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59
Holly didn’t knowwhat the numbers meant. Or quite why she was hand-carrying them to Brunei. Something about no other way to insert military personnel without pissing off the Sultan.
She did know that she was going to do it quickly though.
She’d done this before, once, a year ago, but Mike never had. So she paid more attention to him paying attention to the briefing than she paid to the briefing itself.
It lasted three minutes flat. The pilots’ ready room was still a burned-out husk at the base of the USSTheodore Roosevelt’sIsland. So instead, they were meeting in a small tent set up in an area called the Junkyard, against the Island’s aft wall. There were no longer any broken planes parked there. A mobile crane, a forklift, and two spare arresting wires in great circular coils were parked there—much more the Junkyard’s normal fare.
In fact, if one didn’t look at the Island itself, or the Command Bridge made of tables along its side, theBig Sticklooked ready to kick ass. A helo and two volunteer welders, dangling on winch lines from the cargo bay, were in the process of adding new safety cables to the tilted mast. Too big to straighten, they were pinning it in place until it could reach a Naval shipyard for repairs. It should be okay if they hit no rough seas on the way.
She and Mike were lectured on how to use their survival suits, what to do if the pilot said they were ejecting, and how their best chance of survival after that was keeping together.
“And try not to think about the sharks,” the briefer said with a nasty smile.
After that, all she could think about was sharks, of course.
Holly slid back into her Special Operations Forces training. Mike stayed cool through pure willpower and it looked good on him.
Helmets secure, hands shaken by the captain, they were each led to the backseats of two F/A-18F Super Hornet jet fighters that had been brought on deck by the same elevator they’d ridden up on. The flight crew buckled their seatbelts for them.
A quick glance left and she could see Mike’s plane lined up on the Number Two catapult.
The instant the crew were clear, the long canopy swung down and the jets rolled forward.
In less than twenty seconds, the pilot came on the intercom, “Hang on!”
She hadn’t even promised that she’d see him on the other side.
Nor could she now. And shedidwant to.
The dual jet engines roared to life, barely muffled by her heavy helmet.
Then she spotted her pilot’s salute around the edge of his tall ejection seat and braced herself.
A second later she was slammed back into the seat’s padding.
Between the steam catapult and the jet engines, they accelerated from zero to a hundred and sixty in two seconds flat.
Once the weight of acceleration had climbed off her chest and she could breathe again, she checked. Mike’s plane was less than a hundred feet away. His helmet was turned to face her. When she waved, he waved back.
Now she had nothing to do for the next thirty minutes while they flew five hundred miles at twice the speed of sound. Nothing except worry about Miranda’s numbers. That, and debating whether Mike was teasing her or being serious about wanting more from her than sharing his bed.
