Light Up the Night by M. L. Buchman Page B

for a shot that fast.
    He looked back at the projection on the inside of his visor, the feed from the infrared camera system, just in time to see the pirate boss’ head snap back. Bill couldn’t see the shot actually hit him in the forehead, but there was no question that’s exactly what happened.
    As the pirate tumbled backward, his reflexes pulled the trigger. The RPG shot up at a steep angle before arcing well over the DAP Hawk and exploding somewhere behind and above them.
    What kind of a person went for a head shot from a vibrating platform like a helicopter? He’d have shot center of mass, and if he’d hit the heart, he’d have been thrilled.
    Kee remained in her crouch for several long seconds, then the rest of the pirate crew began tossing their weapons over the side of the boat with a show of great reluctance.
    That created a problem Bill had never solved. Without the weapons, there was no “proof of intent to commit piracy” that any international court would uphold. But if the pirates were dragged back to shore, the boss man who had financed the operation, including paying for the weapons, might be just pissed enough to execute the whole crew. Yet what choice did they now have?
    Kee Stevenson finally stood up into a low hunch, which was all the DAP Hawk cabin allowed, and moseyed back to her position, clearing her weapon. Michael relaxed as if someone had plugged him back in.
    â€œWhat?”
    Michael shook his head.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI’ve watched her shoot dozens of times. I still don’t know how she does it.”
    Bill blinked at that. He was amazed by the shot. But the man sitting beside him was the senior Delta Force operator on the planet, and even he couldn’t unravel the technique.
    â€œIt’s pure instinct. That’s the only possible explanation.”
    Michael looked over at him. “Is that what you do?”
    Now it was Bill’s turn to feel uncertain. He had trained thousands of hours to turn learned skills into instinct.
    â€œNo, because I don’t have a gift.” He’d seen it in his SEAL team. There’d be one specialist who could run, jump, shoot, and swim with great practiced skill, but when it came to languages, he picked them up in weeks rather than months or years. Rawlings made explosives do the strangest and most interesting things. Need a guy who could get comm gear to still work, even after it had been shot a couple times? Axel was the dude you wanted. Bill could barely align his mother’s antenna for satellite television, but Axel could nail the angle through a hole in the trees that every manual said wouldn’t work.
    O’Malley ran that way, as if she were just a natural. And flew that way. What else did she do so “naturally”?
    â€œNo,” he answered Michael. “I’m really good at CQB.” Close Quarters Battle, often becoming hand-to-hand combat. It required many skills including a very fast reaction time and no identifiable patterns or timing to your attack and defense techniques. “But I have to train like any other fool.”
    Michael just watched him closely, not saying anything else.
    And Bill wasn’t about to explain further. He’d grown up on the streets of Detroit from age eight, fighting for food, somewhere to sleep, for everything so that he and his mother could survive. He knew where he’d learned to fight, learned to stay alive. But he sure wasn’t going to be talking about it to anyone real soon. He hadn’t even mentioned much of it during the psych evals they put him through when he went into the SEALs.
    He turned his attention back to the drone screens, which had turned up nothing else as the Peleliu controllers continued winging them down the coast.
    The DAP Hawk held station, releasing the Little Birds to head for the carrier. A SOC-R, Special Operations Craft-Riverine, sent out by the aircraft carrier and loaded with heavily armed