As they scanned the night sky, Furness shivered, wrapped her arms around herself, and stepped closer to Mace. He responded by putting an arm around her. “See any more constellations?” she asked.
“Yeah. Darenoid, the frozen naviguesser. Let’s go inside.”
They went inside and headed for the stairs, but Rebecca took Mace’s hand and pulled him toward the hallway to the right. He hesitated, searching her eyes, silently asking if she was sure, relaxing his grip, offering her a chance to gracefully back away. She did not release him, and he followed her three doors down and into her room.
There was no talking, no polite conversation, no more requests or replies. As Daren locked the door, Rebecca walked over beside the bed, kicked off her boots, and, standing before him, began to unbutton his shirt. He held her cold face in his hands as she worked, rolling his eyes in mock agony as her cold fingers touched, then explored, his bare chest. His body was lean, rock-hard, and athletic, his chest was square and muscular, even his back was angular and sinewy. Guys never tailored their flight suits or fatigues, so most men’s bodies looked the same when in a military outfit — and, in fact, most Air Force men were very much alike, trim and fit, maybe toned-up if they were serious about exercise. Daren was not just fit or toned, he was built, Furness thought. Taking off his shirt, revealing his incredible body, wrapping her arms around his rounded shoulders and roaming across his fantastic chest and arms was like unwrapping a late but much-anticipated Christmas present.
Her hands wrapped around to his back, and they kissed. The kiss quickly intensified as both tasted, explored, and sought even more. Her hips briefly moved against him, an unbidden but insistent invitation, touching groin to groin for the briefest of moments. That caused a sudden shiver to shoot through him, not from the cold this time but from the pleasure, and his hands began to work the buttons of her cotton blouse. When that was removed, she waited for him to reach around to undo the fasteners of her brassiere, but instead he stepped back and allowed her to remove her brassiere herself. She used the opportunity to full advantage, doing it as slowly as her pounding heart and quickening breathing would allow, then stood before him, topless, watching his eyes roam across her body and his smile beginning to grow.
She expected the rest of it to be quick and catlike, like Ed — and she had to admit that sometimes she liked that. But Daren wasn’t going to allow it. He went slow, like a long, sybaritic poem, alternatively smothering her with kisses and grasps, then letting her relax with gentle touches and caresses. He was offering her the spectrum of lovemaking, the hard and the soft, observing which she preferred and delighting in every new discovery. She liked her kisses wet and deep, her breasts handled gently but her nipples teased and moistened into full attention, her buttocks and thighs taken in both hands and firmly massaged. As he laid her back on the thick, soft bed and got on his knees before her, he discovered she liked her womanhood treated slowly, carefully, almost reverently, like kissing a baby’s lips, until her breathing became deeper and more audible and her hands moved from the bed, to her own breasts, and then to the back of his head, urging him closer, deeper …
He finally stood before her, his well-developed chest moving up and down breathlessly as if he had run up and down stairs, and he started to undo his belt. She quickly sat up, slid off the edge of the bed to her knees, unfastened his belt for him, and slid his jeans and underwear to the hardwood floor. She wrapped her hand around him, feeling its heat and its incredible hardness, then tasted him, once, twice, three times, as deeply as she could. When she released him, she knew neither of them was going to wait any longer. As Daren picked Rebecca off the floor, laid her on her back on the bed, knelt between her legs, and guided himself into her, she discovered him with absolute delight.
It was the beginning of some of the most passionate lovemaking she could remember. His strength was enormous, and he delighted in making her climax time after time until he finally succumbed himself. They made love long and slow. She had thrown out every rule she’d ever made about sleeping with her fellow military personnel, but she didn’t give a damn … until …
They heard the ring of a cellular telephone. She hadn’t even noticed it clipped to the inside of his jacket, but of course being the Maintenance Group commander, especially during an alert, it would be a required and constant companion. He withdrew from her, kissing her lips and her breasts and murmuring something softly to her, an apology or a wish, something she couldn’t quite hear. But when she looked at him again, his face had completely changed. He had completely changed. He was no longer her tender, passionate lover — he was now her superior officer, the MG of the 394th Air Battle Wing.
He wasn’t on the phone long, and he was reaching for his pants and shirt. “What is it?” Furness asked him.
“They figured out what they’re going to do with us,” Mace said, hurriedly dressing. “We’re deploying. To Turkey. Recon and Wild Weasel operations. There’s a staff meeting in ten minutes. I’ve got my utility uniform in the truck; I’ll have to change out there,” he told her. He put his jacket and boots on, paused, then came back to Furness and hugged her, closely and deeply. They parted, kissed just as deeply, and embraced again.
“I’ll see you … on the flight line,” Mace said hesitantly as he pulled himself away. She could read his thoughts: he wanted to say thank you, to say all sorts of things that lovers say to each other after parting. But his expression, his anxious smile, told her all she needed to know.
“My gear is packed,” she said. She was dressed and ready in no time. “I’ll drive in with you. They’re going to need crews to fly those things out of here.”
His smile returned, and he nodded. She was, he realized with a great deal of pride, a flyer first and foremost.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The entire Ukrainian Air Force was parked on the west ramp of Kayseri Air Base in central Turkey. Colonel Pavlo Tychina shook his head in absolute disbelief. Kayseri was a rather large base, one of the largest Western military bases between Germany and Hawaii, so it would make sense for even a large number of planes to be lost there, but the entire Ukrainian Air Force fit in just eight aircraft parking rows. At L’vov Air Base in Ukrayina, just the MiG-23s at that one base filled twelve rows. This wasn’t an Air Force, he told himself, this was a recreational-aircraft fly-in. But, thank God, Panchenko had spirited spare parts, missiles, tech orders, and charts to Turkey over the past few months.
Now, this was all they had.
Tychina was at the controls of the last MiG-23 fighter plane out of the Ukraine. General Panchenko had led the formation of survivors to Turkey, and Tychina, flying one of the few Ukrayinan planes that carried any weaponry, was bringing up the rear to cover their retreat. He had been allowed to arm his MiG with the standard GSh-23 gun on the centerline gun station, with only one hundred rounds of ammunition — any plane with a cannon was allowed to carry one hundred rounds of ammunition for self-defense — and he was allowed to carry two R-60 short-range heat-seeking air-to-air missiles on the outer pylons. It was not very much protection for anyone, but at the very least it would allow him to engage any enemy planes and hold them off long enough for the others to plug in the afterburners and get away. He also carried one eight-hundred-liter fuel tank on the center pylon.
He was on a high, wide downwind pattern, parallel to the long northernmost active runway of the large Turkish military complex. He was carefully aligning himself with a Turkish F-16 fighter flying about a kilometer ahead of him, matching every altitude and speed change. Tychina knew that if he strayed too far from his escort his brethren — one F-16 directly astern, another high and out of sight somewhere behind him — would attack. His Sirena-3 radar warning receiver was lit up with threats, and had been well before he crossed the Black Sea into Turkish airspace. Fighter tracking radar, surveillance radar, a NATO Patriot surface-to-air missile system tracking radar — they were all locked on. The Ukrayinans might have been cordially invited into Turkey by the host country and by the NATO alliance, but no one was taking any chances here …