Christmas at Peleliu Cove Page 10

  The storm had built up from the southwest and overrun the Peleliu’s position. The problem was, they had to drive southwest to return to their ship—straight into the storm. Hard enough work for any boat, but brutally difficult in a craft that wasn’t supposed to actually touch the water.

  Her visibility was zero-zero despite the high-speed wipers, and her sense of up and down was going. The storm had thrashed the Mediterranean into sea state 4. The waves were running eight-plus feet already. She’d reduced speed, but it was still a battle.

  “So tell me what your plan is,” Sly told her.

  “Hand off the controls to you.”

  “Not much of a plan, Craftmaster. I have no better answers on this than you do.”

  She cursed under her breath. She’d really hoped that he did.

  “Tom, what’s the distance back to the carrier group?”

  “Farther than it is to the Peleliu. And at the rate they’re steaming east, you won’t catch them before fuel zero. So, unless you want to turn around an entire carrier strike group, you’ll need another solution.”

  Nika glared out at the darkness for a long moment, trying to twist the hovercraft sharply enough to take the next wave head on. Not having a keel made one approach to the big waves as bad as any other. There was a gut-wrenching slap as the impact sent them skidding sideways.

  She hit the radio, “USS Peleliu, this is LCAC-316. Over.”

  “Peleliu. Go ahead, 316.”

  “Request current sea state your position, predicted for next two hours, and how soon can you make max speed toward our position.”

  “316. Are you declaring an emergency?”

  “Not yet. Just get me the information and do it fast.”

  It was a long minute before the operator came back.

  “Sea state 6 our location. Predicted to remain at six to seven for the next seven hours. You are still two hundred miles out, eight hours at our best speed. Please be advised, that will not outrun the leading edge of the storm which will continue to build in your present position for another three hours.” She’d have whimpered, but that wasn’t what the commander of a Navy vessel did, especially in front of an Army soldier.

  “Chief,” she called over to Sly. “You’ve driven these a lot longer than I have. What are our chances fully loaded in twenty to thirty foot seas?”

  Nika didn’t need his one word response to know the answer to that one. And even if they could get through it, there would be no way to reboard the ship—entering the Well Deck was a dicey operation under the best of circumstances.

  “If we could get the MLP ship to turn back to the east,” Sly’s voice was hesitant over the intercom, “that would give us a good chance of reaching them. Of course we’d do better if we could lighten up by dumping this load.”

  “What? No! You can’t do—”

  “”Shut up, Lieutenant!” Nika snapped at Clint.

  It was the first time he’d spoken to her since the brief exchange about the M-ATVs. Clint was a tip-of-the-spear kind of guy. It suited him and she couldn’t imagine him as anything less. But his taking delivery of an armored ambulance with an M240 turret-mounted machine gun had been a wakeup call that she hadn’t been ready for.

  She didn’t like being scared for another’s life—she’d been done with that the day Keila killed herself. Shock, anger, and grief all in one jumbled blast—easier just to shut it out and be done with it. Nika needed time to think how she felt about caring again; how she felt about Clint. Now wasn’t it. She had a ship and a crew to save.

  Nika considered the suggestion. Three M-ATVs. Million and a half dollars. That would take a mess of paperwork to explain. Worse, the Loadmaster part of her couldn’t calculate how to do that without causing a temporarily unbalanced load that would drive the LCAC into the sea. Out the stern gate would be the only possibly survivable option, but she had positioned the supplies container at the very stern. She doubted whether the M-ATVs could move that, even if someone was crazy enough to try driving them in order to ram a container overboard without going overboard themselves.

  “Don’t think we can do that without heaving to…” Nika left the statement open.

  There was a long pause before Sly filled it in, “…which isn’t something I’d like to try in this weather.” It was possible to sink an LCAC. Allowing heavy seas to break aboard by stopping and settling onto the surface while unshipping a maximum load would be a very efficient way to achieve that.

  Which left them only one option.

  “Tom, what’s my nearest landfall?”

  “Libya.”

  “Try again.”

  “Seriously, Nika. That’s about the best I’ve got.”

  Nika wished she could take the time to glare over at him. Of course the cabin was dark and it was well past midnight in a growing storm, so there wouldn’t be much to see. She filed the glare away for later usage.

  “We’re out in the middle of the Med,” Tom continued. “Libya is about a hundred and fifty miles from our present position to the south and southeast, and we have two hundred miles of fuel in the tanks. It’s within range.”

  “Quartering across the headwind of a worsening storm for two to three hours in order to land on hostile shores,” Nika didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  Tom didn’t answer her back and she rather wished he would.

  Chapter 10

  Nika fought the controls of the bucking hovercraft like a champion, but Clint didn’t see how this was going to end up any way good. He kept looking down at his new vehicles and feeling eight kinds of a fool. Of course equipment was expendable in an emergency. And now that he was starting to understand the full extent of the emergency, Clint agreed that his own skin was more valuable than the M-ATVs.

  Having already earned Nika’s ire once, he hesitated before speaking. But he had an idea, so he went for it.

  “Worst case scenario, we could ask the Night Stalkers to come out and perform another SPIES extraction.”

  Nika’s long silence worried him. How thoroughly had he pissed her off?

  “That sounds little better than the Libyan coast,” thankfully her tone was thoughtful when she finally spoke. “I don’t want to lose any of it: the load or the hovercraft.”

  “Or our lives,” Tom’s attempt at cheer fell flat, which made Clint appreciate Tom a bit more because Clint had been about to say the same thing and was now glad he hadn’t.

  “What if…” he had another idea. Or the edge of one.

  “Spit it out, Army.”

  Clint looked out at the storm for several seconds before continuing. He was seeing a different scene than the storm-tossed ocean. He pictured instead that desert terrorist camp.

  “Lieutenant…” Nika’s patience was wearing thin.

  There it was. “Come from the unexpected direction! Turn around. What’s the nearest landfall if we run away from the storm?”

  There was a silence as Tom scrambled around on his electronic maps. The radar screen was covered by a wide tube facing Tom so that it could be used in bright sunlight. Clint leaned so that he could see parts of the screen past Tom’s helmet. He was scrolling far and wide.

  Not looking good.

  “Four hundred miles northwest to Malta.”

  “No good,” Clint answered. “Storm is out of the southwest and that’s broadside to it. We need to run roughly northeast. What’s the closest downwind?”

  “All I’ve got is Crete.”

  “Crete?” Nika sounded startled. “As in southern Greece? How far is that?”

  “Also four hundred miles,” Tom’s voice was a death knell. He’d already said that there was only fuel for two hundred miles. Even his typical volubility didn’t find that to be worth repeating.

  Clint shifted the last step of the way into soldier mode. No ship to fetch them, no land to be rea
ched, they were in it. Chances of the hovercraft going down were high. Now, just as it was in battle, it was a matter of survival. Calm. Panic had long since been trained out of him.

  He twisted around and looked out the window. He could just see the outline of the life raft container close behind the control station. There was another on the far side that Sly could get to without crossing the deck.

  Clint began mapping out the best routes for abandoning the ship in his head. Priority, make sure that the much lighter Petty Officer Maier wasn’t swept away by a rogue wave during the process. Even the spume that the wind was now ripping off the wave tops would be a hazard to her. Then—

  Nika slammed the controls over. Between one wave and the next—the broad side of the hovercraft sliding steeply up the face of a wave, then racing back into the trough—they were flying east.

  The ride—which had been doing its best to snap Clint’s neck with its whiplash impacts against each wave—smoothed out a little.

  “What the hell, Maier?” Tom shouted over the intercom. “We have less than half the fuel we need to reach Crete.”

  “What are my tailwinds?”

  “Not enough.”

  “Answer the god damn question, Trambley.” If Clint had thought there was heat in her voice when she’d told him to shut up, he’d been mistaken. That had just been Nika irritated. Now she was a Craftmaster and ready to eviscerate anyone being less than perfect. Curiously, he didn’t hear The Rage. She’d been right; when on duty she was a hundred percent under control.

  “Thirty knots. Gusts peaking at fifty.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Yo!” He responded before he even had time to process that she was calling on him. In the Craftmaster’s seat, Nika Maier had found a tone of command that he didn’t know she’d had.

  “How much fuel is in the M-ATVs?”

  “Full,” then he knew that wasn’t what she needed. “A hundred and twenty gallons combined, plus another thirty in the strap-on cans.”

  “That buys us ten more minutes of flight time. A dozen miles at our present speed.” He kept forgetting how like an airplane this craft was. It burned a thousand gallons per hour and made his contribution practically meaningless.

  “It’s diesel,” he reminded her. “Your engines will burn it, but they won’t like it.”

  “Okay. Hold that in reserve.”

  Turned east and downwind through the storm, they were now moving faster than the waves. Instead of being slapped by ramming into the steep, breaking side of the waves, they were rocketing off the backs of the waves as if they were ski jumps. Fully loaded, Maier was skittering a hundred and eighty tons through the air like a freestyle skier. He finally understood how she’d beat him at air hockey—she was just that damn good. As good as Colonel Gibson in her own way.

  He looked once more out at the vehicles, helpless to assist. That’s when he noticed that one of the chains had broken free on the medical M-ATV. If that shifted unduly, it could unbalance the whole craft.

  “Jerome,” Clint called over the headset. “Meet me on deck. Bring a fresh chain.” He popped loose his seatbelt and was reaching for the intercom cable to his helmet when he heard Nika’s voice.

  “You be damned careful out there, Clint.” It was the first time she’d actually used his name. Even in all of their lovemaking and conversation it was always Army this or soldier that. He took the change as a very positive sign to which he could only think of one appropriate response.

  “Hoo-ah!”

  He was a US Ranger after all.

  # # #

  Nika would have snorted with laughter if she wasn’t so scared for him. The irony was immense. She’d been worried about him being carried off some hypothetical battlefield by an EXM ambulance; now, if he wasn’t careful, he could be killed by one.

  The fear wrenched in her gut so deeply that it hurt and forced her to bend over the steering wheel as she struggled to get her breath back.

  Why?

  Was it so hard to imagine a world without him?

  She had eased back to the most efficient fuel-per-distance speed, but the waves were still up near the limit for the fully-loaded LCAC. She considered easing off further, to make the work on the deck safer, but if she did there wasn’t a chance of her fuel lasting.

  As it was, she was betting on the leading edge of the storm continuing to shove them east toward Crete almost as fast as she was driving. At a combined speed nearing a hundred miles an hour…she still wasn’t going to make it.

  “Peleliu. This is 316,” she called over the radio.

  “Go ahead 316.”

  “I need to talk to Chief Warrant Lola Maloney.”

  While she waited for them to track her down, Nika felt well and truly trapped. After hours of hectic driving, loading, and fighting the storm on the return journey, Nika now had nothing to do but continue to seek the smoothest path she could find and hope that Clint and Jerome survived their excursion out onto the deck.

  The image of Clint lying close above her, his eyes practically rolled back in his head as he gasped against the pleasure he took from her body, had occupied far too much of her thoughts.

  Two weeks. Tomorrow was two weeks…assuming they lived that long. Two weeks was good. It was fun. In two weeks with the few men she kept that long, the sex and the relationship were already becoming predictable. Within a week they’d shown everything they had to offer, by two weeks it had reached that steady state that was never going to go any higher no matter how long they were together.

  Two weeks with Clint Barstowe and it felt as if they hadn’t even reached the Flight Deck, never mind launched off the safety of the ship. If she spent three weeks with him, she’d never find her way back out.

  Done.

  They had to be done. It was the only way out.

  Her heart had survived this long by never again becoming attached to someone—the immense first blow had been losing her friend, more like her sister, and that had been one blow too many. If she did get attached to Clint, and then lost him, her heart would shatter. Better to float along as she always had.

  Petty Officer, someday Chief.

  LCAC Loadmaster, someday Craftmaster. Graduate to the SSC ship-to-shore connector when they got the LCAC replacement running.

  She’d never live up to Keila’s potential. Straight-A student. Navy ROTC. Officer-in-the-making.

  Nika was none of those and knew it the day she signed up, so she didn’t aspire to be more than she was. But she worked hard and did as well as she could. As Keila had been lowered into the cold ground of Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens, it was what Nika had promised her friend she would do. Work hard. That same day she’d also promised herself that she’d never again care so much about another person. To her mother, a promise was merely another weapon in her arsenal of guilt. In reaction, Nika had never broken a promise in her life.

  A rogue cross-wave rose out of the night. She risked a sharp twist of the LCAC. Better for her people on deck to stumble and fall from the unexpected motion than have a wave ram aboard and slam them into the bulwarks.

  She paid for it when one of the engines swallowed a gutful of seawater.

  “Number three out,” Dave Newcomb announced from close beside her. “Restarting.”

  She counted beats and used the rudders and blowers to compensate for the slowing rear pusher propeller on the starboard side.

  “Restart failed. Restarting,” Dave remained calm, working his engine controls. It was how they were all trained to be in any emergency.

  The hovercraft’s sideways slew across the waves was getting harder and harder to compensate for. She hit the switch for the ship’s PA, “Caution on deck. Imminent bow wave over gate.”

  Just as she’d anticipated, the hovercraft nosed hard into the next crossing wave and there was nothing she could do about it. A sheet
of green water curled high over the gate and crashed aboard.

  “Tom? We still have them?” He was seated against the window overlooking the deck.

  “Roger that. Three on deck.”

  “Pumps running well,” Dave reported as he continued working the engine.

  Three? Sly, of course.

  Odd that Sly hadn’t caught on to what was happening between her and Clint. He had now, though. She’d have to tell Sly to let it go…right after she told Clint they were done.

  She sighed. Neither conversation was going to go well.

  “Restart successful,” Dave slowly worked the engine back up to speed and fed her the power to straighten out the hovercraft.

  If only it was so easy with the men.

  # # #

  Clint was soaked to the bone. His flightsuit for the fast-rope landing he’d done an infinity ago was not a diver’s dry suit. It wasn’t a wet suit either, though he was certainly soaked enough for it to be.

  He, Jerome, and Sly had anchored each other in place and finally managed to replace the broken chain. Then Jerome had worked them around each vehicle until every chain was checked and tightened. Staggering like drunks due to the Tilt-A-Whirl motion of the hovercraft and the battering of the waves, the job had taken them over an hour. By then even Clint’s underwear was a squidgy mess from the cold seawater that had sloshed past his collar and run all down his back.

  He and Sly huddled around the heater in the portside cabin. Jerome had gone up to sit in the portside lookout, not that there was a damn thing for him to see and report—it was still pitch black and nasty out there. They’d worn headlamps that had done little to cut the night, but the full deck lights would have blinded Nika. As they’d fought the battle, he’d taken comfort from the occasional glimpses of her sitting steadfast at the controls.

  “So, Sly, this is what you guys do for entertainment? Maybe the Navy really is crazier than the Rangers.”

  “Keeps us out of trouble, Clint.”