Girl Rides the Wind

by Jacques Antoine

  “Not quite.” He scratched his chin and paused to allow a few red-jacketed sailors to squeeze by him in the ladderwell. “There are dead-ends and wrong turns, but you develop a sense for it eventually.”

  With a crew of eleven hundred, the Bonhomme Richard was one of the first ships with quarters designed specifically to accommodate two hundred or so female crew members—as well as however many women might be included in the Marine Expeditionary Unit the ship was intended to carry in combat operations—the primary female-friendly feature being the inclusion of a private head within each berthing room.

  Officers’ quarters tended to be roomy, within the narrow limits of shipboard life, and CJ’s could accommodate four, while enlisted sailors slept in rooms designed for sixty or more in racks stacked three high in most cases. But even with the extra room, once they’d entered, Zaki’s broad shoulders made even simple introductions, or in fact any movement, difficult.

  “O-Zaki,” Kiku said with a giggle, and then blushed crimson, before bowing. “I am honored to make your acquaintance.”

  “Zaki and CJ were classmates of mine at the Academy,” Emily said in Japanese.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, too, Lt Otani,” CJ said, extending her hand. When Zaki tried to bow, he almost bumped heads with CJ, the two of them towering over Kiku.

  Once Zaki had been reminded of some other errand, and beds had been assigned and the gear stowed, CJ led them on a tour.

  “First stop is the armory, so you two can check in your weapons.”

  “Kiku-san only carries a regulation sidearm,” Emily said.

  “I’m pretty sure the same can’t be said for you.” CJ laughed and nudged a bulky duffel with her foot.

  “Armory?” Kiku asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “All firearms must be secured unless we’re in an active combat zone,” CJ said, and led them through the bowels of the ship.

  “Excellent condition.” Staff Sgt Huart turned Kiku’s Beretta over in his hands, before finding a place for it in a rack of similar weapons. “Looks like it’s never even been fired,” he said, and handed her a chit.

  Once Emily had laid out her ordinance on a counter in front of Sgt Huart, CJ clucked at her. “I don’t know how you can even lift all that.”

  Huart inspected and appraised each piece, then logged it in: “Remington 870… nice. Good in close quarters… really clears a room.”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. “The M4 never really did it for me.”

  “It’s got decent penetration against the lighter body-armor.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s just too fussy for me. Plus, if I’m gonna use a gun at all, I want to end the fight, not just piss someone off.”

  Huart snorted at that remark and began to call her military experience into question — “And just how many firefights have you been in, ma’am?” — but paused when he noticed Emily’s sidearm, hefted it in one hand, and smirked at her. “You’ve got good taste, Lieutenant, but this is outside the regs.”

  “What’s the problem?” CJ asked.

  “Marine regulation sidearm is a Beretta M9, ma’am. We’re gonna have to write her up for this one. Who’s your commanding officer?”

  “She’s DRP, Staff Sergeant,” a deeper voice said from the passageway. “SOCOM made it official: they carry 1911s.” Emily and CJ turned to see who it was, and saluted when they recognized him. Kiku and Sgt Huart saluted, too.

  “Deep-Recon, sir?” Huart seemed to want to object that helo-pilots aren’t really considered part of a DRP, but a glance at the gold ‘budweiser’ decorating Cmdr Leone’s chest silenced him.

  After an uncomfortable moment, Emily asked, “Are we checking steel, too?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Huart replied, but when she extracted her wakizashi from the duffle he glanced again at Cmdr Leone, who returned a brief shake of the head, as if to say, “Just log it in. This too shall pass.”

  But Kiku couldn’t let it pass, and picked it up, cheeks suddenly flushed, examining the sharp edge and the saya, caressing a wavy pattern that ribboned along the side of the blade. Then her fingertips touched a chrysanthemum design etched into the base. “This is not regulation issue, is it Tenno-san?” she said, in Japanese. “This must come from the Imperial Household.”

  Emily nodded and slipped the blade back into the saya. “It’s a reminder of a service done and a debt to be repaid.” Then turning to Huart, she spoke in English, “Take good care of it, Staff Sergeant. It means a lot to me.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am, how would you even carry this in action?” he asked.

  “Strapped to my back.”

  “A Ka-bar isn’t good enough for you?”

  “Never cared for ’em, Sarge,” she said, rubbing her jaw. “In this sort of thing, I’ve found that size really matters.”

  * * *

  Kiku and CJ lost sight of Emily and Cmdr Leone when Kiku showed an interest in a large candy display in the ship’s store across from Wardroom Two. “It really is a city,” she gushed. “Just as Talib-san said.”

  “I doubt Zaki has ever been called that before,” CJ said.

  Kiku looked up at her and tried to fathom her meaning. Had she said the wrong thing? She’d met many gaijin before, and once she got used to how tall the Americans tended to be, they were easy to manage. But sharing close quarters across a language barrier was likely to prove a challenge. Her knowledge of English was passable—she knew how to speak it better than she could understand what was said to her—all of which made her regret losing sight of Tenno-san.

  When they finally caught up with her on the normally crowded Vulture’s Row, looking out over the flight deck, the scene was oddly quiet, perhaps because of a pause between flight exercises. When CJ stopped at one end, Kiku peered around her and saw Tenno-san staring down Cmdr Leone. She sensed CJ’s discomfort at stumbling into what looked like a private scene, and wondered if they shouldn’t withdraw.

  “I don’t need babysitting,” Tenno-san said, and pushed him away. Kiku’s feet seemed to be glued to the deck, and the approach of a line of Harriers meant it would soon be difficult to hear again. Still, body language spoke volumes, and these two would be hard to recognize as commander and subordinate.

  After the last jet roared off the deck, she heard Cmdr Leone say, “What you didn’t need is another article fifteen write-up.”

  “I could have handled him without your help.”

  “Don’t blame us. The orders came from the top, from SECNAV himself.”

  “Us? Let me guess. Your partner in crime is here, too.”

  It seemed so strange to Kiku that a superior officer should shrink from Tenno-san, which is exactly how he seemed, his shoulders slumped and his eyes fixed on his shoes, like a schoolboy who’d been caught in some mischief.

  “Well, you can tell him to come out of hiding,” she continued, when he nodded.

  “It wasn’t our idea,” he said.

  “Did Michael dream this up?”

  “And Connie,” he offered, as if he hoped the mere sound of that name would protect him from evil. “I think it was mainly her idea.”

  Perhaps this ominous name would have worked some sort of magic, for all Kiku knew, if not for the arrival of others on the scene, and the temporarily windblown quiet of the flight deck.

  CJ stepped forward, and when Tenno-san glowered at her, she cleared her throat and made a little gesture to a group of men approaching from the other side.

  “You must be Lt Tenno,” said a small man in jungle-camo, sporting a black beret. When she nodded, he turned to the two men standing behind him, one dressed as he was, and wearing a red insignia embroidered with the word ‘Tagaligta,’ the other, taller man wearing the uniform of the Chinese PLA. After a brief exchange between the two smaller men in a tongue Kiku did not recognize, and a grunt from the Chinese officer, he continued. “This is Captain Ongpin of the Philippine National Police, and Captain Diao…”

  “And you are?” Tenno-san i
nterrupted.

  “My apologies, ma’am. I am Corporal Iwatani, Capt Ongpin’s translator.”

  “Then let me welcome you aboard,” Cmdr Leone said, perhaps a tiny bit irritated at having been overlooked until then.

  “Yes, this is Cmdr Leone…,” she said, pausing to allow an exchange of grunts and nods to settle down. “Apparently, he will have operational oversight of our missions.”

  With Iwatani translating into Tagalog for Capt Ongpin, who then translated into Mandarin for Capt Diao, the conversation promised to devolve into a game of ‘telephone.’

  “Cpl Iwatani-san, may I assume from your name that you also speak Japanese?” Kiku asked, inserting herself into the conversation.

  “Hai. Nihongo ga wakari masu,” he replied. “After the war, my great-grandfather, like many Japanese POWs, married and settled in Mindanao.”

  “And this is Lt Otani and Lt Tanahill,” Tenno-san said, to complete the round of introductions.

  Capt Diao muttered something to Capt Ongpin, who relayed it to Cpl Iwatani, who was about to translate for the others when Tenno-san stopped him and said something in Mandarin directly to Capt Diao.

  “Man, I hope all your communications don’t work like this,” CJ said.

  “It will not be as bad as all that,” Diao finally said, now speaking English. “And, yes, Miss Tenno, Diao is a very common name. Why do you ask?”

  “I met someone named Diao a couple of years back.”

  “I take it from your tone that it was not an auspicious meeting.”

  “No,” Tenno-san said, her face turning dark and hard. “It was not. A close friend lost her life as a result.”

  “As I said before, it is a common name. Still, I am sorry to hear of your misfortune. I hope this Diao was not too blame.”

  Tenno-san’s mood seemed to turn even darker as she took in Diao’s words. “Perhaps not alone,” she said. “But she paid a heavy price for it. You might even say she lost her head over the affair.”

  As her last words washed over him, Diao’s jaw tightened and his eyes sharpened, and Kiku, still peering around CJ’s shoulder, wondered if he hadn’t somehow betrayed himself. CJ herself seemed not to react well to something in those words, her breath caught in a shudder of surprise, or maybe even a sudden grief. In the meantime, Tenno-san had pushed past Iwatani and Ongpin, and started down the ladder at the far end of Vulture’s Row, trailing Cmdr Leone behind her.

  Chapter 7

  Chutes and Ladders

  Emily lay quietly in her rack – the clock they shared showed 0439, and its red eyes blinked back at her. Lettering on the back of an old photo she’d tucked up against the panel above her head shook in the general agitation of the bulkhead. She reached it down and held it out before her face in the dim illumination of CJ’s nightlight. “It’s not over yet,” it read. “Sorry, kiddo.” A finger slipped along one edge and she mouthed the final words: “You can count on me. C.”

  Three pictures mattered to her, two of which she’d salvaged from the charred remains of the home she’d grown up in. Those images of her not-yet-recognized mother sustained her childhood, and she kept those back at Michael’s house in Virginia. But this one, a gift from Connie, had become the shoulder she rested on in the darkest moments, too precious to lose, and too important not to keep near. A sealed plastic bag kept it dry – her one concession to the hazards of shipboard life – but it had been in enough uniform pockets to round off two of the corners.

  She flipped it over and let her eyes roam across the fading colors on the other side. The jungle-camo green of the men’s fatigues had gone mostly grey, but Connie’s hair was still blond, tied back in a severe pony-tail. There she stood, on a wooden dock in Okinawa or maybe Manila, next to a single-engine seaplane, with three men. Two of them looked directly at the camera, perhaps surprised, but with faces too stony to show it, and a third man stood further back, shaded by the wing, glowering at something behind Connie. How had someone even be able to take such a picture – this thought had always perplexed her. Was it a friend? But these people weren’t the sort to make friends, not even with each other. Or just an accident? However it had happened, she was sure Connie had demanded the camera, no doubt hissing a not-so-veiled threat on the photographer’s life.

  The man in the middle always commanded Emily’s attention, her father, as secretive a figure as she’d ever met. He’d raised her under a foggy incognito, kept her hidden even from herself, kept her safe, and been killed before he could complete the task. Gazing at the only photographic image of him she’d ever seen comforted her. The image of the tall blonde standing next to him brought a different sort of reassurance. She knew well enough what lengths Connie would go to on her behalf, as well as what she’d do to keep Li Li and Stone safe – the children Emily had rescued from Kamchatka years ago – and what Connie had already risked to keep her alive, too. The man in the shadow also caught her eye, though she sometimes shuddered even to think of him, her uncle David, inhumanly cruel and determined to destroy her, until in one final confrontation she’d hacked a broad gash across his chest with a katana and stripped his life away. If only his face didn’t haunt her so, resembling her father’s as closely as it did.

  The third man was a mystery to her. She’d never asked Connie about him, and would never show the photo to anyone else. Tall, with wavy red hair, or maybe dirty blond. Other than the fatigues, and the duffle bag over his shoulder, you wouldn’t think he was military, or any of them for that matter, except perhaps Connie. The hand he’d draped over her father’s shoulder suggested some sort of intimacy, and she would give anything to know what it might signify. Emily slipped the photo back into its temporary hiding place, swung her legs onto the floor, taking care not to wake Kiku, and slipped into some shorts and running shoes.

  Sleep had never been a problem for Emily before, and in the ordinary sense of the word, it wasn’t really a problem now. The intermittent roar coming from the flight deck could not be covered by the white noise of whatever fan assembly pushed cool air into their berth, and the vibrations caused by the screws would come through the floor and the bulkheads no matter what. But she still slept soundly enough – in fact, that was the problem. The dreams didn’t come.

  It probably didn’t help that shipboard life put such a crimp in her exercise regimen. Running laps on the flight deck in the odd, quiet hours quickly grew tedious, and she’d devised an elaborate route below decks, up and down ladders, tumbling through open hatches, and weaving in and out of the Phrogs and Harriers stored on the hangar deck. She got yelled at occasionally, and sometimes had to retreat to the treadmills lined up in the second deck training room intermittently reserved for the Marines. She didn’t mind the company, though most of her platoon preferred not to exercise surrounded by the ‘huge’ guys who treated the weight room as their personal domain. Durant had seen to it that none of them would hassle her, though his solicitude wasn’t really necessary.

  “You lifting today, LT?” asked Lance Corporal Stallings. The big grin he wore gave some balance to his “high-and-tight” haircut. It didn’t look that bad, but flashing his teeth at least distracted from the pointy effect the coiffure otherwise produced on top of his over-developed trapezius muscles. “Because I can spot you, if you need.”

  “No, thanks, Tarot,” Emily said, between jerks on the pull-up bar. “That’s not really my thing.”

  The peculiar quality of Marine nicknames never ceased to amuse her, especially since they rarely bore any obvious connection to the physical appearance of whoever’d earned them. You’d have to know how bad a poker player Stallings was to understand why they called him Tarot, especially the pouty look he’d get on his face when fortune frowned on him, as he saw it, since he’d never quite fathomed how anything but malign chance could be responsible for his losses.

  Did they have a nickname for her, one they hadn’t the nerve to utter in her presence? On her first billet, at Camp Schwab on Okinawa, a Gunnery Sergeant had called her Ca
nine, and then immediately apologized.

  “It’s because of the tournament, you know, the one at Quantico,” he’d offered as explanation. “We all saw the video.”

  “What video, Gunny?” she demanded, though she already knew what he meant. Footage like that spreads quickly, she knew well enough, maybe not on the Marine Family Network, though for all she knew some wise-guy had probably sent it along the Marine Corps Enterprise Network.

  “You know, LT,” he said, too carried away with the excitement of his news to notice her changing mood. “When you stabbed that guy in the neck with his own knife, the entire company wanted to call you Vampire, and then it became Elvira… and then it eventually just became Canine… I mean, for the teeth.”

  Emily didn’t say anything about it then, though her displeasure must have been obvious, and eventually the name died out. At least, no one else ever said it to her face again.

  “What’d she say?” Cpl Siegersen hissed a bit too loudly, though she figured it would be best not to notice. The big, quiet Swede everyone knew as Racket had been bursting to tell her something from the moment he’d seen her in the training room a few days earlier. At first, they’d dubbed him Nike after someone informed the platoon that the first syllable of his name meant victory, and this eventually became Tennis, probably folding in a reference to the pontoon-sized tennis shoes he wore. It didn’t take long for this to evolve into Racket, which stuck because of his generally quiet demeanor, irony being another imperative of Marine nicknames. “Did you ask her?”

  “Quiet, you big oaf,” Stallings hissed back. “She’ll hear you.”

  “Okay, guys,” she said, still hanging from the chin-up bar. “Spill. What’s so damned exciting?”

  “Sorry, LT, sir… uh, ma’am,” Siegersen said, tripping over every other word, and staring at his shoes.

  “Eyes, Corporal,” she growled. “Marines make eye contact.”