Strike Force Page 5

  Her head throbbed, her body ached. She'd been in the water so long she never thought she'd be warm again. But she was warm now, though she felt disoriented, like she wasn't herself anymore.

  As she trudged onward down the narrow corridor, she began looking for a workspace. Surely, there were workspaces onboard the ship or just some place to access a computer.

  She needed information. She needed to know what others knew about what was happening.

  At the end of the hall, she paused, unsure which way to turn. The hallways in the Kearsarge were like labyrinths and she hadn't spent enough time memorizing the path to where she thought she needed to go next.

  She stood a moment and closed her eyes, exhaling as she tried to collect herself. Then she turned right without thinking anymore about it.

  She passed a porthole, saw that the sun had yet to set. Both were good signs. "I'm going to find Scott," she told herself.

  In her years working in security and as an operative, she'd performed all kinds of strange assignments. None though that she'd loved or dreaded as much as this one. Working in a moral gray area was commonplace for someone in her line of work, but she never thought the work would lead to this.

  The prospect of what was ahead, what would happen tomorrow, she dreaded in a way. She didn't want to know any more than she already knew and yet she wanted to know everything, even as she tried to remember everything that had happened so should could understand how things had gone so terribly wrong.

  In the new clothes, she felt transformed, never expecting them to be so formfitting or to complement her lithe figure so well.

  Suddenly realizing the absurdity of such thoughts at such a time, she almost laughed at herself.

  More irrational thoughts from an overexerted mind.

  What I need is rest, to sleep for a day or two.

  But she didn't have a day or two to sleep and she knew it. She tried to focus on the events of the day, to sort what was relevant from what wasn't.

  Coming to a t-intersection, she stopped.

  "Sit 1?" she asked a passing ensign.

  The ensign pointed.

  "Thanks," she replied, turning to follow the path he indicated.

  She recognized him immediately, but didn't say anything until he hung up the satellite phone. "Scott?" she said softly, her hand going to her pocket.

  His eyes lit up when he saw her. "You?" he said, waving an accusatory finger.

  She took her hand out of her pocket and rushed at him, running as fast as her legs would carry her. As she got closer, she reached out to grab him.

  When she grabbed onto him, she turned and twisted, almost as if they were a couple of bears going at it. He pressed his lips firmly against hers. "My God," he said, "I thought you were gone. I thought I'd never see you again."

  She returned the passion of his kisses, the fervor of his caresses. She put her hands to his cheeks, looked deep into his eyes. "I thought I'd lost you too. No one would tell me anything."

  "No one knows anything. They told me you were dead."

  Her eyes filled with dread. "Dead? You thought I was dead?"

  "It's what they told me. I didn't know. I was just trying to get back to you, to see for myself."

  She hadn't died, but she almost had. When she'd awoken and he wasn't there, she had been sure he was gone. Dead gone.

  Too afraid to even think about it, she'd pushed those thoughts out of her mind. She left the infirmary in search of answers. As the medical staff kept running between the infirmary and Sit 1, Sit 1 was where she tried to go.

  She kissed him again. Her lips, her tongue, her body, wanted him. Oh God, she told herself as she sighed. She wanted to feel. She wanted him to do her right now, right here up against the wall. She didn't care who saw, what anyone said or whether it was right or wrong. She wanted to feel everything about him, to know him as she had been so deathly afraid she never would get the chance to.

  She spun around, pulled him to her as she backed up against the wall. "Ohhh… Ohhh… Ohhh," she cried out, but this time it wasn't a pleasure-filled moan. It was pain--the pain of her wound as she backed up against the wall.

  The shooting pain in her shoulder brought her back to reality, almost as if a hypnotist had snapped his fingers and told her to wake up. She pushed him back, her hand on his chest. The feel of his beating heart beneath her fingers sent a shiver down her spine and all the way to her toes. "Oh, Scott, what am I doing? What have I done?"

  "Edie, you didn't do anything I didn't want," he said with a broad grin. "I was scared to death that I'd never be able to do that. Mad as hell at myself for not doing it the hundred times I could have. I love you."

  Three simple words she'd waited so long to hear. I could die now, she told herself before realizing how wrong such thoughts were and how even more wrong her actions were with all that was going on.

  Her thoughts swam, but a sudden sadness in his eyes brought her thoughts back to him. He looked absolutely crestfallen. What was wrong? Then she realized she hadn't said those three simple words back.

  "I love you," she said, wrapping her arms around him, even though it hurt like hell to do so.

  Stepping back from him, she nodded to the shoulder wound. "7.62mm through and through. Go me one better?"

  Chapter 17

  Mediterranean Sea

  Late Afternoon, Tuesday, 19 June

  Scott's heart was racing. It had taken everything he had to keep from giving Edie everything she wanted right there for all to see. But his devil-may-care attitude was fleeting.

  He knew better, every part of him knew better--even if every part of him wanted her as much as she wanted him. "You mean 5.56mm?"

  "No, 7.62mm. It's what the combat medic who stitched me up wrote in my charts."

  That didn't make sense. He closed his eyes, tried to bring back the images of the attack.

  He assumed she'd been hit when they were under water by a strafing pass of the .50 heavy guns as the SEALs tried to contain the escalating situation. That made sense because they were in the water and had jumped away from an incoming RPG, putting them on the opposite side of the Sea Shepherd and away from the attack.

  The Beretta ARX160 the SEALs carried had a .223 L.R. round that was just like 5.56mm NATO rounds. Wounds from the two were easily confused, but it was hard to confuse either for a wound from a 7.62mm round.

  There were AK-47s aboard the Sea Shepherd. AK-47s used 7.62mm cartridges but a hit from an AK-47 didn't make sense even if there were AK-47s onboard the fishing boats. AK-47s had an effective range of 300 to 400 meters and at best were wildly inaccurate even at short ranges. The AK-47s on the Shepherd were more scare away would-be attackers than to kill anyone.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Midshipman Tinsdale coming at him from down the hall. Before she could tell him something he didn't want to hear, he rushed back into the operations room, pulling Edie with him.

  Chapter 18

  Mediterranean Sea

  Early Evening, Tuesday, 19 June

  Scott was just coming back into the operations room with Edie when he saw a marine collecting pages from the printer. "Those are for me," he said. "I'm Scott Madison Evers. That's my picture you're looking at."

  The marine eyed Scott, continued collecting the printouts. Before Scott could intervene, the marine gave the printouts to the Operations Commander. The SEAL commander clearly didn't like what he saw. He made an angry sound in his throat and showed his teeth while he read. It was like the half-voiced snarl of an angry wolf.

  Behind the SEAL commander, a young navy lieutenant was giving a briefing about AWACS and EC recon. Mission crews aboard the aircraft were apparently active and processing in theatre communications and signals intelligence with AWACS performing its airborne warning and control duties while an RC-135 performed reconnaissance and an EC-130 gathered communications and signals intelligence in preparation to jam enemy signals. Four F-15C Eagles were providing combat air patrol (CAP) support while an airborn
e gas station, a KC-135, stayed back to refuel the fighters as needed. The official on-station time was still 18:30.

  Scott looked at his watch. The on-station time was 34 minutes away. He frowned as he started thinking, started using his extensive training in analysis and tactics. Nothing was adding up. If disinformation was being put out to counter any real information that got to the media, it meant there was likely an ongoing high-risk operation somewhere that the military didn't want compromised.

  But no one in the operations room was saying anything about any ongoing tactical missions. Everything was tenuous. Lots of planes were airborne, but like the strike group itself the planes were in defensive postures. Only the Checkerboards were out hunting, but so far the marine fighters had no actual targets.

  He asked himself what if the commanders suspected their operations and communications were compromised? What if the early morning attacks had been designed to lure the warships away from one place while another was being targeted? Where were the Mason and the San Jacinto originally deployed anyway?

  The Shepherd had been operating between Tunis and Tripoli, following the purse seiners as they followed the tuna schools. If the Mason and the San Jacinto had been under way since before noon, heading back to the strike group, they could have been as far as 300 miles away, given their top speed of about 30 knots. A starting point west of the current position meant the warships could have been somewhere near Algiers. A starting point to the east, meant somewhere near Benghazi.

  Scott looked over at the real-time tactical map of the Mediterranean Sea and studied the current location of friendlies. He asked himself about EC response. AWACS clearly had come from Naples. The RC-135, and perhaps the EC-130 too, would have come from Athens. The area from Algiers to Benghazi included half of Algeria, all of Tunisia, and most of Libya. And yet the strike group was coming together in open waters near the island republic of Malta.

  Something wasn't right--and surely everything was about to go terribly wrong.

  To the SEAL commander, he said, "I can guarantee you whoever you think did this didn't. Call off the strike response. Things are about to go pear-shaped."

  Learn more at

  www.robert-stanek.com