The newcomer looked around the dimness of the lounge. Noticing the blonde in the back corner, he started over to her. If this fellow was looking for a Sheila, he was out of luck tonight. A couple of the local lads had made the try earlier on in the evening and the bartender had heard the snarled rejection clear across the room. Clearly the lady was not in the mood.
And yet, when the big man made his approach, she nodded, and the newcomer slipped into the booth across from her.
“A Foster’s, please, ma’am,” Stone Quillain said to the passing barmaid. Then he returned his attention to
the small, sullen figure seated in the shadows. “I been hunting all over town for you, ma’am.”
“I’m found,” Christine Rendino replied.
Stone quashed a flare of annoyance. He could already sense he was dealing with
what his father would call “a notional female.”
“It would have been a sight easier if you’d left your damn phone on.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to make it easy,” she murmured, taking a sip of her half-emptied drink.
“Damn it, Commander! We’re on ready-to-move notification. We could get our sortie orders at any time
now. You’re bustin’ shore leave protocols all to hell!”
A blonde eyebrow lifted. “And maybe I don’t give a damn.”
Stone Quillain was a gentleman of the old Southern school, the one that mandated you treat females with respect at all times. He even restrained his verbal explosion until after the waitress had delivered his drink.
“All right,” he said, after taking a savage pull of the beer, “just what the hell is going on here?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit!” he growled back. “For the past few days, you’ve been about as much use to the Task Force as a bucket of oily rags and you’ve been takin’ your whole damn section down with you. Now maybe you figure you’ve got good reason to come down with the vapors just before we launch a combat
op – but I’d like to know what it is. If my boys and me are going to get our asses blown
away on account of bad Intel, we’d kind of like to have a reason.”
“You are way out of line, Captain!” the Intel blazed back.
“The hell I am! All of the tactical units are sweating about the sorry feedback
we’re getting out of Intelligence. You’re falling down on the job and I’m not risking a hit on my outfit over it! I’m takin’ this to the TACBOSS!”
Christine killed the last of her drink in a fast gulp and looked up at him. “You do whatever you want! A court-martial may be the fastest way out of this
shit outfit.”
Stone Quillain took a deep, controlling breath. The Marine could recognize a
notional female when he saw one – but, possibly to the surprise of some who knew him, he could recognize a hurt
and heartsick one as well. “Commander … ma’am. Something’s wrong here. Something’s real wrong. Will you please talk some about this? Maybe I can do something.”
Christine studied the empty glass in her hand for a moment. Then she grimaced
and shoved it away across the mock-wood Formica of the tabletop. “I’m sorry, Stone. You didn’t deserve that. It’s just that … I don’t belong here any more. I’ve never really belonged here.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m not supposed to be a damn naval officer! I’ve never wanted to be one. When I was in high school back in Ventura, I’d have laughed in your face if you’d even suggested it.”
Stone took another sip of his beer. “Then why’d you ever join up?”
The Intel shrugged. “It was convenient. I wanted to go to college and my folks didn’t have the money for it. Naval ROTC was a means to my end. I’d get my degree, go in for my hitch, play with the neat toys for four years – and then I’d be out and on my way to Silicon Valley. But it didn’t work that way.”
“What happened?”
“I ran into Captain Amanda Garrett,” she replied. “She wasn’t a Captain then, just a Lieutenant Commander, and we were both attached to the
Operations Staff aboard the old Enterprise. We were assigned as cabin mates, we
worked together, we became friends, and somehow I got sucked up into her
slipstream.”
Stone chuckled. “I know the feelin’.”
Christine went on softly, her eyes fixed on the tabletop. “All of a sudden, the job and the uniform were important. I wasn’t marking time any more, just waiting to get out. When my time came to re-up, I
did. And when Amanda got the Cunningham, she asked for me. I’ve been working with her ever since.”
“Yeah,” Quillain agreed. “She’s about the best skipper I’ve ever worked for, bar none. She is something special.”
“She was.” Bitterness crept into Christine’s voice and she looked toward the barkeep, considering a survey on her drink. “She was the best they had and they cut her throat. The best fighting Captain in
the fleet and the brass hats just fucking cut her throat!”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a looter and shooter got crosswise with the metal officers
an’ the desk jockeys.”
“Sure, but after all she’d done for him, Admiral Elliot Goddamn MacIntyre let it happen. Maybe he even
made it happen.” Quillain could hear the betrayal creeping in over the pain in Christine Rendino’s voice, the disillusionment. “That all was bad enough. But she let them get away with it! She didn’t fight it, Stone. When the pressure came on, she didn’t stand up to them, she quit! She just damn resigned!”
“Maybe,” Stone replied, his voice neutral.
Christine’s unfocused gaze lifted to the Marine’s face. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I know the skipper,” he replied. “She don’t have quit in her. She’d fight. Even if she couldn’t win, she’d be fightin’ and figurin’ right to the end. I know the Admiral too. I got to know him pretty good when we
were goin’ in on Harconan’s big base on New Guinea. He didn’t strike me as the kind of C.O. who’d crap out on a good subordinate.”
“But he did, Stone! And she did!”
“Like I said, maybe.”
Christine blinked the haze out of her eyes. “What are you talking about?’
He set his beer glass down with a decisive click. “Damn it, ma’am. You’re the Intelligence officer! Work it out like a field problem! We got a
formation under observation that is suddenly diverting widely from its standard
operating procedures for no apparent reason. What must be assumed, given that
situation?”
Christine frowned, making her mind work and reaching for the textbook answer. “That there is a factor or factors not apparent having an influence on that
formation.”
Stone nodded. “There you go. I’m not giving up on either the Skipper or the Admiral yet. There’s something here we’re not seein’.”
“But what?”
