Bring On the Dusk (6 page)

But Delta operators didn't make mistakes and they always knew their terrain.

Perhaps he'd wanted to spend a longer walk with her. She must really be exhausted to be having thoughts like that one. She told her brain to shut up and turned to study the sunset to buy herself a moment.

Hadn't it been setting astern just an hour before? Yes, she'd been flying out in the Gulf of Aden and the coast had been south. Now they'd rounded the Horn of Africa and were headed south into the open ocean.

Something else had changed. This ship had been her home for years and she knew it intimately. They were moving at close to full speed, based on the brisk wind sweeping the length of the deck.

She breathed it in deep: ocean air, hot metal, and spent jet fuel. If she moved to the farthest stern extent of the fantail, she'd catch just the slightest whiff of diesel exhaust shot up into the air through the funnels atop the communications platform.

Michael had led her halfway along the platform, past a half-dozen rooms she knew all too well from when this ship had been servicing the Marines.

For most of her history, the
Peleliu
had transported seventeen hundred Marine grunts and could launch enough SuperCobra helicopters and Harrier Jump Jets from the flight deck, and amphibious water craft from her sea-level well deck to get all of those troops on the move fast.

Claudia had spent countless hours attempting to read a book in the squad ready room while on “alert hold” status.

They'd passed the “pee room” where every pilot had to pee in a cup before every flight to prove they were “Marine clean.”

Now, beneath the setting sun, the old ship felt new and fresh. No longer a jarhead pilot among thousands, Claudia was a SOAR pilot. A Night Stalker. One of the best helicopter pilots on the planet. And in the 5D besides.

And the man beside her was probably the most senior D-boy in the field, making him pretty much the best warrior on the planet. She could sense his quiet center as surely as she could smell the oncoming darkness.

There was a tiny release inside her, as quiet as a skittering stone slipping down a sandy hillside. It was a part of her “safe” memory from last night's sleep-blinded embrace.

What more was there in Michael's arms other than “safe”?

She was just dumb enough and brain hazed enough to ask the question.

Claudia had never been a big fan of unanswered questions.

She turned to face him, his quiet, assessing eyes not blinking for a moment.

A half step closer…

* * *

Michael thought he'd be shocked. Was sure he would be. They had only met just…

His mind blanked when Claudia brushed her lips over his.

His mind never blanked.

There wasn't heat. There wasn't fire.

No…

There wasn't
only
heat and fire.

Beyond those, there was a moment of impossible perfection as if this sensation, this soft intimate touch of only their lips was indeed the goal he'd been seeking since he'd climbed his first hundred-foot tree seeking the pinnacle that you could never quite reach.

He tasted her. Could almost imagine that he could taste her beloved wild desert, for he'd seen that connection in her as clearly as she'd seen it in him.

Some timeless moment later…

He never lost track of time.

But he just had.

…Claudia shifted back that same half step.

She didn't try to fill the silence with words. No apologies. No false compliments. Nor true ones.

Her blue eyes studied him as intently as his studied her.

There weren't questions either.

There was a simple, stupefying rightness.

He turned and held the door for her to enter the passage to the number two ready room. A door heavy enough to block most of a Harrier jet's noise on takeoff or landing—which was major.

A door that felt as if it was opening to many places at once.

* * *

Claudia crossed through the passageway into a room she didn't expect.

Instead of containing the heavy table with bolted-down benches—on which she used to rest her butt until it was so sore it hurt to stand when the “saddle up” or the “stand down” order was finally issued—this was a comfortable office. A small table, a couple of couches, even comfortable chairs. All bolted down in case of rough seas, but still very pleasant.

It was just wrong. She'd come home to… Just wrong.

Lieutenant Commander Boyd Ramis, who'd been First Officer on the vessel when she'd been here as a Marine pilot two years ago, was seated at the desk. He'd made the room his office.

Claudia couldn't help herself. No matter what Trisha had said, she snapped to attention and saluted sharply.

The Lieutenant Commander rose and returned the salute without complaint or equivocation. Then held out his hand and offered a firm handshake. “Welcome back aboard, Captain Casperson. Pleasure to see you again.”

Boyd was good at that. He might be only an okay commander, but he surrounded himself with good people and he listened to them. And he kept them loyal by always knowing their names, their wives, even most of their kids.

“Thank you, sir.” Sure enough, despite a two-year gap, he asked about her mom but not her dad, recalling that he'd died of cancer during her former service aboard. She considered telling him about her stepfather and how happy he and her mom were in Flagstaff, but she didn't want to start that conversation with everyone around.

She chose the least-comfortable-looking chair to stave off sleep as long as possible and tried to assess the others as they arrived. It wasn't a big crowd.

Boyd and Michael, Trisha and Bill. She remembered Petty Officer Sly Stowell, the head of the ship's amphibious assault craft, managing to dredge up his name a moment before he had to remind her. By his greeting he definitely remembered her. Female Marine pilots were still counted in the dozens rather than the thousands, so he had a distinct advantage. Sly moved off; apparently he and Michael had some mutual respect going as they fetched coffee and stood together, though it was a silent respect because neither man spoke.

But Claudia had little doubt where their attention was focused. Michael was working a little too hard at not looking at her.

Fine, Mr. Crazy Delta Colonel.

But she wasn't having much luck ignoring him. Didn't want to.

A kiss chaste enough for a brother, if she'd had one… Okay, it hadn't been that chaste. Still. A kiss like that shouldn't be changing her view of anything. Not of the man, not of herself.

Yet it lingered there like the warmth of hot tea deep in her belly, making her feel more welcome to be aboard this boat than at any moment until now.

Despite the impossibly convoluted series of circumstances that had her coming back to this boat for a wholly different outfit after two years away, it was a return to exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

Claudia didn't know what to do with that. She'd raised herself with minimal help from her parents and only a little more from their neighbors. It had been up to her alone to consciously form herself into who she wanted to be. She was pretty pleased with the woman she'd built so far.

So what was this instinctual thing that had the Ice Queen kissing a crazy D-boy colonel? One she couldn't even keep out of her head.

His presence seemed to radiate from a quiet center.

Yet as aware as she was of him, he was invisible to so many others. People moved so close that they might have thought him a wall or piece of furniture. Few even greeted him. One actually startled himself when he almost walked into Michael.

* * *

Michael was always amused at how simple it was to disappear in a room. It wasn't about outer stillness; it was inner stillness. Very few saw past that.

Lieutenant Commander Ramis hadn't even seen him enter the room. Of course with a woman of Claudia's fine looks in front of him, that was little surprise.

Sly was more observant than most.

Claudia turned away from them, but he could still feel her awareness of him. He shifted, fetching a couple cookies from the refreshment table tray for himself and Sly.

Something, something he couldn't see, had caused her to glance back at him as he did so.

She shouldn't be a Night Stalker; she should be a Delta operator, except there weren't any women allowed. Not yet, but the landscape of the military was changing. Even four years ago there hadn't been any female Night Stalkers.

Well, if Captain Claudia Casperson was an example of that change, he was all in favor of it.

In more ways than one, which was a wholly inappropriate thought. But even though he was biting down on a chocolate chip cookie, that wasn't the taste he was remembering.

It was a woman at sunset.

* * *

Claudia was doing her best to retain names as one person after another arrived. It wasn't like a Marines operation with multiple ground commanders, flight team leaders both jet and helo, and so on. This was definitely a lean-and-mean operation: Night Stalkers, Rangers, Delta, and Navy.

An extremely tall, slender guy strolled in, actually wearing a white cowboy hat tipped back on his head. His easy drawl proved that the hat wasn't just an affectation as he introduced himself.

“Captain Justin Roberts, ma'am. Pilot of the Chinook CH-47
Calamity
Jane
at your service. Nice to have another captain aboard among all this riffraff.” He moseyed—a man who actually moseyed—his way over to one of the deep chairs and settled in. In SOAR, a company command didn't necessarily follow rank. Seniority and experience were far more important in a regiment where captains and even majors flew the helicopters.

Of course, a colonel in the field. Maybe Michael was only in planning. No. Last night. Yemen. Leading a four-man fire team himself.

The man was a puzzle.

The last trio to arrive was a very strange set. The man was tall—though shorter than the Texan—and slender, and introduced himself with a very Boston accent, not all that different from Trisha's, as Air Mission Commander Archie Stevenson III. The man Claudia had traded a dozen words with last night before he sent her into Yemen. He moved off to the coffeepot.

If he saw Michael, it was hard to tell. There might have been a brief nod.

The woman he'd entered with just stood there facing Claudia until she rose uneasily to her feet.

“Let me guess,” the newcomer addressed Claudia. “This is Trisha's doing.”

Claudia knew in that instant who commanded this unit. It was the voice from the DAP Hawk last night. The woman was tall, wore her mahogany hair in a long, flowing wave that framed a stunning face, and had an air of absolute authority.

“Well”—she didn't even wait for Claudia's answer—“when you're conscious tomorrow, you can officially report in. I did send Trisha to guide you in and welcome you aboard ship. She was supposed to lead you to me eventually. I'm Chief Warrant 3 Lola Maloney, by the way.” She had a firm handshake.

“Trisha, ah, took me aloft, ma'am.”

The woman glared at the gray steel ceiling, clearly counting to ten. Slowly. Possibly twice. “O'Malley…” she ground out between her teeth.

“I had to see.” Trisha came over and shoved a cold can of ginger ale into Claudia's hand. “I mean, last night she was good and all, but not like it was a tricky mission or anything. She did great, Lola. Can see something of all those Marine Corps SuperCobra habits, but well integrated. Took to the bird right away, compensated for the stealth characteristics nice and clean. No freeze in a crisis. If it were up to me, I'd sign off on her right now.”

Lola glanced down at the pint-sized chief warrant officer.

Unless Claudia was mistaken, Lola's gaze had shifted from anger to interest. So, Trisha might be a certified lunatic, but she was well respected by her commanding officer.

“You, Captain Casperson, are forgiven. We'll talk more after you've slept again. You, O'Malley, just stay out of my face for the rest of the night, please.” She didn't speak as if she expected such a request to be obeyed.

She headed off with a nod, leaving the third person who had entered watching Claudia frankly. The girl looked about fifteen, yet she stood with the poise of someone much older. Claudia studied her face. Except for the look in her hazel eyes, the girl was fifteen. But no young girl had ever looked at the world with such old eyes. She was as tall as Trisha but clearly still had some growing to do. Even now, her sleeves were just a little short, unless that was some new style. Her dark, ruffled hair was hanked back in a sloppy ponytail built off a pair of smaller braids that swept back from her temples, revealing her dark skin that matched no one else's in the room.

All of the others were dressed in some variation of combat casual, with only Boyd wearing the Navy tan slacks and shirt open at the throat typical of a boat officer. This girl was dressed in full teen style: black boots, skinny-leg jeans, a red cami under a yellow tank top, and an airy, worn green scarf with dark blue trim draped over her otherwise bare shoulders. She had a smartphone with headphones and an e-reader. She was fully equipped, but for what?

“What are you reading?” Claudia asked to break the stretching silence between them. Other conversations were going on in the room, but they had disappeared into a background buzz that was easy to ignore—except for her awareness that Michael was watching them intently.

Claudia was so tired that it was a relief to focus on only one person at a time.

“
Hunger
Games.
A strange title. Hunger is never a game.” The teen spoke as if this were a matter of the deepest importance.

“No, it isn't.” No one else was paying any attention to the strange conversation. As if casual fifteen-year-olds always appeared on ships in the service. SOAR was definitely far outside the norm. Or perhaps it was just D Company.