They were setting up shop less than five yards from the towels, picnic basket, and swimsuits that Sterling and Christine had left on the beach.
"Oh, God, David!" She was trembling in his arms. "What are we going to do now?"
"That's okay. They can't see anything but our heads out here.
"No! I mean what about our clothes! We can't go back now!"
"Why not? We just go ashore, walk over to our stuff, get dressed, and leave. What can they do?"
"David!" She pushed back against his embrace, staring into his face. "You can't be serious!"
"I'm perfectly serious."
"I can't walk up onto the beach in front of people naked!" A wave carried them higher, and she turned to stare at the beach again. "Oh, God, no! NO!"
"Now what?"
"I know some of those people! They're from my church! And that... that's Pastor Kline! David! It's a church picnic! What am I going to do?"
"Okay, listen. I'll tell you what. You stay here. Just tread water. I'll swim back, get our suits, and bring yours out to YOU."
"No!" The word was nearly a scream.
"Why not?"
"They might know you! They know I've been going out with you! If they saw you come out of the ocean like this, they'd know I was with you, and they'd know what we've been doing! You can't!"
"Well, we sure as hell can't stay out here all day." The water was pretty cold. Sterling was feeling fine so far, but Christine's lips were already blue, and her teeth were starting to chatter. "Look, it's easy. Just ignore them. What can they say? Just go up and..."
"God, David, sometimes you can be so damned arrogant!"
He blinked. "Arrogant? Me? I'm just being practical! Christine, you're freezing. Come on. I know you're a bit embarrassed, but..."
"It's so humiliating! David, I can't possibly let my pastor see me like this! I'll never be able to show my face again! He'll tell my father! Oh, why did I even listen to you? I knew this was a mistake!"
Sterling sighed. Impasse. Christine wasn't going back to the beach, she wasn't going to let him go back to the beach, and if she stayed where she was she'd succumb to hypothermia in thirty minutes or less. Her fingertips and the dusky aureoles around her nipples were already starting to wrinkle up like prunes.
There had to be another solution. A SEAL solution...
"Okay," he told her. "I've got it."
Turning in the water, he presented his back to her. "Grab hold. Hold onto my neck."
Reluctantly, she slipped her arms around his neck, and he felt her body pressing against his back and buttocks. "What are you going to do?"
"We're going for a little swim, babe."
Launching into a powerful breast stroke, Sterling began swimming south, moving parallel to the beach and in the general direction of the La Jolla headlands, which rose from the sea about half a mile away.
It would have been a stiff swim for anyone but a SEAL, but Sterling made it seem almost effortless, hauling Christine through the water with a sure and practiced ease. As they drew farther and farther away from the picnickers on the beach, he could feel her starting to relax a little.
The rough part came when he reached the surf line just below the cliffs, where the waves broke in savage, white fury over the boulders scattered along the beach. "Wrap your legs around my waist," he called to her. "And for God's sake, hang on!"
Somehow, he plunged out of the crashing water and sprinted up a narrow shingle of wet sand without being smashed against the rocks. In the distance to his left, the picnickers were visible as a cluster of colored dots, too small for faces to be made out. South, around the headland, Sterling had thought he'd glimpsed some fishermen on the rocks as he'd come in, but if they'd seen the two swimmers they gave no sign. And apparently Christine hadn't seen them either. Her face was buried against the back of his neck.
"Okay," he told her, straightening a bit and bracing her legs with his hands. "We're ashore, but I want you to stay where you are. We have a little climbing ahead of us.
"Why? If we find someplace to hide in the rocks..."
"Babe, in another hour or so this beach is going to be wall-to-wall people, okay? Besides, I can feel you shivering. We've got to get you warmed up before you catch pneumonia."
It was a grueling climb up a slanted rock ledge that ran along the face of the bluff like a narrow path. Fishermen had probably used this route for years to get down to the beach from Torrey Pines Road, which followed the headland around its crest, overlooking the ocean. Or it might have been a beach maintenance access path, a part of La Jolla Heights Park. Christine weighed perhaps 120, close to the weight of a SEAL's full RAHO gear, and it was a struggle to keep moving.
"David, where are we going?"
"We left the car on the road," he told her. "It's just a hundred yards or so up the road. All we have to do is get to the top of this hill."
"And walk down the road like, like this?"
"I don't see too many options, Chris. Should be okay, though. The traffic won't be heavy this time of day." He staggered on, hot rocks and gravel pressing against the bottoms of his bare feet. He thought of all the long, long runs as much as fourteen miles in the sand supporting a 300-pound log with six other guys, and knew he could make it. Piece of cake.
At last they reached the top, where a metal guard rail separated Toffey Pines Road from the edge of the cliff. Far down the road to the north, Sterling could see his blue Volkswagen parked where he'd left it in the shade of a palm tree. He let Christine down, but picked her up again when half a dozen steps on the hot gravel at the side of the road reduced her to tears and a slow and painful hobble. Carrying her piggyback again, he trotted along the side of the road. A truck thundered by, the driver happily leaning on his horn. Sterling could feel Christine trembling against him, hiding her face, certain that the whole world was staring at them.
And she may have been right. There were lots of houses in view up here, mostly the elegant, architectural dream homes of the wealthy southern Californians who inhabited this strip of prime, ocean-view property. If any of them happened to be looking out those big, expensive picture windows now, Sterling thought, they were getting one hell of a great view.
"David!" Christine wailed. "I just remembered! We locked the car! Your keys and everything are down on the beach!"
"Don't worry about it. I'll get us in."
A Cadillac drove past, and the driver beeped his horn. "Oh, this is awful!"
At last they reached the VW. Sterling let Christine down, and she immediately scampered for the partial shelter behind the car's body. "How... how are we going to get in? Can you pick the lock?"
"Easier than that, Chris. I left the trunk open." Walking to the front of the car, he opened the hood. "Shit," he said conversationally. "I thought I had a blanket stowed in here. Guess not."
"David, what are we going to do?"
He hesitated, faced now with the moment of truth. That battered, blue VW was something of a classic, an ancient car dating back to the years when they actually manufactured the VW Beetle in the United States, lovingly preserved and rebuilt through a long succession of enlisted Navy and Marine personnel, passed down from owner to owner each time a tour of duty was up. Sterling had lavished hundreds of hours on the vehicle until it ran like a Swiss watch. Damaging it was a kind of sacrilege.
"David!" Fists clenched, face red, Christine bounced rapidly up and down on her toes, a movement that communicated her urgency while doing delightful things to other parts of her anatomy. "There's a bus coming!"
He sighed. "Okay." Balling up his fist, Sterling smashed through the back of his glove compartment, a dark brown box shaped in thick, heavy cardboard like the material egg cartons are made of. Reaching into the hole from the trunk side, he fiddled with the latch for a moment until the glove compartment door popped open. Then, leaning in as far as he could, he reached through the open glove compartment and pushed open the small ventilation window on the passenger's side. "I hated it when they stopped putting these on cars," he said conversationally as he moved to the side of the car, reached through the open window, and unlocked the door. Christine slipped in through the door just before a yellow high school bus loaded with cheering students roared past. It looked like a field trip of some sort. Sterling cheerfully waved as the bus groaned past them and on up the hill. Christine was huddled on the VW's floor, possibly in an attempt to crawl beneath her seat.