Christmas at Peleliu Cove Read online

  “Make ‘er ready,” Sly’s call echoed down the ramp before he made the last turn into view at the head of the Well Deck. It was the same words he used to start every live mission. A training exercise started, “Let’s go prove we still know how.”

  “Way ahead of you, Chief,” Nika replied as he swung into view at a quick stride. Then she couldn’t resist, “Had it all inspected and prepped before any of these jokers even showed up.”

  “What?” Tom exclaimed and Dave just looked bummed. Jerome nodded as if to say, “Of course you did.”

  She heard the distant sound of several small engines coughing to life up in the garages and her pulse picked up its pace. “What kind of heat are we packing tonight?” She and Jerome had to make sure that any vehicles were positioned so that the LCAC’s loading was properly balanced and she’d fly true.

  “Lots of little heat, Petty Officer Maier,” a deep voice wrapped in a soft Southern deeper and richer than Sly’s called out from the head of the loading ramp. “Fast and dirty heat. And a pair of RSOVs just in case.” Ranger Spec Ops Vehicles—they absolutely confirmed there was action tonight.

  Nika glanced up the ramp to see Lieutenant Clint Barstowe arrive close behind Sly. The commander of the 75th Rangers platoon was a big man, and loaded for bear. Combat uniform, armored vest, and enough magazines for his rifle to take out an entire platoon of bad guys himself. He looked incredible. Not overly handsome, just damned good looking. Strong shoulders on a powerful frame. But mostly he radiated power—dark and dangerous. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to meet him in a trashy alley; even in broad daylight you’d best pray he was on your side.

  His helmet was snagged on his belt, hooked over the butt of his knife. His service piece holstered on the other hip and a rifle over his shoulder.

  Then he totally spoiled the pretty picture by wearing a red Santa hat complete with white fur trim and pom-pom perched atop his Ranger-short black hair.

  # # #

  “Need to grow a white beard if you’re planning to live up to that hat, Lieutenant. Besides, you’re a little early there. And aren’t you from Arkansas? Do they even have Christmas that far south?”

  Clint grinned at the heckler in surprise. Maier was always teasing people, but it was the first time she’d aimed a jibe at him in the eighteen months he’d been aboard.

  “You snickering at my festive fedora, Petty Officer Nika Maier? Thanksgiving is a week gone; it’s December now. Where’s your Christmas spirit, Petty Officer?”

  “I’m Jewish, Lieutenant. And we’re in the Southern Mediterranean where it’s seventy-eight Fahrenheit.”

  “And you’re using that as an excuse not to be merry?”

  “As I said, sir, Jewish. Against our religion to be merry because we don’t need an excuse to feel someone is out to get us—we already know they are. Besides, that’s not a fedora without a brim and an indented crown.” She picked up a three-foot steel pry bar used for tightening the vehicle tie-down chains and waved it at him, revealing a surprising strength in her slender frame. “Be glad to fix the latter problem for you,” her cheerful tone completely belied her prior declaration regarding merriness.

  “And you never had a Christmas tree? I can only pity the poor, neglected child.”

  “Might have had a Hanukkah bush, sir. Might have had pretty lights on it. Maybe even presents that were opened on December 25th. But I promise, I wasn’t merry about it.”

  Damn but he liked her. Nika Maier had sass and a slow smile that was hard to tease out, but it was definitely worth the effort. And she always gave a hundred percent just like a Ranger and it was easy to respect that, even if she was a Navy swabbie. More Navy swabbies looked like her and he just might change branches of the service.

  “My beard comes in as black as my hair, ma’am. Black as my mama’s.” Lena Barstowe was still acclaimed as a beautiful woman even in her fifties. And able to stare down the entire board of the Little Rock hospital she ran if she didn’t like one of their decisions.

  “A mama’s boy. I should have known.”

  “Not the way you mean it, but yes. Hundred percent! Hoo-ah!” She come up the hard way, nurse to senior administrator—doing a whole lot to respect. Raising he and his little sister on her own, she’d been both warm and strict. And he’d do anything to protect them both.

  “So you’re a lump of coal Santa. Wouldn’t want to find you in my stocking; could ruin a whole Hanukkah Bush day. And Ma’am? Do I look like a ma’am?”

  Nika Maier looked like a lot of good things he wouldn’t mind finding in stockings and a Ms. Claus mini-dress—an image he decided to keep to himself, especially because she hadn’t set aside that steel bar yet. Clint went for a different conversation though the image didn’t exactly fade away.

  “Can’t say I much like sleighs either. Especially y’alls air cart,” he did his best to make the last a dismissive sneer, as beneath a gentleman soldier of Little Rock.

  Maier brandished her pry bar again, proving the correctness of his earlier decision on keeping certain things to himself. “You take that back, Army. Nobody insults our little girl 316 and gets away with it.”

  Clint heard the first engine idling down the ramp behind him and used it as an excuse to shift aside out of the main line of Maier’s fire, raising his hands in mock defeat. Even idling, the engines rang about the space loudly enough for him to pull on a set of heavy earmuffs. The big fans to clear the exhaust fumes out of the ship had also roared to life, making conversation impossible. Claiming the final word—or at least gesture—Maier offered a final wave of her weapon before moving to load the craft.

  Lamar and Jeffries backed the two RSOVs down the Well Deck’s ramp and up the LCAC’s. The Ranger Special Operations Vehicles were Land Rovers on steroids. Like the old Korean and Vietnam War Jeeps, they had no doors to delay exit or attack. They carried seven Rangers, mounted a pair of heavy machine guns—an M240 and an M2—and were nearly indestructible. Everything a growing boy wanted when riding into a shit storm.

  Nika guided them into position without a single miscue. She’d already been a fixture when he pulled his first mission launching from the Peleliu. Just watching her had done a lot to shift his thinking about women in the military. She was five-six, just a slip of a thing with shaggy brunette hair that tended to ruffle in the slightest breeze. Half of the time she looked as if she should be teaching besotted kindergarteners.

  Instead, she was completely at home in a heavy-duty war machine like the hovercraft. The other half of the time she reminded him of Natalie Portman in that V for Vendetta movie. He’d have to watch that again—he’d thought the movie merely okay the first time, but imagining Nika Maier in the lead role, especially after the heroine became a kickass warrior for truth and justice, might enhance his opinion a few hundred-fold.

  After Nika and the silent Jerome chained down the RSOVs so that they wouldn’t shift during transport, other Rangers began rolling down the ship’s ramp and boarding the LCAC. Six on dirt bikes and four driving four-man MRZRs—rugged-ass all-terrain vehicles with a roll-cage and a swivel mounted M2 Browning on the passenger side. They were smaller and lighter, but just as tough as their RSOV big brothers.

  “C’mon, you elves. Get aboard and get ‘em pinned down. We’re gonna hafta be waiting on the Navy as it is. Don’t give them an excuse to be even slower.”

  He’d kept a weather eye on Maier who flicked a finger in his direction. At his laugh she called out.

  “We been waiting on your sorry behinds half an hour, Lieutenant. ‘Rangers Lead the Way’ like hell.” She didn’t even break stride to insult him. Didn’t quite offer that hot smile, but he could see her fighting it. Damn woman was a hoot.

  Women usually didn’t make him laugh much. His ex-wife sure as hell hadn’t when she’d bailed after only two years. She’d vacuum cleaned his bank account on her way into the arms of a used car dealer
while Clint had been overseas. She and Mr. Used Car had kept bleeding his Army pay out of the joint account for six months while he’d been in Afghanistan. The Bitch—only way he ever thought of her now—had thought that bleeding him until the last second was a better option than Dear John-ing him while Al-Qaeda had been trying to bleed him for real.

  Of course his service brothers had gotten wind of it. Without his knowledge, one had cancelled Mr. Car’s insurance policy. The rest of the squad had leveled the parking lot; seventy-eight cars good for nothing but the crusher. They’d looped the security cameras so that there were no gaps and no evidence. Never fuck with a Ranger.

  He’d reamed them good about taking such actions, risking their careers that way, and wanted to thank every man Jack of them. They understood loyalty even if women didn’t. As a bonus, after Mr. Car’s inexplicable loss, the Bitch had dumped his ass and would have cleaned out his account too if his brothers hadn’t already seen to that for both of them.

  His team had offered to replace all the money she’d taken but he didn’t want a single cent—it felt soiled by her. So, they’d donated the whole lump into the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. A lot of kids who’d lost their Spec Ops dads had gone to college in Mr. Car’s name. Two years of Clint’s income was gone, but it was helping kids, which reduced the sting. By pure dumb luck he’d never gotten around to adding her name to the retirement account that held the bulk of his savings, or she’d have stripped that too.

  Nika Maier walked across his field of view on her way to double-check one of the tie-downs.

  Shit! How had he gotten off into that ugly headspace again? He’d thought he was done with that. Bitch was gone and no other woman was coming in close ever again except for sport. Wouldn’t mind sporting with Maier a bit, except she didn’t strike him as that sort of woman. Too bad. Damn it! Still thinking dead-end shit.

  “Move your asses!” Clint roared at the last of the Rangers jogging down the ramp as if it was their fault. He tried to soften it, “Time to bring a little Christmas cheer to the heathens.”

  He considered tonight’s mission. Yeah, one terrorist camp going down extra hard. He definitely needed a little of that kind of rock ‘n’ roll right now.

  “We will!...” He shouted out over the heads of the boarding troops.

  “We will!…” He repeated the call.

  “Wreck you!” Thirty US Rangers roared with a double-stomp of their boots on the LCAC’s hard steel deck followed by a unison-shouted “Hoo-ah!” in place of the handclap of the altered Queen song. They picked it up as a double-time marching cadence.

  “We will…we will…Wreck you!” Half of them singing.

  The Well Deck roared with the echoes. They matched their beat to the echo’s, making it all the louder.

  Stomp! Stomp! “Hoo-ah!” Half keeping the chant.

  Damn but he loved these guys.

  Chapter 2

  Nika’s ears were still ringing from the Rangers’ boarding song. Even though they were now tucked away below in their soundproofed cabins and she was up in her tower, it still seemed to reverberate from the craft’s steel hull itself.

  Dave had fired off the LCAC’s four big Vericor gas turbine engines. Inside the Well Deck the roar was deafening. And that was despite her full helmet and own sound-insulated tower cabin. With her acknowledgement that they looked good from her vantage point, Dave raised the ramps and inflated the skirt.

  In an instant the cavernous Well Deck disappeared behind a solid fog of spray. The high-speed windshield wipers had little effect. The deck hadn’t been flooded, which it could do for hulled sea craft, but the big fans beneath the LCAC found every bit of stray water and atomized it.

  As Craftmaster, Sly lifted them six inches off the deck and eased them backward toward the now open stern gate of the Peleliu.

  With a visceral shock they emerged from the brightly-lit interior of the Well Deck out onto the pitch black of the open ocean.

  She pulled down her night-vision goggles and her view reemerged as soon as the spray could blow sideways. She had an unimpeded three-sixty vista. To her right, in the control station on the other front corner of the LCAC sat Dave and Tom with Sly at the outside. Jerome was below, ready to tackle any emergency. At the stern, beyond the chained-down vehicles, were the two massive driving fans. Off the port side was the faintest hint of the Tunisian coast, little more than a green glimmer of heat in the far distance.

  Sly spun them clear from the Peleliu with the smooth twist of a dancer’s pirouette.

  Another of her mother’s dreams, her daughter the ballerina dancing at Rockefeller Center. And yet another “disappointment to the family” as Nika never even made it to the lead in the recital at Mrs. Mandelbaum’s Dance Studio. Nor the assistant lead. If Mom had let her take a martial art, there might have been something to see, but Nika had to wait for the Navy to learn anything useful like hand-to-hand combat. Still hadn’t gotten a chance to study Kung Fu or Taekwondo, but they were on her to-do list.

  In moments, the massive wall of the Peleliu’s looming hull passed astern.

  “Planning to tell us anytime soon what we’re doing tonight, Chief?” Nika called over the intercom. “I’m guessing we’re not just joyriding thirty of the Army’s finest out for a sightseeing cruise along the Tunisian beaches.”

  “You asking me for a mission brief, Maier? What happened to trust? And faith in your commander?”

  “You’ve been hanging out with Lieutenant Barstowe too much, Chief.” Not a surprise. Clint Barstowe had stood as best man at Sly’s wedding, with Delta Force Colonel Michael Gibson as his second. She hadn’t really been thinking about it at the time, but the Lieutenant had looked damned fine in his dress blues. “He gives you an inflated sense of self worth.”

  “Hey, I’m busy driving here.”

  “Glad to show you how that’s supposed to be done at any time, Chief.” And boy oh boy would she. She’d gone through Craftmaster training and Nika flew every chance Sly afforded her. But he was still the LCAC’s Craftmaster and the Peleliu only carried the one. The Navy had offered her an LCAC on another ship, but she’d turned them down cold before she could even think about it. She wanted to fly, but she wanted to stay with this crew and this ship even more.

  The hovercraft was the perfect mix between watercraft and aircraft—three feet up and able to move like a bat out of hell. Handling was also as dicey as an aircraft that was permanently caught in that instant just after takeoff or seconds before landing with no long break of “cruise at altitude” perks included.

  “I’m with Maier on this one, Sly,” Clint Barstowe’s voice sounded from the passenger cabin below. “After all, she called us the Army’s finest.”

  She’d forgotten that the Ranger commander would be on the intercom system to monitor operations. Normally he was dead silent, but he was always on the system somewhere, following status reports until it was time to rush the beach.

  “You misheard, Lieutenant. Must have been some noise on the line. Aren’t the Rangers known as the military’s laziest far and wide?”

  “Only if you don’t count the Navy, Maier. Besides, Sly,” he continued, “she’s way prettier than you are.”

  The bitter taste of remembered rage welled up in her throat and lashed out before she could stop it.

  “Go to hell, Lieutenant! How I got here has shit to do with how I look.” The fire wrenched in her gut, but she should never have let it loose like that. Her mother’s “But you’re so pretty, dear” answer to every one of Nika’s aspirations and failures. Especially the failures to marry. The age when Jewish daughters sold themselves to successful doctors with “pretty” as their main attribute was generations gone…and everyone except Mom knew that. The final fight had been over her signing up for the Navy, “But why would a girl as pretty as you do that? It will ruin your looks and then no one will ever want to marry you.�
�

  There was an uncomfortable silence on the intercom.

  “Sorry,” the Lieutenant said it softly, sounding far more contrite than should be possible for six feet of US Ranger.

  She tried to answer that it didn’t matter, but it did and she’d sworn off lying-to-appease long ago. Instead she kept her silence. No one made a sound until Nika thought the storm of the LCAC’s engine roar was going to break over her like a tidal wave.

  Sly finally broke the silence—as if there hadn’t been any. Yet another reason she appreciated her boss. “Peleliu is fifty miles offshore Tunisia. We’re going to slide in on coastal waters with the government’s permission for a training exercise. We’ll be taking the C203 highway inland. Fifty kilometers south we’ll disappear out of Tunisian territory.”

  “That’s…” Nika tried to picture the maps of the area. “That’s central nowhere. Are there even roads?” She knew it was a mistake as soon as she said it.

  “Roads?” Sly asked, imitating the mad Doc Brown in his favorite movie, Back to the Future. “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!”—the only line he ever quoted.

  “Let me guess, there aren’t any.”

  Barstowe chuckled—had to be him, she’d recognize anyone else’s—but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Yeah, that she’d have to apologize for. It did matter, but she shouldn’t have tromped on him.

  “Only at the outset,” Sly admitted cheerfully. “The C203 is a dirt and gravel highway that slides right down the Tunisia-Libya border. That gets us part way. There’s a terrorist camp in the Libyan desert that will never expect an attack from the deep desert to their south.”

  As long as there were no surprise obstacles over three feet tall, theirs was about the only US military craft that could cross the terrain. A tank could, but only with four people and at forty miles an hour, not nearly eighty with a full load like the hovercraft.