Amanda knew that Christine had to be wrong in at least half of her assessment, the portion concerning the court-martial. But what about the other half? If Chris was right about Elliot?
She didn’t need this now. She didn’t need this at all! With both Indonesia and Phantom looming, there was no time to even consider the concept. Furiously, she stuffed the entire idea into a back compartment of her mind and firmly dogged the hatch down on it.
She took a deep breath. “Chris, this is just plain stupid,” she said coolly. “And I will not hear any more about this.”
“But …”
“Drop it, Commander. That is an order!”
“As you wish, ma’am.” Christine turned away to stare out across the bay once more. “I’m sorry for stepping out of bounds.”
Amanda gritted her teeth. Reaching up, she rested her palms on the Intel’s shoulders. “Chris, will you do a couple of things for me, please?”
The reply was almost inaudible. “What?”
“For one, believe in me and believe in the Admiral. No matter what happens. No
matter what you hear. Believe in us and that everything is going to work out.
All right?”
“All right.” There wasn’t much surety in the reply. “What’s the other thing?”
“Take care of my damn palm tree for me.”
Christine choked on her laugh. Spinning around, she locked Amanda up in a fierce
hug that was returned in kind.
The Sydney Airport Hilton
2010 Hours; Zone Time, October 9, 2008
The brushed denim skirt and jacket Amanda had worn for the flight from Darwin to Sydney felt decidedly odd. It had been some time since she’d had a call to wear civilian clothing. Still, perhaps it was time to start getting used to it. If things went as planned, she’d have considerably more use for them.
According to her overt travel orders, she was scheduled for a twenty-hour holdover in Sydney before making the final transoceanic jump to Hawaii and to her hypothetical NAVSPECFORCE board of inquiry. But according to her covert instructions, she would be contacted by “someone” and diverted to “somewhere else”.
If Naval Special Operations had been a challenging adaptation, this new level of cloak and daggerism was going to take even more getting used to. And this time, she had no one to blame but herself. When she had created the Phantom Force concept, she had not considered what actually living it would entail.
Amanda knew Sydney to be a beautiful and fascinating city to visit, but she didn’t have any taste for sightseeing. Checking into her room in the Hilton, she grimly settled in to wait out the hours until contact. Without bothering to open her suitcase, she cast off her suit jacket and started to pace.
What else would be different in this new command? How would she have to change to fit into it? Phantom belonged to her, more than the Cunningham, more than the Sea Fighters. She had sketched out the parameters, the requirements, the methodology and doctrine for its use. But she didn’t know the reality of it, the end result of the bare concept.
It was rather like being a virgin bride on her wedding night, she mused. Or possibly more like an expectant mother being wheeled into the delivery room.
Admiral MacIntyre had promised to scare up some of her old hands to work with her on this. She wondered who they might be and if she could rebuild the dynamic she’d once had with them.
And then there was the big one. Could she make it all work? She knew, if no one else did, just how fabulously lucky she had been with both the Duke, as USS Cunningham was known, and the Sea Fighters to have the quality and the compatibility of personnel she’d been given. Could she hope to be as fortunate a third time?
The obverse side was that, if Phantom did meet her expectations, and she could meet Phantom’s, it would be the blade used for striking down Makara Harconan. And she must wield it to the death.
Damn, damn, damn you, Makara! Why couldn’t you have been satisfied with just being a multi-millionaire?
And then there was that total insanity Chris had brought up. Where in the world had she gotten the notion that Admiral Elliot Edward MacIntyre could have any kind of interest in her beyond the professional? During her time with Naval Special Forces, they’d had occasions to talk outside of their duties, casual talk about things done and seen and about Elliot’s family and her career and future in the navy. Certainly there had never been the slightest hint of … impropriety.
One of Amanda’s eyebrows cocked. Not that the theoretical concept wasn’t unpleasant. Elliot MacIntyre wasn’t a bad man to think about at all. Only different. If Harconan had been a piercing torch flame stabbing at her points of vulnerability, then Elliot would be more like sun-warmed steel, something to lean against and draw strength from.
She mused for a moment, slammed the hatch shut on that particular space once more. She’d already made more than an adequate hash of her personal life. There was no sense in even contemplating such a titanic compounding of her problems.
Time inched past. She opened her travel book, Hayward’s superb study of Nelson’s battle tactics For God and Glory, and then slapped it shut again. The television was switched on for five minutes and then switched off. The room service menu was examined without any true interest and tossed aside. Only her relentless pacing and the darkening sky of the evening soothed her.
*
A rented Range Rover drew into in the hotel parking lot, its driver looking up at the golden wall of glowing hotel windows. He already knew his objective. Room seven twenty-one.
He could also visualize the room’s occupant, no doubt thinking furiously and wearing a path in the carpet.
He smiled to himself. He knew her well. He knew her mind, her spirit and her body, in pleasure and in pain. But that had been in the past. Now it would be different. It must be different.
He sat behind the Range Rover’s wheel for a few moments more, thinking about other, possibly better times, then stepped out of the vehicle. Pulling a battered briefcase out of the Rover’s back seat, he crossed the parking lot to the lobby entrance.
*
Amanda was standing on the small sundeck balcony, watching the landing lights of the airliners inbound to the airport when someone knocked softly at her door. She hesitated for a moment before going back into the room. It might just be a hotel maid coming to turn down the bed.
She crossed to the small entry hall – but, before reaching for the lock and chain or removing the wedge she’d molded from moistened bathroom tissue from under the door, she checked the security peep-lens.
Outside stood a slender dark-haired young man of average height clad in well-worn Levi’s and a blue polo shirt. His features were Mediterranean handsome, but his eyes were an exceptionally piercing and memorable ice blue.
She had to brace herself against the door for a moment in sheerest shock. What was he doing here? Then she had to smile. When she considered it for a moment, where else would he be?
Toeing the wedge out from under the door, she fumbled the latches open. “What in the world …” she started to say, opening the door wide.
Smiling, Commander Vincent Arkady lifted a hand and touched her lips with his fingertips, hushing her into silence. Moving swiftly, he brushed past her into the room, indicating that she close and secure the door behind them.
