LOGAN
Innerworld Affairs Series
Book Five
by
Marilyn Campbell
USA Today Bestselling Author
Previously Titled: Worlds Apart
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ISBN: 978-1-61417-656-5
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Chapter 1
Earth, 2058 A.D.
Ex-Sergeant Logan McKay used the toe of his right combat boot to lift the weight of the iron shackle off his left ankle. A few minutes later he reversed the procedure. It was tedious, but effectively kept the blood circulating through his icy feet. Knowing that once the aircraft reached its assigned flying altitude the cabin temperature would be more comfortably regulated also helped. He only had to be patient, but after months of being half-frozen on the Manchurian border, the anticipation of warmth seeping into his bones was more enticing than a good meal.
Warmth was definitely the first thing he could appreciate about his current state. A sound sleep would come second—the kind of sleep that can't be had in a war zone where bombs interrupted any moment of silence and the enemy could be ten feet away, just waiting for you to doze off so he can slit your throat.
After he was warm and rested, he might even give some thought to the shackles on his ankles, the handcuffs on his wrists and the sentence he'd been given of life imprisonment at Leavenworth. But at least for the next nine hours, while he was in the air over the Pacific Ocean, his dismal future was on hold.
Logan's eyes drifted shut in spite of his numb fingers and toes, but before he could enjoy the peace, a voice came over the loudspeaker.
"Good morning. This is your pilot, Lieutenant Nathan Boswell. We've been cleared for take-off. Make sure all seatbelts are fastened and loose items stowed away. There's an ugly storm hovering out there, so we're going to be taking the scenic route today. If there are any tourists on board who want to follow our progress, we'll be heading south off Hokkaido, past what used to be Tokyo, toward Iwo Jima, then east to San Francisco. We don't expect the detour to add more than an hour to our arrival time but we'll keep you posted."
As the aircraft began taxiing down the runway, the military police officer sitting in the aisle seat next to Logan uttered an obscenity. Intent on sleeping, Logan pretended not to hear his armed escort but the MP sitting in the opposite aisle seat couldn't ignore it as easily.
"What's the problem now, Higgs?" Corporal Gianni asked. "Forget to say goodbye to one of your sweetie-pies?"
"Didn't you hear what he just said?" Higgs asked then went on before his superior officer made any comment. "A southern heading takes us right into the Dragon's Triangle. We'd be better off flying directly over China."
"For God's sake! You and your stupid superstitions again. Throw some salt over your shoulder or whatever you normally do and grab some sleep like McKay's doing."
Higgs's voice raised a pitch. "Sleep? I'd just as soon spend my last hour awake. And this is not superstition! I read a book about it. Hundreds of planes and ships and thousands of people have disappeared in the area between the Philippine Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It's like a triangle that runs from Yokohama to Guam to the Mariana Islands and back to Japan."
Gianni laughed. "You've got your triangles confused, kid. The Bermuda Triangle is where vessels supposedly disappear, and it's clear on the other side of the world."
"Oh yeah? What would you say if I told you the Dragon's Triangle is on the exact other side of the world and that there's a magnetic field that runs straight through the planet from one triangle to the other?"
"I'd say you spend too much time reading fiction. If you aren't going to sleep, make yourself useful. Go find out if they put coffee on board."
Logan heard Higgs huff then unfasten his seat belt. He hoped the kid wasn't the kind that had to hear himself talking all the time but he had a sinking feeling he was. As the plane leveled out and he felt the first waft of heat, he decided he could even put up with a nutcase like Higgs if his toes got thawed out in the meantime.
Suddenly he heard a woman's voice out of a dream, yet he knew he wasn't sleeping.
"Corporal Gianni? I'm Captain Yan. Private Higgs said you asked about coffee. There are meals and beverages on board, but I don't think self-service is a good idea with the possibility of turbulence from the storm. Since your prisoners aren't going anywhere and my nurses are busy with patients, I would like to enlist the private's help."
"Sure. In fact, if you could keep him busy for about nine or ten hours, I'd appreciate it."
Logan raised one eyelid a fraction of an inch to see just how accurate his memory was. Bullseye. The voice did indeed belong to the Captain Yan who occasionally crept into his dreams despite his wish to forget she existed. She looked exactly the way he remembered—exotic, secretive... untouchable. Her body was compact and toned yet clearly female. Her very straight, nearly black hair was tied at the base of her neck and her thick bangs framed her slightly slanted dark eyes... exactly as he remembered.
But it was her voice rather than her appearance that first bewitched him. It was unlike any voice he had heard before or since. Somehow she made the most ordinary statement sound like a lover's whisper—husky and intimate, as if she were physically stroking him with her words.
Eight months ago, he had been wounded during a shelling and, although it wasn't anything to be sent home over, he had spent four weeks in a mobile hospital unit. It was her voice that had made him want to return from the concussion-induced darkness he was hovering in. When he finally opened his eyes, the dark angel watching over him made him wonder if he'd been sent to heaven or hell.
Her eyes had been filled with compassion, tenderness and sincere concern. They flashed images in his mind of a loving wife, a cozy home and children. Since he knew none of those things were for the likes of him, he'd come to the conclusion that she was merely a hallucination.
He told himself that her being on the same flight back to the States was pure coincidence. She would never remember him out of all the wounded men she'd cared for in the past years. All he had to do was ignore her existence for a few more hours then they'd be going their separate ways—her to the safe and simple life she'd enjoyed before the war, him to a men-only prison cell.
* * *
Tarla Yan took one more glance at the sleeping prisoner then led Private Higgs to the galley. Sh
e had considered passing out the food and beverages herself just to keep occupied... until she saw him. His presence, with or without shackles, was enough to convince her to stay in the front of the plane with the patients and nurses. Not that he'd remember her, but she certainly remembered him and knew enough to steer clear.
How could she not remember Sergeant Logan McKay? She remembered all the men who had hurt or disappointed her. He was merely the most recent.
Though the manifest for this flight showed only names and ranks, she was aware of a little more than that. Of the one hundred seventeen on board, three were crew, forty-five were critically wounded—mostly burn victims—with seven nurses to care for them, and thirty-one others were healthy male and female soldiers whose stints were up.
One of those was her friend, Robin Pascal, a tall green-eyed redhead with a body that attracted every man within a mile, but a sharp wit that kept them at arm's length... unless she chose to let them come near. Though their military assignments differed drastically—Robin's specialty was aircraft mech and tech—she and Tarla had enlisted at the same time and survived boot camp together. Now, three years later, treaties and agreements had finally been signed and they were headed home together.
The rest of the passengers—two military police and their twenty-nine convicts—were corralled in the rear of the plane.
When she'd heard the make-up of the passengers, she should have realized there was a possibility of Logan McKay being one of the prisoners. After all, everyone had been talking about his court martial for weeks.
The sight of the shackles and armed escorts relieved her mind somewhat about spending a day in close proximity with that many criminals. From what she'd been able to learn, they were guilty of such charges as embezzling, assault and battery, rape and smuggling.
Logan McKay had the dubious distinction of having single-handedly committed an entire list of crimes including operating a drug ring, consorting with the enemy and killing his captain.
How could she have been so wrong about him?
She recalled the first time she'd seen him being brought in on a stretcher. She had guessed he was well past forty, twice the age of most of the wounded she had attended. Also, his dark hair was barely trimmed around the ears and neck and left even longer on top instead of shaved off as most of the younger soldiers kept theirs.
The next thing she'd noticed were the scars—a wide one over his left brow that his hair probably covered most of the time, a straight, thin one on his jawbone which was almost hidden by the dark shadow of new beard growth, and several circular ones along his right shoulder and arm that she recognized as wounds caused by an automatic weapon. Now he would have another, much larger scar on the outside of his right thigh. When she learned he was only thirty-four, she'd deduced he was a career soldier or had had one hell of a tough life.
Even unconscious, he had looked hard, not just the body, which was formidable, but the man himself.
She had been checking on him when he first came to and what she'd seen in his eyes had totally belied his appearance. He had looked up at her with such open adoration and need, she'd been about to tell him that whatever he needed she'd be there for him, when he laughed. Grinning from ear to ear, his rugged face looked boyish and quite handsome as he enjoyed some private joke then nodded off again.
During her time on the front, she'd encountered plenty of soldiers with tough-guy exteriors and baby-soft centers. Usually it only took her a day or two to peel the crust away. Logan McKay, however, wasn't like those men at all.
His initial reactions to her had been baby-soft and he had seemed instantly enamored with her. Though other patients had developed temporary crushes while in her care, she had the feeling there was something different about Logan, something very special, and that there might be a chance for a true affection to develop between them. Her usually trustworthy intuition had assured her it would be safe to open her heart to him.
Circumstances prevented him from wining and dining her, but their time together had felt like a courtship nonetheless. Whenever he was awake during the first few days after surgery, she sat by his side and held his hand. They talked or she read to him, and by the end of the second week, they shared their first kiss. It was innocent and tender but held a promise of passion in the future.
Then he said the three words that let her know what a mistake she'd made. "I love you," he told her, much too soon to really mean it. True, it sounded more sincere coming from him than the hundreds of other patients who had said the same words to her, but she reasoned that was only because he was more mature.
Unfortunately, she had already let herself hope, desperately wanting to believe what he felt for her went deeper than the usual patient/nurse gratitude. So when she gave him her standard reply to professions of love from patients, she held onto the hope that his feelings for her would last beyond his release from the hospital.
Thus, it had hurt that much worse when his infatuation wore off so easily. Overnight his demeanor went from welcoming to totally closed off. The more effort she made to comfort him, the nastier he acted and the more lewd his comments became. He never gave an inch throughout the remaining time he was in the hospital, nor did he give an explanation for his change of heart other than "he had finally sobered up."
It was only recently, when she heard about the crimes he'd committed, that she understood that the gentle man she had fallen for had existed only because of the drugs that had temporarily altered his personality. He had never been the usual tough-guy with a soft center for her to uncover. The truth was, he was hard through and through... and she'd been a fool to believe otherwise.
Fortunately, she had discovered his truth before she told him her secret. Despite the friendships that had developed between her and some of the others on board, none of them knew the truth of who she really was, where she had come from or the fact that she had a completely separate, covert life.
* * *
Logan's toes were finally warm. Higgs was being kept occupied. His seat was a damn sight more comfortable than the ground or the cot in the brig. All conditions were perfect for him to catch some z's. Instead he was wrestling with old memories.
Why couldn't he let it go? Eight months had passed, most of which he'd spent in one nightmare after another, and still he was more haunted by images of Tarla Yan than anything else he'd run up against.
When he was being honest with himself however, he admitted that he didn't always resent the memories. In the last few months, whenever things got too tense and he thought he couldn't take another minute of the insanity around him, she would slip into his mind, and he would embrace her. Eventually, fantasies about her became his mental lifeline, though he never completely forgot that they were only fantasies. In reality, he knew he and Tarla Yan had always been, and always would be, of different worlds.
* * *
The plane took a sudden dip that almost made Tarla lose her balance. Private Higgs wasn't so surefooted. He and two cups of coffee landed in one poor soldier's lap.
"Sorry about that," the pilot said over the loudspeaker. "We've found the edge of that storm we heard about, so I'd recommend you stay belted in until we can get clear of it."
As Tarla and Higgs returned to their seats, the powerful air turbulence had the aircraft vibrating like an old washing machine with a lopsided load. Tarla frowned at the dark clouds churning outside the window next to her and prayed that the "edge" the pilot mentioned would be behind them soon. She'd never cared for air travel but what was going on outside was as foreign and frightening to her as the first time she heard bombs exploding outside the field hospital.
A moan of pain distracted her from her fears and she quickly sought the source. The sound had come from one of the young men who'd suffered severe chemical burns over most of his body. He would have massive scarring, but it was a miracle he had survived at all. He was heavily drugged and special padded straps had been used to hold him immobile on the stretcher which was bolted to t
he floor, but the turbulence was so strong, his body was still being shifted just enough to cause him excruciating pain.
Tarla unbuckled her belt and staggered to the injured soldier. Sitting on the floor next to him, she held onto the side of the stretcher and leaned close to his ear. "Willie? It's Tarla. I know it hurts, hon, but it will only be for a few minutes, and I'm going to stay right here with you the whole time. Okay?" She paused to softly touch his bandaged hand and his body seemed to relax ever so slightly.
"Did I ever tell you about the time my friend, Connie—you remember my talking about her, don't you? She was the one who always got me in trouble—well, anyway, she accepted a dare from these other girls for us to spend a whole night in a cemetery."
A streak of lightning flashed outside, instantly followed by an explosion of thunder that rocked the plane for several seconds. Tarla pressed her hand against her chest as if that might slow down her stampeding heartbeat.
It took no more than a slight head nod at one of her nurses to remind them of their duty. If there was one thing they had all learned on the battlefield, the comfort of the patients came before their own needs or fears. Tarla took a deep breath and forced herself to keep talking to Willie. She wasn't sure which one of them needed her fabricated story more, but it didn't matter.
A second explosion of light and sound seemed greater than the first and this time, the plane made another sudden drop in altitude as well. Voices raised throughout the cabin, some with worry, others in anger over the crew's ineptitude. She heard one man question why the pilot wasn't taking them above the storm if he couldn't get around it and she began wondering the same thing.
"I have to go check on something, Willie. I'll be right back, so don't you go wandering off anywhere."
Struggling against the vibrating and pitching of the plane, she made her way to the cockpit and yanked open the door. The frantic dialogue of the crew and the way the pilot was straining at the control wheel increased her anxiety. Pulling the door closed and bracing herself against its frame, she tried to guess what was going on without disturbing anyone.
LOGAN (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 5) Page 1
