He was staring at her, a warm smile of welcome curling around corners of his lips. Freshly shaven, spotlessly attired and rejuvenated by sleep, he looked like a different man.
She shoved through a throng of competing network reporters, snapping out a harsh, “no comment,” and made her way over to him. A phalanx of security guards kept the reporters at bay, but the cameras still tracked her, the hard spotlights blurring her vision.
“It all worked out, didn’t it?” she said.
Xerxes’s dark eyes burned into her. “It did. Thank you for your assistance.”
She brushed aside his gratitude. “It was Murphy who made the difference. He was the one who recognized the man as a member of Arkady’s staff. I was just along for the ride.”
Xerxes’s stare grew more intense. “Something more than that, I believe,” he murmured. He took a small step toward her. “But we have several matters left to resolve, don’t we?”
“Such as?”
“You know what I mean.”
And she did. Sure, he’d forced her to face the toughest ethical question she’d run across, had challenged her to take sides. In the end, she had, and there was no turning back from that fateful decision.
Could there be something more between them? She found herself hoping desperately that there could be. “Is there somewhere quietly could talk?” she asked. And maybe more than talk, one part of her mind suggested.
“Certainly.” His hand closed gently over her elbow. “Come with me.” The longing she heard in his voice set every nerve in her body aflame. She let him lead her toward a waiting staff car.
“Pamela!” One voice broke out over the fervor of reporters behind her. “Dammit, Pamela, listen to me.”
She turned to see Mike Johnson, the regional news desk supervisor, waving at her. There was a look of urgency on his face.
She turned to Xerxes and saw his face clouding over. “I’ll be back in just a second — I’ve got to see what he wants. He’s one of my bosses.” Not entirely true, and she could see that Xerxes realized that. Pamela Drake of ACN answered to damned few people, and Mike wasn’t one of them.
Still, as regional news desk supervisor, he knew what was going on. And if ACN HQ wanted to track her down, he’d be the person they’d send. “One second.” She summoned up her most convincing smile, pulled lightly away from his grasp, and headed toward the cordon of security guards that were holding him back.
“What is it? Make it quick, I’m due for some downtime,” she snapped.
“You may not want any — not with this going one.” He thrust a message form at her. “Chechnya and the Russians. It’s exploding again. And the chemical weapons thing — they’ve got proof this time. Maybe a thousand dead so far.”
Chechnya. She stared down at the message, not opening it. If she started reading it, she would have made her decision. She looked back at Xerxes. He was already in the car, door open, waiting for her.
“We can have you there in four hours,” Mike continued. “You’re the closest one — you could beat everyone else to the story.”
That went without saying, didn’t it? She was always first — always.
Still, she hesitated, utterly tempted by the possibility of life without broadcast news. Not without it, maybe, just not taking first place every time. This one would blow over, as they always did. Then there’d be another hot spot, another story. Would it hurt this once to sit it out?
She opened the message. The details were there. She looked up at Mike, her eyes gleaming, already planning on how she’d spin it. Mike started rattling off her itinerary, drawing her away from the crowd and toward a waiting ACN aircraft. He reached out and rested his hand on the spot that had so recently felt Xerxes touch.
Xerxes! She turned back to look at the staff car and saw it was already pulling away. A tidal wave of regret washed over her, replaced almost immediately by a mental list of resources she’d need, contacts, accommodations, the normal preparations for conducting a long siege in a foreign country.
“Bottled water, lots of it.” She started listing off her other requirements, including a request for her favorite cameraman, all the while staring at the car disappearing across the tarmac.
TWENTY
The Marine staff sergeant stood in front of the ragged formation, surveying the men and women lined up. Supposed to be the cream of the crop, they were, but you sure couldn’t tell it from the way they looked now. Long hair, ragged jeans, and smart-ass smirks on most of the faces. Talking, playing grab ass, checking out the chicks, all the normal things that a group of forty teenagers might do when they were strangers.
Mostly teenagers, he amended. Not all of them. Ten of them were coming from the Fleet or the Corps, maybe had some idea of what to expect. They’d have been through boot camp at least. Knew how to march. Must have done something right or they wouldn’t have earned one of the few slots at the Naval Academy reserved for fleet sailors and marines.
He’d check their records out first, try them out in some leadership positions and see how they shaped up. Not every enlisted man was cut out to be an officer — but then, not every college grad or senate nominee was, either. At least the priors knew what an officer did.
And there he was, the one he’d been looking for. Hanging back on the last rank, quietly at attention, watching everything without seeming to look at it directly. The staff sergeant let his eyes linger on the young sailor, wondering how much of what he’d heard was true. No matter — he’d find out soon enough for himself. But there was one thing this particular plebe was going to learn right off, and that was that Staff Sergeant Carter was his god for the next two weeks.
Smith felt the staff sergeant looking at him, but kept his eyes caged, staring straight ahead as though they were encased in iron bars. It was a lesson from boot camp that had come back immediately in the first moments that the Marine had barked at them.
He still couldn’t believe he was here. Not after… not after Greece. Just to have survived without being court-martialed, not losing a stripe, no punishment at all unless you counted the flack he’d had to take from some of the guys on the boat. Especially after they found out about Annapolis.
Admiral Magruder’s words came back to him. It was just before they shipped him off, maybe two weeks after everything had been resolved.
“You ask questions. That’s good. You’re not afraid to make a tough call. Also good. I’m going to make sure you know how to ask the right ones from now on — and how to live with the answers,” the admiral had said.
Annapolis.
“You got something on your mind, slimeball?” a voice shouted in his right ear. Smith barely repressed a flinch.
“No, Staff Sergeant Carter.”
“Then wipe that shit-eating grin off your face. Now, asshole.”
Smith’s inadequate attempt earned him five laps around the field. He loved every single one of them.
Glossary
0–3 level: The third deck above the main deck. Designations for decks above the main deck (also known as the damage control deck) begin with zero, e.g. 0–3. The zero is pronounced as “oh” in conversation. Decks below the main deck do not have the initial zero, and are numbered down from the main deck, e.g. deck 11 is below deck 3. Deck 0–7 is above deck 0–3.
1MC: The general announcing system on a ship or submarine. Every ship has many different interior communications systems, most of them linking parts of the ship for a specific purpose. Most
