“When does the public get to see your daughter?” She’d hit the perfect note. It was straight from the Lieutenant Commander Boyd Ramis playbook of how to deal with impossibly awkward moments. She’d have to remember to thank him. No, because she’d then have to explain how she’d met the President, and Boyd was on the wrong side of a black-in-black operation. She’d get the hang of this eventually. Claudia just hoped it wouldn’t be too late by the time she did so.
“Not just yet,” Genevieve Matthews replied in her softly French-accented voice. “We are perhaps too much enjoying keeping her to ourselves. But you are right. She is the first Presidential birth in the White House since 1893. It must be soon.”
“She is such a beautiful little girl.”
“That is her name.” The First Lady cooed at her daughter as she slept. “Adele for my mother just as I am named for my grandmother, Gloria for Peter’s mother, Sebiya Matthews. Sebiya means ‘little sister.’ A young friend of ours said she once had a cat named that. She looked both so sad and yet pleased when she told us about it that we gave our own girl that as a second middle name. It sounds so beautiful. And I think Dilya was really touched.”
“Dilya.” Claudia was clearly going nuts. “Adopted daughter of…”
“Kee and Archie,” the President acknowledged when she couldn’t finish the sentence. “Little scamp was here with her father and grandmother right after the birth. You know her?”
Clearly not! “A little bit.” She wouldn’t mention that the Secret Service was presently storing a folding bow and some arrows that were to be a gift to Dilya.
“Great kid.” The Commander-in-Chief was smiling—no, grinning—at even the mention of her.
“That girl,” Claudia felt compelled to remark, “was never a kid. And growing up on a Navy assault ship, she isn’t getting any younger.” Then she heard her own tone. “Not being critical. Just an observation.”
“I understand what you are saying.” The First Lady shook her head. “I keep telling Archibald that it is not so good a way to raise his child. He is here in Washington so much, he should bring Dilya here full time. Perhaps you”—she addressed her husband—“can convince Kee she should work here as well. I think that just perhaps our protection details have need of another sniper on one of those teams of theirs.”
“Maybe.” The President clearly liked the idea.
After some thought, the First Lady startled and took her husband’s hand.
“Oh, Peter, this we must do. Little Addie doesn’t need a nurse much longer, but she needs a babysitter, an au pair.” She clapped her hands together. “It will be parfait! Dilya will go to local school and meet others her age, and she can help me. Then, when her parents must travel, she can stay with us.”
By the time they landed at Colorado Springs, Claudia decided that in addition to respecting her Commander-in-Chief, she also rather liked Peter Matthews and his wife.
Minutes later they were aloft and bound for DC.
Her brain was crammed with ideas and questions. The exhaustion of missing so much of last night’s sleep was the last thing that mattered. She had an upcoming meeting with the CIA and the White House Chief of Staff.
How in the world was she supposed to command an operation half a world away when she had no idea of what the assets were or the people involved?
When the jet’s landing gear squealed on the runway at Andrews Air Force Base, she jerked upright and checked her watch.
Impossibly, she’d just had three solid hours of sleep.
It still didn’t make her feel one bit better.
Chapter 18
After the lengthy meeting with the Chief of Staff and his wife aboard the echoingly empty backup of Air Force One in the hangar at Andrews, Claudia’s need to get away had hit its limit.
Michael drove her along the Potomac to the Marines’ HMX-1—the group who flew the Marine One helicopters for the President—where she “commandeered” a utility helicopter from General Arnson by using the simple technique of begging. After serving three tours as a Marine flier, she’d gotten to know the commander enough to borrow an old Black Hawk they used as a trainer. She needed to go somewhere private, and she needed to straighten some things out in her head.
Michael sat silently in the copilot’s seat while she flew and the insane jangles of the last twelve hours slowly drained out of her.
“Just twelve hours?”
She could see Michael nod in her peripheral vision. “I’m sorry.” His voice was a soft caress over the intercom and the beating of the rotor blades.
“For what?” She flew south down the Chesapeake Bay, enjoying the setting sun and the dark blues and soft grays it brought out in the water.
“For how our trip ended. Dilya will be upset that I didn’t get you to a beach for sand castling. Kid was right. You never know when the phone will ring.”
“You like her too?” Dilya was more adult than many of the soldiers she’d served with.
“Yes.” Michael’s voice was sad. “Even that first day when Kee brought her in half starved to death, that girl was clearly smarter than most of us. But you’re right, that girl was never a child.”
“What about you, Michael?” She took a vector off the Langley and Norfolk TACANs just for practice. She managed to verify her location within two hundred feet of where her GPS reported her. “Do you want children?” Where in the hell had that question come from? She knew she was just avoiding the larger issues at hand, but now that she’d asked, she found that she did want to know.
His silence stretched a long time. It was actually comforting in its familiarity. Far too many words had been thrown at her in the last few hours.
“I never expected to live long enough to have them.” Again, that odd sense of wonder in his tone as he discovered something new about himself. “But…I think…that I do. Especially—”
“What?”
This silence was different. This was his strong, silent-guy silence, and she wasn’t having anything to do with that.
“What?” She pushed him again.
“Especially since I’ve met someone I’d like to have them with.”
Okay, that she hadn’t been ready for. She considered asking “Who?” just to tease him. But Michael was such a straight man that he’d probably answer, and she really, really wasn’t ready for that.
They continued south in silence past the Virginia border and over the Outer Banks islands of North Carolina. If she could fly forever and not run out of fuel, she’d be tempted, but regrettably running away had never been her style.
Finally, about an hour south of DC, she brought the helo down out of the sky and settled it in the dunes twenty miles north of where the Wright brothers had first flown in the Kill Devil Hills.
* * *
Michael had watched the last of the sunset bleed from the sky while they flew. Acknowledging that he wanted children had opened some hole in him. For twenty years he had thrown himself at every dangerous situation as if it were a game. Roll the dice, dive in, and prove that he could walk out the other side when not another soul could.
He’d hunted terrorists from Baghdad to Tokyo. Had walked the streets of Somalia and crawled through the opium fields of Myanmar’s Golden Triangle. He was the man to get it done.
At ten, he could scale anything. At fourteen, he had discovered and measured the tallest redwood Titan there was, and told no one but his parents. They, in turn, had checked the height with a trusted friend to verify it was the tallest without revealing Nell’s location. The day he’d signed up for the U.S. military, his parents had made Nell their last climb to honor his find. They were in their mid-fifties by then, and the big trees were getting beyond them. He hadn’t been back to the top of Nell until he took Claudia.
But now she’d made him think about children, a possibility he’d never considered before. With Claudia su
ch things seemed possible, even desirable. He was still younger than his parents had been when they’d had him.
Did that mean he’d retire from the service like Emily and Mark? That was wholly unimaginable. But he was certainly at the very senior end of being a field operative. SOAR pilots often flew right through their forties and fifties, but Delta was a younger man’s game. He didn’t want to leave the field, perhaps no more than Emily and Mark had wanted to.
Maybe he could make the same shift that Archie Stevenson had made. After his injury, he’d shifted to an Air Mission Commander role, even though his wife had remained in forward operations. If the President did pull him back to the White House as a full-time advisor, would Michael be willing to step into a similar role for the 5D? Could he, as Archie often did, design a mission that would send the woman he loved into harm’s way?
Perhaps that was too high a price.
But to have children by Claudia? It was an opportunity that he’d definitely have to think about at some length.
She settled them in the dunes above a moonlit beach that stretched wide and empty in both directions. He followed when she climbed out of the helicopter and strolled down the beach and toward the ocean. She began shedding her clothes, first shoes, then socks, so that she walked barefoot on the shining white sand. Her T-shirt, pants, and underwear soon followed, scattered as if they were bread crumbs for him to follow. How could he not?
The woman’s bare skin and light hair glowed beneath the quarter moon rising out of the Atlantic until she might well have been a goddess of old brought to life before him. He had never seen such beauty as Claudia strolling forward into the waves. And that she shared that beauty so freely with him humbled him.
Yet one more feeling that was new to him.
He was the best tree climber, the best ROTC student, had consistently been promoted at each rank on the first day he was eligible. Had managed to unravel the Delta training until he was always the maximum performer, the heart of each team he served with, and now their most senior officer ever to serve in the field.
But Claudia humbled him.
She outflew Emily Beale. She thought as quickly as any Delta operator in a crisis situation, a skill she’d proven several times in Somalia. And she’d taken to skywalking as if born to it.
Of course the President had seen that in her, giving her command of the present operation. He had been on the verge of making precisely that recommendation. He knew his own strengths—flexibility and reaction. He was only beginning to know hers—clear-sightedness and always thinking. Everything he did by instinct, she did by being smarter than everyone around her.
Only when the first wave broke warm over his shoes and soaked his pants up to the knees did he realize that he was following her mindlessly. He trotted back up the beach above the waves’ reach and shed his own clothes. Then he followed her into the waves glittering in the moonlight.
They floated and swam in the warm Gulf Stream waters of North Carolina. He cataloged the time by the movement of the stars and moon across the sky because he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to hold and cherish each precious hour he spent with her, even if it was only to swim in companionable silence.
Emerging from the water, she was lit as if by a thousand sparkles of light, each water droplet catching the moon and accenting a curve, a moment of motion. Unable to resist, he reached out and touched her incredible skin for the first time since he’d touched her hand on the Gulfstream. He had to prove to himself that she was real. He could feel her, but he still wasn’t quite sure about the reality part. He’d had as many fantasies as the next man, but none matched Claudia in the flesh.
In answer to his touch, she turned and flowed into his arms. She lay her head on his shoulder and simply stopped there as if they were caught mid-moment in an infinite slow dance. The warm spring evening felt chilly on his drying skin, but neither of them moved to dry themselves off or get dressed. She simply leaned into him.
When his body’s inevitable reaction to her occurred, she still didn’t move from his arms. He’d never been so unself-conscious around a woman.
“I need you to be strong for me, Michael. I don’t know how to do this.” Her voice was weary and soft as moonlight.
That she would ask such a thing of him made him feel stronger than perhaps he ever had before. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her back to where their clothes lay scattered. He set her on the pile of clothes and fetched the light jacket he’d been wearing to drape over her shoulders. Then he sat beside her and simply held her with no idea of what to do next.
“You are the most capable person I’ve ever met, Claudia. And that’s saying something as I’ve known and flown with some exceptional people. You are the best of them.”
She patted his chest, keeping her head on his shoulder, her damp hair against his cheek. “That’s sweet of you to say, my lover.”
He was going to protest that it was the truth, but her last words tied his chest up in knots. He had made love to many women, or at least had had highly consensual and enjoyable sex. A few had even called him their lover. But never before had it meant so much. He wanted to explain, to insist, to spill forth words until he was wrung dry, but he couldn’t think of where or how to begin. So he kept it simple.
“You are the very best…my lover.” And merely saying the words aloud anchored the feeling like a grapple even deeper within him.
Again she patted his chest.
Well, what she needed most right now wasn’t his adoration, but his strength. That’s what she’d said, and he knew her well enough to believe her. For that, he damned well did know where to begin.
“Okay.” He kissed her atop her salt-damp hair to gather his own strength and stave off something of his body’s need for hers. “Let’s start with the beginning. First, what assets do we know, positively, that we need?”
Claudia’s tight embrace, as close as she’d ever held him even during sex, told him that he’d done something right.
“We know we need Trisha and Bill.” Her voice sounded a little more like the confident woman he knew so well.
It was the most surreal mission planning session he’d ever held—in this case, literally. He’d done them in The Unit’s headquarters just a couple hundred miles inland from here at Fort Bragg. He’d met teams in bombed-out Belgrade, in a cardboard hut in a Shanghai ghetto, and an upscale Brazilian condo. He had never before planned one while sitting mostly naked with a beautiful woman filling his arms on a moonlit beach.
Claudia eventually stood and pulled on her jeans. He did his best not to be disappointed, though she continued to wear his jacket unzipped, offering him the occasional heart-stopping glimpse of skin-colored moon shadow. He shrugged into his pants and T-shirt.
She began drawing in the sand. “This is the Caspian Sea, two hundred miles long and seven hundred north to south. Azerbaijan is in the west, sitting on top of one of the largest oil and gas reserves on the planet and friendly to the United States; Iran south, Turkmenistan to the east. Up north, Kazakhstan and then Russia completing the circle back to Azerbaijan.” A third of the way up from the bottom, she slashed a sideways line across the narrowest part of the sea.
“The Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline,” Michael acknowledged.
“Proposed,” she amended.
“Proposed. And deeply opposed by both Iran and Russia on a supposedly environmental basis. Iran actually wants the pipeline to run overland through their country for the taxes, and Russia wants ships to pay large tariffs to use the thirteen locks of the Volga-Don Canal system.”
He knew he was simply repeating their briefing, but that was how the process worked: reinforce the familiar, then build on that to create the next layer of the known.
They never did build a sand castle, but about the time that dawn graced the deep Atlantic, he did help her remove his jacket.
They made slow, ge
ntle love as if they weren’t surrounded by a dozen drawings of an impossibly dangerous mission plan against a friendly foreign power. A mission that if it went wrong was going to kill them and start a war, a big one. A mission plan that would soon be erased by the incoming tide.
Chapter 19
Unable to settle the argument of where to go, Bill and Trisha were in neither Budapest nor Boston. Fort Campbell exchange tracked them down in Scotland, and Claudia and Michael flew in on a commercial airliner to meet up with them.
Claudia set the meeting in a warm Edinburgh pub, because May sure wasn’t as warm here as on the North Carolina beaches. The problem was the bottle-to-throttle rule. In civil aviation, there was a required minimum of eight hours from your last drink to wheels up. In SOAR, it was twenty-four. And since SOAR pilots were technically on call twenty-four by three-sixty-five, that didn’t leave a lot of chances for a drink.
She finally decided that if she was in charge of this mission, she’d make sure they didn’t fly within the next day, because she definitely needed a beer.
They met at a pub just off Grassmarket Square below the castle. It was an old place built of heavy, dark wood beams and worn flooring. The sign over the door said “Here William and Robert shared a pint.” She thought it would tacky to ask whether they meant William Wallace and Robert the Bruce seven hundred years before or the current owners’ dads.
Several regulars sat at the long bar. But unlike in an American bar, there was no morose feeling as if that’s where the patrons moldered over the years. These folks were all cheerfully debating a soccer game on the television. “Football on the telly,” she corrected herself.
“I’m sooo glad you called.” Trisha dropped down in the tall-backed booth isolated in a dim corner. She landed across from Michael and leaned over the table to punch his shoulder in greeting. “Not only has this bloody Scotsman that I married”—she hooked a thumb at Bill—“never been to his homeland, but he knows almost nothing about it. That means I’ve had to play tour guide in his bloody country.”
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