“Well, not quite in that sense.” Amanda chuckled. “I’ve been swapping a few ideas with Admiral Macintyre and we’ve decided to keep the Seafighter Task Force together as a littoral-warfare test bed unit for weapons technology and combat doctrine. We’ll be taking the Three Little Pigs out to Pearl as our core element. From there, we’ll be experimenting with various support and force multipliers for different battlefield environments.
“One of the things we want to try is a composite Force Recon/Marine SOC company, a kind of Seadragon regiment in miniature. We’re going to be putting a provisional unit together, and your name came up in reference to the command slot. Interested?”
Quillain grinned. Standing up, he extended his hand across the desk. “I said anywhere and anytime, Skipper. Have the Admiral save me a bunk.”
Amanda stood as well, exchanging a strong handclasp. “Welcome aboard again, Stone.”
After the big Marine’s departure, Amanda brewed herself a cup of tea. Earl Grey at last, thanks to a care package from her father. Taking the steaming mug with her, she went out to sit on the front step of her quarters. Now that she had adapted to it, the lingering heat of the day was a comfortable hug. A Gold Coast sunset flamed the sky, one of the last she would see.
Floater 1 was being stricken, its current mission completed. A big Whidbey Island-class Landing Ship Dock lay close aboard, its deck lights glowing golden in the dusk. The three seafighters had crawled into the commodious womb of its docking well earlier in the afternoon. Now a Marine Sea Stallion skycraned trailers and cargo pallets across from the platform to the amphibious warfare ship’s helipad.
Farther out, the silhouettes of a pair of Tribal-class Fleet Ocean tugs could be made out. In another day or two, with the platform emptied and the components uncoupled, they would take up the long tow. First back across the Atlantic to the States for repair and refurbishment, then on to some new crisis point elsewhere in the world.
Soon the sea would roll in to the verdant coast untroubled once more.
Amanda sipped her hot drink and thought about people. The Chief, Danno and the Fryguy, Snowy Banks. Sad thoughts, but good ones. She was proud to have known them all.
She thought also about someone else. A man with whom she had spoken with only once but who had totally dominated her life for half a year. The man who had been her foe through no intent of his or her own.
What kind of man was he, beyond being a skilled and capable warrior? Had he ever wondered about her and who she was? And what were his thoughts?
“Hey, boss ma’am.” Christine Rendino ambled up from between the housing units. “Out sitting on the front stoop, huh?”
“That’s right. Just enjoying the night airs.” Amanda slid over, clearing a space beside her on the step. “Care for some tea?”
“Maybe later.” Christine flopped down on the step, bumping shoulders companionably with her friend. “I brought you something,” she said, holding up a padded manila envelope. “It came in with the last hard mail shipment.”
“What is it?”
“Uh, we’re not exactly sure. It’s addressed to you, but according to the postmark, it was mailed in Abidjan and there’s no return address. FPO security was leery, so they checked it out really well before they cleared it as safe, and I had my antiterror people do the same. There’s no explosives or exotic tropical poisons involved, but beyond that, I dunno. Have a look.”
Amanda ran a thumbnail under the tape that had been used to reseal the envelope and shook the contents out into her palm.
It was a pendant, a fine braided leather thong with two golden beads and some kind of polished animal’s claw centered on it.
“What in the world is this?” Amanda wondered aloud, fingering the curved, ivory-colored shape. “A lion’s claw?”
Christine shook her head. “No, it’s too small. I asked a couple of guys who know about this stuff, and they say it probably comes from a leopard.”
“A leopard.”
Amanda Garrett weighed the pendant in her palm for a moment, wondering at the mystery of it. And then she smiled and looped the thong around her neck.
Glossary
Aerostat — A blimplike tethered balloon used to carry radar antenna and Elint-gathering systems to high altitude to expand their area of coverage.
Boghammer — Generic name for a light, high-speed motor gun boat. Generally an open 30—40-foot Fiberglas hull propelled by powerful outboard motors and armed with an assortment of machine guns and shoulder-fired rocket launchers. The name originates from the Swedish boat-building firm that manufactured a large number of the craft used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard during the Persian Gulf tanker war of the late 1980s.
Cyclone-Class Coastal Patrol Craft — A derivative of the Vosper Thornycroft “Ramadan”-class Fast Attack Craft, twelve of these 170-foot, 35-knot vessels have been commissioned by the United States Navy for littoral patrol work and as a staging vessel for SEAL special naval warfare operations.
Depending on the defense pundit one listens to, the Cyclones are either too large, too small, too lightly armed and vulnerable, or too heavily armed and provocative. The only firm conclusion that can be drawn to date is that there aren’t enough of them to go around.
Dash — The monetary lubricant that keeps the governmental wheels of many African nations turning. Referred to else where as “squeeze” or “bribery.”
Eagle Eye UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) — Built by Boeing Textron, the Eagle Eye reconnaissance drone uses the same tilt-rotor technology developed by Boeing for the V-22 Osprey Verticle Take-off and Landing transport aircraft, permitting it to either maneuver as a conventional aircraft or hover like a helicopter. With a 300-mile radius of operation, the Eagle Eye’s dual-mode flight capacity has rendered it of great interest to the Navy, permitting comparatively small surface warships to have an aerial search-and-surveillance capacity.
ECOMOG (Economic Community of West Africa Military Observation Group) — A multinational peacekeeping force deployed to Liberia by ECOWAS. While including military detachments from a number of West African states, it is primarily Nigerian in makeup.
ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) — A multinational economic development and security organization that includes in its membership Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.
Elint (Electronic Intelligence) — The collection of battlefield intelligence (target location, systems type, nationality, force strength, etc.) via the analysis of emissions produced by radars and other electronic systems.
FALN — A first-generation assault rifle designed by Fabrique Nationale of Belgium. A highly successful weapon firing the 7.62mm NATO round, it can still be found serving in the arsenals of a number of Third World states.
GPU (Global Positioning Unit) — A mobile navigation system that utilizes radio impulses beamed down from an orbital network of satellites. Simple, compact, and extremely accurate, this technology is finding hundreds of uses in both the civil and military arenas. So much so that serious consideration has been given to building a GPU into the stock of every rifle issued by the U.S. Armed Forces.