“Forget that too. I’m aware that you and your people have been doing your damnedest to get your systems up and running. Unfortunately, our opponents are seldom obliging enough to work out a mutually agreeable schedule with us before starting their war. The major point is that Belewa has just thrown down the gauntlet. This so-called peacekeeping mission has just gone fangs out. And while this attack has resolved one of my problems, albeit in a pretty damn lousy manner, it also presents me with a larger one.”
“Who do you bring in to replace Captain Emberly.”
“Exactly. Phil Emberly may have had his limitations, but he was the only command-grade officer we had available who was current on the seafighter. Whoever I bring in as TACBOSS now will have to come up to technical speed on a new core weapons system for the Tactical Action Group. They’ll also need to develop an effective use doctrine for that weapons system while already deployed in an active war zone and while coordinating operations for all of the other Action Group elements. And that doesn’t even touch on minor details like the restrictive rules of engagement, a fragmented U.N. command structure, a complex geopolitical scenario, and a severe manpower limitation!”
Macintyre crumpled the soda can in his fist and tossed it into the wastebasket. “You wouldn’t know of any good professional miracle workers we could pick up on short notice, would you?”
Christine found her eyes drifting toward the laptop computer on her desk and her mind drifting back to the e-mail she had read that afternoon. “Uh, well, I do happen to know of one who might be available, sir. And so do you.”
She looked on expectantly, waiting for the Admiral to pick up on the hint. He did a moment later, a grin lighting his soot grimed features.
“Yes!” Macintyre slapped his open palm down on the corner of her desk. “Where’s the communications center hidden around here, Chris? I need to talk with the Bureau of Personnel.”
“It’ll be the middle of the night back in Memphis, sir.”
“Then find out whoever the hell it is I need to wake up.”
On a long blue and gold spring day, the little Cape Cod sloop had beat steadily southward within the long sheltering arm of Cape Hatteras. Lazily she had tacked against a mellow breeze, nosing curiously into inlets and by waters and following no particular course to anywhere.
And now, with the coming of night, she tugged lightly at her mooring buoy. Her standing rigging creaked with the shift of the low swell and her mast tip inscribed lazy eights against a zenith glittering with a million piercing stars. Around her on the water, the moorage lights of the other yachts at rest in the small anchorage glowed companionably.
“Tell me something, babe,” Vince Arkady inquired softly, his breath ruffling the bangs that swept low across Amanda’s brow. “Just what in the hell is a Seeadler?”
Amanda Garrett, Commander, United States Navy, in another life, smiled lazily into Arkady’s rakishly handsome face. “It’s German, love. It means ‘sea eagle’.”
“That’s a little pretentious for a twenty-four-foot cabin boat, isn’t it?”
Amanda thumped her head firmly back down on her young lover’s shoulder. “I like it. It has deep connections with my first great love affair.”
“Ah hah. Confession from your checkered past. This I have got to hear.”
Amanda chuckled softly and shifted position, the two of them flowing into a new embrace on the clumped seat cushions — breasts to chest and thigh to thigh beneath the unzipped sleeping bag. After a dinner cooked in the sloop’s tiny galley, she and Arkady had lounged close in the cockpit, talking and watching the sun set. Gradually as the dusk settled, the making of conversation had segued smoothly into the making of love. As their clothing slipped away, the two had assembled this ad hoc bed on the cockpit floorboards, both of them savoring the freedom of the open sky above.
Long bouts of slow, satisfying passion had followed, the kind shared between two well-versed and familiar lovers, interspersed with drowsing naps in each other’s arms and more sleepy pillow banter.
“Okay, babe.” Arkady lightly kissed the bridge of her nose. “Start talking. Who was this first grand passion of yours?”
“He was an aristocrat, I’ll have you know,” Amanda replied, giving her head a haughty toss. “He was a genuine Prussian count, an officer and a gentleman of the old school, and I but an innocent young thing of thirteen.”
“Those Prussians start early, don’t they? What’d he do? Offer you a candy bar and a ride in his armored car?”
Amanda lightly bit her bedmate’s shoulder. “He also died quite a few years before I was even born. His name was Captain Felix Von Luckner, also known to the Allies in World War One as ‘The Sea Devil’.”
“And what did this Felix do to so arouse your passion?”
“I’ll tell you. When he was thirteen, he ran away to sea, just like I desperately wanted to do. He left his father’s castle, abandoning his wealth and title and everything else to rove the world over as a common sailor aboard an old Russian square-rigger.”
Arkady grinned and ran a hand down her flank. “I can see how that would work for you. Where’s the Sea Devil come in, and what does all this have to do with the name of your sloop?”
“Well, eventually, my hero left the merchant marine and became an officer in the Imperial German Navy. When World War One broke out, he approached the German admiralty with an insane plan. He wanted to go a-raiding in the world’s last sailing frigate.”
“A sailing frigate? In the First World War? You have to be kidding.”
“Nope, and it was a brilliant notion in its way. Sail-powered, he had a global range because he never needed to refuel. And no one would suspect a sailing ship of being a commerce raider until it dropped its gun shields and opened fire. With absolutely nothing to lose, the Imperial Navy gave Von Luckner an elderly bark-rigged Brandenburg freighter. The count mounted a couple of small, concealed deck guns on her and renamed her…”
“The Seeadler.”
“Correct, Mr. Arkady.” She rewarded him with a light kiss. “At any rate, my beloved sailed away on Christmas Day, evaded the British blockade, and politely began to ravage the world’s sea-lanes.”
“How do you politely ravage someone?”
Amanda arched an eyebrow. “You have to ask? For all of his ferocious nickname, and in spite of being in the middle of one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the Sea Devil never took a life if he could avoid it. His technique was to sidle up alongside an Allied merchantman, put a shot across her bow, and capture her before any resistance could be offered.
“All of the delicacies and alcohol from the prize’s officers’ mess would be transferred to the Seeadler, as would the contents of the ship’s safe. The crew and the male passengers would be put over the side in well-provisioned lifeboats, while the female passengers became the Count’s guests aboard his vessel. The prize would be scuttled, and the Count would transmit a radio message to the nearest Allied base, informing them of the lifeboats’ position. Then he would sail away to his next adventure.”
Arkady was suitably impressed. “Now, that was a guy who knew how to make war.”
“I agree. My count was eminently civilized… Mmm. If you insist on doing that, love, do it a little bit lower. Oh yes… Oh yes, yes, yes.” Amanda gave a squirm of appreciation for certain events taking place beneath the sleeping bag.