“I’m sorry, Alisha. But something good has come out of it. You’ve put a stop to the worst shame of the Corps.”
“I just don’t understand why it took me to do it. Clearly, someone acknowledged it was wrong. It’s a three reg. That means it’s been on the books from almost the very beginning.”
“And it’s been ignored just as long.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit hypocritical? Slapping me down for saving Philly’s life, but Tucker can assault one of his squad with a broom.”
“It was Tucker who did this?”
“He’s the captain of Ben’s squad so it was his responsibility to protect the boy. But that wasn’t the point of my question. So don’t try a diversion.”
“Ignoring this reg is worse than hypocritical. But obeying orders is absolutely necessary, Alisha. The Corps would fall without it. However, as for the punishment I charged you with that day…you were right about Denny. Arresting him would have served no positive purpose. And about Jack—I have no right to interfere there.”
“And about us?” she asked softly.
“There can’t be an ‘us’ Alisha,” he replied just as the time ran out and the wind slowly died, much like the last hopes in her heart.
“You can’t mean that.” She reached out and steadied him as he got his feet beneath himself.
He was silent for a moment, then caressed her cheek. “For now, it’s got to be that way. Neither of us can risk the distraction.”
“And later?”
“We’ll see.” He glanced at the door. “Damn it, I forgot we had an audience.”
Alisha turned and saw Benjamin still plastered to the glass. “He didn’t see anything,” she assured Logan.
“How do you know that?”
“Well, for one, the angle would have made it impossible for him to see I kissed you, but secondly, had he seen that kiss, he wouldn’t still be plastered on the glass. He’d be on the bench, huddled in terror, hoping we wouldn’t suspect he saw something.”
He shook his head. “You’re probably right about that.”
Chapter 19
Logan was glad they were eating late that night. If he never had to eat with the general again, having his back slammed and his wineglass tumbled, it would be fine with him. Also, he was certain Alisha and Colonel Dryer would have fought over whether Benjamin would be allowed to eat at the officers’ table.
He was even concerned that Gunny might get put out when he found one of the meals Logan called in was for a private. However, Gunny surprised him on two accounts. First, he served one hell of a nice freshly prepared steak dinner, when technically at this hour the kitchen was closed and all that could be ordered were cold sandwiches. Secondly, Gunny treated Private Benjamin no differently than he would a three-star general.
When Gunny left, Logan winked at Alisha. “I think you’ve an admirer. Gunny’s normally very strict about no hot food outside regular scheduled hours.”
“How do you know you aren’t the one admired, Colonel 991,” she quipped back and then smiled at Benjamin. “Maybe he admired Benjamin’s flying today. A perfect five-hundred-point score.”
Logan almost choked on his food. He looked at the tiny boy across from him in amazement. “Is that true, Private? Did you score better than me?”
“No, sir,” Benjamin replied.
“It’s okay to fly better than me, Benjamin. In fact, I hope a large percentage of the flyers will do so. I can’t very well do it all myself!”
After a moment, the boy cautiously replied, “Well I flew well, sir, but I didn’t hit a single target.”
“Benjamin’s only been in the Corps two days. He doesn’t know how to shoot yet,” Alisha explained.
Logan paused. “You’ve been in the Corps two days…” he said, his voice betraying a dark edge. When he got hold of Tucker, he was going to make the captain sorry he had ever joined the Corps.
“We’re going to take shooting lessons together,” Alisha explained.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Alisha. Not with this boy. He sighed. “Have you cleared that with Anna?” He knew the answer. Anna might be the best instructor in the country, but she was also a major prima donna. She had agreed to teach Alisha because she liked her. To think she’d teach a private: God he could only imagine the cursing that would cause.
“I told Anna that Benjamin was going to be even bigger than me, so teaching him to shoot was the equivalent of saving the Corps.”
Logan laughed, remembering Anna’s complaints this morning. “You couldn’t have made a better argument to win Anna over.” He looked at Benjamin. “Follow this colonel, Benjamin. Anything she wants somehow comes to be.”
As much as he enjoyed being with Alisha, as soon as they’d finished dinner, he ordered them both off to bed. The antibiotics had clearly made Benjamin sleepy and Alisha was feeling the effects herself of an early morning rise.
Once they were gone, he logged onto the computer and downloaded the latest information from the East Coast. There was another skirmish in Tennessee and again the deciding factor was the local townspeople coming to the rescue. It’s a damned shame we don’t have more townspeople armed and eager to help, he thought.
At ten, he went to sleep. He needed his rest for tomorrow’s training. He had two hours scheduled in the tunnel from four to six a.m. Hopefully, that would give him a leg up over the other flyers. He knew, if at all possible, Alisha would select him as the first candidate to move forward. He just wanted that selection to be credible to the troops. It was important for the preservation of the integrity of the testing process.
Chapter 20
Benjamin stumbled to Jack’s cot in exhaustion. The second his head hit the pillow, he fell asleep. Alisha crawled into her own bed and did the same.
In the middle of the night, she woke to crying. She forced the drowsiness of sleep away and got up to comfort Benjamin. Only thing was, Benjamin was deep in sleep and not making a sound. She decided she must have dreamt the crying, and turned back to bed, when she heard another moan of misery. It came from behind the closed bathroom door, which she clearly remembered leaving open before she went to bed.
Is the bathroom haunted? She tiptoed to the door and eased it open. The harsh light hurt her eyes, but she knew the vision before her was not a ghost.
She entered and closed the door behind her so they wouldn’t wake Benjamin.
“Go away, Alisha!” Jack said, his voice dulled in misery and pain, his face buried in a towel to muffle his anguish.
“Jack, what’s wrong?” she whispered.
“It’s not your concern.”
She stepped closer and pulled his face gently against her stomach as her hands petted his hair to soothe him. “Of course it is. If something is hurting you, it’s my concern. You are always there for me, Jack. That means I’m here for you. Friendship is a two-way street.”
His arms wrapped around her, and he pressed his head hard against her stomach, sobbing uncontrollably. His pain was so palpable that she cried with him. Finally, he released her and looked up as she showered him with tears. “Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know. You haven’t told me yet,” she admitted and laughed at her silly response. To her happiness, Jack laughed for a short moment as well. She started to sit on the floor beside him, but he insisted it was too cold and pulled her sideways onto his lap. She wrapped her arms tightly around his chest and squeezed hard. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she pleaded.
“He broke it off,” Jack said and began to cry again.
Suddenly, as if she had found the light switch to Jack’s heart, she understood everything. “General Powell,” she said, realizing who Jack loved.
“You knew?” he groaned in misery.
“Not until tonight,” she replied. Not until the general had left the room devastated with his own guilt of doing nothing to stop the horrors going on in his fort. A sickening thought came to her. “Oh God, I caused this.”
“No.” J
ack pulled her tighter against him. “Tonight was just the last straw. It has been going south for a while. I thought he’d settle down and eventually accept that it’s okay to love, okay to love me…but this week…”
“I showed up,” she filled in.
“You did,” he admitted, “But it wasn’t you that set the general on this stupid path. It was Logan.”
“The colonel?”
“It’s so obvious he loves you, and it’s so clear that for the Corps he is willing to put that love aside. All week I could see it bothering the general, eating away at his self-respect. If his colonel could sacrifice everything for the Corps, then how could he, as General, do less? I thought I almost had him convinced that it was a senseless sacrifice, that the Corps wouldn’t be worse off if Logan and you partnered. In fact, it would doubtless be better, for Logan’s present course was threatening to destabilize you.”
“I’ve tried to tell Colonel Logan much the same.”
“Well unfortunately, the facts are against us. You haven’t destabilized at all. And Logan…he’s channeling all that pain into constructive energy. He has never performed as well as he does now. Up until now, he was coasting into retirement, and nothing the general tried could motivate him, but you come along and light this fire in him and suddenly he’s a poster boy of leadership.”
“How can you not hate me?” she asked, realizing that despite Jack’s disclaimer it truly was all her fault.
“That was never even a possibility,” Jack assured her. “Not even today when you were so clearly determined to disturb something that needed to be left alone.”
“But how can you say that? It’s cruel and wrong!”
“I know that. From personal and painful experience, I know. But it was also a defining moment for me, because it opened my eyes to my own sexuality. I attended college before joining the Corps, and I had a well-earned reputation as a heartbreaker. I wasn’t trying to be cruel to the young women. I was simply trying to find someone who could fire a spark of passion within me, but none of them could. It wasn’t until I became a dog in the Corps that I learned why.”
She stroked his cheek softly. “I would rather you had the chance to learn in a kinder fashion.” She recalled how wonderful her own first touch with passion had been.
“Well, in my case, it was short-lived. I could find partners for my bed, but I still couldn’t find anyone I loved. And then I transferred here—under the meanest son of a bitch general that ever walked the face of this earth.”
“And instantly fell in love with him?”
Jack laughed. “I don’t know about instantly. I had no idea he was gay. There were no indications I could see. But when I was on leave one night, I saw him coming out of a very discreet motel. He had been riding me so hard about my playboy reputation with the ladies, I decided to find out what lady he was entertaining. Well, I found her still in the room he had rented. She was very beautiful, obviously expensive, but she wasn’t quite the woman she appeared in dress.”
“What did you do?”
“I got the hell out of there. I was so damned confused. I didn’t know what to think. My whole image of the general turned upside down. But knowing this secret about him, that he was actually human beneath his cold-hearted exterior, I started trying to understand him, to see the world through his eyes, and before I knew it…I fell in love. For the first time in my life, I was in love.”
“It must have been hard to tell him.”
“It was impossible,” Jack admitted. “I knew if I did a direct frontal battle attack I’d be blown out of the air with a lobby of concussion grenades. He’d have me stripped down to private and shipped off to Alaska before I finished my proclamation of love. So instead, I began a relentless seduction of charm. I was so tuned in to his needs and wants that I’d pass him his damned coffee cup before he even knew he was thirsty. The first indication that my plan was working was the frequency with which he’d lay his hand on my shoulder or back. Then he always wanted me at his side…”
Alisha recalled the way the general was now keeping Colonel Logan at his side. She hoped that was just coincidence.
“But no matter how close I got, I still couldn’t break the wall between us. So I decided to force the issue. I tracked down the beautiful lady for hire that the general favored and arranged a date. I made certain we ate at the same restaurant the general visited on his days off. You should have seen his face when he saw us together. It was a mix of shock, anger, and pure jealousy rolled into one deadpan glare.”
“He can be amazingly expressive with his glares,” Alisha admitted.
“I pretended not to notice that he followed me back to the motel. Once in the room, I had barely removed my shirt when he burst through the door, throwing money at Zepha, and telling her to get out.”
“I know her! She is very beautiful!” Alisha exclaimed and then realized what that meant. “Zepha is a guy?”
“Anatomically.”
“So what did the general do then?”
“Bellowed a lot. Threatened to send me off to Alaska. Then he kissed me,” Jack said, with a sad smile. “And it all fit. It was that true love that everyone talks about. All the ingredients wrapped up in one.”
Alisha leaned her head on his shoulder. “I know the feeling.”
“We took advantage of the room and enjoyed something neither of us had ever experienced before. It was so incredibly powerful at first, like a mind-altering drug. I, of course, didn’t want to stop, and he couldn’t. Not then. However, it’s been two and a half years now, and while the love and passion are still there, the desire no longer dominates our lives.
“I had hoped it was my imagination, but for the last few months, the time between our lovemaking keeps growing longer, as if he were trying to wean himself from me. And then your sanctimonious, self-sacrificing colonel shows up, and now this dog thing…”
Alisha knew by his dry eyes he was done with crying, but his heart remained utterly decimated.
“You need sleep.” She caressed his head.
“I know, but I foolishly gave up my bed.”
She smiled and kissed him on his cheek and stood up, pulling him to his feet as well. “You can sleep with me. You need to be hugged anyway.”
Without protest, Jack followed her to her bed.
Chapter 21
Logan could have sworn he had lain down less than five minutes before the buzzer alarm woke him. “I am definitely getting too damn old for this,” he muttered and pushed himself out of bed to dress. As he headed out of the compound, he paused at Alisha’s door. He remembered her telling him Jack had given up his bed to Benjamin. Without Jack to wake her up, she might sleep through her shooting lessons, and he didn’t even want to think how badly Anna would take that.
He tested the door, and to his surprise, it opened. He froze as he realized that Alisha and Jack were in bed together, and Alisha had her arm wrapped tightly around his chest.
Logan’s heart clenched into a painful knot. He thought he might be having a heart attack. He closed the door and stepped away from the room as if it were lethal. He had no idea a human could hurt this much when there was no actual physical injury. He forced himself down the hall and outside so he could breathe in fresh air.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he muttered. “You damn well invited Jack to make his move.”
“Sir,” Gunny said and walked closer. “Are you all right?”
Logan pulled himself together. “I’m fine, Gunny. What time do you have?”
“4:05.”
“Alisha’s got a five a.m. practice with Colonel Riley. Would you give a knock on her door once you’ve finished setting breakfast?”
“Yes, sir,” Gunny replied, still looking concerned.
“You’re a good man, Gunny,” Logan said and headed off to the wind tunnel.
Logan was focused and fearless in the tunnel. He took some hellish tumbles, but he didn’t even notice. The pain inside overwhelmed anything the tunnel could dish
out. By the time he had finished his first hour, he felt there was nothing he couldn’t handle. And to prove it he stopped the wind, changed the rating to tornado, and took it on at full blast. Within seconds it slammed him against the wall, but he didn’t lose control—he just pushed off and took the wind full force. “Give me whatever you’ve got!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Whatever you’ve got!”
Chapter 22
A woodpecker pecked on the door. Why would a woodpecker peck, unless it wanted in? Yawning, Alisha pushed herself up, walked to the door, and opened it.
“Colonel Logan asked me to make certain you were up in time for your shooting lesson,” Gunny said.
Suddenly Alisha was wide awake and panicked. “What time is it?” she asked, wondering why her alarm hadn’t gone off.
“Four ten,” Gunny replied.
Alisha relaxed. “Thanks, Gunny.”
“Will you, the private, and Colonel Sparkes like breakfast?” Gunny asked, with the straightest of faces.
She grimaced. “Nothing slips your notice. Would it be possible to have our breakfast in here?”
“I thought you might prefer that,” he said and rolled their breakfast into the room.
“I’ll set it up, Gunny. Jack’s still sleeping.”
Gunny glanced at Jack. “Yes, sir.” He nodded with an amused look and left the room.
Alisha closed the door and leaned on it. “God, what he must think of me!”
Gently, she woke Benjamin and set up his breakfast, pantomiming for him to be quiet and not wake Jack. He looked surprised by the presence of Jack in her bed, but he just nodded and hungrily ate his breakfast.
She grabbed her fatigues and took them into the bathroom to change.
When she came out, she sensed Jack was awake, even if he hadn’t moved from the bed.
“Hey, how are you feeling?” she asked as she kneeled beside the cot and stroked his hair.
“I’ll live,” he muttered.
“Gunny brought us breakfast,” she offered.
Scavenger Falters (The SkyRyders Book 2) Page 11
