Christmas at Steel Beach

by M. L. Buchman

  “Nika?” he called over the headset intercom. In addition to being loadmaster and port-side spotter, she was also his port-side gunner. Always good to remind her that he had his eye on his crew.

  “Here, Chief.”

  “You have my permission to shoot the next asshole who is trying to rescue his golf game.” And to remind his crew that he trusted them implicitly.

  “Roger that, Chief.”

  Then she unleashed a dozen half-inch rounds against a still upright section of the wall. It didn’t care, except for some chips in the surface. But the harsh bark of the M2 Browning machine gun put a whole lot of hustle into people moving toward his craft.

  Well played. He’d have to remember that in the debrief.

  Then it happened. They’d been waiting for it, expecting it ever since the ambassador had called in a panic at two this afternoon.

  The top floor of the U.S. embassy bloomed up in a ball of fire. Someone outside the front gate had just fired something big at the building. Not just a rocket-propelled grenade. That had to be a two-inch shell at least to make that kind of fireball. He hoped to god Michael and his boys had already left the top floor on their way down from the roof.

  It had been something major.

  Tank maybe.

  But that’s why they had SOAR along.

  Even so, he wished the Rangers would hurry the hell up.

  # # #

  Gail looked at the three men seated with their backs to her in disbelief. They were just sitting there, doing nothing!

  The embassy was burning and they were—

  A lance of green fire slashed down from the heavens.

  Right. She’d momentarily forgotten about the helicopters.

  Not just helicopters.

  The 5D.

  Their M134 miniguns were cutting up whoever had just attacked the embassy. Searchlights were flickering on, aimed upward to find the helicopters—which explained why they’d waited for nightfall. And the lights were being shot out just as fast as they appeared.

  For an instant she saw a tiny helicopter silhouetted against the embassy and moving fast. It couldn’t be more than five feet off the ground and it was laying down a hail of fire that lit the night sky. Then the nose jerked up and it disappeared once more into the darkness.

  Embassy personnel were, finally, scrambling over the rubble of the wall as fast as they could. Golf bags, suitcases, even framed pictures for crying out loud, were now scattered far and wide as the personnel ran for their lives.

  A small force of embassy Marines worked rearguard on the civilians. Deep in the compound, she could see the three Rangers’ vehicles rushing about—a near constant hail of fire from their gun turrets. Combat medics were out on the ground, gathering up the fallen and loading them aboard the two ambulances.

  She heard the harsh bark of Nika’s half-inch gun. She was fighting a battle off to the port side.

  Then why weren’t the bad guys also over—

  Gail spun to look out the starboard side.

  “Chief, due east.” A pickup truck with a heavy machine gun mounted on its bed was rounding the outside corner of the embassy perimeter wall.

  He spun to look out his side window and didn’t waste any time swearing. “Get down!” he shouted at her.

  She popped her seatbelt and dove to the deck as gunfire poured against the starboard side glass. It didn’t shatter, not right away, which gave all of the guys time to get down as well.

  “Vengeance,” Sly called over the radio. “This is the LCAC. Trouble due east.”

  “Roger,” a woman’s voice answered. “I suppose you want the Army to clean it up for you?”

  Another round of gunfire shattered the starboard window and blew out the port one for good measure, showering them with broken chunks of polycarbonate the size of her hand.

  “That would be nice.”

  Gail wondered what the heck was wrong with these people. Even as she wondered, she saw a single missile streak down out of the dark from somewhere high above. Since she didn’t dare look out the window, she’d shifted so that she could watch the radar screen. She could see the missile on the radar sweep, but not the much larger helicopter that must have fired it.

  Another point in favor of her stealth theory no matter how bizarre it might be.

  The answering explosion on the ground was impressive.

  “Hole in one. Anything else, Chief?” the woman again. Gail had heard rumors of women flying for SOAR, but that’s how everything was with SOAR, rumors.

  Sly looked up and did a quick scan around before brushing the glass out of his seat and sitting back down. “We’re good, unless you have the number of a local window replacement company.”

  “On your own there. Here come your Rangers.”

  Gail edged back up to her seat. Now that the glass was gone, she was far more exposed, but she felt foolish crouching on the floor while the others sat up.

  Sly looked back at her for a long moment, but she couldn’t read his expression behind his lowered visor. He had one of those rigs that projected most of the information he needed on the inside of his visor. That was another thing she’d like to try someday. Her own visor was a piece of clear plastic that might stop a .22 round if it was having a slow day.

  The last of the Rangers were back at the wall. They were driving their vehicles up the hovercraft’s forward ramp, shooing civilians to the sides of the deck as they loaded the heavy vehicles.

  The battle was still primarily concentrated on the far side of the building. Four soldiers remained on the ground of the embassy compound even as Tom was raising the LCAC’s front gate. She was about to point them out when a tiny helicopter swooped down among them.

  Definitely no radar image.

  Too far away to see more than a silhouette, but it confirmed her theory.

  Her theory about something there was no way she was cleared to know.

  Stealth was one of SOAR’s most closely guarded secrets.

  The bird never came to a full stop, or landed. All it did was hesitate at ground level and in moments the four soldiers were sitting on the bench seats, two to either side. Even as they lifted back into the darkness, she could see the men sitting on the bench using their elevated position to fire their rifles down into the hostiles.

  She’d never seen a maneuver quite like it.

  She was also fairly sure they hadn’t been wearing any packs when they landed on the rooftop. Now all four were heavily-laden. What had they fetched while inside?

  If she wasn’t cleared to know about stealth, whatever they had was something she really, really wasn’t cleared to know.

  Gail tried to smell the night air, but all she got was hot exhaust fumes and the smell of the burning truck nearby. She kept checking, as did Chief Stowell, but no one else had tried to come around that corner.

  The hovercraft was on the move and back over the third fairway before Sly spoke.

  “Nice spotting on that truck. Good eye, Chief Miller.”

  “Got two of ‘em, Chief Stowell.”

  “You play golf?” He headed them back onto the seventh fairway.

  Gail looked back at the burning building behind them. No more gunfire or missiles from the sky. But she could feel the 5D out there somewhere, watching over them—invisibly—as the hovercraft picked up speed and headed back for the Boulevard de France and the harbor.

  Their protection was the only reason she could breathe.

  “Twenty bucks a hole, Chief.”

  “Damn! Way too rich for my blood.” They descended the beach, hit the water, and then they were speeding through the harbor once more at over seventy knots.

  Even though she’d bet the Chief wouldn’t take the turn so fast with all of the people on the deck below, she refastened her seatbelt.

  Too rich for his blood, huh?

  “Wait ‘til you try my cooking.”

  He laughed. A real one. As good as his smile.

  Chapter 4

  Gail end
ed up dripping wet by the time she followed Sly onto the Peleliu.

  With the windows shot out, the LCAC’s reentry into the Peleliu’s Well Deck and the resulting solid wall of spray had blown right into the control room and soaked them all.

  They were last ashore, the embassy staff had already been escorted up to the Flight Deck for transport to the carrier.

  Gail desperately wanted to go find her duffle and fresh clothes.

  Instead, Sly Stowell tossed her a towel and led her up onto the Flight Deck, six or seven ladderways above the Well Deck. The darkness was thick over most of the Peleliu’s deck and the stars shone brightly high above them. A waning quarter moon was nosing up out of the sea like a mystical Moby Dick.

  At the far end of the Flight Deck a pair of massive Marine Corps Super Stallion helicopters were actively loading the embassy staff to ferry them over to the aircraft carrier steaming fifty kilometers farther west. She could see two more of the monsters hovering off the stern waiting their turns.

  SOAR’s helicopters were already parked along the deck, covered in nylon shrouds as dark as the night which hid their shapes.

  She could tell there were small and medium ones, Little Birds and Black Hawks.

  “What’s with the camo on the birds? Oh, never mind.”

  “You don’t leave Special Ops helicopters out in plain sight when there are civilians aboard.”

  “Not Special Ops. Stealth. I figured that out earlier,” she saw his surprise. “Didn’t show up on your radar, Chief, when I was looking right at them. I’m just having trouble believing it.”

  The word finally sunk in and she ground to a halt. Planted her feet solidly; it felt as if the deck was thrashing about in an attempt to dump her overboard. The cataloging part of her brain saw that the deck was rock stable to the moonlit horizon.

  Okay, she was the one at sea.

  Stealth?

  Her request for a transfer to a ship, any ship, unexpectedly granted. And at whirlwind speed. Navy Personnel Command was a notoriously lethargic operation. Yet within two days of putting in a transfer she’d received orders for immediate travel halfway around the world.

  As if her name had been on some watch list.

  Overload!

  Something was going on behind the scenes and she had no idea what.

  Tilt!

  “Chief Stowell,” her brain had just completely and totally crashed. “I really need to dry off and get some rack time if I want to be ready for my first breakfast service.”

  “Breakfast was four hours ago. I’ll take you to lunch after the debriefing.”

  Debriefing? Her? Okay, sure. Whatever.

  Gail checked her watch, close enough to midnight to not make any real difference. She sighed and gave in enough to ask the question.

  “Okay, what’s the darn joke?”

  “The joke?” Stowell just watched her like she was some sort of child. His handsome face lit by the soft red glow from the night-time flight operations at the far end of the Flight Deck. The pale moon beyond his shoulder was now swollen large enough out of the ocean to give Captain Ahab conniption fits.

  She felt a strong empathy for Ahab at the moment. Chief Steward Gail Miller was definitely losing her mind.

  Sly Stowell looked at her as if she were dense.

  “I sign up for Marines and I get Special Ops. Instead of the usual Super Stallion,” she waved a hand toward the departing helos at the far end of the Flight Deck, “and a couple of Cobra helicopters on this LHA ship, I get the stealth arm of SOAR. Yesterday I’d have given the 5D a fifty-fifty chance of being a myth, a boogie man created by Psy Ops to scare the enemy. Tonight I watched them fly. And those guys who hit the roof from the helo, there was something strange about them too that I haven’t quite figured out yet. So how about some explaining?”

  He rubbed his chin as he inspected her, “You figured all that?”

  “Not an idiot, Chief.”

  “No, I can see that now.”

  “Oh, now. Fine.” So that had been his first impression of her? Not exactly what a girl wanted to project.

  “The Christmas tree.”

  “What?”

  “‘Oh!’” he made his voice high and squeaky. “‘What a cute little Christmas tree!’”

  She laughed, “Okay, I deserved that. Just didn’t want to brush up your ego about how cool your ship looked. I’d like a real tour sometime.”

  “What’s your clearance?”

  “Probably better than yours,” she shot back as a piece clicked into place. Daddy spent a lot of time in D.C. consulting when he wasn’t teaching, probably for the Navy—naval tactics being his specialty. Mama also taught at the Citadel, so the Naval Personnel Command would know a lot about her too; about all three of them. Duh!

  Sly looked offended.

  “Navy Chief of Staff visits the SUBASE and guess which chef pulls meal service during the meetings.” She made a curtsey as if wearing a pinafore and not khakis and a blouse that should have been washed days ago and were still far from dry. She did her best to not let it sound as if she’d only just figured out her own security clearance.

  “Now talk.”

  Sly Stowell grunted at that.

  Maybe if she just threw the man overboard she’d get some answers.

  “The USS Peleliu has been reassigned,” he explained, perhaps reading her intent and deciding to cooperate at long last. “We support SOAR and Special Operation Forces on ad hoc missions. There’s not a single Marine Corps jarhead aboard. What you’ve got here are Rangers and Delta.”

  “Delta?” She’d never seen a Delta Force operator up close. Once or twice they’d pass through one of her messes—you could tell because they wore longer hair or beards and always sat by themselves. Also, no uniforms, and no one ever sat near them. They’d be on some mission that no one knew anything about and then, like ghosts, they’d be gone again.

  “The four men who used a racing helicopter as a shooting platform…”

  “Delta,” he confirmed.

  When she didn’t respond—couldn’t respond—he continued.

  “They all work in a flipped clock world. The 5D flies at night and sleeps during the day. Navy is still standing three watches, but midrats are at noon, not midnight. Still need rations for those few Navy folk working the quiet watches.”

  Well, being Navy was about being flexible and she typically worked deep inside the ship, so what the sun was doing in the sky didn’t affect her all that much. Heck, she’d probably see more of it this way—don’t see a whole lot of sunlight when you’re busy from breakfast prep through dinner service every day.

  Sly led her into the tower of the communications structure, knocked on a door that bore the simple sign “Ramis,” then held it open for her when they were called to enter.

  His enigmatic smile should have warned her.

  She was still figuratively wet behind the ears and literally dripping from her pant cuffs when she met her new commanding officer. An event for which one CPO Sly Stowell was definitely going to suffer later. At least some of her hair was dry from being inside her helmet.

  The Lieutenant Commander’s office still showed evidence of being a former ready room, but had been converted to a spacious office with enough furniture that a mission debrief could indeed be held here. Two couches and a half-dozen chairs were bolted down, as well as assorted bench seats and a few loose chairs. The wall sported a collection of what she assumed were the commanding officer’s succession of commands in order. This boat was clearly the jewel of the series, an aging craft technically past retirement, but now repurposed for SOAR.

  Lieutenant Commander Boyd Ramis was a tall man, running a little thick around the middle and graying at the temples. He came out from behind his desk to greet her and offer a stout handshake that she did her best to return.

  “Chief Miller. I appear to have met your gear before I met my Chief Steward,” he nodded toward a corner of the room where her pack and knife case had been tuc
ked.

  She fought the heat rising to her cheeks, “I’m sorry, sir. Had never been on an LCAC before and was glad of the opportunity. Chief Stowell was kind enough to let me ride along as an observer.”

  LCDR Ramis looked unperturbed by her transgression, which struck her as odd. There wasn’t a single commander in her past that wouldn’t take her to task for it. She’d simply followed her whim, which hadn’t been very Navy of her.

  “Was it an interesting journey?”

  She shot a surprised glance at Sly.

  He read the question and offered a non-committal shrug. LCDR Ramis’ attitude wasn’t any real surprise to the Chief Petty Officer.

  Gail struggled for a straight answer, “It was very…educational, sir.”

  “Good. All in favor of having a well-rounded staff.”

  “First time invading a foreign country as well?” Sly was being, well, sly. So much for being kind. She didn’t need to feel a poke in her ribs to know when it was happening.

  “Well, I had thought you might be doing something exciting,” she made a bet with herself about the LCDR’s command style and turned back to him as Sly opened his mouth to protest. “Honestly, sir, all they did was play a little golf with a hundred-ton club and park outside a hole in the wall for a little bit. They weren’t even the ones to put the hole there in the first place.”

  “No, that would have been me,” a tall woman entered the office. A voice Gail recognized from the radio chatter, what little there’d been of it. “Chief Warrant Lola Maloney at your service.” She was taller than Gail, almost as tall as Sly, slender and with mahogany hair that fluttered down around her face. Long hair to her shoulders. If there was anything in the U.S. military that indicated Special Forces, it was non-standard hair.

  Others drifted in and were introduced. Lead pilots—several of them women, air mission commander and his daughter—which was pretty weird, the lieutenant of the Ranger company again wearing his Santa hat—who had surprisingly little swagger for being a Ranger. And then she saw why. She almost missed the man who came in beside him.

  He was just her own height, not a big man either, blond hair down to his jaw line, but he moved so softly. It was as if he wasn’t there. He looked…amused that she saw him at all though there were under a dozen people in Ramis’ spacious office.