“Garrett here.”
“Hey, Boss Ma’am. This is Chris. Sorry to interrupt whatever I’m interrupting, but I think we have a kind of situation developing.”
“What’s happened, Chris?” Amanda tried to identify the odd murmur of sound she heard behind her intelligence officer’s voice.
“Do you have your encryption on?”
Amanda glanced at the switch and the check light of her cellular’s security option. “Yes, I’m secure. Go.”
“Here it is. There has been a major national security event somewhere within the Seventh Fleet zone of operations. Seventh Fleet and naval Special Forces elements are being mobilized, and the Duke can expect an alert-to-deploy notification in the immediate future.”
Again that odd burst of noise interrupted Christine.
“Chris, where are you? Aboard the ship?”
“Uh, well, no. Actually, I’m speaking to you from the ladies’ John of Haole Joe’s Sports Bar.”
Amanda knew that Christine Rendino, unconventional though she might be, was not prone to making prank phone calls to a superior officer. Nor was she in the habit of becoming dysfunctionally intoxicated. There would be an explanation, and Amanda waited for it.
“We’ve got a lot of base people over here watching the night game from stateside. The Mariners are dying in agony in the seventh inning, in case you’re interested … ”
“I’m not. What’s your point, Chris?”
“Anyway, starting about forty-five minutes ago, pagers and cell phones started going off all over the place. Four people from the Seventh Fleet Operations Center, a couple of guys from NAVSPECFORCE, even a couple of civilian ONI analysts, all of’ scorched out of here like tomcats going over the wall at a neutering clinic.
“Shall we say that this aroused my curiosity. I retired to the ladies’ relief facility here and set off a few pagers of my own. I can confirm that this isn’t a localized phenomenon. Command and operations personnel are being pulled in from all over the island.”
As she followed Christine’s words, Amanda gestured across the table to Arkady, motioning him to come around and listen in on the conversation. Swiftly, he circled the table and hunkered down beside her chair, leaning close to listen in.
Christine continued. “Finally, I called a friend of mine who is standing a port watch out aboard the Yellowstone tonight. They can see both Seventh Fleet Ops Center and NAVSPECFORCE HQ from their moorage. Both places are lit up like a dance club on Saturday night and have a steady stream of traffic going into their lots. Fa’ sure we have an event on.”
Amanda nodded slowly. “Is there any chance at all that this could be some kind of readiness exercise?”
“No,” Christine responded decisively. “I don’t think so, Boss Ma’am. The vibes coming off this are wrong.”
Amanda nodded again. Christine’s “vibes” were something that she trusted implicitly. She was not only a friend, but she was also one of the rising stars of her field. Behind that carefully cultivated Valley Girl persona, there was a cool and crystal-clear intellect of formidable capacity. A perusal of personnel records would have shown that Christine Rendino had the highest IQ of anyone aboard the Cunningham. And that, Amanda had to admit, included the captain.
“What’s your best guess on the crisis point?”
“I don’t have to guess; I know. I had them switch over to CNN during the seventh-inning stretch. They’ve just announced that the Nationalists have dealt themselves into the Chinese civil war. Taiwan has launched an invasion of the Chinese mainland.”
“You are kidding me!”
“Kidding not. They went across the beach this morning. And fa’ sure, this is going to have some people freaking out.”
“And you think we’re going to get a piece of it?”
“Our new lords and masters over at NAVSPECFORCE are already getting a piece of the action. We’re the only stealth hull they have in the Pacific just now, and we’ve just passed our requals. Add it up, Boss Ma’am.”
“I see your point, Chris.”
“I just thought you’d like the word. Do you want me to keep digging on this?”
Amanda stared unseeing across the restaurant lanai, her thoughts accelerating. As always, Christine’s logic was impeccable.
If there was a flare-up looming in the Pacific, the Cunningham, as one of the fleet’s most capable surface combatants, would be going. She had gained a few hours, possibly a day, on her deployment notice. How to spend it best?
“Negative, Chris. Go on back to your ball game. I’ll take it from here.”
“Okay, Captain.” Christine’s voice grew intent again. “I trust that I didn’t interrupt anything too critical?”
“No.” Amanda suddenly became aware of Arkady’s body warmth pressing close. “Not yet.”
She signed off. At her side, her Air Division leader rocked back on his heels.
“Well, what’s the word. Captain?”
“Nothing,” she replied thoughtfully. “We re going to let it ride for tonight.”
Noting his raised eyebrow, she continued. “Even if we did start pulling the crew back aboard now, we probably couldn’t get all that much done before morning. If the Duke is due for a crash deployment within the next couple of days, the best thing we can do is to let our people get a little shore time It might be their last for a while.”
“Makes sense to me.” Arkady nodded. “Right.”
Amanda crisply snapped the phone shut and returned it to her purse “Damn, damn, damn! We had a deployment preparations schedule all roughed out, but that’s shot to pieces now. I’m sorry, Arkady, but I’d better get back to the ship and see what I can start piecing together.”
“Okay, babe. But before you do, can you do me one favor?”
“Of course. What?” She looked at him inquiringly. He was still kneeling beside her chair, meeting her gaze levelly with a spark of affectionate humor dancing in those damnably blue eyes.
“Would you please repeat all that stuff you said about shore time for the crew and everything. Only this time around, just for fun, substitute ‘Garrett’ for ‘I’ just like to hear how it sounds.”
In her moment of distracted confusion, she almost started to do it. Then she found herself dissolving into something close to a giggle. She collapsed back into her chair and reached out to caress his cheek “Vincent Arkady, you are a sin. My sin.”
“Like you said, babe It might be the last time for a while “
“So it might”
7
Again the trilling of Amanda’s phone registered on Vince Arkady’s consciousness, this time piercing through layers of sleep. There was a silky slithering on the bed beside him, and the pleasant pool of warmth that had been curled against his back was gone.
By the time he had rolled over and opened his eyes, Amanda was up and across the room to answer the call “Garret!”
Last night she had drawn open the drapes and the glass balcony door to allow the sea breeze and moonlight into their hotel room. Now she stood backdropped by the morning blue of the bay and the sky, totally unselfconscious in her nudity, completely intent on whomever she was speaking with. To Arkady, just then, she was all things desirable and beautiful.
She stood posed, one hand on her hip, one long dancer’s leg carrying her weight, the other relaxed with her knee slightly bent. Her tousled auburn hair flowed down around her tanned shoulders, making the scar across the top of her left collarbone stand out. What had hurt her there? he wondered. That was another one of those things that he hadn’t had a chance to ask about yet It took him a few moments to focus on her conversation.