"Twenty-one hours and twenty-eight minutes, Lieutenant. I'm practically counting seconds here." Paoletti sighed, his easygoing smile fading. "I've actually got a love-hate thing happening with this assignment, if you know what I mean."
"I do, sir." Muldoon watched Joan as whoever was on the other end of her cell phone made her laugh. "The team hasn't had many assignments as easy as this one in a long time. Everyone's benefiting from having extra time to spend with their families." He thought about Sam. "Well, almost everyone."
"I'm glad to be home with Kelly every night," the CO admitted. "Very glad. But I think we're asking for trouble if we all assume there's no chance of any danger while we're here on base."
"I agree completely, sir. If I were a player on Osama's team ..." Muldoon trailed off. This was probably not what the CO wanted to hear right now.
But Paoletti was looking at him with that thought-penetrating gaze. "Go on, Lieutenant. This should be interesting."
"Okay. I'd look to hit the United States in a place like this. A naval base or military compound. Maybe a federal government building. Someplace believed to be invincible. Do you remember your World War Two history, sir? How after Pearl Harbor we made a point to bomb Tokyo? It was just short of a suicide mission. Jimmy Doolittle and his Raiders took off in bombers from aircraft carriers—it was the first time in history that was done successfully. The pilots had to ditch over enemy territory because there wasn't enough fuel to get back to the ships. It was a logistical nightmare. But we did it. And we succeeded. Why? Because the Japanese government told the world that their island was untouchable. Invincible. Attack-proof. Safe. We intentionally went in there and rubbed their faces in the fact that they were dead wrong. They were not safe, and we demoralized the hell out of them.
"If I were a terrorist, that's what I'd try to do to the U.S."
"They're not going to demoralize us," Paoletti countered. "No matter what they do."
"No, it wouldn't work," Muldoon agreed. "It would be 9/11 all over again. But I think they don't get that. They don't understand the way we think. Same way we don't understand them."
"And with that, you have neatly summed up the reason why guys like you and me won't be out of a job for a good long time."
"And why it pays to be ready for anything," Muldoon said.
"That's my plan." The commander smiled. "I've been making so much noise about potential danger I've been a little afraid I'm going to be asked to go in for another series of psych evils. But when that demo starts, I'll be fully in command, and I'll be damned if any bad shit is going to go down on my watch. We'll both have radio headsets tomorrow— along with the rest of the team. While you're on that dais, Muldoon, I want your eyes open at all times. No staring at Joan's ass, do you hear me?"
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Not that you would—you're too polite. We'll be running through our part of the show again this afternoon," Commander Paoletti continued, "and we'll actually use real smoke bombs. I want the Secret Service to see what the colored smoke is going to look like. Hopefully, they'll request we don't use any smoke at all after they see how completely it's going to obscure the spectator stands. But that run-through's not scheduled until 1400. After lunch. Admiral Tucker set up some kind of fancy buffet for the President's staff. Any brilliant ideas as to how I can get out of that?"
Lunch ... Muldoon looked over at Joan, who was still talking on her phone. Earlier, he'd asked her to have lunch with him, and although she hadn't given him a definite answer, he suspected he was going to get a no.
Which was a major problem if his goal was to talk to her. Although maybe what he should do was call her. She sure spent a lot of time talking on her phone.
"You never managed to have lunch with Joan," Muldoon told his CO now. "And you did promise her that you would."
"God bless you, I certainly did. Jenkins!" the commander shouted.
"Yes, sir?" Jenk appeared out of nowhere. He was dressed in cammy gear, with black and green greasepaint streaking his boyish face.
"Send my regrets to Admiral Tucker. I won't be able to join his party for lunch."
"I'll tell him you're real broken up about it, sir."
"And after you do that, call Joan DaCosta on her cell phone and ask if she'd like to join me for lunch at 1200 hours at that Greek place—what's it called?"
"You mean the Falafel Shack?"
"No, Jenk. The one that has chairs that aren't attached to the plastic tables, and plates that aren't paper. What is it, Alexi's?"
"Actually, Joan would probably prefer the Shack," Muldoon said.
The CO's face lit up. "Really?"
"Yes, sir. And they do have real tables and chairs. Outside. There's a nice little garden. If you call ahead, Nick will actually reserve a table for you. He pretty much gets his kid to sit there and color until you show up."
"Call Nick at the Shack and tell him to break out the Crayolas a few minutes before noon," Paoletti told Jenk.
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Don't forget to talk to Tucker's office first," Paoletti reminded him.
"You got it, boss." Jenkins vanished.
"That's a trick you might want to remember when you're CO of a team and want to avoid lunch with the base commander," Paoletti told Muldoon. "Send your regrets first. That way if your escape plan falls through, well, gee, you've already cancelled, right?"
"I'll keep it in mind, sir."
"You will be able to join us for lunch, won't you, Lieutenant?"
Alleluia. "Permission to kiss you, Commander?"
Commander Paoletti laughed as he headed toward some kind of problem the senior chief appeared to be having with three of the Secret Service agents. "Not a chance, Muldoon.
You're smart enough, but other than that, you're not my type. You're much too polite."
"What are you doing out here?" Charlie asked.
Vince glanced up at her from his seat on the patio. "Sitting."
"I can see that."
"Do you remember when we moved to San Diego we thought it would be so great because we'd be able to spend all that time on the beach?" Vince asked her. "When was the last time we went to the beach? I mean with any regularity?"
"I don't know."
"It was at least thirty years ago." He shook his head. "You loved the beach. Maybe we should have bought that place right on the water. Remember that place?"
She sat down next to him. "Only very vaguely. It was damp and the playroom had all that awful dark paneling."
"It didn't have a playroom. You're mixing it up with that house we looked at that had the swimming pool."
Charlie gave him a look. "How can you possibly remember that?"
"I remember everything important," he said. "Finding the perfect house was always up there in importance. I wanted..." He cleared his throat. He'd wanted to make her happy. Why was it so hard to say these things aloud?
Because if he said it, then she'd say, "You made me very happy." It was an expected response like, "I love you, too." But happiness, like love, couldn't be measured. Vince knew Charlie loved him. Of course she loved him. She loved him— enough. Enough to marry him and spend sixty years with him, which was a whole hell of a lot of enough. And yes, she'd been happy—happy enough. But what did that mean, really? He'd never truly know if she'd really been happy, or if she'd simply been content.
"Remember that day you showed up in Fort Pierce?" he asked her.
"Yes, that one I remember, thank you very much," she said tartly. "Just because / don't have a superhuman, freakish ability to remember houses that we went inside of once a million years ago, doesn't mean I can't remember days like that one."
He'd been exhausted that day, down to his very bones. Training around the clock, swimming miles every day, and spending hours and hours learning about explosives and detonators and wires and the best way to rig an obstacle to blow while standing in the pounding surf.
But it wouldn't be any easier on the beach, under enemy fire. So each day they pushed themselves to the limit and beyond.
Each night, he fell into bed and dreamed about sweet Charlie Fletcher.
And then one day there she was. Standing by the barracks as if she were waiting for him.
He was cross-eyed from fatigue and overexposure. The Atlantic ocean was cold this time of year and he'd been shivering for hours. His teeth felt as if they were about to rattle right out of his head.
"I had to ask Jerry Parks if he saw you standing there, too," Vince told Charlie now. "I thought maybe I was hallucinating."
"I was terrified," she said. "Traveling all that way on the train. Not writing to tell you I was coming was quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever done. And then you looked at me as if you were horrified to see me there. I almost turned and ran."
"I thought I was cracking up."
But Jerry had seen her, too. And it was all Vince could do not to cry. "What are you doing here?" he asked, hardly daring to hope.
"I came to see you," she whispered. "Do you mind?"
Vince started to laugh. At least he thought he was laughing. It was hard to tell because he had to keep wiping his eyes. "No," he said. "No, I don't mind."
He pulled her into his arms, and she came willingly, eagerly even. Her mouth was warm and sweet and God, he kissed her for about twelve minutes straight and for that entire time, she kissed him back and ran her fingers through his hair and pressed herself against him and damn near heated his formerly frozen body to a boiling point.
"Marry me," he said at his first opportunity.
"Yes," she said, and he kissed her again. "Except," she said, and he stopped kissing her. There was a catch.
"Except what?"
"Don't look so worried," she said, smiling up at him. "I just ... I told your commanding officer that I was already your wife. I got his permission to, well, to take you back to my hotel room with me." She suddenly got shy. "That is, if you don't mind."
"You are going to marry me." He tried to make it into a joke. "You're not going to just use me for sex and ditch me, are you?"
"I'm definitely going to marry you," she said. "But since we can't do it tonight..."
They got a ride into town with a truckload of Marines, one of whom gave up his seat so Vince could sit and hold "his wife" on his lap.
It was the sweetest night of his life. He learned a heck of a lot. He learned that there were vast amounts of information he'd yet to learn about lovemaking—so much so that he could probably spend his entire life doing it and still get surprised on a regular basis. He learned that nice women like Charlie Fletcher—Charlie DaCosta, in a matter of hours—liked sex as much as men did.
And he learned possibly more than he'd wanted to know when he woke up in the night to find Charlie crying.
She was in the bathroom and the door was closed. It was a long, long time before she came out. And when she did, she slipped back into bed, telling him, "Shhh. I'm all right. Go back to sleep."
"I can't believe you lied to my CO," he told her, almost sixty years later.
"It wasn't a lie," Charlie said, the way she always did when they reminisced. "It was a pre-truth. I was going to marry you. It seemed crazy not to grab every second together that we possibly could."
"Yeah," Vince said. "And it wasn't as if I could get you pregnant. Again."
No, he'd done that quite effectively the very first time they'd made love.
Finding out about it had been something of a shock. And a disappointment.
And suddenly it all made sense. Charlie's swift and sudden change of heart. Her tears at night.
She was marrying him because she had to. Fate had forced her hand.
Vince tried not to care. So what—she was marrying him and that was what mattered. From here on in, their lives would be joined. He could—and would—make this work. He'd do everything in his power to make her happy.
And he had, hadn't he?
He looked at her now, sitting with him in the yard behind this home they'd made together, and he knew that he'd made her happy—enough.
James Fletcher's spirit brushed past him. Or maybe it was just the afternoon breeze.
Chapter 24
"Do you think I'm too polite?"
Joan glanced up from her Greek salad and over at Tom Paoletti before looking at Muldoon.
He was looking at her as if he were remembering—in detail—the third time they'd made love the other night. When she'd... Oh, God. She had to look away.
This wasn't fair!
"Do you?" he asked again. "Because recently two different people referred to me as too polite and I don't think it was intended as a compliment."