Breakpoint (22 page)

Because, amazingly, she and O’Halloran actually worked well together. And even more amazingly, he wasn’t turning out to be the obnoxious chauvinist she’d once thought him to be.

As she stood at the window and watched him drive off to get their breakfast, Julianne realized that made him even more dangerous.

In contrast to a lot of the women he’d dated over the years, who merely pushed their food around the plate, pretending to eat to stay runway-model skinny, Juls managed to make an Egg McMuffin, hash browns, half an order of hotcakes, and sausage disappear in short order.

“I know,” she said, when she noticed his obvious amazement, “it’s disgusting. But I just can’t help myself. I’m a fast-food junkie. Which is why I try, with varied success, to stay away from it.”

“I wasn’t being critical,” he assured her. “I was just wondering why you aren’t the size of the Fuji blimp.”

“I’ve been blessed with good metabolism.” She licked hash brown grease off her fingertips, causing a painful spike in Dallas’s hormones. “Besides, as I said, it’s pretty much a guilty pleasure. So I tend to indulge whenever I break down and give in to my cravings.”

Which, needless to say, left Dallas wondering about what other guilty pleasures she might indulge in. As for her cravings, as good as he was about compartmentalizing, Dallas didn’t even want to go there. Not unless he wanted to show up on the carrier with a hard-on.

“FYI,” she said as she refilled their coffee cups, “carriers aren’t commanded by an admiral.”

“I’d never given it any thought,” Dallas said. “But that would’ve been my guess.”

“There may be an admiral on board, which makes it a flagship, but the commander is always a senior captain. One who’s already been commanding officer of a flight squadron.”

“They put flyboys in charge of the biggest ship on the ocean?”

“Aviators,” she corrected. “You might want to keep that term in mind when you’re aboard the
O’Halloran
.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He snapped a sharp salute that had her lips curving just a little. She was fighting it, but the lady wanted to smile. Which, along with that earlier evidence that he hadn’t been the only one having a really hot dream, assured Dallas that he was getting to her.

“It actually makes sense when you think about it,” she said, going back into teaching mode. “They’re experienced and have had previous command of a deep-draft ship before getting appointed to CV command.”

“CV standing for?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t stand for anything. It’s just the naval designation for a carrier. And the aviators in question are the best in the business. After their CV tour, they’re usually chosen for flag rank.”

“Meaning they get promoted to admiral.”

“Exactly.” She took out a pen. “Here’s the chain of command. . . .”

She drew a rectangle on one of the paper napkins. “The admiral commands the battle group.” Another box. “The CO, commanding officer—”

“Actually, I knew that one.”

“Do you want to know this or not?”

“It’ll be helpful, right?”

“Do you think I’d waste time if it weren’t important?”

“Consider me duly chastised.” He gave her his best apologetic expression. “Carry on.”

She looked at him for a long moment, as if trying to decide whether or not he was making fun of her. Then she shook her head and carried on.

“The commanding officers of the squadrons”—yet another box, which he couldn’t help noticing, was perfectly rectangular, with all ninety-degree angles—“who would’ve been in charge of our dead pilot, report to the CAG, carrier air wing commander, who reports to the admiral.”

“I’m beginning to think I wouldn’t have done all that well in the Navy.”

“O’Halloran, if what I’ve read and seen is any indication, you would’ve washed out in boot camp.”

She got up and went over to her bag and pulled out a yellow legal pad. “I wrote down some more info while you were out foraging for food. Commonly used acronyms about jobs, and places aboard the carrier you probably wouldn’t have ever had any reason to know. I figure you can use that apparent computer you call a brain to memorize them while we’re on our way out to the boat.”

“Wow.” He skimmed through the pages. “You’ve been busy.”

“It’s important that we look as if we know what we’re doing. We’re obviously not going to be the most popular people on the boat, so we need all the creds we can get.”

“Roger that.” He began skimming through the list.

She stood up and began gathering up her bags in preparation to leave. “So, you think you can memorize all that before we land on the flattop?”

Flattop being carrier. Dallas noted that she’d alphabetized the terms. He wasn’t surprised. But couldn’t help thinking that he’d have done exactly the same thing.

After leaving the building, as they drove to the airfield he decided to try an idea out on her he’d thought about while waiting in the drive-through line.

“I’m guessing that after we talk to the doc who called the suicide, we should interview LSO Manning,” he said. “Since he was the last person seen with her. And they’d had that public altercation.”

“Great minds,” she agreed.

“So, from your notes, the landing signal officer is the guy who decides when a plane lands?”

“Yeah. Though he’s also a pilot. Not necessarily always the best, but he’s got to be really motivated, because he’s required to keep up his own flying hours. So, nights other squad members might be hanging out watching TV, he’s out there on the platform directing the pilots with his paddles.”

“I’d guess it’d take a certain amount of ego to land a plane on a pitching deck.”

“‘Gargantuan’ probably doesn’t quite cover it,” she agreed.

“And if those complaints about Manning being a chauvinist are fact, he might not be all that agreeable to being interrogated by a woman.”

“I’ve yet to meet a person who considers any interrogation—by a man or a woman—an enjoyable experience. And believe me, I’ve dealt with my share of chauvinistic military guys.”

“And I’ve no doubt you deflected their behavior with your magic bracelets.” He had no problem at all imagining her in that hot red-white-and-blue Wonder Woman outfit. “The thing is, we could work it to our advantage. If you were to piss him off—”

She caught on immediately. “You could leap in and play good cop to my bad. Or in your case, Prince Charming to my Wicked Bitch of the West.”

“Yeah. That’s kind of what I was thinking.”

He waited for her to object to having the ultimate control of the interrogation taken away from her. Then he was, once again, surprised.

“That’s a good idea.” He could see her thinking about it as he pulled into the parking lot of the air station.

The’d been assigned to a COD—carrier onboard delivery. Unlike on a civilian aircraft, the blue metal seats faced backward; there were no overhead luggage bins—just life rafts hanging from a bare metal ceiling.

Inside the belly of the COD, the cabin was hot and dimly lit, but having been on a lot worse transport during his years in the Air Force, Dallas wasn’t about to complain as he strapped himself into the tight four-point harness.

Though as the scent of soap and shampoo hit when she sat down beside him, he couldn’t help fantasizing about flying over the sea at night in some fancy first-class cabin, making stealthy, stolen love with Juls as the other passengers slept.

Since there was no way they could carry on a conversation over the engines, he used the time to memorize her very detailed list.

The landing was as intense as he’d expected. There was a huge pop as the tail hook caught the cable and jerked them to an abrupt, bone-shaking halt that had him feeling as if he’d been thrown against a brick wall. Or sucked into a vacuum.

“Okay,” he said, even as his heart pounded a gazillion beats a minute. “I’ve gotta admit, that was a lot cooler than anything Six Flags could cook up.”

“The ultimate E-ticket ride,” Juls agreed. Her smile lit up her face in a way that had him thinking that no one who saw her now could accuse her of being an ice bitch.

As they exited the rear door of the aircraft, Dallas found himself in another, almost surreal world of eardrum-breaking noise, wind blasts, and fumes from the roaring jet exhaust.

Although the SEALs he’d worked with had never seemed to pay much attention to regs, Dallas had always been aware of the fact that the Navy came in a close second place behind the Marines when it came to tradition.

But he hadn’t expected such a host of greeting events once they landed on the carrier. Going through the lengthy drill, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Juls and the OOD—officer of the day—started exchanging secret hand signals and fist bumps.

“I’ve only been on one Tiger Cruise when I was a kid.” Julianne had to shout to the OOD to be heard over the roar of the jet engines. “But, except for the ceremonial flyover, I don’t remember so many planes and helicopters being in the air at one time.”

“It’s a search-and-rescue unit, ma’am,” he responded, equally loudly.

“Are you saying someone’s fallen overboard?”

“Yes, ma’am. One of the LSOs didn’t show up for morning muster. So he’s presumed to have gone overboard.”

“What’s the missing crew member’s name?” Dallas asked.

“That would be LSO Lane Manning, sir.”

The look Julianne exchanged with Dallas told him that once again they were thinking the same thing: that the missing LSO being the guy who’d had such a public altercation with the dead pilot was one helluva coincidence.

And while he wasn’t one to discount coincidence—his being assigned to work with Juls was definitely a case in its favor—this one was just too tidy.

“So, he’s been missing since this morning?” she asked as they crossed the deck.

“That’s when he was reported missing, ma’am. But his bunkmates don’t recall hearing him come to bed last night. So it could’ve been longer.”

Which meant, Dallas considered, that they’d just probably lost one of their best witnesses.

He also suspected that the argumentative LSO’s dive off the USS
O’Halloran
had not been an accident.

“Captain Ramsey wants to greet you personally,” their escort told them.

As they descended to the below waterline decks of the cavernous carrier, Dallas found himself actually relieved when it was explained that, for security reasons—and their own safety—they’d always have to have an escort while on board. Because, although he’d always prided himself on having a GPS in his head, he feared he’d be hopelessly lost within his first ten minutes alone.

And for a guy used to wandering around deserts and jungles in some of the world’s toughest terrain, that would just be too humiliating to ever live down. In fact, he might just need to throw himself off the boat.

“We’d be honored.”

Although her tone was polite, Dallas had come to know Juls enough to hear the impatience in it. He knew she wanted to get down to brass tacks. Meet with the doctor, investigate what could be a possible crime scene. But once again, there were traditions to follow, respect to show.

The guy glanced over at Dallas. “That’s quite a coincidence, sir,” he said, “your having the same name as this boat.”

“That’s all it is.” Not having been in the officer ranks, Dallas was uncomfortable with the repeated “sir.” But he understood training. The guy would probably tack “sirs” onto butchers or barbers back home. “A coincidence.”

The USS
O’Halloran
was not only long, it was tall. Two hundred and fifty feet, to be exact, and Dallas was beginning to get the feeling that the OOD was going to make sure they covered every inch of the ship before he finally ushered them into the captain’s inner sanctum. Which, he figured, was the same sort of benign hazing he and a lot of his fellow Spec Ops guys would give the CIA spooks whenever they showed up for a mission.

All vertical movement required moving up and down a seemingly endless series of narrow stairs. In their seemingly constant need to be different, the Navy called them ladders, which made sense, since they were essentially open, very steep metal stairs set at seventy-degree angles. Sailors were clattering up the right sides, down the left.

“I now understand why I’ve yet to see an overweight sailor on this ship,” he murmured to Juls. One positive about the stairs was that it gave him a very nice view of the woman’s very fine butt.

The negative was that he quickly learned the hard way that if you weren’t careful, it was easy to hit your head on the metal step above you.

“It’s pretty much a multibillion-dollar StairMaster,” she agreed.

Dallas decided they must be getting closer when all of a sudden stars started appearing on the floor.

“This is the Walk of Fame,” the OOD said back over his shoulder. “It commemorates important persons in naval history.”

William D. Leahy. Chester W. Nimitz. Hyman George Rickover. William F. Halsey. Then—whoa!—noticeably larger than its predecessors, and painted a rich and gleaming gold in contrast to the other bronze stars, was Declan Cormac O’Halloran.

“Okay,” Dallas admitted. “Coincidence or not, I kinda hate to step on this one.”

“I’d feel the same way if it were my father’s name down there,” Julianne said.

“But he’s not my father. Probably not even a shirttail relative.”

“It’s a part of naval history,” she said. “Which always gives me shivers.”

As he took a long stride over the star, although he still bled Air Force ultramarine and gold, Dallas couldn’t help but concur.

Captain Chester Ramsey’s quarters, unlike the barge space assigned to the suicidal lieutenant commander, included a dining room and living area adjacent to his office, were definitely not from DoD procurement. The sofas were covered in royal blue; the steel walls had been paneled and covered with framed photographs and a handful of framed oil portraits of former naval heroes. Blue-striped drapes framed what had to be the only portholes on the carrier.