Circle 'Round: The Night Stalkers Short Stories, #6

By M. L. Buchman

-a Night Stalkers story-

Chief Warrant Officer Lola Maloney never expected to lead the Night Stalkers of 5th Battalion D Company. But when Beale and Henderson left, they put her in charge.

Now the 5D’s first mission under her command is going all to hell. Only she can salvage it—her team’s very lives depend on her.

Lola reaches back to every trick they ever taught her and finds the answer in a most unexpected place, as they Circle ’Round.

(Previously published in Fiction River: Last Stand 2016.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386185123

M. L. Buchman

USA Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. "Matt" Buchman has 70+ action-adventure thriller and military romance novels, 100 short stories, and lotsa audiobooks. PW says: “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.” Booklist declared: “3X Top 10 of the Year.” A project manager with a geophysics degree, he’s designed and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, solo-sailed a 50’ sailboat, and bicycled solo around the world…and he quilts.

Book preview

Circle ‘Round

Circle ‘Round

M. L. Buchman

Buchman Bookworks

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy:

Target of the Heart (excerpt)

About the Author

Also by M. L. Buchman

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Chapter 1

Chief Warrant 3 Lola Maloney stared at the tactical display of the DAP Hawk helicopter  Vengeance  projected on the inside of her helmet visor. Against the pitch dark of night outside the windshield and the soft glow of console instruments, the display revealed the rough terrain of the southern Ukraine and her broken flight formation.

The commander always knows what to do.

She tried it again as a mantra, The commander always knows what to do.

Along with a thousand plus hours of officer training, none of it meant shit at the moment—she didn’t have a goddamned clue what came next.

Kara, she called to the drone operator tucked three hundred miles away on the USS Peleliu helicopter carrier, though her drone was circling somewhere six miles above Vengeance. You’re my eyes.

Roger. All clear.

Everybody else get down and land now.

At her radioed command, the three other birds descended to gather around the pair of already grounded heavy-lift Mil-17 Hind helicopters. One a shattered wreck and the other one was trying to salvage the bodies of the fallen.

Lola had borrowed both of them from the Iraqis for this mission. She hadn’t been intending to return either one, but she hadn’t planned on one being shot down either. Two bodies had been blown out through the fuselage, but there were still three bodies—she’d just think of them as bodies at the moment, not guys she’d handpicked and trained for this mission—trapped in there.

One thing Lola knew to the core of her being, she’d see the whole flight dead before she’d leave a body behind. Too much history had drilled that lesson into her head.

She had watched too much News at 11 as captured pilots were tortured, raped, and even burned alive for the cause—whatever the cause of the week was. Had seen the old tapes of the bodies of dead pilots and Delta Force operators being dragged naked through the streets of Mogadishu.

That was not going to happen to her people.

If the ground