"Do you talk in your sleep?" I grinned at her. "Because I'm supposed to find out."
"I don't know, I do know you've little chance of finding out. I'm exhausted but I'm too keyed-up to sleep."
"Maybe I can relax you," I said. Her eyes were dark and serious.
I moved close to her and my lips pressed on hers, opening her mouth and I found her tongue with mine. She quivered and clung to me, welcoming me with an eagerness that permeated every movement of her body. I thrust my hand up beneath the sweater and found that the nurses hadn't given her a bra. My hand closed around soft firmness and she gasped. I grasped the sweater and pulled it over her head. She was against me instantly, clinging, and I pressed her back upon the bed. Her breasts pointed up at me and I kissed them, tenderly first, then gently nibbling at each protruding tip. Her head strained backwards and she gasped again and again, her hands clutching at my back. Slowly, the nipples began to rise and harden. I pulled gently on them with my lips and Rita half-screamed. I was grateful for the soundproof walls of fleet ships.
"O-o-oooh!" she cried out and arched her back, thrusting her breasts upward deeper into my mouth. When I let them go she fell back on the bed. My lips moved down across her body, and she moaned passionately as I neared the place of all places.
Her lovely legs moved up and apart invitingly. I bore down upon her, into her moistness, feeling the welcome warmth of her closing around me, and now her body moved with a will of its own, apart from the moaning protestations of her lips. I knew she was protesting only the ecstasy that was beyond her reach at the moment. But she was trying for it with every thrusting muscle, with the warm moistness that flowed from her, with the wanting that wracked her magnificent body.
And then, as she reached passion's summit, she flung her legs out straight and her head reached up and backwards. Her hands were against my chest, pushing me from her while her legs clasped tighter around me, and then she was clinging to me, moving convulsively, a creature of pure passion. Finally she fell back, drained of everything but the shallow harshness of her breath. I lay beside her, my head cradled against her breast, lips touching her nipples.
In a while I felt her hands stroking my head. She snuggled against me, her soft breasts sweet cushions against my chest. "You know, I surprise myself," she said. "I never would have guessed that I could, well, function, in the tense atmosphere we're under. I think it must be you."
She rose on one elbow and traced imaginary little lines on my chest. "Are you sexually stimulated by stress?" she asked.
"Research or personal curiosity?" I grinned at her.
She chuckled softly. "A little of both, I guess."
"Frankly, it doesn't make any difference," I told her honestly. "Stress, no stress, I keep a fire going."
A few minutes later she was fast asleep against my chest, her breath soft and even.
I put my head back and dozed off myself. I got in somewhat more than an hour and a half when I heard the polite but firm knock on the door. Moving out from under Rita, who only gave a murmured, sleepy protest, I put on clothes and answered the door.
"AXE Headquarters calling you, sir," a sailor said, saluting. I closed the door softly behind me and followed him to the radio room. Hawk's voice crackled out at me as I put on the head phones.
"Has the girl said anything?" he asked.
"Nothing you'd be interested in, sir," I answered.
"That figures," the old fox replied. "But we've pieced together a few things for you that may help. Chung Li thinks that the jet pilot may be one of their men. He had to make a few admissions that must have hurt, but they confirmed past reports from our own sources. First, the Chinese had a bad explosion some while back testing their A-bomb warheads. A woman was killed. Her husband was a jet pilot by the name of Chan Hwa. Chung Li also had to admit that one of their special long-range jets has been missing for a week, along with pilot Chan Hwa."
"All right, a Chinese pilot with a stolen jet and his own set of gripes is going to help Carlsbad put his plan into effect," I said. "That doesn't tell us where to find him."
"I might have that, too," Hawk said. "That statement about the 'tip of the three, Nick, I gave it to our cryptanalysts. It's not code and not truly cryptography, but they've so much specialized training in solving riddles that I figured they'd be best and fastest. They came up with a possible answer. There's a spot, not too far from the Kuriles, where Soviet Russia, China and Korea meet. It could be reached by helicopter. All three countries touch only at the very tip of the area at Changkufeng."
"Ill get there right away," I said. "If we're not too late already."
"Do your best, Nick," Hawk said. "Chung Li is on his way with two hand-picked men. So is Ostrov. Chung Li is very worried. I think that's what made him so cooperative. He's afraid Carlsbad is going to set X–V77 loose on Chairman Mao and the Supreme Council. He wants Mao to leave for the United Nations World Leadership Conference ahead of schedule. Frankly, I'm afraid that might be Carlsbad's plan, too, and you know what that would trigger."
"I can get a Vigilante A-5A from the carrier here," I said. "That'd be the fastest way for me to make it."
"Ill certify clearance for you," Hawk said. "Take the girl. Maybe hell listen to her if you get to him."
"Will do," I said. "Over and out."
The carrier commander took over as I raced back to the stateroom. I woke Rita and her arms slid around my neck. Her half-opened eyes said only one thing.
"Not now, honey," I said. "There is too much to do."
She sat up, the sheet dropping from her breasts. She was into her clothes in moments. "Better say your prayers that well be in time," I said. "This could be our last chance."
V
Rita and I jammed into one of the Vigilante's two seats, our pilot in the other. They'd come up with a pair of jeans and a zippered jacket that fit Rita. It would have been cozy except for the bulk of our chute packs made it uncomfortable. The two J79 turbojets had the plane up to near its 1400 mph speed in not much more than a long minute. In a little over an hour we were winging over Sosura on the Korean coast and then, at the tip of the land where the three countries came together, we saw the village of Changkufeng inside the Manchurian border. Just beyond it lay the Russian border and the village of Podgornaya. We flew a tight circle around Changkufeng and then across thatched-roof-and-clay farmhouses and hilly land dotted with scrub brush and stunted trees. I saw no sign of a field large enough to land a jet.
As we flew along the narrow pointed finger of land where the three countries touched at the tip, moving into Manchurian territory, the pilot dipped low over the fields and houses. I saw his arm point down and he banked. Below, outside a clay-walled house, a figure waved and I recognized the portly shape of Chung Li. The Red Chinese espionage chief was holding a rifle in one hand and waving with it. He had reached here first, as Hawk suspected he might. As the pilot sent the Vigilante A5-A up in a steep climb I wondered what Chung Li had found.
When we got enough altitude, the pilot pressed the ejector button and I felt myself flung out and upward, hurtling through the sky to stop suddenly as the chute billowed open. I caught a glimpse of Rita's chute, a round shape against the sky, mushrooming up behind me and then I was drifting down, guiding myself as best I could by pulling on the chute lines. I hit the ground a few hundred yards from the farmhouse, unsnapped my chute and ran over to where Rita was struggling with hers. I had just unsnapped her chute when I heard the roar of the MIG-19s coming in, three of them, out of the north. They wheeled and banked and shot up for altitude. That would be Ostrov, coming in from Yakutsk.