He frowned. She was usually never short on cash. “Why?”
“Girl stuff. What about that new camera you were going to buy?”
“Haven’t yet. Waiting for the new technology.”
Ardith laughed, and he loved the sound of it. “Like me waiting for the new technology on computers, right? It changes every month, so I’m still waiting for the ideal setup.”
“You have a computer at home.”
“Yes, it’s two years old and already a dinosaur. I can’t even read the JPG files.”
“Way ahead of me. I don’t know what a JPG file is.”
“With pictures and graphics and things.”
He slid over beside her. “No more talk,” she said.
He nodded and kissed her. His hand found her breast and she sighed, and pushed back against his hand.
She came away from his kiss. “Right here on the couch?” she asked.
“It would save time.”
“It would be a first.”
It was.
Later, they sat in front of the fireplace on the floor, and watched the wood burn.
“Real wood, logs and sticks,” Ardith said. “I like that. You haven’t been to our cabin up near Rhododendron, have you?”
“That’s some kind of a flowering shrub. It’s a town too?”
“Yes, just a little place up on Mt. Hood. Beautiful in summer, fantastic in the winter when the heavy snows come. We’ll have to spend some time up there.”
“Yeah, I’d like to. Only not for a while.”
Ardith watched him, her face still flushed, her eyes pleading.
“You really have to go?”
“Yes. But we have nearly a week. During that time I have to finish training. A new guy in the platoon is always a worry. Men who have been in combat form a bond, a loyalty that imprints us so hard that it makes for lifelong friendships. When we can stay alive together, with teamwork and support, it makes the relationships so tremendously powerful. The new guy hasn’t had any of that. He knows the routines, where to go, what to do, but he doesn’t have the emotional bonding yet.”
She snuggled against him. “I can’t feel the power, the bonding, but I can understand it. No more whining from me. Just hold me tight, and I’ll pretend that you’ll never let me go.”
“I won’t let go of you. I’ll have to be gone sometimes, but I’ll never let go of you. Hey, this is the Navy. A good Navy woman knows about separation. Most of the men have a six-or-nine-month blue-water deployment, bobbing around on an ocean somewhere.”
“No more whining,” Ardith said. “Korea. I don’t think the North is going to invade the South. Their economy is nearly bankrupt. They have thousands of people starving. How can they launch a military offensive?”
“War takes the people’s minds off their problems and the shortage of food. Gives them somebody to hate out of country. Great strategy for a failing government.”
“Will it work?”
“Usually it doesn’t. The army runs out of food or guns, and the enemy overwhelms the military, then takes over the country, and almost always it’s worse off than before.”
“Except World War Two and the Marshall Plan.”
“True.”
They were both quiet then, watching the fire. He stood, and put more wood on the blaze, then settled back beside her.
“Oh, yes, I like this,” Murdock said. “So much better than sand fleas in your ears and sand crabs crawling up your leg.”
“Is it true you turned down a chance to be an aide to the CNO?”
Ardith asked.
“True. I don’t polish boots well.”
“You know the Chief of Naval Operations. It would be a plush, prestigious assignment for you.”
“I’m not on the admiral track. If I’m lucky I might make captain before my twenty are up. If I don’t, it won’t matter that much.”
“But you can’t be a SEAL for ten more years, can you?”
“My knees wouldn’t hold out for that long. We lose more good men with worn-out knees than any other physical problem. But I might be able to move up in the operations end.”
He held her then, and she made soft noises in her throat that he knew meant she was content, happy at least for the moment. She stirred, and looked up. Then she put one of his hands over her breasts.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t bug you about moving on from the SEALs to another job in the Navy. But I guess I am. I’ll say it once more and then not again. I truly hope you will move on from the SEALs soon before you get yourself killed or smashed up, and find a nice safe shore job where we can be together.”
She looked at him seriously, then reached out and kissed him so gently on the lips he barely felt it. “Now, please make love to me again, and again, and again. I don’t plan on getting much sleep tonight.”
He opened the sides of her robe and kissed her breasts.
9
At slightly after 0800 the Third Platoon took to the water of the Pacific Ocean just off the BUD/S training area. They wore full black wet suits with their desert-pattern cammies over them. They had their complete combat-ready vests, weapons, Drager LAR V rebreathers, and fins.
Murdock told them before they left it would be a twelve-mile swim.
No heroics, no surprise attacks from the depths by SEAL instructors, just a conditioning swim out and back. Most of it would be underwater.
Murdock put Ed Dewitt at the lead. They would follow a compass heading from the sand in front of BUD/S o-course straight across to Zuniga Point at the southernmost landfall of North Island Naval Air Station. It was exactly six miles across the inward sweep of the Pacific there. This course had been used by the SEALs many times in training.
Ed Dewitt dropped down to fifteen feet below the surface, set up his attack board on the right azimuth, and kicked out. The attack board is a molded plastic device with two handgrips and a bubble compass in the center. It also has a depth gauge and cyalume chemical lights regulated with a twist knob for the amount of light needed to read the instruments.
The SEALs were paired by their six-to-eight-foot buddy lines, and strung out in a file behind Dewitt. The usual routine was to stay close enough to the swimmers ahead to be able to see them. That kept the platoon from being spread out too far. There were no radio communications in the wet.
Murdock and Joe Lampedusa swam at the tail of the string, and became the rear guard. Murdock had told Dewitt to stop halfway through the swim and he’d take the lead. He wanted Jaybird to set the pace for training.
They were a mile into the swim when Murdock saw a shape coming up to his right. He looked closer, and saw the white flash of the belly of a large animal. He stared through the shimmering water, and the creature turned and swam directly toward him. It stopped a dozen feet away, and studied him from large curious eyes.
It was a Pacific dolphin, smaller than the ones that perform at Sea World, but just as curious. He knew these mammals traveled in pods or groups, so he stared around. He found a dozen moving up behind him, and then they flowed around him, and next to the line of SEALS. He could see them going to the surface and jumping, then returning time and again to inspect these strange-looking creatures that had invaded their territory. He figured there must be a hundred in the pod.
Then before Murdock could turn and look, something nudged him from behind. He glanced back, and found a four-foot dolphin smiling at him with big eyes.
This wasn’t the TV Flipper; this was a wild sea creature. Murdock put out one gloved hand, and the dolphin backed off, then came forward.
Murdock touched the side of the creature, rubbed along its back.
Then, on some unheard signal, the dolphin turned and jetted away.