by Peter Albano
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It almost touches Alaska.”
“Right. About fifty miles. Most of it’s above the Arctic Circle. It’s mostly desolate and barren tundra. Japanese holdouts could be there and no one would ever know.”
“But you’d need Russian cooperation for a reconnaissance.”
He grunted, muttering, “Fat chance.” And then he smiled. “Then, you don’t think I’m nuts.”
“No,” she said, laughing. “And it’s time for dinner.” She gestured ahead where the lights of Bill’s Gills and Swill loomed out of the darkness.
*
“Do you feel better, Brent?” Pamela asked, reaching across the table, covering just a small part of his hand with hers.
He smiled. “Don’t stir me up, woman. You’re disturbing my digestive juices and they’re at work on the best bouillabaisse this side of Mount Olympus. Zeus, himself, would be envious.” The smile vanished, eyes narrowed. “But that poor bastard never had a goddess who could compare with you.” For a moment, they were lost in each other’s eyes. He ached to get closer, cursed the table. He held up an empty glass. “One more mai tai and God will be back in his heaven and all will be right with the world.”
She chuckled, obviously pleased with his change in mood. “A philosopher and bard,” she said, facetiously. “I never suspected these hidden talents.
“I have many,” he said with sudden intensity. His hand turned, fingers enveloping her hand and wrist like the leaves of a carnivorous plant, moving upward, leaving tingling trails. “Perhaps,” he continued, “sometime we can explore these talents. Both yours and mine.”
“Please, Brent,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “I’m not sophomoric and I’m. no tease. But, please, we’ve only known each other for two days.”
“Christ,” he said, looking down at the table. “OK. I’ll have a couple more of these — ” he nodded at his glass — “and take you home.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “All right?” The tone was hard.
“All right. All right,” she said, lips turning down. “Brent?”
“Yes?”
“Let me make you a mai tai.”
“Make you a mai tai?”
“Yes. At my place.”
For an eternity he lost himself in the warm, emerald depths of her eyes. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, rising.
She rose slowly, eyes locked with his as if tied with invisible strings.
*
“I’m not going to ‘change into something more comfortable,’ Brent. But I would like to get out of these blues and into some civvies,” Pamela said, standing before a rugged hatch top end table, handing her guest a drink. Brent seemed comfortable, smiling up from a plush velour sofa pushed against one wall of the living room of Pamela’s tastefully furnished and decorated apartment. Just off Linden Avenue, overlooking Lake Green, the sparkling new apartment was one of eight enclosing an open court, boasting a recreation room, heated pool and sauna.
Pamela felt a tremor as she entered her bedroom, scanning the king-sized bed that dominated, splendidly inviting with its turquoise, brocaded spread. “Not tonight, damn you,” she said, under her breath as she moved to a closet, reaching for a green satin blouse and matching slacks.
As she dressed before two full length mirrors hung from adjoining closet doors, her mind raced with thoughts of Brent Ross. He was young and attractive — an attractiveness made more intense by his boyish masculinity and the power of his mind. Pamela demanded intelligence. She had never accepted a man purely on the basis of physical appeal. But there was something else. Brent needed her, not just physically but also because of the Bering Sea and the terrible, violent things that had happened there. She was not sure just how she could help him. But she knew the casual gift of her body was out of character, had never been made to any man, and she was determined, would not be made to Brent Ross.
She tucked the blouse in, turned, eyeing the way her upthrust breasts — usually flattened by her blue blouse — jutted in freedom, nipples peaking through the satin. She had always taken pride in her tiny waist, and rounded, sculpted buttocks. Now, both were enhanced by the clinging satin. And her legs, long and slender in the tight, glistening sheaths. She slid her hands downward over her flanks. “Damned, narcissistic, oversexed bitch,’’ she muttered to the mirror. Then she turned and walked to the door.
Seated again on the sofa, Pamela turned to Brent, raising her glass. “They also serve who only stand and wait, Brent.”
He smiled. “Right. I guess that’s Milton.” She nodded. “Okay, Pam,” he touched her glass with his. “For the rest of the evening, the Bering Sea is off limits.” They sipped their drinks. Again the mismatched hands found each other. “Pam, remember that, ah, incident with Hughes?”
She chuckled. “That was only two nights ago.”
“Well, you said you’d throw both of us in the brig — pulled rank.” She nodded. “You meant it, didn’t you?”
“You gave me no choice. He’s an animal — had it coming. I wanted to slap him myself. But, yes. I had no options.” She sipped her drink, savored the flavor. “They’re proud of the New Jersey, think it’s unsinkable.”
“She is formidable,” Brent said.
“I know about her main battery, Tomahawks, and Harpoons, but what is the Vulcan Foulger was bragging about?”
“It’s the newest weapon for close-in defense. Popular now; especially since the British lost ships in the Falklands to low-flying aircraft, dropping old-fashioned gravity bombs.” He put his drink on the highly varnished table top. “It’s a Gatling-type system — six twenty-millimeter guns revolving. It tracks automatically and can fire three thousand rounds a minute; even tracks its own projectiles. There are rumors that it can actually hit five-inch shells. The Big J has four.”
“Only four?”
“Of course. A dozen attacking aircraft or even cruise missiles would have no chance.”
“What about a hundred?”
He laughed. “The Russians just don’t have that capability.” He picked up his glass, sipped.
“Brent,” she said, softly. “Let’s not talk shop.”
He chuckled. “Pam, you told me once that you didn’t believe in rushing things.”
“Right.”
“Well, what’s more Platonic than machine guns?”
She laughed. “Touché.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to the unsinkable New Jersey, Andrea Doria, Lusitania, and Titanic.” They drained their glasses.
Rising quickly, she took his glass and walked to a small bar in the comer. His eyes followed, riveted to the lithesome flow of her body enhanced by the satin. He moistened his suddenly parched lips with the tip of his tongue. As she mixed fresh drinks, he said, grinning, “How am I supposed to be a good boy when you dress like that? You just put on another layer of skin. What did you use: a spray gun?”
She laughed as she filled the glasses. “I have a muumuu, if you prefer.”
“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m a masochist. I prefer this exquisite torture.”
She handed him his drink. Returned to his side. Closer. They eyed each other over their glasses. Drank. “Put down your glass,” he commanded, tabling his. She obeyed.
He pulled her close. She felt his hard chest against her breasts. She lifted her head. Then his mouth was on hers, tongue circling her lips, leaving a trail of fire. The tongue became a reptile, darting into her mouth, exploring her teeth and gums, finally finding her tongue, engaging it in a slithering, sliding duel. An arm was under her knees, lifting, stretching her full length.
“No, Brent. Please. Not yet.” But his lips silenced her with a desperate urgency. She felt a hot wave erode her resolve. Her hands were on his back pulling.
Then his weight was on her, pushing her deep into the cushions. A trembling hand traversed her blouse, leaving a trail of loosened buttons, pulling the satin, tearing it away, exposing the upthrust pinnacles. She felt her slacks loosened, pushed downward. She raised her hips. Lips
explored her ear, pulsating neck, finally reaching and enveloping the rosettes of her swollen breasts. Exquisite sensations flamed downward, following a hand that had finally searched out and commanded her warm, moist depths. The maddening mouth was insatiable, moving ever downward, tongue burning trails across her flat stomach and abdomen.
She moaned. Put her hands to his head. Pressed. Pushed upward with her hips. Then the lips began an upward journey, recapturing her breasts, throat and finally her open, hungry mouth. His body covered hers, pressing down between her legs.
“Brent, Brent — darling. Not here. Not here.”
Wordlessly, he rose. As he lifted her like a rag doll, the torn blouse slipped away, falling to the floor, a forgotten rag.
In minutes she was on the bed, nude, watching him strip his clothes with trembling hands, never taking his eyes from her. Running her eyes over the young man’s broad shoulders, narrow waist, and muscular arms, Pamela held no wonder for her passion. He was magnificent.
He came for her. She held her arms to him. Welcomed him. Opening her legs as he lowered his weight. She moaned, eyes glazed with desire, arms circling, hands clawing, hips pushing upward. She reached down between his legs and took him in her hand. “Now, my darling — now,” she said, thickly, guiding him.
She gasped as he pressed down, felt rigid flesh part her tight but liquid channel. Driving. He moved into her slowly, gently, until he could penetrate no further. She felt filled — strangely, emotionally as well as sexually. He began to move. Short thrusts. Her hands travelled over him, testing the muscles that bulged in arms and shoulders and back. His open mouth was on her sensuously moist and slack lips, hands beneath her buttocks. She shook, washed by a flaming sea, whimpered, called his name, thrashed, reached her first climax with a moan that was almost a shout.
“I hurt you.” He began to withdraw.
“No, darling. No. Stay! Deep!” Her clawing hands moved down his back, pushing him against her.
The burning sea returned, washing her in waves, rippling from the depths of their union. He drove into her with power. She raised her legs, locked him in.
Suddenly, he was possessed. Frantically, driving. Sweat ran from his face, mingled with hers. She began to moan with every breath, writhing against him, wept, suddenly climaxing at the moment he shuddered, shouting, “Oh, God.”
Then they were still; mouth to mouth, still locked together, sighing, kissing gently, murmuring, wondering. She felt a softening within her. He began to withdraw. “No,” she commanded. “Stay, darling. Stay.” He sighed contentedly, a prisoner of her arms and legs.
They lay for a long moment, kissing gently. Then there was a swelling — a new hardness within her. She began to move her hips. He made a guttural sound, began to thrust — frantic, powerful thrusts while his hands cupped her twisting buttocks, raising them. Again, the waves of sensation and the shattering climax that found him sprawled helplessly atop her, still a prisoner of her arms and legs.
“If we could only stay like this forever — forever,” Pamela sighed, fingering her lover’s wet hair. But there was no answer. Brent Ross was asleep.
FOUR
4 December 1983
Captain Third Rank Andrei Vasilyev disliked the north Pacific run. Eyeing the two snowplows scraping Runway Four of the Soviet Navy’s Vladivostok Air Station, he grunted his replies as co-pilot Lt. Gregor Bokanovich droned the usual challenges of the takeoff checklist. “V-one, VR, V-two,” sounded in the earphones.
“120 knots, 140 knots, 155 knots,” Andrei answered, happy that Gregor was nearing the end of the list. Idling engines burned fuel uselessly.
“Trim,” was the challenge.
“Three set.”
“Flaps.”
Andrei yawned. “Take off.”
“IFF.”
Andrei threw a switch. A green light glowed. “Our friends and foes will know us.”
“Warning lights.”
The captain straightened, eyes moving across the instrument panel, craned his head, glancing at an overhead panel. “All out,” he said, reaching for the yoke-topped control column. And then with sarcasm, “Wake up those Siberian bears.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
The lieutenant reached to the overhead console, switching aircraft communications from Cockpit to All Stations. Then he snapped, “Crew ready?”
As the crew answered, acknowledging readiness, Andrei’s shoulders slumped. Four years of Vladivostok, flying Tupolev Sixteens and Twenty-Twos on the same north Pacific run could strip a man of his sanity. This cursed land was perpetually cold and damp. And he was forced to fly ancient, vibrating aircraft with five of his crew brainless peasants. Only his co-pilot of two years, Lt. Gregor Bokanovich, was, as himself, a Great Russian, intelligent, and worthy of command. But the handsome Gregor always seemed fatigued, no doubt tiring himself moving from one woman’s bed to another.
Despite his appalling duty and crushing boredom, Andrei was satisfied with his career. The son of a commissar, Alexander Vasilyev — a miraculous survivor of the Stalin purges — he had been admitted at the age of fifteen to the Nakhimov Naval School in 1965. Here, in classes filled with sons of Party functionaries — no peasants or sons of men who were not of Great Russian stock were admitted — he excelled at his work and pleased his Zampolit. Whenever his Zampolit assaulted the class with dull harangues, pounding the sanctity of the Communist Party, socialist ideology, conformity, and the necessity for “political reliability,” Andrei listened with a rapt expression — even if thoughts of Yak dung ran through his mind.
When he entered flight school, he joined the Communist Party and, he had hoped, insured his career. His first seven year tour at Odessa had been an idyll. Stationed on the Black Sea, he was able to enjoy the beaches and resorts where there was always an abundance of vodka and women. Nearby Yalta, on the Crimean peninsula, had been a special place. Here, Party dignitaries brought their families for rest and relaxation. The older members could still be heard chuckling over Roosevelt — poor, naive Roosevelt: charmed by Yalta and tricked by Stalin into surrendering half the world.
It was here he had met Nadia — Nadia Rusakov, twenty-year-old daughter of Rear Adm. Nicolai Rusakov who was Chief of Staff to the Chief of Naval Aviation, Col. Gen. A. A. Mironenko. Nadia — soft, blonde, and passionate. She had spent the entire summer of 1977 with only two servants in the family’s magnificent dacha on a hill overlooking the sea. He remembered how his groin would ache for her when he was on those long flights that took him over Bulgaria, Albania, the Ionian Sea, and finally the Mediterranean where his radar always found the American Sixth Fleet. And those American fighter pilots. So aggressive. Often they would try to frighten him with nerve-shattering head-on passes. “Like Cossack cavalry,” his co-pilot had remarked once when the turbulence from one close pass almost ripped a dorsal mounted antenna from the Tupolev.
But his mind was always on Nadia. Those warm evenings, stretched on the white sand together, the sounds of balalaikas wafted by the breeze from nearby resorts. And her body, soft and yielding. If only she had not become pregnant. He remembered his orders to Vladivostok. Very unusual. They had been cut in the office of Col. Gen. A. A. Mironenko. Siberia would have been better.
As were all Russian officers, he was accustomed to stupidity and expected incompetence in the enlisted ranks. Anticipating bungling by enlisted clods, his training included courses on all the mechanical and electronic functions of his aircraft. But the technicians given him at Vladivostok were the worst in the Navy with the mechanical aptitude of Mongolian idiots. Many officers claimed the only thing more stupid than a Mongol was a Ukranian mule. Thus necessity — survival itself — had taught him intimate lessons about the Tupolev’s two Mikulin AM-3 engines, its four twin mounted NR-23, twenty-three millimeter cannons, even the radar which was so baffling. In fact, he never took his plane off the ground without first studying her from glazed nose to tail guns.
His Armenian navigator, Onnig Hugasian, seated in h
is armored seat in the nose, was a joke. The fool could not add a column of two digit numbers. Fortunately, Andrei was a competent navigator and knew he could bring them back if the navigational computer broke down. And his two gunners — Vladimir Neustroyev, a Kazakh, and Stepan Bolkanski, a Uzbek from Samarkand — could not hit the ground with their guns if they threw them overboard. Fortunately, radarman Ivan Yegorov, a Georgian, had little to do but stare at his scopes. An ape could do that. He was not expected to repair breakdowns and, in any event, was helpless anyway. But the other radarman, Mikhail Susloparov, a Ukranian farmer and pure Slav, possessed the coveted Master Three Radar Specialist badge and could actually watch his scopes and operate his radio. Luckily, their computer-enciphering unit compensated for the peasant’s plow horse touch, scrambling his coarse voice on one -band and sending crisp dots and dashes on the other.
And he was Zampolit to the crew, responsible for the ideological well being of a herd of dolts with the political awareness of a pack of Karelian wolfhounds. But without a doubt, the KGB — Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti — always guarding state security, always alert, was watching, looking for non-conformists and deviants. Was one of the peasants KGB? Watching? Perhaps, even his co-pilot.
There had always been tension between the secret police and the armed forces. He shuddered, thinking of torture, confessions, show trials, the random arrests and midnight executions in the infamous Lubyanka Prison. Thousands of officers had been murdered in the paranoid purges of the Thirties, destroying professional command, leaving Russia vulnerable to Hitler’s invasion. He must be alert and watch his lips.
Andrei shook his head. Looked up and down the runway. Why was it taking the crew so long to report ready? Two more years of this. Could he keep his sanity?
Finally, the last station reported ready. Andrei stirred, switched the intercom to Cockpit, saying, “Call the tower, Lieutenant.”
Gregor nodded. “Vladivostok tower,” the lieutenant said, “this is Otter Six-Eight. Request clearance for takeoff.”