Target of the Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  “Took you seven hours to rebuild the Chinook,” Pete decided maybe John didn’t deserve to be both happy and have a loving wife like Connie.

  John groaned once again, “Don’t remind me.”

  Deserve. Did Pete deserve a woman like Danielle? Wow! There was a loaded question. Did he feel like the luckiest shit on the planet for getting to bed her? Oh yeah.

  But what had he done to deserve her attentions? That was far less clear. He’d been consistently grouchy about forming the 5E, then driving everyone like mad to excel because of his desire to get back in the field.

  “Why are you even with me?”

  “Cause you’re the boss,” Big John thumped him on the shoulder.

  Pete definitely needed his head examined, perhaps starting with a swift smack. He looked around for Danielle and instead spotted a team of four men who entered and crossed the hangar floor with the smooth grace of top operators.

  One moved like an officer despite his big pack. The other three were also humping packs, even bigger ones. Two of the three had beards and civilian hair. The third was clean-shaven…no, another woman in the service. They were everywhere all of a sudden.

  “Hi Pete,” Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman came up and shook his hand; a crushing grip that Pete gladly returned.

  “Hey Luke,” he’d carried LCDR Altman and his SEAL teams on any number of missions. Altman was one of the very best the Navy had to offer. “What brings a bunch of SEALs to Okinawa?”

  “You do.”

  Pete gave himself a moment to digest that. They’d had the choppers together for about seven minutes and, ding, on cue, in come the operators. He could feel Cass McDermott back there pulling strings.

  Luke dropped his pack to the concrete floor and the other three did the same.

  “Didn’t know you had women in the SEALs.” Pete bought himself another moment to consider things.

  If Luke was involved, this op went way higher up the pecking order than just Cass. Joint Special Operations Command was in on this one.

  “No offense intended, ma’am,” he addressed the woman. After all, it didn’t pay to tick off a Navy SEAL.

  “I have Nikita,” Luke shrugged “Night Stalkers have…” Luke looked him up and down, “you! No offense intended Nikita.”

  She simply rolled her eyes at her commander’s back.

  “I felt that,” Luke said without bothering to turn to her.

  It was the sworn duty of every service member to look down on anyone in another branch. Pete opened his mouth to say something about having learned how to be a wimp by watching SEALs—

  “Are you now one of the women of SOAR, Major Napier?” Danielle appeared at his elbow as if magically transported.

  It was unnerving how easily she did that to him. She was the only person who could slip past his situational awareness. The woman he should be most sensitive to, and she did it to him constantly.

  “You must be very proud to be one of us. Do you wear a dress often?”

  “No. Do you?” Pete shot back at her.

  “Only when someone takes me dancing.”

  “Lady,” Luke grinned at her with a lascivious smile and Pete resisted a sudden urge to flatten the SEAL commander up against the side of the DAP Hawk parked close behind him, “if I weren’t already married, that would be a date. What about you, Pete?”

  “Me? Do I look like I dance?”

  “I don’t know. Grass skirt, a couple white orchid Hawaiian leis. I think you’d make a picture.”

  “Don’t forget the ukulele,” Danielle was being of no help at all.

  “Would you dance with a man if he played the ukulele?”

  Danielle looked at Pete as if she was trying on the picture for size. A smile teased along the edge of her lips. He knew what that smile felt like when he was kissing her back at the NTTR, but he’d never seen it before.

  He’d hadn’t seen this smile because for a month he’d kept her at arm’s length and ignored the pain he’d caused them both by refusing to even acknowledge their one kiss. And now he’d done a hell of a lot more than kissed her and it was one of the best things to ever happen to him.

  Unlike the radiant blast of her “happy smile”—which made her beyond gorgeous—this one made her impossibly cute.

  “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” Luke said. “Loving anyone who plays a ukulele.”

  “Hard enough to imagine even dancing with one,” she admitted.

  “I. Don’t. Play! The ukulele.”

  Danielle ignored him and turned back to Luke. “He also said he doesn’t dance, should we trust him on that?”

  “Pete’s always been more of a tromp on ‘em and leave ‘em kind of guy.”

  “Shut up, Luke. Or I’ll be telling stories on you that’ll burn your team’s ears.”

  “Hell, Pete. You can’t threaten a SEAL and expect to be left alive.”

  “Sir,” Nikita spoke up for the first time. “I think you said that we need him for this mission. Won’t be much use to us dead. Perhaps we can kill him for you afterward?” Her voice was mission-asset deadpan.

  “See why I keep her around?” Luke snapped his fingers and pointed at an open spot of floor next to him.

  # # #

  Danielle didn’t have to wonder what the signal meant for long. In moments the other SEALs had grabbed a fold-up table from where it leaned against the hangar’s wall and set it up where Luke had pointed.

  He reached into his pack and pulled out a long map tube. Nikita had a worklight plugged in and moved over. All of the Night Stalkers gathered around the table as the SEAL commander rolled out the map. The SEALs dropped into a line standing at ease behind their commander, like a personal body guard.

  Danielle tried to look at them without looking. She’d flown with a few Delta operators, they tended to be smaller men. Whatever Delta’s selection process was, it favored lean, whip-strong men of average height.

  The SEAL commander and the two men topped six feet and Nikita wasn’t far behind them. They stood at ease, but looked lethal. You could look at a Delta and wonder what his day job was. You looked at a SEAL and they exuded power and physical conditioning. Even their loose camo pants couldn’t hide the powerful swimmer’s legs. There was never a question about what a SEAL did for a living.

  Standing safe in a friendly hangar, the Night Stalkers still all wore their sidearms. The SEALs had that plus massive knives strapped to their thighs. Another at the ankle. Their rifles were not strapped to their packs; rather they’d carried them in, and only rested them against their packs close to hand. She felt safer simply for having them here.

  Then she looked down at the map.

  “Uh, that’s China. Or at least a part of it.”

  “Is it?” the Lieutenant Commander stared down at it in shock. “Well, I’ll be damned. You’re right, little lady. Pete, you should definitely take this lady out dancing. Though she’s smart, so maybe not your type. Unlike Brittany or Lucy or—”

  “Eat hot shit, Luke!” Pete’s growl spoke of a long friendship.

  So Pete liked them dumb? Yet he certainly seemed to like her. This would assurément be an interesting ride.

  Time for a subject change.

  “China?”

  “Yes,” Luke threw some internal switch and became all business. “The Jiangnan Shipyard is China’s premier large shipbuilder. They are presently building a pair of the world’s largest Coast Guard ships.” He tossed down several large glossy photos.

  She knew enough about ships to know it was big, but not much more.

  “Three times more displacement than our largest—if you don’t count our two broken down ice breakers. Fifty percent bigger than our destroyers and missile cruisers. The only thing we still have that have greater displacement are our helicopter and aircraft carriers.”

  “
So,” Patty pointed a finger at the image, “you’re saying these things are big?”

  Pete rolled his eyes, but Luke nodded matter of factly.

  “Big and heavily armed,” and he listed off an impressive array of armament. “She also carries a pair of Chinese Z-8 helicopters.”

  That got everyone’s attention. Night Stalkers might not be impressed by deck-mounted guns on a ship no matter their number or size. But the Z-8 was a heavy lifter. It could move a lot of troops quickly and even mount missiles; a far more formidable opponent than the Augusta Westlands that served on U.S. Coast Guard ships.

  “What do you do with a Coast Guard ship that big?” Rafe was a good strategy man, which made him ideal as the DAP Hawk pilot.

  “The Chinese are dredging sediment and then building man-made islands on top of submerged reefs in Vietnamese and Philippine waters, an area called the Spratly Islands. They’re building military bases on them, seven hundred miles from their mainland. You can’t protect those without a Coast Guard ship that can cruise for a long time and bring some serious firepower to guard them.”

  “And we’re supposed to do something about them?”

  Luke looked at her for a long moment before replying, “We didn’t come to Japan for the sushi.”

  No, they hadn’t.

  Chapter 11

  They had twenty-four hours off, between the completion of the mission plan and launch. A day and a night.

  Not a chance was Pete going to waste that in a barracks bunk and eating in an American chow hall, not when Japan beckoned.

  Nor was he going to do it alone.

  He commandeered a car from the motor pool shortly after sunrise—managed not to look like an idiot by remembering just in time that Japan was a right-hand drive country. Nothing fancy, just a blah-green Toyota sedan.

  When Danielle came out to the car, he wished he’d found a Miata convertible or a Honda S2000. She wasn’t a Ferrari sort of woman, but she definitely evoked the need for a convertible where the wind could play with her hair.

  She shouldn’t appear so startling, after all they’d rarely been apart in the entire last month of training. But it was the first time he’d seen her in civilian clothes. Sneakers, form-hugging jeans, and a nice, simple blouse should not be such a shock, but they were. The nondescript knapsack over one shoulder and dark wrap-around shades only completed the incredible image.

  He scrambled out of his seat to open her door. She walked right up to the driver’s door and then did that double-take of soldiers who only drove American military vehicles when overseas.

  Barely able to restrain himself from wrapping an arm around her waist, he led her to the left-hand passenger door and held it open for her.

  “What?” she stopped with the door between them. “No greeting of hello, yet jumping to open my door, even if I don’t know which is which. What’s going on, Pete?”

  He didn’t know. They were standing on a U.S. military base. And while she perhaps wasn’t the most physically beautiful woman he’d ever known, she was close. However, Danielle stopped him cold like no other woman ever had. Her looks combined with the way she carried herself were sufficient to make grunts stop and stare when she was walking across base, even if hers wasn’t the face-slap beauty of someone like Sophia Gracie. To his eyes, all others dimmed in comparison to the woman standing a single car-door thickness away.

  “Climb on in.”

  “Not until you explain that look on your face.”

  “I don’t have a mirror, how am I supposed to know what I look like?”

  “You look beautiful.”

  Men weren’t supposed to look beautiful, but in Danielle’s whispery French accent it was very hard to complain.

  “Also like a rascal.”

  Pete rubbed at his jaw in order to stop himself from reaching out and doing something wholly inappropriate while standing on a military base. He’d save inappropriate for as soon as he could get her alone.

  She did that eyebrow-arch-question thing.

  He placed a hand on top of her head and pushed down until she gave in with a smile and sat in her seat. He closed the door and circled back around the car.

  What was it about this woman?

  Enjoy and depart…

  Good times…

  No attachments…

  None of the tools he’d used up until now to manage relationships fit Danielle Delacroix.

  This is so stupid, he told himself as they drove out through the security gate.

  Why’s that?

  Pete ignored his own question—resisting the desire to pound his head against the steering wheel—turned north across the Hiji River, and drove through the Toguchi District. In minutes they transitioned from two and three-story concrete buildings crowded hard against the road’s edge out into the neat Japanese farmland.

  The woman was so goddamn attractive, he didn’t even dare look at her for fear of crashing the car. It had been a while since he’d been in a right-hand drive country himself and Japanese roads were painfully narrow with deep concrete drainage ditches close beside them.

  # # #

  Danielle stared hard out the passenger left-side window. The Japanese countryside was so orderly that even the trees looked like they belonged in a museum. They lined up in perfect rows of impossibly uniform size, ten meters high and one hand wide; they looked phony, like a child’s drawing of a forest made with a ruler.

  The farms were out of some textbook. She recognized potatoes growing in rows so perfect that they must be hand tended. Why potatoes here? It seemed so mundane. But she couldn’t ask.

  The bastard hadn’t greeted her. Hadn’t told her that he was glad to see her. She hadn’t been expecting him to take her against the side of the car in broad daylight, but she’d expected something. Instead, he’d shoved her down and into the car as if he wanted to hide her from view.

  Then he’d muttered to himself.

  Stupid? He thought that being with her was stupid? Taking the risk because of their need for each other was stupid from a military point of view. But she had been so looking forward to getting away with Pete. She’d said yes before he’d even had a chance to finish asking.

  Then he’d called it stupid and refused to explain when she asked why. Was that how he thought of this? Of her? A risk for sex that wasn’t really worth it?

  Is that all he thought this was? Sex?

  Sure they’d had sex on the scratchy grass in the NTTR. But they had also made love in the back of the Chinook. There was nothing else to call it. She’d already been gone on him by that point. Now she was pretty sure she was in love with Pete Napier…and he was worried about the trade-off of risk versus sex?

  She could feel the ache in her fingers from clenching the door handle. Pete reached the coast road and continued north, still not looking over at her. Why would he? He was ashamed of his need for her and wanted to hide it away. Apparently she was just a fuck buddy, and that wasn’t what she’d signed up for. It wasn’t what her heart had signed up for.

  The view of the Sea of Japan sparkling beneath the morning sun wasn’t the only reason her vision had gone watery.

  By all the saints, she was a Québécois. A woman of SOAR and she goddamn deserved to be treated like one.

  Danielle was gonna kill the man if she sat here a second longer.

  “Let’s go back.”

  “Huh, what? Don’t be silly.” And the bastard kept driving.

  “Stop the car.”

  “Why?”

  “Stop the goddamn car, Napier! Or I’ll fucking jump!” her shout was so loud inside the car that it hurt her own ears. She didn’t look over, but she could feel his shock.

  He eased the car onto the narrow shoulder.

  She was out the door and moving before the Toyota had fully stopped. She tucked her knapsack over one shoulder, a
imed herself back toward base, and started walking. The pavement was rough-surfaced but in good condition.

  And she could hear Pete coming up beside her.

  Danielle took an abrupt right turn onto the narrow-sand beach, moments before he reached her.

  He cursed and called her name.

  She kept moving.

  He grabbed her arm.

  She whirled and gut-punched him hard enough to drop him to the sand.

  Danielle turned to keep walking.

  An iron-strong hand clamped around her ankle which sent her tumbling down as well. She should have simply rolled with it and come up onto her feet ready to turn and fight.

  But her one arm was caught in her knapsack. And Pete didn’t let go.

  She face planted.

  Sand was hard when you hit it with your face. It was all down the front of her blouse and bra in an instant. She rolled over to kick Pete’s grip free and could feel the back of her pants scoop several handfuls of grit down her backside.

  She shook her leg and he let go.

  “What the hell’s your problem, Napier?”

  “What’s yours, Delacroix?” His expression was bewildered as he rubbed at his solar plexus.

  “You really don’t get it?” Danielle didn’t know whether to be angry or simply give up. Rubbing at her face to get the fine sand clear, she pulled up her legs so that her ankles were out of his reach.

  “Wouldn’t ask if I did.”

  “ ‘This is so stupid’?” She did a fair mimic of his American farm-boy accent.

  “I,” he squinted at her then looked around to retrieve his sunglasses that had fallen to the beach when she’d leveled him.

  Hers had somehow stayed on her face.

  “I thought I was speaking to myself.”

  “Out loud, Napier.”

  “Didn’t mean to.”

  “You called what we were going to do ‘stupid’.”

  “Were? Past tense?” Pete’s voice was suddenly sad, like a little boy who had just lost his ice cream.

  “Could someone please explain men to me?” she asked the world at large. Which consisted of a green Toyota, several hundred meters of beach, and a horizon’s worth of ocean shining beneath a blue sky.