha respect.
    And friendship.
    Kara was only starting to learn just how tight-knit a group the women of SOAR constituted. The 160th regiment had five battalions of four companies each, and every single woman flying for the Night Stalkers was in the 5D. The first woman in, a Major Emily Beale, had retired when she had a child. And Kee Stevenson was on temporary assignment to do some training with the HRT. Apparently, being one of the nation’s top snipers, she was the one training the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, not the other way around.
    All of the women in the entire 160th were in this room. And here she was, one Kara Moretti, late of the 3rd Special Operations Squadron of the USAF 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon Air Force Base in bumfuck New Mexico.
    No pressure, girl.
    She’d been here two months and she still didn’t have her feet down. She’d been eye-in-the-sky on a hostage rescue on her second day in, and the same on a black-in-black op invading Azerbaijan a month later. A mission that no one had or ever would know about, except for the four others who had flown it.
    “How did it feel doing your first sortie as our AMC?” Lola asked her in the suddenly silent room.
    Kara startled.
    Somehow the debriefing had begun and she’d missed it. Everyone looked at her intently, even LCDR Ramis. Except Justin who was staring at her as if she was a total screwup…or maybe a lost circus clown who’d wandered away from Barnum and Bailey at Madison Square Garden and onto a Navy ship in the middle of operations.
    “Maybe you should tell me?” It wasn’t like her to be cautious, however it was the only way to mask her sudden nerves. She was mostly sure that the op had gone well, but only mostly.
    “We’ve all heard Trisha’s assessment.” Lola offered a bit of a laugh. When Trisha was excited, her voice tended to expand to fill any space she was in. “Claudia Jean?”
    “Captain Moretti offered clear instructions in a timely and accurate manner under difficult circumstances. It was neatly done.”
    Lola nodded. “Captain Roberts?”
    Justin was still staring down at Kara from where he stood across the room—concentrating fiercely on something.
    The silence stretched long enough to be awkward.
    “Yo, Roberts!” Kara snapped at him when she couldn’t take it any longer.
    “Uh.” He looked around quickly. “What?”
    Trisha snorted, but her expression was unreadable when Kara turned to look at her.
    “Chief Maloney asked for your opinion on Kara’s first op as Air Mission Commander,” Clint Barstowe offered helpfully from where he stood close beside Justin.
    Justin shook himself, almost losing his hat.
    Why a man who stood six-foot-two needed another six inches of hat was beyond her. It looked like a big, white, “shoot me here” target. Right in that thick head of his.
    “Beautiful.” Then Justin snapped to, his deep-blue eyes raking over Kara once more before he looked over at Lola.
    Trisha sent an elbow into Kara’s ribs hard enough to hurt for reasons she didn’t understand. Trisha widened her eyes as if that was supposed to communicate something.
    By the time Kara turned back, Justin had finally shifted his attention to Lola.
    “The timing and clarity of her direction really was as purty—”
    He actually said it purty !
    “—as could be. I was flying along, just breaking into final eyes on the target and she drew me a new map. Imaging