Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  “Yes, sir.” Kyle was starting to sound like a parrot. But he couldn’t think of anything else to do except keep yes, sir’ing until he knew the full story. Was he in trouble for something or not?

  “To save the hostages, we first have to find them. That’s where a journalist from the LA Times by the name of”—Kelleman leaned forward and glanced down at a paper on his desk—“Max Dougin comes in. JEM wants media coverage in order to spout their rhetoric about how they’re a force to be reckoned with, so Dougin is being pulled in to help. He’s a foreign correspondent, an expert on Pakistan, and fully up to speed on the covert nature of this op. While the US government strings JEM along with empty negotiations, Dougin will conduct a false interview with JEM, the actual objective being to discover the hostages’ whereabouts.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m assigning you to protect Max Dougin, Lieutenant.”

  Some of the starch left Kyle’s spine as he sagged into his waistline in shock. What…? That’s what this was about? An assignment so far out of his usual mission parameters it wasn’t even in the same hemisphere? He was an expert in maritime warfare, which usually required, you know, water to perform, not a whole lot of desert.

  “I need someone I know and trust to be my eyes and ears on this operation,” Kelleman stated. “That’s you, Hammond.”

  Kyle immediately snapped straight again. “Sir, yes, sir.” Had the prestigious Robert Kelleman really just said he trusted Kyle?

  The admiral exhaled a blast of air. “Truth is, this operation is more a face-saving show of force than a rescue. A Reaper strike is planned as a part of the hostage extraction, and word around the water cooler is—collateral damage bedamned.” Kelleman glanced down at the paper again.

  Kyle didn’t get the sense the man was reading it. He waited. A wall clock set in the middle of a ship’s wooden wheel tick-tocked.

  Kelleman looked up again, his voice lower than before. “My nephew is one of the hostages.”

  Shit. “Sir—” Kyle hesitated. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Kelleman didn’t react. “You met him once when you were with Sienna, during a barbecue at the house. Todd.”

  Heat pressed outward from Kyle’s checks. He was blushing, laugh-your-tits-off-at-me blushing, over the mere suggestion that the admiral remembered Kyle once being at the Kelleman house. “Yes, sir.” Unfortunately, Kyle didn’t recall Sienna’s cousin Todd.

  Kelleman’s steady stare never wavered. “Once Dougin has located the hostages, I need you to report directly to me, and only me. I’ll want to order the SEALs dropped in well before the Reaper strike. Are we clear?”

  Kyle cursed beneath his breath. They’d arrived at a possible sticking point here. If the American government wanted the Reaper strike to go hand-in-hand with the hostage extraction, then what the admiral was asking Kyle to do slanted close to illegal. Granted, Kelleman wasn’t giving Kyle a direct order, but still…what could Kyle say? Here was a chance for him to prove himself to a man who’d never given Kyle any indication of liking him, who’d never uttered anything even close to, Hey, call me Bob, a man who, for all Kyle knew, assumed Kyle had knocked up Sienna, then done the douche-bucket thing and bailed on her. Because the idea of Sienna shining a complimentary light on Kyle by telling her father that she’d kept Kyle in the dark about the baby was laughable.

  ‘No’ felt like an impossible answer. “We’re clear, sir.”

  “Very good.” Kelleman shoved aside the papers on his desk. “First thing when you get back to your ship, write your letter.”

  Here was another topic coming at him from the back forty. “My letter?”

  “A final letter,” Kelleman clarified without emotion, “to your loved ones.”

  Kyle’s pulse changed rhythm. When a soldier went on a life-threatening mission, he was supposed to leave behind a letter to be read in case of. And, yeah, going on an assignment that dealt with a volatile, dangerous, and unpredictable terrorist group obviously qualified, but…who would he even leave the letter for? His father? Ha! Sienna? Just as much of a joke. His mother? He wouldn’t want to burden her with it. His younger brother, Andy? Maybe… Eric? Like he wanted a fellow aviator to be reminded of his own mortality. Kyle fisted his hands at the small of his back. This has been such an awesome-sauce stroll into the emptiness of my life, Admiral, thank you. “With all due respect, sir,” Kyle said. “If this mission is as life-threatening as you suggest, then should a journalist be a part of it? Why don’t I just fake the role myself?”

  Kelleman shook his head. “Dougin has interviewed other terrorists in the past, and JEM has asked for him by name. So we don’t have a choice. Dougin is our sole contact with JEM, the only means we have of getting intel about the hostages.” Kelleman’s expression hardened. “You’re to treat this as an allied operation between the Navy and the LA Times, Lieutenant. We can’t do this mission without Dougin. Understood?”

  “Sir, yes, sir.”

  “JEM has forbidden any US military involvement,” Kelleman warned, “so you’ll be playing the role of a news cameraman. Max Dougin is expected in Jebel Ali in no more than a week, so you don’t have much time to go lax on grooming regulations and change your appearance. Start growing your hair out today, Hammond, and get a beard on your face, quick.”

  Chapter Three

  Present time. Port of Jebel Ali. USS Bunker Hill (CG-52) Ticonderoga class cruiser part of Carrier Strike Group One

  No regrets, right? Samantha was compelled to repeat the phrase to herself the next morning, soon after she was escorted into a room that looked like a cross between a conference room and a dining area on the USS Bunker Hill, a Navy cruiser currently anchored in the port of Jebel Ali. Straight ahead of her was a rectangular table large enough to seat twenty people, surrounded by just as many cloth-covered chairs. On the wall to her right was a flat screen TV, keeping company with an assortment of nautical-themed pictures and banners, and to her left was a sideboard laden with a tall silver urn, coffee cups, and a basket of pastries.

  The ship’s commanding officer, dressed in blue-and-gray camouflage, stood near the head of the conference table.

  Another man stood next to him.

  For the briefest second, Samantha didn’t recognize the second guy. He was wearing a flight suit—and she’d been so convinced he wasn’t military—and the narrow look he was aiming at her was so unlike the warm, charming way he’d treated her in the Jebel Ali Club.

  But, yes…hair the color of wheat or sand, eyes the blue of a Caribbean Sea. He was last night’s oops, no doubt about it, beard and all.

  She groaned internally. The one time she’d indulged in a casual hookup—one, one, one!—and she’d landed herself in the exact situation she wanted to avoid: running into the penis-mole-bearer the next morning. Although in a literal sense, she had no idea if this guy’s unit had a mole on it, or a zit, or a palm tree growing out of it, seeing as she’d forgone any close inspection of his organ. Main thing, though, extreme bad luck was not how she wanted to start out a dangerous assignment.

  Worse and worse, there was only one reason Lieutenant Carbuncle would be in this room with the ship’s captain; he was the one who’d be her partner, acting as the pretend cameraman. Glory Hallelujah, she was stuck with him for the duration of this assignment. Another groan rose in her throat. She would’ve let it loose, along with a fair amount of eye-rolling, if she hadn’t been so determined to appear like the woman who has it all together even when living her own personal Gong Show.

  “Max Dougin,” her escort announced her.

  She strode toward the ship’s captain, crossing an insignia of the USS Bunker Hill woven into the carpet, and shook hands with him. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

  He stared at her, providing her with ample opportunity to shake Roger Ramjet’s hand, too, but she kinda didn’t want to touch him.

  Would his hand be sweaty?

  Would his touch linger?

  Would he tuck his finger into the middle
of her palm and diddle-diddle it there as he shook?

  She shuddered delicately. Gack. “Do you mind if I have some coffee?” She proceeded to the silver urn. Since you’re just gawking at me anyway…

  “I was under the impression you were a man,” the CO said. An unnecessary clarification: his gawking had made it obvious.

  She offered up a reassuring smile while she cranked out a stream of coffee into her cup. “It happens on occasion.” Her bio was deliberately written to leave her sex nebulous. People would have to dig further to find out she was a woman. Sometimes people didn’t.

  The CO frowned. Clearly he wasn’t happy about his peons failing to brief him thoroughly. He recovered quickly, though. “I’ll call ahead to the aid station where you’re going and make sure they change you out of the men’s quarters to a private tent.”

  From the side of her vision, she saw Flash Gordon’s eyebrows slant. What a shame. Or? Ha-ha, privacy’s good for me, too.

  “That would be nice. Thank you, sir.” She took a large swig of her coffee, then topped off her cup. The sun had just been rising over the bow of the Bunker Hill when she crossed the gangplank, and a morning person, she was not.

  The CO gestured at Oops. “Lieutenant Hammond is the officer in charge of the flight crew assigned to work with you.”

  She finally turned toward Hot Shot. A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant. Hmm, that didn’t exactly fit, did it? “Great,” she said, not entirely erasing the flippancy in her tone.

  The lieutenant’s eyes snapped a brilliant, glittery blue.

  “When do we take off?” she asked him.

  “As soon as we’re done pre-flighting,” he answered. “We can head out to the hangar now, if you’re ready.”

  “I dropped off some luggage and equipment with the officer at the gangplank when I boarded. I’ll need to swing by and get it.”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “He would’ve already loaded it onto the aircraft.”

  “Okay.” She gulped her coffee, then set down the mug and grabbed a Danish. “Let’s do it.” She started for the door with an almost imperceptible hesitation between heel and toe—did she really just say do it? She followed the lieutenant into the corridor.

  Ten feet down the hallway, his arm shot out in front of her, his palm slapping against the wall to block her path.

  She stopped and turned, her spine crowded back against the bulkhead. He was very close, his wide body hemming her in. Steam hissed behind the wall beside her ear. A trickle of heat skipped along the skin of her belly.

  Well, here was a surprise. Outside of the forgiving dimness of the Jebel Ali Club, he was actually very attractive. Nothing that would land him on the big screen, but still compelling. His eyes were more startlingly handsome than she’d realized, so pale a blue as to be almost silver. His nose was a sharply inclined slope, his mouth, exquisite, and his beard shadowed a jaw that was square and could be quite stubborn, she’d bet, but right now was angled at her in a way that projected an aura of animal maleness.

  A languid breath swirled through her lungs. This was what was compelling about this man. More than his looks, it was his raw magnetism.

  “Max?” he inquired, almost making her name sound like an accusation. “What is that? Short for Maxine?”

  “No. My real name is Samantha.” She dropped her focus to the colorful patch on the left side of his chest where his own name was displayed: LT. Kyle “Mikey” Hammond. A wave of warmth flushed through her body and her throat pinched off. The emotion felt like guilt. It probably was…for not bothering to know this man’s name prior to letting him…sow her fields. “I was a young reporter, first day on the job, and I paraded into the newsroom and said to everyone, ‘Hello, my name is Samantha. Not Sam—that’s a man’s name—but Samantha.’ To pay me back for being too big for my britches, everyone started calling me the most masculine three-letter name they could think of: Max.” She shrugged. “It stuck.”

  He laughed. It was a deep, rich sound, and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I like that. Although I can’t imagine you ever being ‘too big for your britches.’ You’re such a dainty little thing.”

  She edged her brows together. No, she wasn’t. She was 5’5”, which was hardly short. She had a swimmer’s body, though, with long, slender muscles, and she supposed that lent itself to the illusion of her being smallish.

  “You know,” Hot Shot went on, “when you first came into the wardroom, I wasn’t too thrilled by the idea of having a female along.”

  “Keep the woman in the kitchen kind of guy, are you?”

  His lips curled, and the sides of his eyes creased again. “Something like that. But now….” His gaze roved hungrily over her, like a predator who hadn’t been sated a mere nine hours ago. “Let’s just say it’s looking like this cruise won’t be so boring now.”

  An incredulous laugh broke from her.

  His eyebrows shot up an inch before returning to normal.

  She cut off her laugh by clearing her throat. She’d surprised him. The charming son of a gun was probably used to most woman feeling honored by his offer to be his sex toy.

  As the silence elongated, he narrowed his eyes a bit.

  She took a slow bite of her Danish. Best to chew when using her mouth to speak wouldn’t produce anything nice.

  She was finishing up the last of her Danish when Kyle Hammond led her into the ship’s hangar, a place that looked like a garage nourished on growth hormones. It was stocked to the high rafters with all the necessary accoutrements for the care and feeding of Navy helicopters: tools, hoists, chains, tire chocks, oil cans, etcetera, tossed together with a potpourri of nose-wrinkling odors, like grease and fuel, and others she didn’t recognize. One helicopter was inside the hangar, across from the door, its long rotor blades tucked back like a sleeping pterodactyl. Another helo was visible outside through the open hangar door, crouched in a white-painted circle on the flight deck, two sets of three-pointed chains securing it in place.

  She stared at the closest helo, suddenly feeling like a dainty little thing, after all. She’d ridden in news helicopters several times, but these Navy birds were gigantic in comparison, gray beasts of prey emanating power, menace, and the potential for massive destruction.

  She cut a glance at Hot Shot from beneath her lashes. She knew what he smelled like now. A man who could control one of these.

  Two other men, similarly clad in flight suits, were lounging in the hangar, but livened up when she and Kyle entered.

  Kyle introduced the men. “This is my copilot, Jobs,” he said, indicating a young man who’d just arrived off a Nickelodeon television show, jug-eared, stars shining in his eyes, and with an embarrassment of freckles. “And my AW,13 Tarzan.”

  Tarzan was a stocky, compact fellow with dark hair nearly down to his shoulders, a beard, like Kyle—although Tarzan’s was thicker—and a tattoo on his body, at least to judge by the snaking ends of some creature she saw curling up the left side of his neck.

  “Hi. I’m Max,” she said.

  They grinned at her.

  She was used to her name earning lots of smiles. But this time she wasn’t alone in the strange name department. “Why are you called Tarzan?” she asked the AW. “Are you a yodeler?” she added in a teasing tone.

  He chortled. “No, ma’am. The call sign has to do with the type of skivvies I wear. Which I’d be happy to show you”—he winked—“if the lieutenant here gives his permission.”

  “Denied,” Kyle drawled.

  She rounded on Kyle. “What about you? Why are you called Mikey?”

  “Story time’s over.” Kyle turned away perfunctorily.

  Tarzan chortled. Apparently he knew.

  She’d find out, too. Unearthing secrets was one of her reporter superpowers.

  Kyle grabbed a small plastic book bound with metal rings labeled NATOPS Pilot’s Pocket Checklist.14 “Let’s get this show on the road.” He moved to stand in a circle with his men.

  They b
egan their pre-flight routine, talking in a language all their own, acronyms being bandied about like IFF, ADIZ, IMC versus VMC emergencies. Procedures upon procedures were discussed, maneuvers, tactics, ordnance… It was head-spinning. She’d never heard pilots of news helicopters talk like this.

  She kept her gaze on Kyle the whole time. Staring at his profile, she got an even better look at the nasty scar on his jaw. Had he been sewn up on the battlefield, maybe by a corpsman with a hand shaky from combat fatigue? What a fascinating enigma this Kyle Hammond was turning out to be, too. In the interval of a heartbeat, the silky flirt had disappeared and in his place was a professional speaking on a level of expertise she never would’ve believed the smooth operator could manage. A point lost for her. She was usually spot-on when it came to reading people: another reporter superpower.

  “Now the passenger brief,” Kyle said to her. “This is for you, so listen up.”

  She nodded.

  “If there’s an emergency, you’ll hear it over the ICS.”

  “What’s the ICS?” she asked.

  “Our Internal Communication System. You’ll be wearing a modified helmet called a ‘cranial’ with headphones and mic.”

  She nodded again.

  “If you hear the words mayday, mayday, mayday, stay off comms.” Kyle crossed his arms over his chest. “If we have an emergency requiring a water landing, you’ll hear ditch, ditch, ditch. Immediately prior to the helicopter going in, pull the black-and-yellow handle on the passenger observation window to jettison it, then hold onto your seat. We’ll land as carefully as possible, but even so, the aircraft will flip over quickly. Do not try to exit until the cockpit is completely filled with water. Otherwise you’ll get shoved to the back, and it’s where you’ll undoubtedly stay.”

  She hid a grimace. That sounded pretty brutal.

  “Once we all make it to the surface, we’ll check each other for injuries, link ourselves together, and I’ll coordinate a rescue operation on the handheld PRC radio. Understand?”