LITMIR.BIZ

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Go lie down. I’m tired, too. Do you want a shower? The hotel supplies robes—”

      Cal slowly stood up. “No. I’ve taken enough advantage of your generosity already, Dev. If I can grab a few hours, that’s all I’ll need.” He walked over to the bed, turned the lamp off and sat down. Dev watched as he took off his shoes, then stretched out, his hands behind his head. She got up, moving to the hall and shutting off another switch, which darkened the entire suite. Her lips still tingled from the coaxing fire of his kiss, and dazedly, she wandered into the bathroom to have her bath. The evening was turning out to be incredible in so many ways.

      Dev languished in the orange-scented bath salts, her thick mane piled on her head. If someone had told her she would be meeting a devastatingly handsome man, a marine corps fighter pilot, she would have roared with laughter. And then to have him in her room, sleeping in one of the beds! If Sarah ever found out, her twenty-year-old eyes would widen to saucer proportions, and her mouth would drop open. Dev smiled. Cal Travis, you are something else. A breed apart. An interesting man. A fascinating human being. She mulled over the facets of him that she had glimpsed that evening. Putting them all together, Dev confirmed her belief that something tragic had happened lately to Cal. After he had kissed her and she had opened her eyes, Dev had seen grief in his gaze. Raw anguish that hadn’t yet been expressed. She sighed tiredly, rising from the water and stepping onto the rug, wrapping the thick white towel around her and drying off.

      Slipping into her lavender-sprigged, knee-length gown, Dev quietly opened the door, shutting off both the bathroom and hall lights. She waited a few moments, allowing her eyes to adjust to the gloomy darkness. A slight smile chased across her lips: she could hear Cal’s occasional soft snore breaking the silence. Padding barefoot into the main room, she noted that she had left the gauzy blue panels drawn across the huge wall of windows. The lights of Hong Kong shed a luminescence into the room, making it easy to see where she was walking.

      Dev hesitated after pulling back the covers on her own bed, turning to look at Cal. He had rolled onto his side, legs slightly drawn up toward his chest, arms around the pillow he had laid his head on. In sleep, he looked vulnerable, and her heart gave a funny lurch. No longer did the corners of his mouth pull in as if he were experiencing some pain known only to himself. Dev felt sudden compassion for him and, walking around the bed, drew a lightweight blanket up across his body. Several strands of his dark-walnut hair had dipped down across his brow. She leaned over, coaxing them into place with her fingers.

      “Good night, Cal,” she whispered. “I hope you’ve escaped all that hurt I saw in your eyes.” Dev straightened up, her own eyes fraught with worry. She recalled the only time in her life when she had gotten miserably drunk and on a great deal less than what Cal had probably consumed. Dev gnawed on her lower lip for a while before going back to her bed and slipping between the cool, crisp sheets. If Cal hadn’t slept much in four days, he wasn’t going to be getting up in a few hours feeling fit. Or even human. Dev found herself hoping he would sleep through the night and be around when she woke up in the morning. Her dreamy side wished that. Her realistic side chided her: Cal would get up in a few hours and quietly walk out of her life, never to be seen again. She snuggled into her pillow. Despite everything, she liked Cal Travis. Despite his obvious love of himself, he did have some face-saving traits that endeared him to her. On that thought, Dev spiraled into the welcoming folds of sleep.

      * * *

      CAL MOVED RESTLESSLY in a stupor that straddled sleep and the nightmarish reality that haunted him. He twisted his head to one side, feeling a rivulet of sweat running down from his temple, across his jaw. His mouth moved, unintelligible words torn from him. Chief was smiling. Even though his friend wore the mandatory oxygen mask, Cal could always tell when his copilot was smiling because the corners of his chocolate-brown eyes crinkled. He smiled back beneath the rubber of his own face mask. They were running through the last compulsory checks on their A-6 Intruder jet. It stood poised in front of the catapult that would soon sling them like an arrow off the deck of the carrier and into the pink dawn.

      “Hey, you know you have to see my sister, Kaya, when you make it to test pilot school,” Chief teased him, flipping on a few more switches with his gloved hand.

      Cal leaned over, his gray gaze making a final sweep of the instruments. “Told you I would.”

      “I’ll scalp you if you don’t, buddy,” he teased good-naturedly, giving Cal a light punch on the right shoulder.

      “I promise. I promise.” Cal looked over at his friend, with whom he had flown for over a year and a half. Joe was a full-blooded Hopi Indian, one of the first Hopi to make it through the rank and file to become a fighter pilot. Maybe it was because they were both taciturn, revealing little of themselves, that they had initially been drawn to each other. Cal wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that Chief, his teasing nickname for Joe, was the very best of the fighter pilot breed. They were top scorers in competitions around the world in air-to-air and air-to-ground target practice. Cal and Chief were inseparable.

      “My sister’s pretty. So just keep your hands to yourself, Travis.”

      Cal laughed, bringing the canopy down and locking it. His long fingers folded over the dual throttles. “If she wasn’t your sister, she wouldn’t be safe.”

      Chief gave him a dangerous look laced with amusement, throwing him a thumbs-up sign. “I know. Okay, check complete. Let’s get this baby airborne, I want to play eagle.”

      The hookup man on deck, crouched beneath the A-6 Intruder, handed the plane off to the catapult officer, who stood a few feet off the wingtip. The cat officer thrust his right hand, two fingers extended, into the air and waved it in a rapid rotating motion. Cal scanned his instruments and moved the control stick forward and back, from right stop to left stop. He saw four other deck-crew troubleshooters rapidly moving down the expanse of his aircraft, searching for leaks, proper engine function, control movement or anything abnormal. When one of the crewmen gave a thumbs-up, the cat officer looked down at the hookup man, still kneeling by the aircraft’s hook that was now linked to the steam catapult.

      Automatically, Cal asked, “Harness tight?” The raw power of the catapult, hurling the A-6 off the deck at one hundred eighty miles per hour, could snap a neck. The crisscross of harnesses kept Cal and Chief tightly strapped to their individual ejection seats, pinned in one position. Cal always had bruises on his shoulders from the straps biting deeply into his flesh.

      “Yeah. Tight enough to make a pig squeal. Brakes full power,” Chief replied.

      Cal saw the hookup man scurry away from beneath their A-6. Immediately, his gaze moved to the yellow-vested cat officer. Cal snapped off a salute, preparing himself for the release.

      “We’re going to get the signal,” he said, watching as the shooter, who stood over the catapult console on the edge of the deck, raised both arms skyward. The cat officer took a wide stance, his left hand in the air, two fingers extended. He returned Cal’s salute, then suddenly dropped to one knee, signaling the shooter to press the button that would send them down the deck.

      Cal heard the call from the control tower that sat above them. The dawn was turning a brilliant red and pink; the South China Sea was placid on that beautiful late October morning. But Cal didn’t notice. He was locked into one of the most dangerous maneuvers ever to be performed by any pilot in any jet—takeoff from a carrier. The jet began to scream, trembling and howling like a banshee around him and his copilot as he arced the throttles to full power. Then, at a hand signal from the navy crewman who stood five yards away from the wingtip of the jet, he knotched them into afterburner range. Cal braced himself, unconsciously pressing his helmet back into the seat and keeping his neck relaxed. His fingers tightened imperceptibly around the stick.

      The wrenching jerk of the catapult driving the screaming jet down the expanse shattered the aircraft’s immobility. There would be five seconds of thousands of tons of catapult pressure pushing the jet, giving it enough speed to safely hurl it off the carrier.

      It was then that Cal heard an explosion. The jet suddenly lagged beneath them. His gaze snapped to the engine manifold pressure. The engines were screamingly alive. The catapult!

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