"Okay, then, we'll go with honest. My name's Vince."
"Amanda."
"Amanda… Let's see, that means 'worthy of being loved.' It suits you."
"And what does Vince mean?"
"Vince, a contraction of Vincent, which means 'invincible.'"
"Which has yet to be proven." Amanda smiled.
"That's what I get for memorizing those name derivations out of the back of the dictionary. Gah! How bad am I bleeding?"
She chuckled softly. "Not too badly."
He could make her laugh, that was important, and honesty did work well with her. He wasn't exactly what she had visualized as the man of her dreams, but there might be definite potential here for a playmate.
"Stay and be welcome, Vincent, and let's see where doing some more honest gets us."
He returned her smile. They each understood the game they were beginning, and the beach at Rio on a late summer's afternoon was a wonderful place to play it.
With luck, they both could win.
As it was, though, they were allowed only a few minutes. Both became aware of a disturbance out on the water, a rumble of engines and a chorus of perturbed voices. Something about the sound of those engines made Amanda sit up abruptly.
A ship's boat, a navy-gray, semirigid Zodiac with a stern steering station, was nosing its way inshore, pushing a scattering bow wave of swimmers and waders ahead of it. It rode up onto the sand and a slender figure in khaki hopped over the inflated sidehull and trotted up the beach toward them.
"Damn, damn, damn!" Amanda muttered under her breath.
"Begging the Captain's pardon, but your presence is urgently required back aboard ship."
Commander Amanda Lee Garrett, United States Navy, sighed and got to her feet, brushing off the sand. Time to herself was over.
"Okay, Lieutenant, what's going on?"
Lieutenant Christine Rendino's inquisitive pixie features, normally expressive to the extreme, remained carefully neutral. "I really couldn't say, ma'am. The executive officer just dispatched me to locate you."
"I see. Very well, then, return to the gig and stand by to shove off. I'll be with you in a second."
Amanda knelt down to retrieve the bag that held her uniform. Her new acquaintance had come up on one knee, looking wary and a little unnerved.
"We all have to make a living somehow," she said wryly. "It was a very good pass. If it's any consolation, I think I might have gone out to intercept it."
Following an impish impulse, she leaned forward and lightly brushed her lips against his. Then, getting back to her feet, she started down to the waiting boat and her responsibilities.
The gig's twin outboards churned up a flurry of sandy foam as they backed off the beach. Slewing about, they went up on the plane and headed for Sugar Loaf Point and Rio's inner harbor.
Amanda rode one of the side benches while Christine Rendino stretched out comfortably on the deck, her back propped against the steering-station windscreen and her legs extended out ahead of her over the keel line. It was a rather casual stance in the presence of a superior officer, but then, that could sum up a great deal of Lieutenant Rendino's military career.
The lithe ash-blonde had entered the service via the University of California's NROTC. She had graduated with honors but had never quite managed to fit into the classic mold of "an officer and a lady." She survived and even prospered because of two things: one, that she was very good, if not brilliant, at her job, the other, the long-held belief within the naval community that intelligence officers were always just a little bit peculiar.
Beyond that, during the tour of duty she and Amanda had shared on the same Fleet staff in the Pacific, she had become a friend, comrade, and confidante. When Amanda had moved on to her own command, she had expended a considerable portion of her accumulated store of favors to ensure that Christine came along with her.
"All right, Chris. What's really going on?"
"Not sure, boss ma'am, but my sit-guess is that it's big, local, and we're being sent to do something about it."
Now that they had a degree of privacy, the intel had released the sober-faced control she had exhibited on the beach and was backsliding into her more usual state of casual frankness.
"Specifics?"
"Not many. A little over an hour ago we caught a rocket from high places. CINCLANT no less, Milstar, top priority. Commander Hiro took the call, then hit the Chinese fire drill button. Crisis one, find you. Crisis two, make all preparations for getting under way."
"Oh, glorious! Of all the days not to take my phone ashore with me. What else?"
"One other thing: my justification for thinking it's local. The Defense Intelligence Agency has asked for a download of all of our Sigint intercepts for the past forty-eight hours. We're dumping into the link now."
"Are they going to find anything interesting in there?"
Christine looked uncomfortable. "To tell you the truth, Captain, we haven't been breaking anything down since we anchored here in Rio. We didn't have any priorities on the threat board, so we've just been keeping the scanners and recorders running and storing the raw data. I've got my gang working on it now, and I'm sure we'll have something for you by the time you get back aboard."
"No need for explanations, Chris," Amanda replied, pulling her whites out of the shopping bag and shaking the wrinkles out of them. "We've all been keeping bankers' hours these last couple of days. Speaking of bankers' hours, how did you know where to find me? I didn't even know I was going to the beach when I left the ship."
"Heck, this is Rio. Someone with your sea and sand fixation would be bound to end up on the beach sooner or later. When Mr. Hiro put me in charge of the 'For Crissake, find the Skipper detail,' I just borrowed your gig and coxun and a good pair of binoculars and I cruised offshore, checking off redheads until I spotted you."
"Good thinking and good work," Amanda replied, buttoning her blouse on over her swimsuit.
Rendino delicately cleared her throat. "If I may be so bold as to say so, my captain was doing some pretty good work back there herself."
"No, Lieutenant, you may not say so. Not if you intend to hang on to those bars on your collar."
"I'll be the soul of discretion."
"Not likely," Amanda snorted, sliding back into her tailored skirt. "You'll have me taking part in a beachfront orgy five minutes after you hit the wardroom."
She tugged up the side zip and slipped her feet into her pumps. Glancing sideways, she cocked an eyebrow at her intel. "On the other hand, it might do certain mopheads around here some good to know that The Lady' still has a few moves left in her."
"Fa' sure, Skipper, fa' sure." Christine laughed, a hint of her old Valley Girl lilt coming back into her voice.
As the gig swept around the point, Rio's port district came into view, as did the ships lying off in the deepwater anchorage. Two of them were United States men-of-war. The more distant of the two was a FRAM-updated Perry-class frigate, a diving barge snuggled against its stern quarter. The closer and larger of the pair was Amanda's ship, DDG-79, the USS Cunningham.
Amanda moved in her seat to get a better view. She was new enough into her captaincy to still feel a surge of excitement and pride at the sight of her command. Likewise, she was not long enough into it to realize that those feelings would always be there.