She was sorely tempted by the lobster cocktail. “No— I’m—” She yawned. “I’m fine.”
“Fine! You’re beautiful. If you’d have me back, babe, I’d—” He fell silent. She’d speared the olive with the swizzle stick and he watched her take it to her mouth, leaning forward, her breasts the more tantalizing for being hidden in the uniform, the uniform that carried with it the suggestion of regulations, conformity — the very things that excited him to violate. “God but you’re beautiful. Now don’t get mad. Just a compliment.”
“I’m not mad,” she said, taking another sip then sitting back against the plush padded wall of the booth. She looked around. It was the first time she’d been to the Davy Jones Restaurant. “It’s not as bad as I thought,” she said.
“Huh — oh. Thought you’d been here before?”
“No. Just heard of it. Navy lieutenants can’t afford eating out. Not in restaurants anyway.”
“Then have dinner. Come on, relax. I’m not trying to hit on you. You believe that?”
“I don’t know anything about you,” she said, her finger trailing the edge of the glass. “I thought I did once but I don’t.” She took another sip.
“You think I’m an animal,” he said.
“Not all the time.” She looked around the restaurant. “When are those papers coming?”
“Any minute.”
Before she could ask him any more questions about the papers he rambled on, “Told them to take them up to my room, but I can see now there’s no way you’d come up to sign them.”
Lana’s smile was a worldly one — a world away from the shy virgin that Jay had married and debased until she’d fought her way back to self-respect. Her look now told him, “Come on, Jay — you take me for a fool?”
“So,” he said. “I’ll get someone over here from the Excelsior. If you don’t mind a lawyer sitting in.”
“Why should I?” She took another sip, visibly more relaxed and feeling more in control of the situation.
“Okay,” he said, lifting his drink. “To a civil parting of the ways. No hard feelings.”
She sighed, and he saw her eyes going out of focus.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” She yawned. “Why-?”
“I dunno — you don’t look so good. I told you, they work you too hard at that—”
The thud of her head knocked over the glasses, and Jay was by her side in two seconds. “Hey, babe—”
The barman came over. “Is there anything wrong, Mr. La Roche?”
“No,” Jay said sarcastically. “She’s fine. Loves crashing on tables.”
“Should I call a doctor?”
“No — she’s got low blood pressure. Happens all the time. She’ll be right in a few minutes.”
A man appeared from one of the booths, looking concerned, coming over to see if he could help. Jay was lifting her up, putting her over his shoulder. “Better send dinner up to the room,” he told the maitre d’-cum- manager.
“Certainly, sir. Should I ring a doctor?”
“No, I told you it’s just a bit of low blood pressure. She’ll be right as rain in a little while. You could give us a hand up on the elevator.”
“Of course,” the maitre d’ said. “Marge, you clean up the table.”
“Yes, sir.”
Up in Jay’s room the manager was still fussing.
“She’ll be fine,” Jay told him for the third time in as many minutes. “But listen, maybe you should hold off on the meal. I’ll call down when we’re ready.”
“Yes, Mr. La Roche. Of course. Anything…”
Not long after the manager had gone, Jay heard the phone ring. It was his lawyer downstairs who had been sitting a few booths away.
“Everything okay?” Jay asked.
“No problems, Mr. La Roche. They cleaned up the booth real nice.”
“You switch her glass with mine?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. La Roche. Be through the washing machine in a few minutes anyway.”
“Fine. Now I don’t want any interruptions for at least half an hour. I’ll call down when I want you. When I call, get your ass up here quick. I want you here when she wakes up. Right?”
“Of course, Mr. La Roche.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
When they returned to the dune overlooking the shot-up trailer there was an eerie silence due to the wind having dropped considerably in the last quarter hour. They found a clump of land lines leading into the reforested area and heard voices coming from the direction of the willows.
Aussie estimated there were about six ChiComs, and that was the number he tapped out on Brentwood’s sleeve. The SAS/D withdrew a hundred yards back up the dune, and Brentwood had his night-vision binoculars resting on the crest. For five long minutes he watched as the ChiCom patrol emerged and walked around the trailer, assessing the damage but careful not to go too near the mine field. Even when Chinese whispered it seemed to be at about thirty decibels. The SAS/D group by instinct and training knew what to do — follow the patrol back from whence it came. Brentwood took the point.
Aussie, holding back for minute, taking the tail end position, gave himself a jab of morphine. It wouldn’t last long, but hopefully long enough.
As the Chinese returned to the forest, the SAS following them — the infrared footprints an easy pickup with the SAS’s night-vision goggles — not a word was said. From here on in through the willow trees and if necessary deeper into the poplar, not a sound would be made, everything done by feel and by a touch code very much like that used by me SEALs when they too went “in-country.”
Brentwood, following the fiber-optic line, was sure of only one thing, and that was that for ease of repair, should a break appear in the line, the ChiComs would not have mined the area either side of the land line, as it ran parallel to a line of poplars deeper into the man-planted forest, the ChiCom patrol, by Aussie’s reckoning, no more than five minutes in front of them.
The four SAS/D men did not rush but used their weapons as one would use a stick to sweep either side of the fiberoptic line to make sure there were no trip wires from ankle to neck height. Had it not been for the infrared goggles that the SAS/D were equipped with, the ChiComs would have vanished from view, but the residual body heat of the six-man ChiCom patrol was visible — at least for a while — and then, suddenly, all trace of them, infrared or otherwise, was gone.
Brentwood took out his K-bar knife and soon, joined by the other three, was probing the ground for any unnatural seam that would be formed by a trapdoor or tunnel entrance, concentrating on the area where the optic line ended and suddenly plunged underground. That the radar management center was immediately below them they had no doubt, but where the trapdoor was they still couldn’t tell, until by virtue of moonlight that had penetrated the dust beyond the great tank battle, Salvini was able to spot a rather jerky infrared camera ten feet up the poplar as a squiggle in his infrared goggles, the heat caused by the friction of the camera moving so often.
The Chinese officer of the day, his red armband signifying that he was in charge of the first night watch, was watching the four SAS men on the video feed from each of the four poplar-mounted cameras. He saw the six-man patrol come in and asked them, “Were you followed?”
“No,” the NCO replied confidently. “Not a sound.”
With that the officer of the day nodded to the video screen, the heat lines of the four SAS commandos plainly visible on the closed circuit.
Immediately the NCO apologized and offered to take his patrol back up — take care of them right now.
“Oh yes,” the OOD said, “and what will they be doing in the meantime? You go up the steps, open the
