This beach, the setup, putting her alone like this.
The bastard was daring her!
Aloud, she gave an angry, frustrated yip.
If she did, he would have won yet again, maneuvering her into it. And if she didn’t, she’d lose for not having the nerve to accept the challenge.
Damn, damn, damn the man!
She fought the battle for a minute more, then the sun and the brush of the warm wind on her skin won. Her hands came up and crossed, slipping the straps from her shoulders. The discarded satin whispered off her body and pooled at her feet. Stepping out of the suit, she yielded to the pleasure and freedom of her nudity and ran down to the sea.
Plunging into the blood-temperature water, she reveled in the infinite difference between swimming in even the most minimal of clothing and swimming in nothing at all, wondering if it were possible for Harconan to have learned of her secret passion for skinny-dipping.
There was a reef some twenty yards offshore and she swam parallel with it, keeping a safe distance from its jagged coral and defending army of spiny sea urchins, yet diving intermittently to sight see the brilliant swarms of reef fish that flickered and danced among the multicolored sea fans. She should have forgotten about the suit and asked for swim fins and a face mask. Next time, that’s how she would do it.
Next time?
Before Amanda realized, she had swum a quarter mile up the beach and noticed that early-warning glow of too much skin, sun, and saltwater exposure. Paddling ashore, she sought the shelter of the shade line at the head of the sand. She was going to have to walk back to her suit bare, but that prospect wasn’t particularly unpleasant. She picked wild-growing scarlet hibiscus and tucked it into her hair as she ambled back toward the path.
She was so deep in daydreaming that she overshot the mark. She looked back in puzzlement. No, she couldn’t be mistaken: There were her sandals. This was the place she had left her suit. The beach jacket too.
They were gone, and suddenly Amanda found herself no longer merely nude but naked.
He’d done it to her again! Amanda’s hands started to move in the two classic gestures of a female caught in the predicament. Angrily she straightened and forced them down to her sides. It was not as if he had not already seen everything that was available. She was not going to lose her dignity on top of her clothing.
“Makara!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.
“Yes,” he replied casually coming down out of the deeper shade of the seaside grove. He was barefoot and wearing a beach jacket, and his gray eyes studied her with frank and open appreciation. Instinctively she started to cover herself again, catching herself once more. Angrily, she snapped at herself that this was just like having her clothes taken in escape-and-evasion training.
Only it wasn’t and she was fully aware of it.
“All right, Makara, what happened to my suit?”
“Nothing happened to it,” he said matter-of-factly, “You neither needed it nor wanted it anymore so I simply sent it back to the house. You are very lovely as you are now and I intend to keep you this way for a time.”
“That was a dirty trick!”
He sighed as if explaining something to an obstinate child. “Amanda, be reasonable, nobody tricked you except yourself.”
“Are you going to deny you set this whole thing, and me, up?”
“I admit to recognizing a potential,” he replied, grinning. “Recognizing potential is what I do best. Be fair: At most I can be accused of opening a series of doors for you, and in each case you stepped through of your volition, of your own desire.”
“I did not!”
“Of course you did. You could have stopped my stripping you like this at any time. Have you been forced, coerced, had a hand lifted against you? I think not. Even now it’s not too late. We can lie and say that this is something neither of us want. You may have my beach jacket to walk back to the house in.”
He lifted a hand now, to reach out and brush the petal of the flower in her hair against her cheek. She found her knees trembling, and her own hands came up, trying vainly to shield herself, to hide the hardening of her nipples and the other signs of the growing, uncontrollable fire within her.
“Makara, please,” she whispered. “I’m naked out here.”
The back of his fingers caressed her cheek directly this time. “Of course you are. Naked and very beautiful and vulnerable and helpless, as you wished to be, just for a little while.”
The sunset was awesome in its gold and flame grandeur. They watched it together on the scratch bed made out of the lounge mattresses. They lay on their sides, spoon fashion, Makara’s right arm under her head as a pillow, his face buried in her slightly salt-sticky hair. Both of them finally satiated after an almost frightening time when neither of them could seem to have enough of the other. And yet, the hunger for more still lived, the fires banked by sheer exhaustion.
“You’re right,” Amanda said, the first conscious word she had spoken in many hours. “I did want this, but I don’t know why.”
“I could take that as an insult, you know,” Harconan replied his voice slurring slightly as he kissed the back of her neck.
“That’s not what I mean, love,” she replied wryly, reaching back to administer a caress. “I’ll acknowledge that your very obvious charms impressed me from the beginning. I mean, why was I drawn to this particular scenario you set up? I’m usually more … straightforward about such things.”
“Must you always be so analytical?” he inquired, delivering a nip to her shoulder blade.
“Yes,” Amanda replied honestly, starting to move the backs of her thighs in a gentle massaging motion.
“Mm, well, I’d tell you my theory, but I don’t want to interrupt what you are doing.”
“I’ll stop cold right now if you don’t, mister.”
“I hear the captain coming back already. Very well, woman, here is my theory. You fell into my trap because you wished to do so. You wanted to dice with the Devil and be defeated. You wanted to lose the game and quite literally be stripped of all your control, all of your considerable power, to be left as you are now, naked and helpless. In short, you wished to lose.”
She stopped moving her hips and looked back over her shoulder, her eyes wide. “That’s crazy.”
“No, it’s not. Not for people like you and me.” Harconan closed both of his arms around her, drawing her back against him in a fond hug. “Losing is a natural human experience, a part of living. We learn from it. But you and I are different from the normal herd.”
“How so?”
“We are, as they say in your country, high rollers. We live large and the stakes are high when we gamble. When we lose, the losses are great, in money, in policy, and in lives. We must win—anyway we can, whenever we step to the table. Thus, the battlefields where we dare to lose are few and far between. You found one on my beach this day. I hope the experience was interesting for you.”
“Yes … very. Makara?”
“What, beauty?”
“I must be back at the ship soon. Before I go, do you think you could … defeat me one more time?”
Approaches to the Anchorage at Adat Tanjung
Island of Sulawesi
2241 Hours, Zone Time: August 16, 2008
Twin shadows ran in echelon formation through the night, not with the shriek of turbines and the billowing spray of lift fans, but with the all but inaudible mutter of silenced auxiliary diesels and the lap of waves against displacing hulls.
The Queen of the West and her sister craft, the Manassas, crept in toward the river estuary that served Adat Tanjung as a harbor. The ECM threat boards had sensed no trace of radar, and the only stealth ranges the Sea Fighters needed to be concerned with were the ancient ones of sight and sound.
At the “shoulders” of each broad hull, just aft and to either side of the cockpit, weapons pedestals elevated into firing position, rocket pods and twin-barreled 30mm autocannon locking into place
and panning across the darkness. The snub barrels of OCSW grenade launchers supplemented the primary armament, peering from the open side hatches.
Normally, a third grenade launcher would have been mounted aft, to fire out the opened tailgate. On this night however, a small team of SOC Marines made use of that space to inflate and equip their small CRRC (Combat Rubber Raiding Craft).
With the hull hatches open, the Queen’s air conditioners couldn’t cope with the inrush of steaming warm night air. Sweat prickled under interceptor vests and Kevlar K-Pot combat helmets. Steamer Lane bounced his attention between the graphics chart of the estuary on his Navicom display and what was visible through the windscreen via his night-vision visor.
“Okay,” he commented, “that’s the western point. We get around that and we should see the village on the eastern bank of the river mouth.”
“Uh-huh.” Scrounger Caitlin looked up from the console screen she was using to access the more powerful low-light television camera in the Mast-Mounted Sighting System. “Better keep us at least two klicks off the point, sir. I’m seeing some fish traps and some small-boat activity off the beach. Locals night fishing, I guess.”
“Will do. How about that coaster passing astern of us?”
The sensor pod atop the snub mast swiveled around to peer aft.
“Almost over the horizon, sir. No longer a factor.”
“Good enough.” Lane chuckled softly. “I can see a real nice break over the bar across that river mouth. You know, if you had a strong southerly wind building out here, you could probably catch a wave on that bar and ride it a good mile up the bay.”
“Begging the Commander’s pardon, but I don’t think my guys and I want to try that tonight.”
It was a try at levity from the young Marine officer riding the cock pit passenger seat. It didn’t quite come off. Tonight would be the first hot mission for Second Lieutenant Lincoln Ives, USMC (SOC).
Steamer Lane and Scrounger Caitlin knew the feeling and empathized. They had been there themselves. It wouldn’t really help Ives to explain that the knotting gut and dry mouth would always be there. Experience just allowed you to hide the symptoms better.
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” Caitlin called back over her shoulder. “It’s going to be a cakewalk, you’ll see.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Chief,” Ives replied wryly.
“Vote nothing, sir, a statement of fact. I know tonight’s run is going to be good for you.”
Ives looked up from adjusting his MOLLE harness for the tenth time. “You know? What do you mean?”
“Just that. I know. I got the Touch, sir.”
“The Touch …” the Marine’s voice trailed off. He’d heard the stories. Every combat hand does sooner or later. The military urban legends about certain individuals who seem to have the ability to sense the future, specifically concerning fate, life, and death, warriors who have accurately predicted the loss in combat of others or themselves. Ives had always tossed off such stories as just that, stories. They couldn’t be true, no matter how matter of factly the Queen’s chief of the boat spoke. Could they?
“Believe her, Lieutenant,” Steamer Lane said quietly. “This is a genuine no-shiner. If the Scrounge says you’re going to be okay, you are.”
At that moment Lincoln Ives had wanted nothing more in the world than for someone to say, “Hey, it’s going to be all right,” with enough conviction to make him believe it.
“If you say so, Commander.” He grinned. “Thanks for the word, Chief. I’ll pass it along.”
There was a thump and scuff from overhead, and Ensign Wilder slid down through the open hatch in the cockpit overhead. “Cipher drone tie-downs are cleared for launch, sir,” he reported, sliding into the navigator’s seat.
“Good enough, Terr. Get us a status update from the Manassas and then let the Carlson know we’re on station and ready to open the ball.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“I’d better check on how my guys are coming down in the main hull.” Ives levered himself out of the jump seat and started down the cockpit ladderway.
Lane let him drop out of sight before glancing over at his copilot. Steamer would no more doubt Sandra Caitlin’s gift than he would one of the Queen’s instrument readouts. After “the Touch” had foretold the deaths of some people very close to them both, he and Caitlin had spent many long nights considering the complex morality involved in such a power.
“So was that a square count on tonight’s run?” he asked.
She returned his gaze and gave an ominous shrug.
Landing Force Operations Center,
USS Evans F. Carlson
2252 Hours, Zone Time: August 16, 2008
The Combat Information Center, or CIC, of a modern warship is by nature windowless, being located deep within the vessel’s hull or superstructure. But here, surrounded by arrays of increasingly sophisticated sensors, communications systems, and intelligence-gathering assets, a commander can truly “see” what is going on in the surrounding combat environment.
Befitting the complex nature of her amphibious warfare mission, the Carlson had more than one such facility. The Carlson’s CIC proper controlled the offensive and defensive posture and actions of the LPD, and, through the data links of the Joint Battle Management System, the task group as a whole when she was acting as command ship of the formation.
The second facility, the joint information center, oversaw the operation of the task force’s “Raven” assets, its strategic, operational, and tactical intelligence-gathering capacity. Here flowed the electronic and signal intercepts, the recon satellite and drone downloads, the sit reps from the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence—even the latest off the wire from CNN—all to be assessed, correlated, and passed on to the task force decision makers.
Thirdly there was the landing force operations center, or LFOC, mission control for the embarked Marine detachment.
The LFOC had a comforting familiarity for Amanda, the low cable strung overhead, the triple row of workstations facing a bulkhead paneled with large screen displays, the quiet efficiency of the duty crew in the CRT-lit dimness. Some were in Navy officers’ khaki or enlisted denim, others in Marine-green utilities.
Amanda had fought her first wars in places like this.
“What’s our latest on Indonesian air and naval deployments, Stone?” Amanda inquired, standing behind the force commander’s workstation in the rear row of consoles.
With a headset settled over his close-cropped brush of dark hair, Stone Quillain brought up a regional area map of western Sulawesi and its maritime surroundings on the main bulkhead flatscreen. Using the joystick controller with only a hint of unfamiliarity, he highlighted the key points amid the sprinkling of civilian traffic hacks on the 120-inch display.
“Well, we got us a maritime polisi launch at Parepare. That’s a good forty miles to the south. She’s currently off patrol and standing down at her slip. I don’t think we have to worry about her much. The nearest Indonesian air is a C-160 transport over the Makassar Strait about thirty miles to the west in the standard ATF corridor to Balikpapan. Nothing to worry about there, either. The nearest major surface element is a training frigate, the Hajar Dewan … something or other, way down here off Selayar Island. No helo embarked at this time. Another no-problem.”
“How fresh is this intel?” Amanda inquired.
“JIC says it’s hot out of the oven, skipper. They’re direct linking with both the Global Hawk we have over the target area and the Oceansat recon net. If somebody steps outside of his hut to take a leak, we’ll hear the splash.”
“Do tell,” Amanda replied wryly. She sank into the chair behind the adjacent workstation and plugged her command headset into the communications hardlink. “Stone, do you ever feel obsolescence sneaking up behind you? I like to consider myself innovative, but the technology just keeps pulling away.”
The Marine cut his eyes at her and chuckled, a baritone
huh, huh, huh in his chest. “That’s for you button pushers to worry about. I’m still a bayonet-and-bullet man. They’re going to be needing me around for a long time to come.”
“Hmmm, consider where you’re sitting at the moment, Stone,” Amanda smiled back. “Consider where you’re sitting.”
The big shadow beside her grumbled something about women under his breath.
There was a flicker of corridor light in the cool CRT-lit dimness as the blackout curtain in the operations center entryway was brushed aside. Amanda felt a cluster of people pressing close behind her and her nose cataloged the scents added to the limited space: Admiral MacIntyre’s old fashioned bay rum, Christine Rendino’s slightly musky cologne, and the clean lime bite of another aftershave that she didn’t recognize at first. Then she recalled the scent signature of Nguyen Tran.
“Status?” MacIntyre inquired at her shoulder.
“The microforce is positioned,” Amanda replied. “We should be getting the active link from the Queen momentarily.”
As if prompted by her words, a second large screen display lit off, filling with the low-light image of the Queen of the West’s cockpit interior, the face of Steamer Lane’s executive officer centered in the screen.
Ensign Wilder’s lips moved. “Possum One, this is Royalty. We are at point of team departure, commencing live data stream. We are on the time line with green boards. Tactical situation appears nominal.”
More flatscreens activated.
One was a computer-graphics overhead simulacra of the engagement area, a composite image built from the information flow from both the Sea Fighter’s sensors and those of the orbiting Global Hawk drone, combined with the geointelligence database on the Adat coastal region.
Another screen filled with the low-light vista drawn from the Queen’s Mast Mounted Sight cameras.
Amanda lifted her voice. “Give us a pan across the village area.”
A systems operator in the console row ahead accessed a system override and manipulated a miniature joystick.
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