Hover

by Anne A. Wilson

  I know I shouldn’t be watching this, but it’s interesting to observe Eric interact with our skipper. They’re shaking hands now and laughing like old friends. Interesting … It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Captain Magruder smile.

  I look down at Em, who hasn’t moved. “Everyone’s leaving,” I say. “You’re starting to look a little obvious.”

  “Oh, all right. Spoil my fun.”

  Emily rises and we’re almost to the door when we’re corralled by Commander Claggett and the rest of our pilots in the lounge area.

  We have three aircraft commanders in our detachment. Commander Claggett is one, of course. His protégé, Lieutenant Chad Henkel, is another, and acts as the assistant officer in charge. Unfortunately, he follows Commander Claggett’s lead on most everything, including his attitude toward Emily and me.

  Matt Zemekis completes the aircraft commander trio. He has trouble keeping his hair cut to regulation and is currently experimenting with extra-long sideburns for some reason I can’t fathom. He does treat me decently most of the time and isn’t too bad to fly with.

  Zack Taylor is the final member of our pilot group. He’s a helicopter second pilot like Em and me. All three of us are hoping to earn our aircraft commander designations by the end of cruise. Even though he’s a second pilot, he leads the aircraft commander group socially, attracting women in droves. Like Matt, fortunately, he tolerates Em and me pretty well.

  “Captain Magruder wants to see those of us who are flying tomorrow,” Commander Claggett says. “We’re meeting in his office in five minutes. That’ll be me, Chad, Matt, and Lace.”

  “But I thought Zack had the flight,” I say.

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Commander Claggett says. It’s hard not to notice the disappointment in his voice.

  “So what gives?” Zack asks.

  “Fuck if I know,” Commander Claggett says. “Captain Magruder’s orders.”

  As the group breaks up, Emily starts hitting me on the arm. “Oh my god, he’s walking over here. He’s walking over here!”

  Eric approaches with a guarded smile.

  “Hi, Sara.”

  “Hi, Eric.”

  Emily loses all decorum. “You know him?” She gives me a look like I’ve been keeping a big secret from her.

  “Well, actually, we just met,” I say. “When I was stuck on the Lake Champlain.”

  “Eric Marxen,” he says, putting out his hand to Emily. “Nice to meet you.”

  She shakes it, but carries the oddest look on her face. I don’t think I would have believed it unless I’d witnessed it myself, but Emily is speechless.

  “Captain Magruder invited us to stay for dinner,” Eric says, turning to me. “But I need to stop by the maintenance office first. I was hoping you could direct me there.”

  “Oh, I’ll show you!” Emily pipes up, suddenly finding her voice.

  “Thanks,” he says. “And Sara, I trust you’ve been told you’re flying tomorrow.”

  “I just found out, yeah.”

  “Captain Magruder will go over the details with you when you meet.”

  “You know we’re meeting?”

  “I am in charge of the exercise.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to keep you,” he says. “Emily?”

  “Here, come on,” she says. “The office is this way.”

  As I watch him walk away, I realize I’m bothered by our interaction. While polite, he was all business. Although, should I really expect his behavior to be any different after the way I dismissed him on the Lake Champlain?

  But this is good. This is what I want.

  Right?

  * * *

  Entering the commanding officer’s quarters, I find Captain Magruder in a huddle with our three aircraft commanders. He motions for me to join them.

  “For the exercise tomorrow,” Captain Magruder says, “Nick, I want you flying with Lieutenant Denning. Lieutenant Henkel, you’ll fly with Lieutenant Zemekis.”

  This is highly irregular. The captain of the ship doesn’t assign flight crews.

  “I want to reiterate the importance of executing clean flights with exacting scrutiny on the gauges,” Captain Magruder says. He hands Commander Claggett and Chad briefing cards that detail the headings, altitudes, and speeds required. “Five runs each. No deviation from the altitudes or speeds listed.”

  We all nod, but I wonder why he’s so keen on the details for this flight. Normally, we’d just execute our mission and be done with it.

  “As you heard in the brief, this training exercise has Admiral Carlson’s full attention, mostly due to the fact that every ship in the group has some role in the tracking and simulated destruction of the low-level threats,” Captain Magruder says. “Keep to the timeline and the established holding patterns since we’ll have the Shadow Hunters and Nighthawks in the air, too.”

  The Nighthawks are a squadron of H-60 Seahawk helicopters deployed aboard the Nimitz.

  “The Shadow Hunters will take the lead, acting as airborne command. Their word is final,” he says. “Following the low-level runs, you have a zero seven hundred overhead at Nimitz to pick up a squad from SEAL Team One for a fast rope to simulate hostile boarding. You’ll be given the target name then. The overhead to target is scheduled for zero seven fifteen. You need to be in, out, and gone over the target deck.”

  Captain Magruder looks directly at Commander Claggett. “Nick, that’s going to be your bird, and Lieutenant Denning will be at the controls for that.”

  What…?

  I do a quick scan of the faces of Commander Claggett, Matt, and Chad, and see that I’m not the only one surprised.

  “Yes, sir,” Commander Claggett says.

  “That’s all I have,” Captain Magruder says.

  Very odd. Exceedingly odd. No, make that unheard of. The captain of the ship dictating who will be at the controls on a flight? Never.

  What the hell is going on?

  12

  As we enter the wardroom for dinner, it’s far louder than normal because of our visitors from the Operation Low Level brief. Admiral Carlson is already seated with Captain Magruder and the other commanding officers. I notice that Eric sits with them.

  Captain Magruder motions Em and me over, and he and Admiral Carlson rise.

  “Sir, this is Lieutenant Sara Denning and Lieutenant Emily Wyatt,” Captain Magruder says.

  “Nice to meet you both,” Admiral Carlson says, extending his hand. “I want you to know we’re happy to have you with us in the strike group.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Emily says.

  That was weird. I wonder why we were singled out like that. Well, no matter. I turn to find a seat, surreptitiously glancing in Eric’s direction as I do so. Shoot. He catches me peeking because he’s looking right at me.

  But that’s not what gives me pause.

  “Is she the one?” Admiral Carlson whispers.

  “Yeah, that’s her,” Captain Magruder says.

  I bring my eyes to theirs, but they don’t look away. I wonder if they know that I heard them. Scanning to the left, I see that Eric’s eyes haven’t left my position.

  Emily heads to the open seat next to Eric, while I turn, finding two free chairs at the far end of our U-shaped table arrangement. Petty Officer Sampson, our lead mess crank, hurriedly approaches with lemon water and a larger-than-normal menu. I glance up to see that Eric is giving his full attention to Emily.

  Switching my gaze to Admiral Carlson, I think about the comment I just overheard. “Is she the one?” What on earth?

  I don’t have a chance to consider the question, though, because Commander Egan shatters my concentration with his arrival. He sits next to me, adjusting his chair until it touches mine, and I recoil. When he gets close, my skin gets prickly. I swear, I’m going to break out in a rash as this cruise progresses, with him around.

  “Sara, Sara, Sara,” he says. “Talkin’ it up with the admiral, I see.”

>   Maybe he’s trying to be funny? I don’t even look at him. “Yes, sir.”

  I had planned to order something off the menu because Petty Officer Sampson has pulled out all the stops for Admiral Carlson. But I don’t want to sit here waiting for my food, drawn into a conversation I don’t want to have with Commander Egan. I can give myself space by selecting from the salad bar instead. I push my chair back, and as I walk away from him, every inch I put between us allows me to breathe easier.

  I pick up a plate from the storage well and begin piling it with lettuce. The salad on the ship isn’t great by most people’s standards, but for me, I’m eating better now than I normally do. I inherited little—actually, make that none—of my mother’s legendary culinary skills, so having a mess hall has always been one of the perks of military life for me.

  “You guys are lucky,” Eric says, silently appearing at my side.

  The current is a jolt this time.

  “We’re lucky?”

  “To have a salad bar,” he says, picking up a plate. “This would never fit in our wardroom.”

  “Oh, yeah. This is really a great thing.”

  I add spinach and cucumbers to my lettuce bed, and out of the corner of my eye, I see that he’s filling his plate, too. Maybe he’s extra hungry. When I watched Emily take her seat next to him earlier, he had already been served a full plate of food, which included a salad.

  The ship takes a heavy roll and the cherry tomato I’m trying to harness with the salad tongs slips and accelerates across the grooved railings in front of the vegetable bins. I quickly grab the side of the bar to keep my balance as the tomato goes airborne at the end of the rails. Eric’s hand shoots out, snatching it in midair.

  I raise my eyebrows. “Nice save.”

  He turns to me, latches onto my gaze, and holds it. Uncanny, how he does that. And his all-business demeanor from earlier evaporates.

  “I wanted to ask how you were doing,” he says in a low voice. “I didn’t have a chance to talk with you before you left yesterday morning.”

  “The flight went fine. We did the maintenance checks and—”

  “I wasn’t asking about the aircraft,” he says. “I was asking about you.”

  “Oh.” The effort required to pull my eyes away is a monumental one. I focus on the construction of my salad, stalling, adding items that under normal circumstances would never find their way onto my plate. Olives, anchovies …

  “I’m doing all right,” I say, looking resolutely at the salad bins. “Thanks for asking.”

  Emily’s half-baked Harlequins flash through my mind, expounding on the heated magnetic pull between two people. Nonsensical nonsense, I call it. And that is not what’s happening here. Not onboard a navy ship. Not in a wardroom. And most definitely not in uniform.

  I continue mindlessly adding ingredients, my head spinning.

  I will not succumb to this. I won’t. Besides, there’s nothing to succumb to. It’s the rolling of the ship. That’s it. My stomach hasn’t been feeling right today anyway.

  “You know, I wouldn’t have taken you for the jalapeño type,” he says.

  “Jalapeño … what?”

  He points to my plate and I cringe. The jalapeño slices awkwardly outnumber the tomatoes and cucumbers combined, creating a dull green boundary layer of way-too-hot-for-me peppers that nearly covers the entire salad.

  Holy hell, Sara. Where is your dignity?

  I straighten and look at him directly, preparing to say my good-byes, but notice for the first time a scar that traces across his upper lip. It only makes him more handsome—in a rugged, no-nonsense sort of way.

  Okay, that’s it. I’m done. This is getting out of control.

  I need to get away from here. Now.

  I move to turn back to my seat, but a hand on my arm stops me; that and a shot of something that just rocketed through my body the moment he touched me.

  “Can I ask you something?” His eyes shift to look behind me for a moment before he speaks again. The tone is not at all playful as it just was. “Commander Egan … Is everything all right there?”

  I hesitate, deciding he doesn’t need to know. “Yes, why wouldn’t it be?”

  “You flinched when he sat next to you,” he says, removing his hand from my arm.

  How did he notice that? I was sitting at the far end of the table.

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  “It’s not fine.” His eyes hold mine, daring me to say otherwise.

  This is altogether new to me—someone needling into my feelings like this. And he’s right on the mark, too, which is even more disconcerting.

  “I need to go,” I say, and turn back to my seat.

  “Soooo, do you know Lieutenant Marxen or something?” Commander Egan says. “You took forever getting your salad.”

  “No … no, not really,” I say.

  I pretend to scoot my chair in closer to the table while actually moving it farther away from him. The supply officer who sits next to me has got to be wondering why my chair is now rammed up next to his.

  Eric watches all of this, his jaw set. He then crosses the room to Admiral Carlson and leans into his ear before returning to his seat.

  “Commander Egan!” Admiral Carlson calls from across the table.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I need to speak with you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Commander Egan pushes back his chair and walks to the admiral’s side.

  It’s difficult to make out what they’re discussing. Something related to Operation Low Level, I think.

  “You know, sir,” Eric says, addressing Commander Egan loudly. “You can just have my seat. It would probably be easier than having to stand there.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Admiral Carlson says.

  Eric pushes his dinner plate aside and rises. He has a quick word with Petty Officer Sampson, who comes to my side, collects Commander Egan’s plate, and takes it to his new seat.

  Commander Egan doesn’t look happy with the new seating arrangement, and neither does Em, for that matter.

  I share a quick look with Eric as he exits the wardroom. So there, his expression reads.

  * * *

  I swore to myself I’d go back to Ian’s Vikings jersey, but here I am, second night in a row, slipping into Eric’s maroon shirt. He never asked about it today in the wardroom and I wonder if he realizes I have it. I rub the spot on my arm where he placed his hand, trying to get my head around the still-tingling sensation.

  Em roars into the room like a tornado. “Okay, so tell me this!” she says, the door slamming behind her. “How is it that you can describe a full two days spent on the Lake Champlain and fail to mention a certain Lieutenant Marxen?”

  I turn and busy myself in my closet, hanging my khakis with extra care. “Easy. He’s just another guy,” I say, speaking to my clothing.

  “Just another guy? Just another guy? He’s a fucking Greek god! You don’t omit details like that!”

  “There were almost four hundred men on that ship,” I say, turning to face her. “Sorry I didn’t mention every one.”

  “But you did,” she says, plopping into her desk chair. She holds up her fingers to count. “Let’s see, Brian Wilcox, Stuart Grady, Ben Holcomb, Rob LeGrand, Ken Watkins. Hell, you even mentioned Seaman Ogilvy, who served you coffee. So it’s highly improbable that you would have missed—”

  She straightens, her eyes widening. “Wait a minute. Wait one fucking minute!” Her eyes bore into mine, like she’s a coldblooded dective on the hunt. “There’s something going on between you two, isn’t there?”

  “No, of course not,” I say.

  “Yes…,” she says, drawing it out for effect. “Now it makes sense. I wondered why he went up to the salad bar when he’d already been served a salad.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I say.

  “And you talked. For a long time.”

  I shake my head.

  “And he stared at you. I remem
ber that. And you were looking back … with like, weird dreamy eyes.”

  “I was not!”

  She nods, the facts stringing together in her head forming a neatly packaged conclusion—one that suits her romance-infected mind perfectly.

  “You like him, don’t you!”

  “No, absolutely not.”

  She continues as if I haven’t said a thing. “You purposely avoided telling me about him because you’re smitten and you didn’t want me to know!”

  “Em, that’s ridiculous! Stop it.”

  “Unfreakingbelievable!”

  “You are so off base.”

  She crosses her arms. “Your heated denials only serve to clarify the truth of the matter.”

  “Besides,” I say, “it’s not allowed anyway … not that there’s anything there … I mean, to be allowed…” What a stuttering mess.

  “Ha! There is something there. And yes, it is allowed! You’re of equal rank. You’re in different squadrons. No conflict of interest. Boom! You’re good! You are so good!”

  “Enough, Em. Enough! I’m going to bed.”

  “Hold on…,” she says, rising, her mouth agape. “Hold on!”

  “What now?”

  I’ve never seen Em move so fast in my life. In less than a second, she has the back of my shirt collar in her fist, giving it a firm yank.

  “I knew it!” she says.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I say, spinning on her.

  “Size large!”

  Her hand goes to her heart and she staggers backward, her eyes furtively roving across my torso. “That’s his shirt, isn’t it?” she whispers.

  I shrug.

  “Oh my god, you’re wearing his shirt!” She collapses on the bed, flopping backward, her hands gesturing to the overhead. “That’s so fuckin’ romantic, I can’t stand it!”

  “Em, wait, hang on! After we landed, I was a sweaty mess and I didn’t have anything clean to wear. He just let me borrow it. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” she says, shooting upright. “That’s all? Do you have any idea what this means?”

  “Em, it was just a clean shirt.”