It sounded strange to Lewinsky to hear her curse with that beautiful voice with just a trace of the South. Alabama? Georgia? Memphis? His Indiana-raised ears weren’t trained enough to figure it out. What was even stranger that she had just plopped down and started talking to him as if they were friends. Or more.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but can I ask you, Redhead, why are you sitting here with me? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, it’s just, well, it’s not every day a guy like me,” he ran his hands thought his flat-top haircut and adjusted his black-framed glasses on his nose, “gets visited by a woman who looks like the real-life version of Jessica Rabbit. Shouldn’t you be crooning in a dark smoke-filled nightclub somewhere, wearing six-inch heels and a silk gown with a slit up the side?”
Redhead tilted her head back and laughed, her laugh as musical as her voice. “I noticed the Ferrari,” she said. “I did a photo shoot next to one once, and I thought it was hot, but I mean, you never see one, even here in snooty Virginia Beach. Then a week ago I saw yours and I saw you get out of it. So I checked you out. You’re a Navy lieutenant commander. Engineer on the Vermont. Newly reported aboard. Extremely handsome. Extremely sexy. Extremely smart. And extremely shy. So — no girlfriend. Well, at least until today. As of today, you do have a girlfriend.” She winked at him.
“First, Ms. Redhead, how did you find out all that about me?”
“Hey, Mario. A girl’s got to have some mystery, doesn’t she?”
“Come on.”
“Okay, fine. I used to date Bruno Romanov. He was my first naval officer. I guess you could say I got hooked. I’m sort of a naval officer groupie now. I was out for drinks with Bruno and that bitch Rachel and they mentioned the Ferrari. They said it belonged to you, that you were hot and single and ripe for the taking. So. That brings you to now.” She smiled brightly as if it were a done deal.
“Want to go for a ride?” Lewinsky said, smiling at her. Even if this were a trick by Vevera, Lewinsky decided to roll with it, maybe even have some fun with it. What was the harm? Then he heard his own question, and realized it sounded like a sexual proposition.
Redhead tossed back her whiskey, put down four crisp twenties on the table, using her whiskey glass as a paperweight, and took Lewinsky by the hand out to his car. He opened the passenger door and watched her as she folded those long legs to get in.
Four hours later they were naked in bed and sweating after the most amazing sex he’d ever had in his life. He had never believed in love at first sight, but Redhead was it for him.
It had taken two years for the relationship to fall apart, and when it did, it came apart as suddenly and strangely as it started. If Redhead had a fatal flaw, it was jealousy, and somehow she’d gotten it into her head that Lewinsky had something going on with Rachel Romanov — which he most certainly did not — but his working closely with the ship’s navigator had made Redhead stew in boiling anger, particularly when Vermont would disappear on an op for weeks on end. Redhead finally revealed that Rachel had a crush on Lewinsky, and had put Redhead up to sleeping with him as an odd way of, as Redhead put it, “Rachel fucking you by proxy,” saying, “she used me, she made me into a sex torpedo that she fired at you.” Redhead was convinced that the Vermont navigator had sent Redhead his way in order to obtain juicy details about what sex with him was like, because Romanov lusted for him. The reality of this crazy situation was that Redhead couldn’t live in a world where she thought another woman wanted her man, or one where she thought her man wanted another woman.
Redhead eventually left him, slamming the door after her. She’d taken an ice pick to the Testarossa and in white epoxy paint had written the word ASSHOLE on every surface. It had taken a twenty-thousand-dollar repair and a new paint job to fix that, but there would be no fixing Mario Lewinsky’s heart. He was still deeply, profoundly in love with Redhead, and he imagined he always would be, their terrible ending notwithstanding.
It was then that his reverie was interrupted by Sonarman First Class Jay “Snowman” Mercer, the midwatch sonarman of the watch. “Officer of the Deck, we’ve got some strange transients coming from the Panther.”
“Transients? Like what?” Transients could be bad news. A mechanical malfunction? Something rupturing and breaking? A fire breaking out with the crew making noise trying to battle the flames?
“I’ve got a pump startup. Not just any pump. A big pump.”
“A pump? Why would a diesel-electric submarine be starting a pump?”
“Maybe because it’s about to become a nuclear submarine.”
“Oh, holy hell, no.”
“I’ve got flow noise, Eng. There’s definitely steam flowing in pipes, a fuck-ton of it.”
“Exactly how much is the quantity ‘fuck-ton,’ Petty Officer Mercer?”
“A buttload, in technical terms, Eng. Now I’ve got a turbine starting up. No, two turbines, a small one and a big one. Definitely a big-ass turbine. Do you want that quantified also?”
“Is this for real?”
“I’ve got transient clicks or booms, Eng. Could be breakers shutting. The turbine noise is getting louder. Wait, what the hell?”
“What?”
“Possible zig, Panther, sir. She’s speeding up. Jesus, she’s speeding up. Can you get a TMA leg? With speed across the line-of-sight of at least fifteen knots?”
“Pilot! Left full rudder, all ahead standard! Steady course east.”
“Left full rudder, steady course east, Pilot aye, and all ahead standard,” Torpedoman Senior Chief Nygard said. “Maneuvering answers, all ahead standard. Present course one six zero, seventy degrees from ordered course.”
“FT of the Watch, once we steady on course east, get a curve.”
“Get a curve, aye.”
Lewinsky was already dialing the XO’s stateroom.
“Command Duty Officer.”
“Sir, we have a zig on Panther. Looks like they lit off that fast reactor and they’re speeding up like a bat outta hell, sir. I’m getting a perpendicular leg to get a fix on his speed.”
“I’ll be right there,” Quinnivan said.
Ten minutes later, after Vermont had taken data on the first leg, then turned to the reciprocal course, west, and gathered data on the other perpendicular leg, the answer was in. Panther was doing thirty-one knots.
“Thirty-one goddamned knots, XO,” Lewinsky said.
“That reactor seems to be working quite nicely,” Quinnivan said. “And good news. It didn’t explode.”
“Yet,” Lewinsky said, old worries from the past deciding to visit.
“Your optimism is noted, Eng,” Quinnivan said. “I’ll inform the captain.”
BOOK 5:
THE WAR OF JUNE 7
23
Captain Second Rank Anastasia Isakova blinked hard, trying to become more alert. She’d had the first watch for almost four hours and was trying to make the adjustment from having had the afternoon watch.