Well, it was less than the wholehearted support to which he was entitled, but it would have to do, Bradley decided. Indeed, the care and feeding of his subordinates had become of increasingly little significance to him. They were there to do a job, to feed him the information he required in order to make the appropriate decisions, and they’d damned well better understand that. It wasn’t as though he could trust them with anything more than mechanical tasks, not after their conduct during the last flare-up with China. (Carrier 8: Alpha Strike)
He let the man squirm for a few minutes more while he studied his fingernails. Finally, when he deemed that the full weight of his dissatisfaction had settled in on the man, he spoke. “Turkey is an old and valued ally of the United States,” he said slowly and distinctly. “During the decades of the Cold War and even before that, there has never been an incident of this kind. Therefore, our first priority is to determine exactly what provoked this reaction from her.”
“Provoked?” his section chief said wonderingly. “Sir, with all due respectthere has been an attack on American forces. A nuclear attack. Regardless of any supposed justification, I cannot see any possible rationale for such an egregious breach of international protocol. It’s simply-“
“You’ve just demonstrated why you’ll never be anything more than a Section Chief,” Bradley interrupted. He pointed an accusing finger at his area expert. “The inability to see beyond the obvious. Of course this is an egregious act. That’s obvious. I don’t need you to tell me what I can hear on ACN every morning.”
Bradley sighed, contemplating for perhaps the thousandth time the difficulty of working with lesser minds. If only at least a few of them had possessed a degree of class, he might have been able to live with the lack of intellectual capacity. But the buffoonish, crass man standing in front of him was all too typical of the minions that inhabited the State Department. “What we need,” Bradley continued, enunciating each word carefully, “is a reason. And a solution. If you can’t supply it, I’ll find someone who can.”
“With your permission, then,” the Chief said, his voice a tightly controlled filament of rage, “I’ll be getting back to my desk. We’ll see if we can produce the answers you seem to think exist.”
Without waiting to be excused, the Chief turned sharply and left the office, pulling the door shut behind him with a bit more force than perhaps was necessary.
Bradley dampened down his own annoyance, and pulled a legal pad toward him to outline his thoughts. The situation had the potential to be an absolute disaster. Not for the United Statesthe nation would survive, as she had for centuries. He had an unshakable, inchoate belief in the divine immortality of his country. No, there was a much more serious danger before himthe damage that any mishandling of this affair could do to his own career.
He laid the Mont Blanc pen on the pad, carefully centering it in the middle of the page. “I’ll have to go myself,” he said thoughtfully. “If I don’t, something’s bound to go wrong. Any mishandling of this incident, and we could end up with another war on our hands.”
A vision formed in his mind, one that he found pleasing. He promptly embellished the appropriate details. It was based on a photo taken in Tiananmen Square, of the single Chinese student who’d stood in front of an oncoming tank and held Chinese military forces at bay during the student protests there. Yes, the Chinese studentand Bradley Tiltfelt. He alone could stand in front of the United States military and prevent an entirely inappropriate reaction from occurring.
A sense of duty, of destiny and historic import, settled over him.
Yes, that was what he’d do. Stop the war before it started.
And what better place to serve as a base for his operations for implementing a true solution to this conflict than aboard the potentially aggressive American warships that were undoubtedly steaming toward Turkey at this very moment?
Bradley reached down and punched the intercom button that would summon his administrative assistant. When the attractive young woman appeared at his door, he barked, “Call my wife. Have her pack me a bagcasual, yet formal. She’ll understand what that means. And have the Travel Section arrange transport and passports. Get Military Liaison to send out the appropriate messages for embarkation on board the USS Jefferson.”
Bird Dog was only half awake when he felt the unmistakable touch of a small female hand trail softly across the hard ridges of his gut, lightly tickle the thin band of dark hair that ran between his groin and his navel, and descend unerringly and relentlessly toward its objective. He groaned, stretched hard to release the sleep kinks in his shoulders and hips, and rolled over on his right side. Morning had never been one of his favorite times of the day, but over the past two months, Callie Lazure had been doing her best to change his mind.
“You’re awake?” a soft voice said in his ear. Her hand closed around him, tightened. He could feel his pulse pounding against her delicate skin. “Part of you is, at least.”
There was a warm, affectionate note in her voice.
Bird Dog groaned, threw one arm around her waist, and pulled her close. “The best part of me is.”
He moved his hips forward, and felt an answering surge of her hips.
“It’s not your mind I’m interested in, sweetheart.”
She shoved him slightly, rolling him back over on his back. A few seconds later she was astride him. “Just this.”
Bird Dog drove deep into her, marveling at the incredible hard wetness that engulfed him. The sensation was all-encompassing, literally driving every coherent thought from his head.
He reached up, caressed the outsides of her breasts with the palms of his hands, his thumb and forefinger tracing out the rock-hard nipples. Callie planted her hands on his chest and settled back, driving him even deeper into her.
Time dissolved into the rhythmic motion, minutes and hours now counted by the slow surge and beat of the motion between them. It seemed to take hours, weeks, for the steadily rhythmic rocking to pick up speed, accelerating until it drove him almost insane from the sheer relentlessness of it. He groaned, pulled her down to him so that her face was nestled against his, and exploded inside her. He heard her answering cries, soft and insistent, as she came herself.
As his sanity returned, and he began to be able to distinguish the contours of her body from his own, he had but one thought. God, he loved shore duty.
“I’ll be damned if I will,” Tombstone said, his voice cold level menace. “Not on this operation.”
“You’ve got no choice, Stoney,” his uncle said quietly. “Neither do I.”
The call from the State Department had come just minutes after his nephew had left the CNO’s office, and had carried with it an ominous feeling like the first clouds on a storm front. JCS had approved replacing the current Sixth Fleet commander with Admiral Matthew Magruder, but it had added a complicating factor to the entire strategic scenario. Given the delicate longstanding relationship between Turkey and the United States, the president was insisting that the answer to this potentially explosive conflict be thought of in the broader spectrumas an entire political and national response rather than purely a military one. As a result, the USS Jefferson would be entering the operating area carrying a senior State Department official, a supposed expert in the area.
There wasn’t a damned thing about this the CNO liked, and he couldn’t blame his nephew for sharing his opinions. After all, wasn’t that why he was sending Stoney?
To have someone whose judgment so mirrored his own on scene?