Bring On the Dusk by M. L. Buchman

quiet ride. Trisha and Bill, paired in the other stealth Little Bird, had probably spent the whole flight chatting about, she didn’t know, China patterns or frag grenades or something equally prosaic.
    Knowing she had to move, she forced herself out of her seat and checked that the ground crew was behaving. After all, this brand-new bird was all hers and she’d spent years working for it. The man and woman of the fuel team wore bright purple vests over their armor, marking them clearly as fuelies, also called grapes because of their vest color.
    Even though she hadn’t fired a shot, a two-man, red-vested ammunition team inspected her craft carefully. These reds kept trying to relabel themselves as “the Red Hot team” and even though one of them was pretty damn handsome, it didn’t stick. The not-quite-so-hot one, but with a better smile, asked her to please double-check that her weapon and the spare ammo pouches along her thighs were fully stocked. He also ensured that the FN-SCAR combat assault rifle strapped across her chest and her Marine Corps M9 in her hip holster were loaded.
    Once they finally stopped hovering, Michael came around from the other side of the helicopter. She noticed that they didn’t bother to question his readiness. Was it because he was a D-boy and they’d learned not to ask, or was it because she was a woman? Maybe it was just that she was new and they didn’t trust her to have a clue out here in the real world. After almost a decade in the service, she was always ready, so they were going to be disappointed on that point.
    By the look in Michael’s eye, Claudia could see what he was up to. Okay, some things she wasn’t ready for. She cut him off.
    â€œPlease, no. I can’t stand to review the mission one more time. My brain will short-circuit and I’ll be useless.”
    Michael closed his mouth and considered her for a long moment. Then with one of those silent, sideways nods, he turned and led her away from the bustling impromptu airport.
    They’d landed in the deep desert, a dozen miles from anywhere except some trackless stretch of the Somali border. Low scrub trees that Claudia didn’t recognize were scattered every few hundred meters. Bushes under a meter high might have been related to the creosote ones that dotted the hills of Bumble Bee. Here the sands were very white, rather than the yellow and red of her home hills. And instead of hills, there were just miles of flat land that would be of use to no one except perhaps a really desperate camel.
    Michael came to a stop just over the first rise.
    Claudia walked up until they were standing side by side looking out at the endless expanse of dusty green brush, white sand, and dusty blue sky. With the helicopters out of sight behind them, and even the fuel pump noises muted by the shallow rise, she felt as if she could suddenly breathe for the first time in ages.
    She hadn’t missed the feeling when she was in the middle of it all. There’d been no time to just stop in months. The final part of Green Platoon training for SOAR was no easier than the beginning part. Helicopters, tactics, explosives, language, first aid…the trainers had inundated her with information, methodologies, and endless practice during every second they’d had her in their control.
    That had been followed by an immediate assignment to Operation Atalanta, travel, the Yemeni terrorist camp, and all of the intensity of mission planning before she even had met most of the flight crews.
    Five days ago, she’d been signing out of her billet in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, sweating beneath the moist heat of a May afternoon. Now she was sweating like a dog beneath the setting sun in the arid furnace of the African desert.
    Finally, for a brief moment, there was peace in her world. The soft breeze, though not enough to cool her brow, occasionally rustled the dry branches together. Some small animal