Target Engaged

Chapter 13-1

13

“No way in hell!”

The four guys stood around in the ship’s ready room wearing little more than Speedos; they also wore wristwatches. Carla admitted that they looked damn good that way. Four men at the prime of their lives and their training, so impossibly fit and handsome, parading around the room most of the way to naked. Kyle stood out, of course, even discounting her personal bias.

But there were limits!

“I am not wearing a goddamn bikini in front of you jokers.”

“Ba-kaw! Buck buck ba-kaw!” Chad started doing a chicken dance around in circles. Duane picked it up and Richie blushed—either on her behalf or because he too wanted to see her dressed…undressed that way.

Only Kyle was standing there with that goddamn, patient half smile of his.

“They’re going to drop us several kilometers off the beach in Aruba. We’re going to arrive on the beach with the morning snorkelers and week-old entry stamps in our Spanish passports. Then we’re going to peel off our wet suits. What are you going to be wearing?”

“When James Bond crawled out of scuba gear, he didn’t have to wear a goddamn bikini!”

“No,” Richie acknowledged.

“Thank God someone’s on my side.” Carla sat down on a bench and crossed her arms solidly over her t-shirt and sports bra. Which she’d be keeping firmly in place, thank you very much.

“He did climb out of a semi-submersible alligator wearing a full suit, tie, and dress shoes. I guess it was a dry-suit alligator, though it certainly didn’t look it in the film.”

“Thanks, Richie.” So much for having someone useful on her side.

“No one on the boat has a one-piece.” Kyle kept his voice level. “We asked around.”

“I’m not wearing one of those either. Wait! You’ve been discussing my body with everyone on the whole goddamn ship?”

“Nope, only the women.” Chad offered a leer and then did another chicken-dance circle, actually making a tune out of his chicken noises.

When he passed too close to her bench, Carla kicked him hard in the shin. That sent him hopping off in a new direction making a different kind of noise. She still had her Army boots on.

“Okay, Anderson. So what are you going to wear instead?”

“A goddamn cast-iron suit!” She clambered to her feet and snatched the impossibly tiny bag that Kyle had tried to hand to her at the beginning of the conversation.

Then she struck him in the solar plexus. He’d been ready for her, so her fist merely bounced off his rock-hard gut.

“What was that for?”

“For thinking this is in any way funny.”

“I find it”—he hesitated and bit his lower lip for a moment—“intriguing. You’ll be far more appropriately clothed than you were crossing the General’s compound two nights ago with your shirt open to your navel.”

“Two nights ago,” Carla managed between gritted teeth, “I was a soldier. Now I’m going to be a girl on show.”

“You’re going to be a woman who will look beautiful.”

“Aw shucks, Mr. Soldier Man. I feel so much better now.”

She stalked off to change.

Duane and Chad had finished prepping the drop bag and were double-checking it by the time Carla came back.

Kyle had seen her naked many times: indoors, outdoors, daylight, starlight, firelight, and scant hours ago reflected in a mirror. That he’d somehow had the power to cause Sergeant Carla Anderson to come apart like that still awed him. It was as if she’d transformed within the circle of his arms—though quite how was still unclear.

But the woman who walked back into the ready room was a revelation despite her grim expression.

“Aw, spoilsport!” Chad called out when he noticed that Carla had indeed changed, but then pulled on a white, large-sized, V-neck t-shirt over the swimsuit.

“Can it, Reaper.” Kyle gave it enough heat so that the guys would know that while they’d had their fun, they were done now. And using Chad’s Unit nickname would remind them all that this was a mission, not a fashion show.

Though what Kyle noticed was how the t-shirt hem teased and enticed. Her legs looked longer, and it suggested the lack of bikini bottoms entirely, though he occasionally caught quick flashes of bright yellow to prove they were indeed there.

He did his honest best to keep his expression neutral. Her arched eyebrow told him he’d done a lousy job of it.

“Thanks, Carla,” he managed to choke out and turned to pull on the neoprene shorts and jacket of his wet suit because there were things that a Speedo was never going to hide.

Two hours before dawn there was negligible boat traffic off the west coast of Aruba, which Carla appreciated. Being run down by a coastal freighter while swimming to shore wasn’t her idea of a good time.

They had jumped out of Chief Warrant Maloney’s helicopter as it hovered a single meter above the waves; the swim should be a straightforward task. They covered the first ten kilometers rapidly using DPVs. The small diver propulsion vehicles had quiet electric motors to drive the small propeller, a leash that hooked to the front of a simple waist harness to tow them along, and two handles for steering.

When they could see the coast as a shimmer of resort lights on the horizon, they disconnected the DPVs, opened the devices’ small flotation bladders to the sea, and let them sink out of sight along with the harnesses.

The last five kilometers was a snorkel-and-fin job, made pesky by the big rollers of the open ocean, but not problematic.

Dawn found them a couple hundred meters offshore.

The soft morning light—simple pinks shifting gold, orange, then yellow—shone through the crystalline water down to the coral reefs. Carla wished she had time to stop and watch, or, better yet, was wearing tanks so that she could go down and enjoy the spectacle.

The only tank diving she’d ever done had been for Delta training. They’d started in a swimming pool and then rapidly moved into the most turgid, dark, and brutally rough water they could find. Puget Sound was deep, muddy, deathly cold, and rife with rip currents.

The Aruban sea life’s changing of the guard at daybreak ten meters below her was a dance visible through crystal-clear water. Nighttime fish were seeking their hideaways, and the daytime species began nosing their way out of coral hideaways. Angel, sun, grouper, and a hundred others she didn’t recognize, exotically attired in oranges, blues, and yellow stripes. A two-meter sand shark lazed along the bottom, moving in a languid fashion meant to fool other fish into thinking he was harmless. A great ray—as wide as Ms. Shark was long—flapped its wings as it rose out of the sand and sent her scooting off in a new direction.

When they hit the lifeless sandy bottom of the surf zone, it was a rude and abrupt shock.

A quick glance showed Carla that she was in among several early-morning snorkelers, none of them her team. A family of four paddled happily past her. A couple swam along holding hands. By the way they did it, you could tell that they were newlyweds. Better them than me.

Carla kept paddling for shore. Marriage had worked out so well for Mom and Dad. He’d been a useless drunk long before Mom’s National Guard unit went to war. Mom had been shocked by her abrupt deployment. It was supposed to be a weekend a month and extra time if there was a sudden disaster.

There had been one, and it was called Afghanistan.

After her one-year deployment was over, she’d returned a better, happier person. She’d wanted to go back and the only way was to go full Army.

Carla could still remember the conversation.

Clay had been seventeen and already working two jobs to eke out a helicopter license at the local airfield. He was shooting for the 101st Airborne on his eighteenth birthday, Carla had turned fourteen and was already spending as much of her time as she could hiking in the mountains.

There had been no need to comment about their home life. Dad wasn’t a part of this family meeting.

“It’s up to you, honey. Clay will be gone soon. You still have four years to go. If I sign up, you’ll be mostly on your own for at least two years.” With Dad the sullen drunk the unspoken part of the conversation.

“Mom…” Carla hadn’t wanted her to go, but she knew what her mom needed to survive. “You have to go. I’ll be fine.”

A year later Clay was indeed flying with the 101st, Carla had managed to find a small place of her own with money Clay sent home, and Mom had come home in a wooden box. Dad had refused to go to the funeral in DC, hadn’t even told her until it was too late for her to hop a bus. Yet another thing she’d never forgive him.

Carla had only been home by chance when a lieutenant had tried to deliver the folded flag.

Shoving her father into bed to sleep off yet another night, then sitting on the couch to watch the dawn, she’d fallen asleep. She’d woken to her father fighting with the poor lieutenant. She’d taken it herself.

Now she had two flags, Mom’s and Clay’s. She wondered who they would go to when her own flag, folded down to a triangle, joined the other two. Her father wouldn’t be sober enough to care.

“Cheerful thoughts for a beautiful morning,” Carla muttered to herself as her knees grounded on the soft sand. She flipped over to sit on her butt as she slid up her mask, spit out the snorkel, and removed her fins. The sun was well up, and while the resort beach wasn’t crowded, it was active. Perfect.

Per plan, they’d come ashore in the land of the well-tended. The resort itself was made of ornate towers surrounded by lush plantings dotted with sharp-peaked giant umbrella shapes made of darkest thatch. The resorts weren’t crowded together here like the photos of Waikiki, but spread along the shining sand in stately array.

Richie and Kyle were already ashore. Chad and Duane were arriving a hundred meters down the beach.

Carla stood and, before wading ashore, rapidly shed her neoprene in the warm morning air that would soon be trying to bake out their brains.

“Oh. My. God!” Richie’s voice had Kyle turning.

Kyle couldn’t have said it better. His mouth, dry with salt water, was suddenly parched past speech.

“Ursula Andress in Dr. No.” Richie’s deep immersion in Bond films made the point perfectly.

Carla Anderson, rising from the surf, didn’t brag Ursula’s impressive build or blonde locks. But she most certainly boasted that same centerfold wet look, advertising exactly why you should come snorkeling in Aruba.

Her long hair, black from its soaking, glittered wetly in the morning sun. Her white t-shirt had become wholly transparent when wet, each place it clung merely emphasizing the incredible fitness of the woman within. The lemon-yellow bikini, merely a suggestion beneath the t-shirt when dry in the ready room, now shone through brightly. There was scant fabric for a woman of Carla’s form, and Kyle blessed the lack of every single millimeter. Her dusky skin glowed with fitness and sunshine.

She strode up the beach until she was standing right in front of them. “What?”

Kyle could only shake his head.

Chad, never at a loss for words, joined them. “Damn, Anderson. I knew that Kyle was an asshole lucky far beyond what he deserves, but I had no idea how far beyond.”

Duane had arrived beside Chad and merely nodded his agreement, silent for once.

Carla’s brow knit for a moment, then she looked down at herself and cursed. She dumped her swim gear to the sand and tried pulling the t-shirt away from her body. She wrung out the bit in front of her belly. When she let it go, it wrapped back around her body with an audible slap.

Another guy stopped to stare until his newlywed wife shoved him along on his way.

“Is this a Sports Illustrated photo shoot? Could you introduce us to the director or whoever?” A pair of shapely bleach blondes, severely straining the scant material of their swimsuit tops, stopped and asked. Then they looked at the steam pouring out of Carla’s ears and scooted on their way. Normally Kyle would have at least watched how the two of them walked off. All four of the guys would. Not with Carla Anderson standing in front of them; they weren’t in the same league as the reality of the soldier woman standing before them.