yet formal. She’ll understand what that means. And have the Travel Section arrange transport and passports. Get Military Liaison to send out the appropriate messages for embarkation on board the USS Jefferson.”
Bird Dog was only half awake when he felt the unmistakable touch of a small female hand trail softly across the hard ridges of his gut, lightly tickle the thin band of dark hair that ran between his groin and his navel, and descend unerringly and relentlessly toward its objective. He groaned, stretched hard to release the sleep kinks in his shoulders and hips, and rolled over on his right side. Morning had never been one of his favorite times of the day, but over the past two months, Callie Lazure had been doing her best to change his mind.
“You’re awake?” a soft voice said in his ear. Her hand closed around him, tightened. He could feel his pulse pounding against her delicate skin. “Part of you is, at least.”
There was a warm, affectionate note in her voice.
Bird Dog groaned, threw one arm around her waist, and pulled her close. “The best part of me is.”
He moved his hips forward, and felt an answering surge of her hips.
“It’s not your mind I’m interested in, sweetheart.”
She shoved him slightly, rolling him back over on his back. A few seconds later she was astride him. “Just this.”
Bird Dog drove deep into her, marveling at the incredible hard wetness that engulfed him. The sensation was all-encompassing, literally driving every coherent thought from his head.
He reached up, caressed the outsides of her breasts with the palms of his hands, his thumb and forefinger tracing out the rock-hard nipples. Callie planted her hands on his chest and settled back, driving him even deeper into her.
Time dissolved into the rhythmic motion, minutes and hours now counted by the slow surge and beat of the motion between them. It seemed to take hours, weeks, for the steadily rhythmic rocking to pick up speed, accelerating until it drove him almost insane from the sheer relentlessness of it. He groaned, pulled her down to him so that her face was nestled against his, and exploded inside her. He heard her answering cries, soft and insistent, as she came herself.
As his sanity returned, and he began to be able to distinguish the contours of her body from his own, he had but one thought. God, he loved shore duty.
“I’ll be damned if I will,” Tombstone said, his voice cold level menace. “Not on this operation.”
“You’ve got no choice, Stoney,” his uncle said quietly. “Neither do I.”
The call from the State Department had come just minutes after his nephew had left the CNO’s office, and had carried with it an ominous feeling like the first clouds on a storm front. JCS had approved replacing the current Sixth Fleet commander with Admiral Matthew Magruder, but it had added a complicating factor to the entire strategic scenario. Given the delicate longstanding relationship between Turkey and the United States, the president was insisting that the answer to this potentially explosive conflict be thought of in the broader spectrum?as an entire political and national response rather than purely a military one. As a result, the USS Jefferson would be entering the operating area carrying a senior State Department official, a supposed expert in the area.
There wasn’t a damned thing about this the CNO liked, and he couldn’t blame his nephew for sharing his opinions. After all, wasn’t that why he was sending Stoney?
To have someone whose judgment so mirrored his own on scene?
But the higher you got in rank, he reflected, the tougher the answers got. There were political trade-offs, power plays and rice bowls, not the least of those was in Central Asia. It was already evident that the State Department would play a role in this mission. Hell, the JCS had been unwilling to discuss potential targeting scenarios without consulting with the limp dicks over in State. It had even indicated that if the Navy couldn’t work with the rest of the U.S. government, they’d put the Air Force in charge of the operation.
The Air Force. The CNO snorted. Not on my watch.
“He’s going with you,” the CNO said flatly. “Get used to it, Admiral. We pay you to act like a guy wearing two stars, not like some hotshot fighter pilot.”
He hated the words the moment they left his mouth.
Stoney seemed to withdraw into himself, a trait the CNO had noticed all too often in the last several years. He sighed, wishing life had dealt Stoney a better hand. To lose his father so young, especially when the full details of his father’s mission had never been made public?damn, it had to affect the man, no matter that he had a father- figure substitute in the form of an older uncle who loved him dearly.
“Yes, Admiral,” Tombstone said finally. He shot his uncle an accusing look. “You’ll get my best efforts, sir. Have no doubt about that. If there’s one thing I understand, it’s the concept of taking orders.”
“Stoney, I-“
The CNO broke off. What could he say now that would bridge this gap between uncle and nephew, that could soften the iron dictates of duty that bound them both?
Nothing, he realized. In circumstances such as these, duty superseded all blood relationships. And as much as he disliked it, the admiral had his orders. “Good luck,” the CNO said finally, wishing desperately there was some way to break through the new wall he felt between himself and the younger admiral. “Not that you’ll need it.”
Tombstone stared at his uncle for a moment, and his glare finally softened into something that held twinges of regret. “If we have to depend on luck, Uncle Thomas, we’re in a world of shit. Who am I taking anyway?”
“His name is Bradley Tiltfelt,” the admiral said, relieved to be back on less treacherous ground than the emotional health of a family. “I don’t know much about him?he’s a political appointee. They all are,” he added with some degree of bitterness. It was one of the trends that had bothered him most, especially seeing it in his own service. Appointing those who were politically correct and in favor after years of D.C. tours instead of true, operationally hardened warriors with extensive time at sea. Luckily, his nephew was an exception to that trend.
“Well.”
Tombstone seemed at a loss for words. Suddenly, without warning, he thrust out his hand at the man standing across the desk from him. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
The CNO surprised himself by walking around the desk, taking the hand, and drawing his nephew in toward him for a brief, hard embrace. “Take care of yourself, Stoney.”
Bleating goats competed with the sharp staccato of automobile horns to drown out the continual underlying roar of crowds and machinery that was a constant background in Istanbul. The ancient city crowded down to the water, fronting on the Bosphorus Strait. From the earliest times, it had provided a demarcation between Eastern and Western worlds, cosmopolitan and tolerant of almost every culture and religion.
Pamela Drake, combat reporter for the prestigious ACN news network, studied the crowds flowing and eddying around her. Usually, she could pick up vital country details from her studies of the crowds, details that lent her reports an air of authenticity that few others could rival. It was almost a sixth sense, one anchor had once commented, the ability to be on scene at the most godforsaken and remote areas of the world just as all hell was breaking loose. It was also the reason her salary had edged up steadily toward the seven-figure mark, making her the highest-paid foreign correspondent at any network.
Istanbul was hardly a backwater, however. As the world grew increasingly smaller, major metropolitan centers started to look more and more alike, she thought, studying the cars streaming down streets originally built for goat herds. The past slowly faded out, replaced by electrons and tarmac and concrete. Yet for all the modern progress it had made, Istanbul had managed to retain the flavor of an exotic, foreign port.
The crowds today were quiet, and felt puzzled and frightened. She couldn’t quantify it exactly?it was less a data-point than a personal observation born of long experience in combat theaters. And Lord knows she had experience?from the Arctic to the South China Sea and all points in between, she’d chased the vagaries of geopolitical eruptions across the globe.
