This February, M. L. Buchman raises the stakes—and the heat—in By Break of Day, the latest in his acclaimed Night Stalkers series. To celebrate Buchman joins us on the blog to share an excerpt and answer a quick Q&A!
Title: By Break of Day
Author: M.L. Buchman
Series: The Night Stalkers, #7
Pubdate: February 2, 2016
ISBN: 9781492621560
NAME: Kara Moretti
RANK: Captain of the Army’s
stealthiest remote piloted aircraft (Don’t call it a drone)
MISSION: To be the eyes of the
team
NAME: Justin “The Cowboy”
Roberts
RANK: Captain of the Army’s
most powerful helicopter
MISSION: To redeem the past, at
any cost
They Put Life, Limb,
and Heart on the Line
Two
new captains join The Night Stalkers with two different strategies in life,
love, and combat. When Brooklyn-raised Kara joins the crew, she knows one thing
as an absolute truth: to stay safe, keep everything and everyone at a distance.
Born in Texas, Justin knows only one honorable way to make up for losing his
first crew to a suicide bomber: he flies with all his heart. When Kara and
Justin collide on a top secret mission deep in the Israeli desert, then the
battle truly begins.
Where do you come up with the ideas for your books?
The character. I write into the dark,
meaning that I typically know as little about the stories as my characters do.
As I get to know them, I start to find a challenge to face them with. One of
the other surprises with this method is that it is only in retrospect that I
can see how that specific situation placed just the right type of challenge at
my characters’ feet to truly force them to face themselves.
Captain Justin Roberts flies a massive Chinook
twin-rotor helicopter. Captain Kara Moretti flies a drone and is trying out to
be the Air Mission Commander during a training exercise.
Captain Justin Roberts gave the collective
control between his knees a little nudge forward. Fifteen tons of helicopter
carrying a platoon of U.S. Rangers and their gear eased forward as smooth as a
baby’s behind.
Every single time he flew his big MH-47G
“Golf” Chinook helicopter, it was a surprise—a surprise of how much fun it was.
Like they were meant for each other since long before they met.
SOAR only flew three primary types of helos,
all deeply modified to the 160th’s specification. The Little Bird, the Black
Hawk, and the Chinook Golf. His girl was the monster of the outfit. Calamity Jane was definitely a
Texas-sized lady: big, powerful, and dangerous.
“I feel the need for a song.”
“Oh God, spare us.” Danny Corvo spoke up from
the copilot seat. From there he was Justin’s second set of eyes and the master
of the helo’s general health and well-being.
“Oh,
give me a home,” Carmen cut in from her position at the starboard gun close
behind Justin’s seat.
Carmen Parker was hot shit with an M134
minigun that could unload four thousand rounds-a-minute of hell on anyone who
messed with her. She was also king, er, queen of the bird—the absolute last
word on maintenance and loading.
“Where
the Chinook helos roam.” Talbot George was always off-key at the side gun
behind Danny’s copilot position, but he sang with heart, even if with a
distinctly British accent.
“And the
flights are at night every day,” the three of them sang together in
splendidly awful harmony.
Danny groaned as if in the throes of death-by-torture
agony.
As usual, Raymond Hines kept his own counsel
at the rear ramp gunner’s post. The Chinook was the size of a school bus
inside. Tonight, in the cargo area between the cockpit and Ray’s rear post,
thirty U.S. Rangers and their three ATVs were counting on SOAR to sling them
into position. The big rotors fore and aft let her lift her own weight in
cargo; even in high-hot conditions the Chinook outperformed most everything
around.
By the third chorus their harmonies were
better, so Justin hit the transmit switch for the last of it. It got the
answering transmission he was hoping for.
“Justin, honey?”
“Here for you, sweetheart.” Kara Moretti just
slayed him.
From the first briefing where she’d moseyed in all dark and Italian and
perfect, his head had been turned hard enough that he kept checking his neck
for whiplash. Then when she opened her mouth and poured out thick Brooklyn… Two
months later and he still didn’t know what to do with that, not a bit of it. It
was all… wrong, yet it was so right.
Her voice should be some sweet bella
signora, like the one he’d spent a week with while stationed at Camp Darby
outside of Pisa on the Italian coast a couple years back.
Instead Kara was—
“You do that to me again and you’re gonna be
singing soprano the rest of your life. We clear, Cowboy?”
—a hundred percent, New York. “Y’all wouldn’t
do that to me now, would ya?” He laid it on thick.
“Castrate the bull calf? In a heartbeat. And I
ain’t your sweetheart.”
“I’ll hold him down while you trim ’em,” Lola Maloney called in from the DAP
Hawk.
He was about to say something about how it
made the meat taste more luscious and tender—which was why they castrated most
bull calves—but he couldn’t figure out how to phrase it without it sounding
crude and perhaps tempting her to start looking for some neutering shears when
Trisha cut in.
“Roger that! We’ll pin him, you chop and
cauterize. Use a really hot iron.”
Claudia Jean Gibson at the controls of the Maven II didn’t speak much, but he could
feel her out there agreeing with them.
Justin winced in imagined pain, as he was sure every man on the comm
circuit did. He figured maybe it would be
better if he kept his mouth shut. Once the women of the 5D got on a roll,
wasn’t no man on God’s green earth who was safe.
M. L. Buchman has over 35 novels and an ever-expanding flock of short stories in print. His military romantic suspense books have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the year,” Booklist “Top 10 of the Year,” and RT “Top 10 Romantic Suspense of the Year.” In addition to romantic suspense, he also writes contemporaries, thrillers, and fantasy and science fiction.
In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world.
He is now a full-time writer, living on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife. He is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing at www.mlbuchman.com.
