Christmas at Steel Beach Read online

  Tanker reached for the ketchup and she slapped his hand.

  The meal was a merry one.

  # # #

  With the smaller crew aboard Peleliu there was a lot of job overlap. Sly had always enjoyed that aspect of the shipboard life. If you wanted to stretch yourself, there were plenty of opportunities. He’d been cross-trained on dozens of aspects of operations. Over the years he’d worked gunnery control, stood watch, and was a fair hand in engineering spaces. And they all trained in fire suppression.

  But ship’s stores was one he wished he hadn’t been trained in. A couple of the non-stealth SOAR helicopters were working back and forth between the supply ship and the Peleliu. They were flying so fast that the massive pallets of supplies, each wrapped in its own cargo net, were building up faster than he and his team could move them with their forklifts.

  The supply ship floated only thirty meters away. A fuel hose had been run across on a wire, and diesel was pouring through it for the ship and the Rangers’ few vehicles. Another line delivered Jet A for the helicopters and his LCAC.

  Machinery, personnel and supplies were moving around so fast that mayhem was a far nearer state than order. At moments like this he kept waiting for someone to pick up a load and back up right off the side of the ship; and he was always afraid it was going to be him. For some idiot reason, it wasn’t the fifteen meters of freefall that worried him; it was the looking stupid.

  And the fear tripled the moment he spotted Gail Miller up on deck.

  He zipped over to her in his forklift.

  “Hi Chief. That was some fine breakfast you made.”

  She shaded her eyes against the setting sun to look at him. “Breakfast at sunset. I’m still not used to that.”

  “We switched over six months ago and I’m not either.”

  That earned him a smile. Better than she’d offered when they returned this morning, but still not her usual dazzler.

  “Whoops!” he spotted another bird leaving the supply ship. “Must run.”

  “Be careful with my dry goods!”

  “You promise to make more meals like that one, Chief, and I can guarantee it.”

  “I’m just getting started.”

  Sly didn’t ask the next question, Were they “over” before they’d really gotten started?

  He drove off before she’d be able to see the question on his face in the shadowy light.

  # # #

  Gail hadn’t expected to see Sly when she’d come up on deck for some fresh air. She’d actually been thinking of getting as far away from him as possible.

  His hovercraft was parked six decks below. It lay at the water level and here she stood looking up at the sunset sky.

  So, of course, he was here.

  And of course he had hurried over, spotting her the very second she’d stepped onto the Flight Deck. Couldn’t the man be some oblivious jerk who bedded a woman and moved on, looking awkwardly aside ever after.

  No.

  Instead he’d proven himself considerate, funny, and had carefully driven away the moment the dark shadows of doubt crossed over his features.

  She wanted to retreat back to the steel safety of her galley. Pull on the white cloak and hat of “chef” and disappear back into her own cocoon of familiarity. But that would be the coward’s way—a path she could never follow once she recognized it.

  Instead, she threaded a path through the stacks of un-netted pallets of supplies. One box said Library. A pile of mailbags were strapped to another. A long pair of boxes, each less than a meter high and wide, and almost a dozen long was labeled “MH-60M rotor blades” for one of the Black Hawk helicopters.

  Her supplies were being stacked on the bomb elevator and were headed down to the big coolers, freezers, and storage areas on Fourth Deck. Machinery was being loaded onto the aircraft elevator for a ride down to the Hangar Deck. Each parcel would be in its place inside the hour. Or if mis-stowed, forever lost in the labyrinthine ship.

  Like one Chief Steward Gail Miller.

  Why in the world was she on a Special Forces ship?

  It was another point in favor of accepting Matheo’s offer. On something as big and complex as the George H.W. Bush her role would be very clearly defined. Bounded. Comprehensible.

  She wanted to take an apple corer and remove the part of her brain that wouldn’t stop worrying at this problem. She’d done little else since speaking with Matheo.

  Finally escaping the twists, turns, and temporary alleyways of stacked supplies, she walked up the deck away from Sly and the other workers.

  Just to frustrate herself, she stopped before she reached the first shrouded helicopter and looked back at the forklifts buzzing around the deck. One had a different pattern of movement than all the others.

  That forklift was Sly Stowell.

  She couldn’t even see its color in the fading daylight, not yet fully replaced by the bright deck lighting. But there was no question which was his. He drove a forklift the way he flew an LCAC, clean. The man simply stood out from the crowd. He did it without bragging or being obnoxious.

  He simply did. That was all.

  She…didn’t need to keep thinking about that.

  Gail turned away and barely suppressed a scream when she saw the tall chief pilot of SOAR standing not two steps behind her.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to spook you. Chief Warrant Lola Maloney.”

  “I remember,” Gail took a breath while her heart rate dropped slowly.

  “Thinking deep thoughts there, Chief Miller. Thought you were going to run me right over.”

  “Sorry, Chief. I was simply going for a walk.”

  “Well, no question about you being from the South, apologizing for everything between one breath and the next. And if you promise not to Chief Warrant me, I won’t Chief Steward you. Want some company?”

  Gail didn’t want to spill out her thoughts all over a stranger, but… “I’d love some. I really need to stop thinking.”

  Lola simply grinned at her until Gail heard her own words.

  Gail opened her mouth to apologize, but Lola raised her hand to stop her.

  “You gotta cut that out, girl.”

  “The apologizing, the thinking, or the being rude?”

  “Well, the first two at a minimum.” Lola said it flat.

  “Think I’m going to like you, Lola.”

  “Jes’ wait ‘til y’all gets to know me,” she said with a rolling Creole accent that was there one moment and gone the next. “N’awlins,” she offered by way of explanation.

  “Haven’t been there since Mardi Gras while I was still in school. We made a field trip out of it and ate our way through the French Quarter. Before, well, before.”

  “Before Katrina tried to kill my city. I know.”

  Gail resisted the “sorry.”

  “So, I’ve got an important question.”

  “As long as I don’t have to think.” And the question had better not be about Chief Petty Officer Sly Stowell or the aircraft carrier that still floated nearby.

  Lola laughed, “I know how to serve up twenty omelettes out of a kitchen; that’s how many girls Mama Raci had.”

  “Your mama had twenty daughters?”

  “Did I say they were daughters?”

  “Uh,” that meant…“Oh.”

  “Now I wasn’t one of the working girls, but I busted my butt in her kitchen. How did you serve up six hundred? That’s something I just don’t get.”

  Gail and Lola wandered up the deck, winding around the parked helicopters like they were briar patches, and ducking under shroud tie-downs as if they were kudzu vines. And as they walked and talked, Gail’s world felt as if it wasn’t quite as irrational as she’d thought it was.

  # # #

  “This is crazy.” Sly meant to mutter it to himself two days later, but that didn’t work when you were wearing a helmet and were plugged into a comm circuit.

  “What is? Everything looks okay here,” Dave was watching hi
s engine readouts closely.

  They were taking the LCAC out for a spin to check her engines after the latest tune-up. He also wanted some more practice running blind at night. For a load, he’d driven the three M-ATVs back aboard, an easy forty tons, about two-thirds capacity for the LCAC. Sly liked keeping his craft and his skills at a hundred percent capability.

  The waves had built up a half-meter taller than the run to the Ivory Coast and the moon was still down. He had his running lights on, but kept the big floods off so that he could concentrate on the feel rather than the look of what he was doing.

  “We’re on course and flying true,” Tom reported. Not that Nav was being especially tricky on this run. Go that way for a while. Do some sliding turns in the two-meter ocean rollers. Come back. Don’t run anyone over going either way. Not much chance of that. The carrier group had departed for the Mediterranean once the resupply was complete. Peleliu once again cruised alone off the West African coast awaiting orders.

  “Idiots!” Nina muttered over the comm from her outpost in the port-side tower. “He’s talking about the girl.”

  “I’m not talking about the girl!” Sly insisted, knowing it was too late.

  “What girl?” Dave and Tom spoke practically in unison.

  Jerome was down in the engine spaces. He’d be on headset, but the man never spoke unless something broke, which Sly could really appreciate at the moment.

  “You guys. Getting me wet here Sly,” Nika reported excess spray on her windshield. “These are what you call friends? You really need an upgrade, man.”

  Actually he thought he was doing pretty well counting the three of them as both his closest friends aboard and as his crew.

  “Oh,” Tom turned as if he were trying to look back over his shoulder to the empty observer’s seat.

  “What girl?” Dave asked again, still lost as usual. He was one hell of a mechanic, right over into ridiculous nerd status. The sort of guy that if someone said he built his first NASCAR engine as a kindergarten project you had to think twice. He could tune an engine up so sweet that there was nothing like it. It was the rest of the world that was a mystery to him.

  “Omelette lady. Pasta lady. Southern fried chicken lady. The one who makes you want to re-up just so you can keep eating her food,” Tom clued Dave in. “That one.”

  By the dim lights of their instruments, Sly could see Dave lean forward to look at him around Tom, “Really?”

  “Why do you think he’s always running off the ‘check out’ something?” Nika scoffed. “Straight to the galley, is my guess. You gotta learn some subtle, man.”

  “Thanks. Little late on that advice.”

  “You getting any?” Dave asked in a confidential whisper which also didn’t work at all over the comm headset.

  “Shaddup, Dave!” Sly knew the instant he said it, he’d put too much heat behind it.

  Nika snorted.

  “That answers that question, doesn’t it?” Tom kept his attention on their whereabouts.

  Sly risked taking his left hand off the controls for a moment so that he could punch Tom’s arm.

  “Wow,” Dave said softly.

  Sly concentrated on angling the hovercraft another five degrees to port so that he took the waves more to starboard. Nope. Five to starboard worked better. He tried a cross-control so that they kept moving in a straight line, just rotated five degrees to the side. He fed a little more power to the starboard side blower to create more lift on that side. That actually had possibilities. He tried it again at two-and-a-half. Nope. Back to five.

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “There’s no problem,” Sly cut a hard turn hoping to change the subject, knowing it wouldn’t work. Nika was tenacious as hell, that was a key element of what she brought to the team.

  Nika sighed in exasperation, “Sly, buddy. Six straight days, eighteen meals you talked about her food. Then the last three days, she just keeps gettin’ better and yet you don’t say word one. Now that’s crazy talk, man. Or crazy lack of talk.”

  “It’s good food,” he knew he sounded lame.

  “No argument, dude. But come on. What went sideways?”

  Sly thought about it.

  It was the trip to the aircraft carrier. And it wasn’t just the chef who hugged her goodbye either.

  They really needed to talk.

  # # #

  “No. I’m fine.”

  Lola looked steadily at her and Gail did her best not to fidget. They were in her space, in her galley.

  This is where she should be most comfortable, but it wasn’t working.

  The problem was that Lola hadn’t come alone, there were five of them here.

  Dinner service was done. Galley clean and crew gone. Midrats crew wouldn’t be in for hours. All the lights were out except for the down-lights over the central prep table where they all sat. It has been casual at first. Lola and Trisha had dropped in, supposedly hunting for another round of the night’s…morning’s…dinner’s chocolate mousse.

  They’d taken to coming by the galley, or the three of them would go for a run together on the Hangar Deck which offered the largest track area on the ship. She was starting to think she’d found some possible friends on the ship.

  By the time they sat down. The Asian-American gunner Kee and her mismatch adopted daughter Dilya had drifted in with the same excuse. Connie, the 5D’s genius mechanic, didn’t bother pretending she had an excuse; she simply came into the galley and sat down at the huge stainless steel prep table. Thankfully, she chose a stool on Gail’s side so it wasn’t like she was facing an inquiry board.

  Or was it?

  “Really, I’m fine.”

  Lola rolled her eyes, “You’re a mess, girl. Trust me, it takes one to know one. It gives me hope.”

  “I’m not— Wait. What? It gives you hope that I’m a mess?”

  “Sure!” Trisha offered one of her big smiles. “If you aren’t a train wreck, you aren’t allowed in the 5D.”

  “I’m a Navy chef, not an Army helicopter flyer. I can’t be in your revered 5th-battalion D-company.”

  “That bother anyone here?” Trisha looked up and down the line. “Nope?” She turned back to Gail. “You’re outvoted. Honorary 5D member. Done.” She pounded the side of her fist on the table like a gavel.

  “Uh, is that actually an honor or am I in it even deeper now?”

  “Honor.” “Oh yeah, absolutely.” “Of course it’s good.”

  Connie remained silent.

  Dilya, the teenager, did an eye roll toward the others that told Gail she’d been right on the second part of her guess. She was in it way deeper…whatever it was.

  Maybe if she banged her head on the table for a while this would all go away. She wouldn’t bet on it, so she ate another spoonful of chocolate mousse instead. Next time she’d see if she couldn’t scare up some seventy-percent dark chocolate and back off on the heavy cream just a little—a half gallon less per batch should be about right.

  “There’s a tradition among the 5D,” Lola began. “We—”

  “It’s a tradition we’re big on,” Trisha cut in. “I’m the worst of the lot.”

  There was a sudden silence as no one argued and Trisha just grinned.

  “We,” Lola gave Trisha a look that might quell her for the next thirty seconds, might not. “We each have gone through this. Some of us so bad that we were almost kicked out of the 5D. It was a tradition started by the first female pilot of SOAR, Major Emily Beale.”

  At the mention of her name, the room shifted. The women, every one of them including Dilya grew quiet for a moment.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. How did she die?” Probably on some wild 5D mission that they couldn’t tell her about. Dumb question.

  “She isn’t dead.”

  Which made Gail’s question even dumber.

  “Worse,” Trisha whispered in a loud voice, “she had a kid.” Trisha offered a shudder.

  Lola and Connie looked a little wistful.
They were each married to a crew chief who flew on another helicopter aboard. Trisha had married a D-boy, one of the ones who had slid down out of the little helo onto the embassy’s roof.

  Kee appeared to be the sort of person not given much to the softer emotions. The only people Kee let in at all were her Air Mission Commander husband and their adopted war-orphan daughter. Even now she and Dilya sat as close together as best friends.

  “Back to the point,” Lola must have a clear point to try and drag it through this crowd. “We all arrived with, I’ll be kind, issues. Frankly I was such a female disaster area that Emily should have just booted my ass—”

  Hands went up around the table in agreement.

  “—but she didn’t. Instead she made it simple. Once you get past all the crap, the question is: do you want in badly enough to fight to stay here?”

  All of them turned to look at her.

  Her snort of laughter took them aback.

  “I don’t even know why I’m here to begin with. I have no Special Operations training. I’m a chef. Why did they pick me to come aboard the Peleliu? I’ve figured out enough to know it wasn’t random, but it sure isn’t making any sense to this girl. Any of y’all can answer that one for me, I’ll be right pleased.”

  By the looks going around, she could tell they didn’t.

  “I bet Michael knows,” Trisha offered up.

  “Michael? The D-boy? Why would he know?”

  “Michael knows everything,” Dilya said softly, speaking for the first time.

  Gail opened her mouth, but the others were nodding their agreement.

  Gail closed her mouth and focused back on her mousse.

  Colonel Michael Gibson of Delta Force was not the man she needed to be talking to.

  Chapter 10

  Sly was sitting in the control room of the LCAC parked in the Well Deck. He should be doing something constructive, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of what.

  Dave and Tom were seeing to topping off the fuel tanks. Nika was doing the post-op inspection. Someday he was going to count up the number of steps required to prep and shutdown the LCAC. Then he’d go up and check that number with Connie or John Wallace and find out who had more, his craft or one of their helos.