Blue Forever (Men in Uniform) (19 page)

So they lay on their beds and talked for a while, hashing out a strategy for the morning, then fell silent as they started to doze off.

But Kip couldn’t shake Alex’s words.

Just admit you love DeAnne, get down on one knee, and marry the woman. Don’t throw it away, man. You’ll regret it.

It was too early in Kip’s relationship with DeAnne for that kind of serious commitment, even if he hadn’t had a valid reason for avoiding marriage altogether.

But for the first time, he started to think maybe, just maybe, he should consider taking Alex’s advice. Not the getting-down-on-one-knee part, but the accepting-the-inevitable-and-getting-on-with-it part.

Kip dragged in a breath. Did he honestly, deep down, think he could avoid dealing with his family and his inheritance for the entire rest of his life?

No. Not really.

Whether or not he ever got married, sooner or later he’d have to face them. To accept the existence of the trust fund. And decide what to do with the damned money.

To be even more honest, he’d begun to seriously wonder if he could actually stay single for the rest of his life. Being with DeAnne . . . it felt good. As absurdly unusual as their circumstances had been so far, they’d managed to achieve a deep sense of connection and optimism together that he’d never have expected in an everyday life, let alone while being chased all over the map by enemy soldiers. They felt . . . right . . . together. Like they belonged together, and could face anything together, come what may.

Wasn’t that what marriage and family were supposed to be all about, ultimately?

Now that he’d found that kind of connection, he was hard-pressed to imagine a life without it. Or without the person who made him feel this way.

Which really made him wonder . . . had he been selfish all these years? If family was about having a solid connection, come what may, should he have stayed at home and fought for what he wanted, stood his ground against his father—but kept that family connection, as rocky as it was, instead of running away and severing it completely . . . ?

That was a hard truth to face head-on.

During the past couple of days, he’d been thinking a lot about his mother and father, about how he’d feel if one or both of them died before he saw them again. Or if Kip, himself, died tomorrow . . . or next week . . . or next year?

Would his father regret not making amends before it was too late?

Would
he
?

How would his family feel if things went terribly wrong on this op and he was killed? How would he feel if he was captured and disappeared into a Chinese prison for the rest of his life, and they never found out what had happened to him?

No doubt he could rely on DeAnne to track them down and let them know. Strangely enough, that was a far bigger comfort than he ever would have thought.

And maybe . . . just maybe, letting her assume that burden was taking the coward’s way out.

Kip knew himself to be many things, but he was not a coward.

If he survived this mission, he’d have to do some serious thinking about his future.

About confronting his family.

About dealing with the damn trust fund instead of spending every minute of his life avoiding that huge responsibility.

About seeking a real relationship with DeAnne, and finding out if it could work between them.

Yeah. He’d definitely have to think about all that.

If he survived the day tomorrow.

30

Darcy jarred awake to the booming screech of a Klaxon. It scared her so badly she vaulted from her bunk onto her feet, weapon drawn from under the pillow, in less than a second.

After three blasts, the Klaxon cut off and the loudspeaker blared out a warning, “Report to battle stations! Prepare to dive!”

She obeyed orders and dove for her clothes.
What the hell was going on?
She pulled on her shirt to the static of several more orders from the overhead speaker.

Then, “Dive! Dive! Dive!”

Yanking on her cargo pants, she felt the acute shift of the deck under her feet as the submarine slipped downward into the ocean depths. She grabbed the door frame to steady herself and struggled to jam her feet into her boots.

Her ears popped at the increasing heaviness of the atmospheric pressure—or maybe it was just nerves. Was it her imagination, or was it getting harder to breathe in here?

For the past day, the submarine had been playing possum, lingering amongst the valleys and seamounts that surrounded the Paracel Islands, well away from Hainan. Even if patrolling PLAN planes or coastal cutters had spotted the sub before today, the Chinese wouldn’t worry about the sub later this morning when the AUV test was launched. In fact, the enemy navy might even try to use them as a target for testing their new toy.

Which Darcy knew was exactly what Walker hoped.

Was it already morning? Had she overslept and something gone wrong?

Something with Bobby Lee?

Oh, sweet Lord.

She careened out of officer’s country and up the ladder to the main deck, swinging to an abrupt halt at the top when she found the control room crammed with submariners laser-focused on their tasks. The captain snapped orders, which were echoed by two or three other officers before being executed, reports were shouted, and the overhead intercom crackled with a chaos of information being relayed back and forth.

She’d seen it all before at various times in the past when her STORM teams had been transported via submarine, but it never ceased to amaze her that anyone on the crew actually knew what the heck was going on. It was a pure miracle the damn thing didn’t sink. But it never did. And it wouldn’t. These Silent Service guys were the bomb.

She sidled past the bedlam to the sonar room, praying she’d find Rufus Edwards there. Sonar techs never wandered too far from their beloved shack.

Sure enough, the master chief was parked in a swivel chair at one of the consoles, big black earphones on, peering intently at a trio of monitor screens that were cobbled up in front of him—obviously not part of the standard equipment, but something he’d brought with him. Between him and the real sonar guy, and the packed jumble of instruments, there was hardly room to breathe.

She stuck her head into the tiny space, and when no one paid the slightest bit of attention to her, she slid inside next to Edwards.

“Chief,” she said, and when he didn’t hear her, she tapped his shoulder.

He glanced up questioningly, and she pointed to her ears.

He lifted off the headphones, but kept one eye on the monitors. “What’s cooking, sugar?”

At the endearment, she did a double take, but he was definitely not being disrespectful, and certainly not flirting. He was all about the monitors.

“That’s my question,” she said. “What’s going on? Is it the away team?”

“What? No. They’re fine. Talked to them an hour ago.” He peeled his gaze from the colorful snow falling across his monitors. To her, it looked like close-ups of the aurora borealis in a blizzard. Well. Except for the three solid silhouettes of torpedoes swimming in it.

“Holy crap,” she exclaimed, her eyes bugging out. “They’re firing torpedoes at us already? We haven’t even done anything yet.” She blinked at him. “Have we?”

He hooked his headphones around his neck and smiled, his eyes crinkling. “First, not torpedoes. Those are submarines. Vietnamese submarines, from what we can make of the signatures and the language being spoken onboard. Damn new shielding’s a bitch to hear through. Second, no. We haven’t done anything to prompt being attacked. As you say—yet.”

“Vietnamese?” she asked, her anxiety notching down. “So this has nothing to do with the Chinese AUV test? Or our away team?”

“Extremely doubtful on both counts,” he assured her. “However, this harassment could seriously interfere with our ability to carry out our plans later this morning.”

She peered closer. “They’re harassing us?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Part of the general anti-access, area-denial cold war being waged between China and its neighbors in the South China Seas.”

She’d have to ask about that mouthful later. Right now she was more concerned about how this Asian power struggle would affect their mission. “But why harass us? We’re American. And not their neighbors.”

“True. But they just acquired these new subs from Russia in the past couple of years. They probably intend using us to test their stalking skills, hiding in our baffles, practicing their angles and dangles.”

She had no idea what any of that meant, but whatever it was, it meant trouble.
Unbelievable
. She checked her wristwatch. It was already after six a.m. The AUV test was slated to start at nine o’clock.
Shit
.

“So cut to the chase,” she said. “What are we doing about it?”

His grin turned evil. “Why, giving them what they want. A little practice.”

As if on cue, the sub made a steep turn to the left, still diving, heading into the network of faults and troughs that formed the bottom of the South China Sea between the Paracel Islands and Hainan. She’d checked the charts last night and knew that the seabed varied quite a bit, from the water depth to the geology—some places shallow and sandy, some deep and rocky. The perfect place for a submarine to play hide and seek.

But they didn’t have time for this nonsense.

“Will we be able to shake them in time?” she asked worriedly. “How close do we have to be to Yulin to do the intercept?”

He pushed out a considering breath. “Good question. I honestly have no idea. Clint was working all night on setting up our two UUVs with the necessary software for the bait and switch. He’d be in a better position to tell you.”

“In that case—” She turned to go find Walker.

“He’s catching an hour of sleep,” Edwards said, bringing her up short. “He was pretty much a zombie.”

Damn
.

The sub made another steep turn, and she grabbed onto the back of his seat to keep from falling on her butt.

“Jeez Louise. Good luck sleeping through these loop-the-loops.”

Edwards chuckled. “Hell, girl, this is nothing. He’ll be sleeping like a baby.”

“Who’ll be a baby?” came a voice from the door.

Darcy turned to see Walker standing there, rubbing a hand through his hair, making it stick up every which way. “
Sleeping
like a baby,” she corrected.

“Which you should still be doing,” Edwards said. “You’ve still got fifteen minutes. Why are you up?”

“Figured something was happening, what with all the commotion. We were supposed to be running quiet.”

Again the sub made a deep turn and Darcy hung on for dear life, her stomach lurching, while the men simply leaned their bodies with the motion, not even seeming to notice.

Edwards gave Walker a quick rundown of the situation, and she repeated her question. “How close do we have to be to the launch site for you to make the switch undetected?”

Walker shook his head. “We could launch our UUVs now, except”—he frowned at the screens—“those other subs out there would pick them up on sonar. That would kind of blow the whole ‘undetected’ thing.”

She gritted her teeth against another circus maneuver, swallowing her stomach back down where it belonged. “So I guess this roller-coaster ride is for good reason.”

The two men nodded, lopsided grins creeping across their faces. “Why? Feeling a little queasy, sugar?”

She scoffed. “Who, me?” She would
not
get sick in front of them. Not if it killed her. Which it just might.

Walker swiped a hand through his hair again, making it stick up in the other direction. “I suppose I could reprogram the mission sequence so the UUVs would launch and then wait until all other vessels are out of acoustical range before proceeding to the target.”

“Would that be hard?” she asked.

His head wobbled back and forth. “No. Just a pain. But what’s new?”

She looked at Edwards. “What do you think?”

“Might be a good idea,” he said. “Who knows how long we’ll spend ditching these bozos.” He tilted his head. “Of course, we could always use the sound library. My guess is their sonar guys are rank amateurs. Shouldn’t be too hard to fool.”

Walker nodded. “And it’ll give
us
some practice.” He yawned. “All right. Let me grab some coffee and we can get to work.”

* * *

DeAnne dreamed she was riding Space Mountain at Disneyland.

Space Mountain had always been her favorite ride. Well, other than Alice in Wonderland, which was the all-time best.

Kip was strapped in next to her, his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders. But instead of a brilliant light show of laser beams shooting past them in the dark, it was bullets whizzing past. Real bullets. She twisted and turned to escape, but their seat belts were welded shut, so they couldn’t get away.

The ride whipped back and forth, this way and that, the car hurtling down the mountain at breakneck speed. Which was the only thing that saved them from the bullets.

Suddenly, the ride swerved violently. DeAnne was torn from Kip’s arms and thrown from her seat. Flying into the black void of space, she screamed and screamed, grabbing for Kip, but he was carried away at the speed of light, the ride disappearing into the blackness.

She came awake with a desperate scream, her heart pounding, and a feeling in her gut that tore her apart from the inside out.

Oh, God. Had something happened to Kip?

She blinked open her eyes and attempted to sit up.

And realized with a start that she was sprawled on the floor of her stateroom, tangled in the blanket. She’d fallen out of bed.

How the—

Suddenly, the room around her tilted and dipped wildly to one side. Which explained how she’d tumbled from the bunk. She squeaked, and grabbed for purchase on the mattress frame, managing to follow the boat’s movement with her body.

Good night
. She didn’t think she could ever ride Space Mountain again.

She thought of Kip again, wondered where he was, what he was doing. And if he was all right. She’d never been psychic before this, and she prayed that hadn’t changed. Those dream bullets had felt all too real.

She shivered, and knew she’d never get back to sleep again. So she gingerly rose from the floor and got dressed.

The feeling that Kip was in trouble wouldn’t leave her alone. It had lodged in the pit of her stomach and sat there gnawing at her, like the monster from
Alien
waiting to burst out.

She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep, steadying breath.
God
, she hated this. Hated being useless. Hated being the extra wheel, waiting on the sidelines for something bad to happen. Or even something good.

That was Kip’s fault—the impatience.

Before meeting him, before being dragged all over kingdom come and back again, eluding men with guns, making love under the stars, outwitting tracking dogs, being kidnapped at gunpoint, before all that she never would have believed herself capable of any of it.

She was a diplomat. She waited patiently. She was practical and sensible. She used her words.

She didn’t shoot at foreign army jeeps, didn’t sleep on the ground and ride motorcycles, didn’t climb rope ladders onto submarines.

She didn’t even
like
people who did that stuff, people who were like her father. People like Kiptyn Llowell.

God. People like
she’d
become.

Except she did.

She’d loved doing all those things! Even when she’d been frightened to the roots of her hair, she’d felt a thrill in her soul that she’d never before experienced.

She’d loved every minute of the past two days.

And most of all, she loved Kip.

The man who’d taught her it was okay to take a risk. That sometimes jumping off a cliff was the only way to get rid of all that baggage you’d carried all the way up there, for all of your life.

She opened her eyes and slowly let out her breath. And knew that it was high time to do something about it.

Time to admit she’d been wrong.

Time to jump off that cliff.

And tell Kip how she felt.