Sign, SEAL, Deliver

by Rogenna Brewer

  Hell, he could always buy her a bigger rock. And he’d have a lifetime to get used to the idea of being married.

  Marriage. A big step. Maybe the biggest he’d take in his lifetime. Making the decision to leap felt kind of like an emergency ejection during an aborted takeoff. Damned if you did, and damned if you didn’t. Odds were you’d survive a crash in front of the ship only to be dragged under and drowned.

  And that was what he felt like right now. A drowning man. But Michelle was his life preserver.

  As he neared the mess, the deceptive smells of sizzling bacon and frying eggs—any-way-you-like-’em as long as you liked them runny and scrambled—ambushed his senses. There hadn’t been eggs on board since the last port of call.

  Above the cacophony of sounds from the busy kitchen and several simultaneous conversations from the dining area, he zeroed in on his RIO’s street-smart, New York accent.

  “Yo, Zach! Over here.” Steve waved from a corner cloth-covered table where he sat eating breakfast with Skeeter. The white linen was supposed to remind them they were officers. And somehow make them forget they were eating the same chow as the enlisted personnel.

  Zach nodded as he entered and picked up a tray. Moving quickly through the breakfast buffet line, he chose his favorite preflight carbo load—a short stack of pancakes drowned in imitation maple syrup with a tall glass of powdered milk on the side.

  God, he missed whole milk, fresh eggs and a long grocery list of other favorite foods. But this far into deployment just about everything came reconstituted.

  Welcome to shipboard life, haze gray and under way.

  Plastering a smile on his face, Zach pulled out a chair next to Skeeter and sat down.

  “The old man rip you a new one?” Steve asked.

  “You could say that,” Zach admitted “Where’s Michelle?”

  “I’ve already had this conversation once today and it’s not even 0600. He’s all yours, Marietta.” Skeeter got up, leaving the rest of her breakfast untouched.

  Plucking the dusty plastic rose from the bud vase, Zach held it out to her. “Are you sure you have to go?”

  Skeeter rejected the faux flower and his insincerity by turning away.

  “I don’t think she likes me,” Zach confided in his RIO once the other navigator was out of ear-shot. Not that he cared. Sticking his gum on the side of his plate, he picked up his glass.

  “Aren’t you barking up the wrong skirt?”

  Zach almost choked on a swallow of chalky milk headed down his windpipe. He coughed to clear his throat.

  Steve offered a sheepish grin. “So Skeeter doesn’t like you and Michelle is pissed at you—what else is new?” Steve sopped up the gravy on his plate with his last bite of biscuit, a Navy specialty called SOS.

  “‘Pissed’ is an understatement.” Zach dug into his pancakes. “Michelle acts as if I’m out to destroy her career,” he managed to say between bites.

  “And you probably will. Admit it, Prince, you’re a nonconformist. You don’t give a damn about your career. But you’re a helluva F-14 pilot, which is why the Navy puts up with you. Your call sign isn’t Renegade for nothing, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Even before this latest ass-chewing, he’d been thinking about what he had to offer the Navy and what he wanted in return. But despite what anyone thought, it bothered him that Michelle thought he was out to destroy her life when all he wanted to do was be a part of it. Maybe he’d have been better off following in his father’s footsteps to the SEAL teams, instead of pursuing Michelle into aviation.

  He loved to fly, but his laid-back approach in a world that moved at Mach II sometimes made him look indolent. Maybe he’d be better off out of the service altogether. “If I start submitting my résumé now—”

  “Whoa. Back up.” Steve pushed aside his plate. “You want to fly for a commercial airline?”

  “Why not? I’m at the end of my obligated service. I could have a civilian job by the end of the cruise.”

  It was no secret the airlines recruited military pilots right out of flight school. He and Michelle could both easily get real jobs. Was that what he wanted to do with the rest of his life? A commuter run between Sioux Falls and Cedar Rapids? Two point five kids? A white picket fence?

  He wasn’t sure.

  But sometime during the past four months the idea had taken hold and wouldn’t let go. Now all he had to do was convince Michelle.

  “Wipe those thoughts right out of your head. Talk about conforming—” Steve reached for Skeeter’s bowl of unfinished cereal and started shoveling soggy shredded wheat into his mouth “—that is not what’s going to make you happy, my friend.” Steve let his less-than-objective opinion be known between swallows of slop. Zach was used to his friend’s garbage gut and his convictions.

  Steve’s eyesight had kept him from becoming a pilot and fulfilling his own dream of becoming a Blue Angel, the Navy’s elite exhibition fliers. Even after laser surgery corrected his vision, the Navy rejected his request to retrain from a designated NFO—naval flight officer—to a pilot. Retreads, as the Navy liked to call them, had a higher percentage of crashes. But that didn’t stop Steve from trying to cut through the red tape, however.

  “Don’t take it personally, Magic Man. You’re the best radar I’ve ever had in my back seat. And you’d make one helluva pilot. Even Greene is pulling for you on this one.”

  Beyond that, Zach didn’t offer any encouragement. Whether or not Steve would ever find himself behind the controls of a jet all depended on the needs of the Navy.

  “You can’t be serious about giving up jets, Prince.”

  Do you have any idea how serious this is? We were lucky to get off with just a warning.

  “I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.” Or anyone. His deepest personal thought caught the tail end of his sentence and went along for the ride.

  It didn’t matter what he did as long as they were together.

  If he and Michelle married while in the service, they’d see less of each other than they did now. There’d be long separations. Restrictions when they were together. And he didn’t have a clue how they’d ever manage a family. But if he could convince her they had other options…

  The ensign leaned forward in his seat. “Take my advice, Prince. Forget about it. You’re a naval aviator, there’s JP-5 running through your veins. If the Navy wanted guys like us to have families, they’d have issued a wife and kids along with the seabag.”

  Steve spoke the truth. Not too very long ago the Navy hadn’t even allowed married men to train as pilots. Single guys were discouraged from tying the knot. Firstborn sons from two-parent families with stay-at-home mothers and domineering fathers were considered ideal candidates, according to one Navy study, because of their natural arrogance.

  Opportunities for women, once nonexistent, were just now opening up. Michelle’s pride was all wrapped up in being among the first female fighters. And he was going to ask her to give that up?

  She’d never go for it. Even he had to admit how much she loved flying.

  What had he done?

  “I appreciate the warning, Magic Man. But it’s too late.” He’d already popped the question, so to speak. But he was no longer sure about her answer.

  A CORNER OF the squadron changing room was sectioned off by a hanging bedsheet. The easy locker-room banter subsided as Michelle entered, then picked up again as she crossed to the other side of the jerry-rigged drape.

  Since her introduction to the Fighting Aardvarks of VF-114, she’d seen as much of these men as their wives and proctologists. Yet the barriers remained.

  The partition only served as a reminder.

  It certainly wasn’t there to protect her already compromised modesty.

  Michelle grabbed her G suit from its hook and put it on over her flight suit. In the post-Tailhook era male fliers acted with caution around their female counterparts. When asked, they dutifully acknowledged women as their equals
, but resentment brewed beneath the surface.

  Michelle shut out thoughts of equality as she shrugged into her survival vest. She had a job to do. The same as the men. For better or worse, for now at least, she was a Vark.

  Hearing Zach’s familiar voice from the other side of the curtain, she realized he’d come into the room and wasn’t attempting to sweet-talk her out of her bad mood. In fact, he ignored her altogether as he carried on a conversation about weather conditions with the rest of the guys.

  Michelle paused in putting on her gear.

  What did she expect? She’d made it clear she wanted him to leave her alone. Even if deep down that wasn’t what she wanted at all. She’d made her choice, the right choice, and now she had to live with it. Still, it would be tough going on without him. He’d always been a part of her world.

  He’d smoothed over the rough waters of squadron life. And she credited him with the fact that the men even tolerated her at all. His easy acceptance of her as his wingman made them all more comfortable.

  It was her job to ride his wing. Follow his orders. But she’d always felt as if he didn’t mind being the one watching out for her, something she didn’t always appreciate, but remained grateful for nonetheless.

  There were pilots who considered it bad luck to have a woman walk the wings of their parked planes, let alone ride in them.

  Michelle’s gaze involuntarily darted to an eye-level rip in the sheet, searching for Zach on the other side. Some smart-ass had printed the words peep show in Magic Marker on the guy side. Skeeter had retaliated by drawing the male symbol around the hole, the arrow pointing to the words no show on the gal side.

  Even though Skeeter was only on her first carrier cruise, she could hold her own with this bunch of bandits.

  When she realized what she was doing, Michelle forced herself to look away. If they caught her peeking, she’d never hear the end of it.

  Well, that would be one way to lose her icy reputation. Though she’d hate to think of what they’d call her then. Behind her back the Varks referred to her as the Ice Princess. Which was fine. Because the one thing they’d never call her was Quota Queen.

  She’d earned her gold wings. And the price she’d paid may very well have been her only chance at happiness. Certainly it was higher than the price paid by a man.

  Bending over in an exaggerated bow, she cinched her parachute harness tight, reminding herself of at least one advantage to being a woman. She didn’t have to worry about crushing her balls during an emergency ejection.

  Sweeping aside the curtain, she strode past the men with all the regal bearing of a condemned royal, pausing only long enough to pick up her oxygen mask and helmet with the call sign Rapunzel emblazoned across the front.

  A flight instructor had given her the tag after her first solo. In the aftermath of excitement, she’d taken off her helmet and let down her hair.

  A mistake she’d never make again.

  ON THE FLIGHT DECK, winds buffeted Michelle’s face. Jet engines roared in her ears and rattled her teeth, while the familiar heady scent of jet fumes filled her nostrils.

  The sun put in its first appearance of the day, highlighting the light cloud cover with streaks of bright orange and pink.

  A fine Navy day, as her father would say.

  God, she loved this life. Nothing compared with a dawn launch off an aircraft carrier. She’d take that adrenaline rush over a man any day.

  Pausing to check the safety of her 9-mm pistol, she placed the gun back in the holster pocket of her survival vest. Then ran a confident hand across the sleek underbelly of her assigned F-14 Tomcat. This was the point when she pushed aside all self-doubt and donned the persona of Xena Warrior Princess.

  “I read the maintenance log,” Skeeter shouted above the din as she joined in the preflight walk-through. “The last pilot reported a problem with the left rudder, but the ground crew didn’t find anything.”

  “Thanks, I’ll check it out.” Even though she trusted the “Vark fixers,” Michelle didn’t believe in leaving anything to chance. As a Navy pilot, she knew her plane inside and out.

  Circling the aircraft, Michelle scanned the overall structural integrity of the jet. After she inspected the hydraulic gauges, she moved on to check the tires. And more importantly, she made sure the tailhook was pointed down. If the hook couldn’t catch the arresting wire and the jet couldn’t be diverted to a land base, the pilot had to fly into a steel-mesh-and-canvas-net barricade strung across the deck. A terrifying experience she could do without.

  “You okay? You seem distracted,” Skeeter observed.

  “Well, you know Captain Greene.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Worse.”

  “I thought maybe you and Zach had a fight.”

  Michelle didn’t respond at first, needing the few moments it took to round the plane and come up on the nose again. But finally she had to satisfy her curiosity. “What makes you think Zach and I are fighting?”

  “For one thing,” Skeeter answered, “he keeps looking over here with those soulful blue eyes of his.”

  Michelle feigned indifference, but from the look on her RIO’s face, Skeeter wasn’t buying it. She pushed on the nose of the Tomcat to make sure the cone wouldn’t flip up during the catapult launch and crack the windshield.

  Her gaze darted toward Zach’s plane a few feet away. They made eye contact from where he crouched on the wing checking an access panel. But he didn’t offer a jaunty salute or wave as he normally would have.

  The corner of her mouth turned up in a sad smile. “He always looks like that.”

  “Maybe when he looks at you. Personally, I don’t know what you see in him,” Skeeter said.

  “Nothing,” Michelle denied automatically. Skeeter was probably the only person she knew who wasn’t taken in by Zach’s charisma. “In fact, I’m putting in for a transfer when we get to Turkey. I’m thinking about joining the Nintendo generation and retraining to fly the F/A-18 Hornet,” Michelle confided. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her until she shaded her eyes to watch as one of the newer, more maneuverable jets landed on deck.

  The pilots were younger, from a generation where working mothers were the norm, and less likely to see a female flier as a threat. Hell, as sobering as the thought was, they’d probably think of her as mom.

  Motherhood. With thirty approaching at Mach speed, she couldn’t deny thinking about it a time or two lately. Mostly with regret for what would never be.

  A son with dark hair and blue eyes, toddling after his daddy…or a daughter, slipping her tiny hand into a much larger one…

  “What about an F-14 squadron on the East Coast?” Skeeter asked.

  A tidal wave of homesickness washed over Michelle for her home state of Virginia. For her mom and dad.

  For forfeit fantasies.

  “You don’t really want to fly with Bitchin’ Betty, instead of me, do you?” Skeeter persisted.

  Michelle forced her attention back to her RIO, who was referring to the soft feminine voice of the computer system in the newer aircraft. The Hornet and the Super Hornet didn’t need a navigator. The pilot viewed operating systems from a four-inch screen with a touch pad, instead of having to scan countless dials and gauges.

  The jet was equipped to do the job of two planes—the fighter and the attack bomber—while utilizing only one-quarter of the personnel. In a few short years fighters like the F-14 Tomcat would be as obsolete as bombers like the A-6 Intruder. And so would she. Why hadn’t she seen the writing on the wall sooner?

  “If you stayed with the F-14, I could ship out with you.” Skeeter sounded a little desperate. And no wonder. As a pilot, Michelle had more options than her flight officer did. An NFO qualified to ride in, but not drive, a plane.

  In Skeeter’s case, she was too short. Skeeter had received a waiver for the back seat only after proving she could reach the farthest control, the handle that jettisoned the canopy during an emergency ejection.
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  The Navy had built its planes decades earlier to accommodate males from five-six to six-three. Michelle’s height and build worked in her favor. “You’d want to do that?” she asked, weighing Skeeter’s feelings against her own motives. She didn’t want to hurt her dear friend with careless words or deeds. It wasn’t necessary to make up her mind right now.

  “We’re a team, right?”

  “Teammates,” Michelle agreed, but wondered in the end if she wouldn’t be moving on. She stole another glance at Zach, gabbing with a grape, a person wearing the purple vest of aviation fuels. The young enlisted woman appeared to hang on his every word. The knot in Michelle’s stomach tightened.

  She knew what that girl and others saw when they looked at Zach, his movie-star looks for one thing. The charm that radiated from every pore for another.

  But what did she see in him? Nothing…

  Except that he was everything she wasn’t. A better pilot. A better person. And she resented him for it. And some resentments took a lifetime to overcome.

  Michelle climbed onto the left wing to check the rudder. Was it possible to be jealous of and in love with your best friend?

  WITH ONE LAST LOOK in Michelle’s direction, Zach put on his helmet and pulled down the visor, then climbed into the cockpit of his Tomcat.

  It was already too late for his heart. And as soon as she got around to that piece of bubble gum in her pocket, it’d be too late for his pride.

  He had nothing left to lose. Except her friendship.

  Why hadn’t he left well enough alone?

  Why did this restlessness he felt have him acting on impulse? He should have waited. Until her birthday, at least. By then maybe he’d have come to his senses. He’d waited four months already, since the ship left port, and that wasn’t exactly impulsive. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d had this particular itch for more than twelve years. He’d just been too spineless to scratch it before now. So why then, when he’d finally worked up the courage, was he breaking out in hives?

  Steve climbed into the back seat and closed them off inside the Plexiglas canopy. Zach hooked up his G suit, oxygen mask and fastened the torso harness of his ejection seat. With a map strapped to the top of one knee and a scratch pad with notes secured to the other, he cinched the straps that held his legs in position. Flailing appendages could get chopped off in an emergency ejection.