Christmas at Peleliu Cove

by M. L. Buchman

  Chapter 13

  Three days later, Clint knew he’d miscalculated and needed some help after all. Some egotistical part of him had thought that if he stayed away, maybe Nika would change her mind and want to try again.

  Now he knew that he’d grossly underestimated one of two things.

  First, the strength of their mutual attraction. However, with the maddeningly sleepless nights he was experiencing himself, he didn’t think that was the issue. The attraction was as real as ever and he was sure it was mutual.

  Second, he’d underestimated Nika’s strength of resolve that they were done. That, he decided, was a serious miscalculation.

  When a man needed reinforcements on an operation there were several ways to get them. First off he’d ask. If that didn’t work, he’d try shame.

  “Hey, Sly,” Clint caught up with the Chief just as he was heading into the weight room. He made it look like simple chance, even though he’d been lurking in wait for over half an hour.

  It was an odd time of day, which is why it had taken Clint a couple forays to track down the chief for ambush. Then he’d remembered that Gail Stowell was Chief Steward aboard the ship and would be awake and in the galley hours before breakfast service began. Being a good husband, Sly would get up with her and then have a few hours to kill before it was time to eat. There was one surefire way to kill time aboard a ship at sea, pump some iron.

  Clint felt pretty pleased that it had worked and he’d caught Sly alone. And it wasn’t as if he’d be getting any sleep himself; there was only so much tossing and turning a man could do before giving up in total disgust.

  “You’re up early,” Sly greeted him easily. “Thought you and my petty officer would be—” The chief grimaced. “Sorry, not my place.”

  Clint merely offered a disappointed grunt as he started some warm-up stretches.

  Sly began his own stretches.

  Clint waited until they’d each done a couple of stations, matching pound for pound and total reps without trading a word about it. When he moved to the bench, Sly moved into the spotter position. Clint loaded heavy and pushed hard, building up steam until his arms burned and his breath was coming in painful gasps. He barely managed to place the bar back on the hooks without assistance.

  Sly matched him in weight, but struggled out three more reps than Clint had. He could see what it cost Sly to beat a US Ranger though and didn’t feel too bad about being beaten. Not too bad.

  Maybe if he’d slept more than a few hours in…

  Clint dropped to sit on the next bench over as Sly sat up and mopped his face with his towel.

  “You going to unstick your craw, or do I have to keep proving that Navy can outdo Army without even breaking a sweat?” Sly mopped at his face again.

  Clint wasn’t sure where to begin, “What you said before?”

  Sly nodded for him to continue.

  “She did it. Cast me aside.”

  “Shit! Sorry brother, that’s got to hurt.”

  That didn’t cover half of it. But, “Rangers don’t throw in the towel that easily.”

  Sly’s nod was encouraging this time.

  “She—” and then he stopped. Nika had said that she’d never told anyone else about her past and her motivations for joining the Navy. That was precious and he couldn’t betray that confidence.

  He mopped at the sweat that wasn’t entirely from the workout and tried again.

  “I can’t breathe right without her. But she’s got this iron resolve.”

  “Might have noticed that. Might be why I recruited her from the Flight Deck.” Sly picked up a dumbbell and began doing curls, but Clint could tell his mind wasn’t really on it—it was just a twenty-five pounder.

  “If staying away makes the heart grow fonder, it sure as hell hasn’t worked.”

  “At least not on her,” Sly said with far too much perception.

  “Yeah.” Clint picked up a forty and began curls of his own. It had worked entirely too well on him; he’d go mad if he couldn’t find a way to get Nika back.

  “So now you’re bringing your sorry mess to the Navy to clean it up for you?” Sly picked up a second twenty-five and began working both arms.

  “No,” time to try for the shame, “I’m asking my service brother—who I stood best man for—whether or not he wants a chance to return the favor.”

  Sly looked up from his weights for the first time.

  Clint found a second forty-pounder even though his right arm was already feeling it.

  “You that serious?”

  Was he? If Nika had made a different choice, would he have been willing to go down on one knee out on the windy headland at Cape Tripiti?

  His mama had raised two kids and worked her way from nurse to senior administrator at the biggest hospital in Little Rock. Clint knew she’d taken a lover—he’d introduced them after all—but always a step back; always referred to as “just a friend.” It worked for them.

  It didn’t work for him. Not when the woman was Nika Maier. Clint rose, tossed the pair of forties back on rack with clang, then faced Sly squarely.

  “Yeah, Sly. I’m that serious.”

  Sly came over and dropped the twenty-fives into place, then slapped him on the shoulder. “Guess we better do something about it then, Clint. Because it’s a guarantee that this is one time the Army is definitely going to need the Navy’s aid.”

  “So what’s our first move?”

  Sly smiled. “We definitely need to recruit one more person.”

  “Got someone in mind?” His friend’s tone was giving him hope, something that had eluded Clint for the last day or so.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone way smarter than the two of us put together.”

  “Colonel Gibson? Don’t know that I really want to get Michael involved in all this.” Frankly it would embarrass the hell out of him to ask.

  “Nope,” Sly shook his head. “Way smarter than Michael.”

  # # #

  Thankfully Nika didn’t believe in running away from problems, or she would have gone looking for a way off the ship—fast—rather than working her way down the evening chow line as if this was just a normal end of shift. Another six months remained on her current tour, so a transfer wasn’t going to happen anyway. Besides, putting in for a transfer to get away from Clint Barstowe was a pansy-ass maneuver.

  It wasn’t as if she’d seen him in days. Nika supposed that if she’d really wanted to, it would have been easy enough to arrange. With the light crew aboard the Peleliu, several rules had been relaxed. She could just as easily have eaten up in the Officers Mess as she did here in the Chiefs Mess and been assured of running into him there.

  Once she’d caught a glimpse of Clint during an operation. But while he’d sat in the LCAC’s control station in the Troop Commander’s seat, she’d been relegated back to her tiny Loadmaster’s aerie on the portside; Sly was again taking his Craftmaster role. Other than that, their paths hadn’t crossed once in the last four days.

  She wanted to return his Santa hat. Somehow it didn’t seem right for him not to be wearing it with only a day left until Christmas. But she’d still been wearing it for warmth in the cold winds on Gavdos Island when she’d walked away from him.

  A part of her wished she could go back to that cove.

  It had been pristine and primitive, practically an undiscovered land. She could have pulled an ensign flag out of the LCAC’s storage locker and declared the land as a new discovery in the name of the good ship Peleliu. There had been no sign of habitation in the cove to deny her claim other than the narrow foot trail.

  If she did that, she could have declared many things. Perhaps, in a new country she could have become a different person. But that didn’t work aboard the Peleliu. As soon as she’d parked the hovercraft back bel
owdecks, it was as if a giant reset switch had been thrown.

  Nika was here now just as she had been for most of six years. Her role was defined. Her goals were simple—one of the things she liked best about military service. Her job as Loadmaster had one hundred and thirty-seven specific operational tasks; one-ninety when she was acting as the Craftmaster. She had memorized the procedures of those tasks, as well as the ones for Tom’s, Dave’s, and Jerome’s responsibilities; after all, the Craftmaster must be trained in and oversee all of the others. Work hard and perform to the best of her abilities and everything would be—

  “Get the lead out, Maier,” Tom gave her a nudge from behind. “You’re blocking the lasagna.”

  She started to move off, saw that she hadn’t taken any entrée for herself and actually collided with Tom when she doubled back to get some. Gail Stowell’s lasagna was not a thing to miss.

  “Where’s your head at, Maier?”

  That was a question she absolutely wasn’t going to be answering.

  She took her tray over to their usual table. Wall Rudolph was looking sad. His nose had evolved over time to be as ever changing as when it blinked on a snowy night. The nose cone of the Hellfire missile had been replaced by many objects since. It started with a red-painted drink coaster—which had gone through a startling series of color changes—before a worn Army boot heel had finally replaced it. The longest lasting—of which Nika was fairly proud—was a blinking button she’d fabricated that proclaimed “Girl reindeer lead the way.” But without Clint there to see it, the joke didn’t really work and she was relieved when it had then turned into a circular cutout of a Monet water lilies postcard, then a split corn muffin that looked like a tiny elf mooning them, and then…

  She sat next to Jerome and wondered how so much food had ended up on her plate; she wouldn’t be getting through half of it.

  “Pretty crappy happy face there, Maier. Christmas Eve tomorrow,” Sly plunked his tray down directly across from her.

  “Asshole,” she muttered but only loudly enough for herself to hear. He was right of course and it was time she cured that. This time she said it aloud and backed it up with a bit of sass, “Asshole.”

  “Been called worse,” Sly admitted happily enough.

  “What are you looking so damn pleased about?”

  “Me?” Sly went for an I’m-so-innocent look that she wasn’t buying in the least. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Which is a crock of crap.”

  “Hey, show some respect for the badge,” he tugged on his t-shirt sleeve where his uniform’s badge would have been if he’d been wearing one.

  “A total crock of crap, Chief.”

  “How’s the lasagna?” Chief Steward Gail Stowell came up to their table and wrapped an arm around her husband’s shoulder, planting a kiss atop his head. Perfect setup to put Sly in his place.

  “You know that your husband puts ketchup on all your meals when you aren’t looking? Here, let me help,” Nika grabbed a squeeze bottle from the end of the table and fired a stream onto Sly’s serving even as he protested.

  He grabbed for the mustard bottle, but Gail slapped his hand as if he was a two-year old, not a twenty-year veteran.

  “Would you like to come eat with me?”

  “And how,” Nika was up with her tray before Gail could second guess her offer. There was a friendly courtesy that emanated from the Chief Steward, but it might be the first time it had ever been extended directly to Nika. She felt a little like a happy girl following in a fairy godmother’s wake. Gail led her back into the Main Galley which lay just aft of the Chiefs Mess.

  Nika was completely taken aback by what she found there.

  She’d been in the kitchen a few times before with Sly. His wife ran an immaculate kitchen filled with gleaming steel surfaces and giant kitchen machines invariably painted Navy gray. They had mixing bowls big enough for Nika to fit right in, and massive whisks far bigger than her head.

  She’d always admired how thoroughly Gail belonged here. She looked so smooth and sophisticated in her immaculate chef whites. Her dark hair down fell in a neat, short ponytail that only added to the image. She looked almost as beautiful here in her kitchen as she had in her wedding dress.

  Nika briefly wondered what it was like to be that way, but discarded the notion quickly. Gail was tall, thoughtlessly elegant, and a two-time winner of the coveted Admiral Ney award for best mess in her class of ship. Nika was—in a rare moment of self-consciousness—on the verge of retreating before she crossed the threshold.

  And as she crossed the threshold, she wished she had run while she had the chance. In the background, the kitchen was still in full swing. The final trays of lasagna, innumerable loaves of garlic bread, and massive bowls of salad were being finished and delivered. The dishwashing station was barely controlled mayhem.

  But there was also a secondary operation going on. The staff no longer needed on the cook line were starting on what could only be Christmas Eve dinner. There was a whole line of turkeys being dressed. Great mounds of bread cubes and chestnuts overshadowed by the savory smell of frying sausage spoke of the amazing stuffing that would be served with the birds.

  None of that was daunting, though the scale of the operation was damned impressive.

  No, it was the group around central stainless steel prep table that was setting Nika back on her heels.

  “I needed some extra hands,” Gail said lightly as if Nika wasn’t facing the most daunting collection of women imaginable.

  It was the three Night Stalker pilots: Lola, Trisha, and Claudia. The team leader from New Orleans who should have been a magazine model with her dark flow of curling hair and her dusky skin. The fiery-haired Little Bird pilot from Boston. And the near silent but powerful and brilliantly blond woman who had married Michael Gibson—the best soldier of them all. Only Kara Moretti, the Brooklyn Italian drone pilot was missing, probably flying some surveillance mission.

  They were all dressed in standard shipboard wear of camo pants and black t-shirts that only showed off their soldier-fit physiques. Over that, white aprons which made them look uniformly girded for battle.

  On the table before them were spread all of the makings for Christmas cookies.

  # # #

  “Something feels wrong, brother.” Clint knew he was being an antsy idiot, but he couldn’t stop himself. As soon as the coast was clear, Sly had slipped up to the Officers Mess to fill him in on progress.

  “What do you mean?” Sly sounded offended. “It went off exactly as planned.”

  “I’ve learned that around Nika, nothing goes off exactly as planned.”

  At least Sly had the decency to sober up a bit at that comment. Then he brightened and slapped Clint’s shoulder hard enough that he was knocked into Michael who sat beside him.

  “She’s in Gail’s hands. What could possibly go wrong?”

  Clint felt a little better. Gail was an amazing woman after all and she had agreed readily enough to help him out. Then Clint made a mistake and looked at Michael.

  There was a speculative look on Michael’s features as he turned back to his meal. He offered the tiniest nod toward an empty table near the center of the mess.

  It took Clint a moment to recall who typically sat there, then he saw it in his mind’s eye—the women of the Night Stalkers. If there was ever a group of women to reckon with, they were it. And if they weren’t here, then they were—

  Clint’s nerves roared back to life.

  # # #

  “You know this was a setup, right?”

  “I don’t need any signposts to figure that out,” Nika managed to respond to Gail, though she was still unable to move from the galley’s threshold. Courtesy was all that held her in place against the sound tactic of beating a hasty retreat.

  “Well, I’ve got news for you,” Gail’s voice re
mained calm and polite as if she knew how close Nika was to running. “Just don’t tell our menfolk.”

  “What’s that?” Cookie production had stopped and all four of the women were looking at her as she stood like a mannequin clutching her tray of untouched food.

  “We are completely on your side, not theirs. So, no pressure from us.”

  Nika carefully checked the others’ eyes and saw that Gail had spoken nothing but truth.

  At Nika’s tentative smile, Trisha piped up, “Wouldn’t that surprise the shit out of them? Just imagine. Lysistrata. Joan of Arc. One of those things. We take over and the men will never know what happened to them.”

  “I thought we already had taken over,” Lola turned back to rolling out the dough in front of her.

  “Yes,” Claudia observed in her soft voice. “But they have yet to realize that we did.”

  “Men really are so sweet,” Trisha took a big fingerful of icing off her mixing spoon and stuffed it into her mouth. “Yum!” And her tone made it clear that she wasn’t talking about the icing.

  “Sit,” Gail waved to a small clear spot at the end of the table. “Eat.”

  “Sure,” Trisha spoke around her mouthful of icing. “We’ll wait until after you’ve finished your dinner before we start dissecting your soul.”

  Nika could do without that, but decided that she was way past having a choice. Besides, there was a we’re-all-in-it-together here even tighter than Sly’s handpicked crew and she could already feel its warmth.

  “Fine,” she set her tray down and dragged out a high stool from under the table. “You want to dissect souls? You first, Trisha.”

  “Don’t have one. They’re too messy. I just have sugar and sweetness inside,” and her smile was both sloppy with icing and absolutely genuine.

  Nika poked a fork into the lasagna and tasted it. It was damned good. Too bad Sly had ketchup all over it.

  # # #

  Clint moved quietly as he scouted ahead. Quick eye check through a doorway, then roll back out of sight while his mind processed what his eyes had seen.