“You don’t believe me, do you?” Claire’s voice was breaking.
“Why are you here?” he demanded. “To pry another story out of me?”
“I’m here because I wanted to see you. I don’t understand you. Why are you so cold?”
Maxwell didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. He wanted to take her in his arms, but he couldn’t. He was paralyzed. He remembered DeLancey’s accusation about her being a security risk. Now he didn’t know.
Claire’s eyes were brimming with tears. “Damn you, Sam Maxwell!” She said it loudly enough that all the aviators boarding the bus stopped and gawked at them. “You idiot! I love you. Don’t you know that?”
Maxwell stared at her, totally confused.
“I’ve always loved you.” She whirled away from him. She disappeared from his view around the corner of the hotel.
The bus driver beeped the horn. Maxwell turned and saw that the other pilots were all aboard, watching him through the windows.
CAG Boyce appeared in the door of the bus. “Get in the bus, Brick. We need to talk.”
He took the seat next to Boyce in the last row.
As the bus rumbled out of the parking lot, Boyce said, “You may be a hell of a pilot, Maxwell, but you got a lot to learn about women.”
“Sir?”
“That girl back there on the sidewalk. You stood there like a lump of cow crap and let her run away.”
“We, ah, were having a disagreement, CAG.”
“I know all about your disagreement with Claire Phillips.”
Maxwell looked at Boyce in surprise. “Excuse me? You know —”
“She called my room last night, and I went down to meet her in the lobby. She kept me up well past midnight while she told me all about herself. And you.”
Maxwell had to shake his head in wonder. There was no end to the ways Claire surprised him. Nor Boyce.
Boyce went on. “She was worried that I — or the Navy — would think she was a security threat, being close to you. And the truth is, I thought she might be. But I realize now that the woman understands more about Middle East problems than you or I and probably our intel staff.”
“Did she tell you about last night in the bar?”
“Yeah. While she was talking to her ex-husband, you stormed off like a kid who got stood up on his first date.” Boyce shook his head in disgust. “That was pretty damn dumb.”
Maxwell nodded, remembering the rage he had felt. Okay, that was dumb. He hadn’t given her a chance.
Boyce gnawed on his cigar for a while, watching the bleached scenery of Manama roll past. The bus arrived at the embassy gate. The Marine sentry saluted, and the bus continued to the pad where the CH-53 Sea Stallion waited.
Boyce waited until the other pilots had exited the bus. “Assuming it’s not too late — and it might be, after your sterling display of ineptitude — you might consider getting on your knee and begging forgiveness. For some reason that defies my understanding, that girl is in love with you.”
Chapter Eighteen
The XO
Killer Delancey made love, Spam Parker reflected, like he flew fighters. Fast, furious, without preliminaries. He was pumping away in quick, relentless strokes, like a man in a hell of a hurry.
They were in DeLancey’s stateroom, in his down-quilted bunk. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. Most of the squadron officers were either flying or working in their respective offices.
Of course, this was DeLancey’s office. Here the commanding officer conducted squadron business, and here he met with his subordinate officers. And here this afternoon, while the Reagan cruised the Persian Gulf, he was making love to Lieutenant Spam Parker.
She had recognized the look in his eye when they were down in the ready room after the all-officers meeting. She and DeLancey were going over her monthly materiel division report. Like the other pilots on the day’s flight schedule, she was wearing her green-gray flight suit, but not the standard baggy suit that looked like a potato sack. Spam’s flight suit had been tailored, taken in at the waist and tightened around the legs so that it accented her longish, narrow-waisted figure. The front zipper was far enough down so that when she leaned over to retrieve a document from her file case, DeLancey got a glimpse of cleavage.
His eyes fastened on her like heat-seeking sensors. She glanced down, as if she’d just noticed the gaping flight suit. She tugged the zipper up a couple of inches. She gave him a knowing smile.
It was enough. DeLancey glanced around, cleared his throat and said, “Uh, I need to go over that report once more before we submit it to the air wing. How about dropping it by my office at, say —” he glanced at his watch — “fourteen-hundred?”
Her eyes met his. The meaning was unmistakable. “Yes, sir. I’ll be there.”
It had been so easy.
DeLancey’s breathing was becoming faster, more urgent. She began to moan softly. Not too loudly, just enough to give him encouragement. He liked that, she had learned. It was good for his ego.
She felt him tense, and she arched her back, emitting a low, throaty groan. DeLancey finished in a flurry of pounding and pumping.
It was over too soon, she felt like telling him. The guy made love like a jackrabbit. But she knew he wouldn’t like that. She would let him think he was terrific.
They lay together in the bunk, perspiration dripping from them onto the sheet. “Did you really want to see my materiel report?” she asked.
“What materiel report?”
She giggled. He was actually a pretty cool guy when he wasn’t being the World’s Greatest Fighter Pilot.
They dressed in silence. As she laced her boots, she said, “I flew with Craze Manson this morning.”
“Yeah? How’d that go?”
“Very good. He said I was an excellent wingman.” It wasn’t exactly what he said, but it was close enough.
DeLancey just nodded.
“So don’t you think it’s time I moved up to section lead?”
DeLancey shook his head. “I ran it by CAG, and he said not yet.”
“CAG? Why do you have to have his permission? Isn’t this your squadron?”
“It’s his air wing. And he’s taken a special interest in the… women pilots.”
“Aliens, you mean.”
“You know what I mean. You and B.J. are the only two women in his air wing. You’re high-profile, and CAG wants to be careful.”
She noted the way DeLancey was watching her. He had a worried look on his face, like a man who had just seen an armed intruder.
Good, she thought. He was beginning to get the picture.
Maxwell peered around the corner of the passageway. The officers’ berthing area was deserted. It was mid-morning, with flight operations in progress, and all the inhabitants of the staterooms were in their respective offices or ready rooms.
All but one.
He glanced at his watch. He’d been there fifteen minutes now. No one had left or entered the area since he’d been standing there.
After five more minutes, he heard the lock turn in a stateroom door. The door cracked open. The head of Hozer Miller popped out and glanced quickly in each direction. Seeing nothing, Miller ducked back inside his room. “All clear,” he said in a low voice.
The pudgy shape of Yeoman Third Class Diane Grotsky emerged from the room. Her chambray shirt flapped loosely over her blue dungarees. Grotsky’s disheveled hair looked like a bird’s nest.
Stopping in the passageway, she peered to the left, then the right — and then a look of absolute terror flooded her round face. She was gazing directly into the face of her squadron executive officer.