Show of Force Read online

  Synopsis

  It should have been simple, but life has a way of getting complicated.

  When correspondent Tate McKenna broke her own rules and took navy pilot Lieutenant Commander Evan Kane home from an embassy dinner in Bahrain, she knew all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. Long, unpredictable work hours. Extended absences. The dangers inherent in their jobs. Yet after being with Evan once, it was inconceivable she wouldn’t be with her again.

  When they finally have a chance to get things right, danger follows them home from Afghanistan. Now, Tate and Evan must stand together in a show of force or risk losing everything—including their lives.

  Show of Force

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

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  Show of Force

  © 2013 By AJ Quinn. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-972-5

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: September 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Ruth Sternglantz

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  By the Author

  Hostage Moon

  Show of Force

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Rad for inspiring me and making me want to be a better writer. To Ruth Sternglantz, editor extraordinaire, for being so very good at what you do, and for being willing to teach me and help me tell a better story. To the amazing team at BSB who work to make all of this possible. To JP for sharing all those stories about life as a navy pilot—even the ones that made me blush. And especially to the readers for your encouragement and support. It’s both an honor and a pleasure to share my stories with you.

  Dedication

  To BJ, for so many reasons and more.

  Prologue

  February 16

  1800 AST

  USS Nimitz (CVN 68)

  Northern Arabian Sea

  It was into a warm mid-February evening that Lieutenant Commander Evan Kane stepped out of the squadron ready room. The winds were light, cloud cover minimal, and the setting sun had painted the horizon in glowing shades of orange and gold. It promised to be a great night to fly, and she was eager to get the mission underway.

  Following close behind her, she could hear her wingman, Deacon Walker, giving some good-natured grief to a nugget—a new pilot on his first deployment. She wanted to keep her mind focused on the mission, and for a moment or two, she remained silent. But she finally had to shake her head and laugh as the trash talk escalated. The kid would learn soon enough.

  As her long stride took her into the noise and bustle of the flight deck, she realized she was hyperaware of everything around her. The constant scream of aircraft engines. The inescapable smell of jet fuel that filled every breath. The flow of action. It was almost, she reflected, as if, like the nugget, this was the first time she’d ever been here.

  Except, of course, this was not her first cruise. She’d been on the flight deck of a carrier untold times, day and night, in good weather and bad. And, unlike the nugget, she was at the top of her game.

  During this last deployment alone, Evan had flown countless sorties to and from the operating areas in Afghanistan. Each mission lasted between five and seven hours and necessitated refueling by air force tankers while en route. And between takeoff and landing, she provided close air support to US and coalition forces on the ground.

  Sometimes that meant performing strafing runs while under antiaircraft fire. Still other times, she’d been called on to use the sensors on her F/A-18 to locate possible improvised explosive devices or roadside bomb positions.

  Lately, many of those missions had included loud and low show-of-force passes over insurgency areas. In the lexicon of close air support, the maneuver was a nonlethal display of power intended to signal enemy forces that the ground troops were not alone.

  It was all part of the job.

  A job that was coming to an end.

  Tonight’s mission had the distinction of being her last. After this mission, and all the intervening years since she’d walked into Aviation Officer Candidate School as a fresh-faced college grad, she was finally going home.

  Stepping onto the four-and-a-half acre flight deck, she walked with cautious familiarity as sailors and aircraft moved about in a tightly choreographed ballet. Not just a cliché, it truly was poetry in motion.

  She wasn’t surprised to find Dave Riley, the air wing commander, standing near her aircraft. They’d met years earlier while training in Fallon, Nevada prior to her first deployment, and they had served together a long time. Dave had always been supportive, pushing, stretching, and encouraging her to be the best. He had also done everything in his power to convince her to stay in the navy. But he had finally accepted her decision to walk away.

  Without saying a word, he fell in beside her as she completed her last preflight walk around. He then stood at attention and crisply saluted her. She returned his salute and watched him turn on his heel and leave the area.

  Alone once again with her thoughts, Evan quickly slid into the seat of her F/A-18 and strapped in. She was on the clock as she went through her takeoff checklist, then followed direction and lined up at one of the Nimitz’s four catapults, collectively capable of launching aircraft from the flight deck every thirty seconds.

  With canopy down, engines turning, and ejection seat armed, she patiently awaited her turn. A yellow shirt—an aircraft director—gave her the signal to start rolling forward, and she followed the wands until she was parked behind the jet-blast deflector, which protected her from the jet twenty feet ahead about to take off.

  Evan tensed, felt the adrenaline flow increase, and forced her muscles to relax as she double-checked her trim settings and her ejection seat and ensured all radios, navigational aids, and data links were turned on while an engineer gave a final check. As he ran clear, he gave her the signal to go to full power.

  Evan complied. She heard the roar of the engines reverberate, felt the aircraft quiver in anticipation of takeoff. Seconds ticked by, and then she saw the yellow shirt snap a smart salute. She returned the salute, her response telling the CAT officer both pilot and aircraft were ready for launch. An instant later, she pressed her head against the seat, slammed the throttle to full afterburner, and was catapulted into the evening sky.

  God, she would miss this, she thought fleetingly, as she cleared the deck. The exhilaration. The camaraderie. The sheer joy of flying. But the moment quickly passed, and she turned her focus to the immediate business at hand. Raising the gear and shutting off the lights, she ascended rapidly as the giant carrier receded below her and her wingman joined her in the darkening sky.

  They were four hours into the mission when the call came in. A marine unit doing reconnaissance had run into unexpected resistance. Under heavy fire, they had requested air support, and a ground controller wanted the two strike fighters to send a sign—a show of force—to the marines and the Taliban fighters.

  She signaled Deaco
n to follow, and the two jets dropped down, skimming over the massive, snowcapped mountain range. They used the jagged mist-covered mountains and valleys as cover, trying to avoid detection and surface-to-air missiles.

  As they approached their target, Evan banked and aligned her aircraft, diving before pulling level and accelerating into the canyon, broadcasting her proximity with an extended engine roar. Deacon followed suit.

  What happened next came without warning.

  A surface-to-air missile hit her starboard wing.

  The sound was paralyzing and her world exploded into chaos.

  Her F/A-18 shuddered and smoke began to fill the cockpit, while the instrument panel lit up like a Christmas tree with flashing warning lights. She quickly lost altitude and speed and groaned under the g-forces.

  Not good.

  Already the aircraft had become unresponsive, and in those fleeting seconds, as time slowed to a crawl, Evan resigned herself to the fact that on her very last mission she would be abandoning her aircraft. Ejecting into a no-man’s-land of cliffs and rocks and ice, far from help and the possibility of a quick rescue.

  Automatically, her hands moved in a sequence of actions reinforced through years of continuous repetitive training. She tightened her harness straps, cinched down her helmet, and got ready to take the ride of a lifetime. And then she was out of time.

  It was going to be close. With her aircraft disintegrating around her, she grabbed the pull handle of her ejection seat.

  After an explosion caused by the canopy separating, she was blasted into the cold and eerie silence. She had barely begun her descent when something struck her helmet. It hit hard, shattering her visor.

  She never lost consciousness, not quite, but everything blurred. Her head exploded with pain and cold air rushed in. Something wet ran down her face and she thought she could taste copper.

  Dazed, disoriented, her vision dimmed, and her last conscious impression as she hurtled toward the ground was of being surrounded by snow. Tate loved snow, she remembered dreamily as she descended through the clouds.

  Just before she slipped into unrelieved blackness, only one thought was on her mind.

  I’m sorry, Tate. I’m so sorry.

  Chapter One

  Seventeen months earlier

  September 21

  1900 AST

  Manama, Bahrain

  Everything in Tate McKenna’s world was irrevocably altered on the evening of her thirty-third birthday. It happened the moment she caught her first glimpse of Evan Kane in the grand ballroom at a by-invitation-only embassy party honoring the US secretary of state’s visit to Bahrain.

  Under normal circumstances, Tate went grudgingly or outright avoided these formal affairs. But for some inexplicable reason, she had put up only a token resistance when reminded by a colleague this was a must-attend function, especially given her job as a correspondent for the Middle East news bureau entailed covering the guest of honor’s tour through the region.

  So she pulled out the little black dress she saved for occasions such as this and contemplated putting her shoulder-length hair up before deciding to leave it loose. She added a hint of scent and put a smile on her face. Twenty minutes later, she braced herself as she entered the ballroom, prepared to spend the next few hours watching an assortment of diplomats fawn over the secretary of state.

  The room was brightly lit and echoed with the clatter of crystal and laughter and the sounds of countless muted conversations. The dignitaries and guests in attendance milled throughout the ballroom, their voices competing with the strains of music from the orchestra.

  Almost immediately, a waiter wandered by with a tray of full champagne flutes and Tate gratefully swept up a glass. As she brought the champagne to her lips, it was a husky laugh that first caught her attention. Transfixed by the sound, she scanned the nearby crowd, looking for its source.

  And then she saw her and literally froze, the glass hovering near her mouth.

  It wasn’t as if she was unused to seeing an American military presence. Marines at parade rest stood guard at every embassy she’d been in. Bahrain was also home to the roughly one thousand land-based navy personnel at the headquarters for the Fifth Fleet, which directed operations in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Arabian Sea. And Tate was aware the USS Nimitz had just arrived in the Gulf.

  But for some reason, the three naval officers cutting across the room—two men and a woman—stood out with poster-child perfection in their dress whites. Then again, maybe it was just the woman who cast a magical spell and captured her attention, because over the next few seconds, the two male officers beside her ceased to exist, while the woman seemed to offer the potential of changing her evening from one of tedium to one promising endless possibilities.

  She was stunning.

  There was an unconscious arrogance in the set of her shoulders, and she moved with the languid, easy grace of a woman who knew what she was doing—and could handle anything that came her way. Tate watched as she moved through the crowd, charmingly mingling with the savvy of someone well used to these events, and when Tate saw a smile tug at the corners of her beautiful mouth, she was certain she’d never seen anything as sexy in her life.

  She was at least five-ten, possibly more, and lean, with narrow hips and long, endless legs. And her dark, nearly black hair was styled in one of those hypershort cuts that just looked sinfully sexy. Maybe because it bordered a bewitching face that was instantly unforgettable. High, slashing cheekbones, dark eyes, and a lush mouth. Actually, make that an incredible mouth, curving upward in a kind of lazy smile, framed with twin dimples that flashed each time she smiled.

  Evocative as hell. It was also a face that gave the impression she was hiding a wealth of secrets and made Tate want to unveil every single one of them, until she discovered who the officer really was.

  It took Tate a moment to recognize the nearly instantaneous and overwhelming sweep of raw desire that enveloped her, and she almost stumbled as the realization dawned. Her mouth became dry and she was aware of an indefinable, primal attraction that had nothing and everything to do with the pleasure of simply watching the officer as she cut through the crowd.

  As Tate followed her with her eyes, swallowing grew increasingly difficult. And as a small, pleasant ache settled between her thighs, Tate wondered if anyone else in the room was suddenly thinking of hot, hungry mouths and sweat-dampened skin.

  The thought startled her. She would not have described herself as an impulsive woman, nor was she normally given to flights of fancy. Especially not while on the job.

  But the naval officer seemed like every fantasy, every dream played out. She was every wish personified, and Tate had not been involved with anyone for a very long time. A deadly combination.

  Who are you, and why can’t I take my eyes off you?

  Tate shook her head in silent bemusement. She was accustomed to relying on her instincts when it came to people, and she was rarely wrong. But she had never experienced anything quite like this. She was actually breathless.

  “See something interesting?”

  Tate turned around, bringing her face-to-face with Jillian Cordell, smiling as she drew near. “Maybe,” Tate replied, looking back for an instant until she was staring once again at the naval officer. “Do you know who she is?”

  A tiny blond dynamo in a flame-colored silk dress, Jillian was considered direct, focused, and disciplined by everyone who knew her. She was also a seasoned foreign service officer and came with a reputation that could walk into a room about ten minutes before she did.

  As two individuals went, Tate and Jillian couldn’t have been more different. But in spite of those differences, Tate would be eternally grateful Jillian had taken a new and relatively inexperienced correspondent under her wing when Tate had first arrived in the Middle East. And for reasons neither of them fully understood, the two women connected and had quickly become friends.

  Jillian nibbled from a small plate of hors d’oeuv
res she was holding as she attempted to follow Tate’s line of sight, and Tate knew the moment she saw the navy officer. Jillian made no attempt to hide the fact she was staring and her smile widened.

  “Mercy,” she whispered reverently. “If you’re looking at tall, dark, and oh-my-God-she’s-gorgeous in the dress whites, she makes me want to fall to my knees and beg. And, no, I don’t know who she is, but I’m thinking now would be a good time to change that.”

  Tate shook her head. “Uh-uh. I’m thinking now would not be a good time. At least not for you, my friend.” She smiled to ease any potential sting in her words. “Besides, she’s much too young for you,” she added, knowing Jillian had recently turned forty-two while guessing the lieutenant in question was most probably only in her midtwenties.

  Jillian laughed. “I don’t think so. If you look at the insignia on her uniform, there’s a half stripe between the two full stripes. She’s a lieutenant commander, and that should put her somewhere around thirty years of age. Not too young at all.”

  “Okay, she just looks young.”

  And delicious. Desire, stronger this time, spiked through her again as Tate continued to follow the lieutenant commander with her eyes. She was faintly surprised by the involuntary reaction, causing Jillian’s sarcastic retort to fade into the din of the ballroom.

  She shook her head. She hadn’t felt this kind of immediate response to a woman since—she paused and grinned to herself—well, since never.

  Jesus, I need to get it together. Or I need to get laid.

  She tried to keep an eye on the striking brunette but momentarily lost her as she was swallowed by the crowd. Maybe that was a good thing, she told herself. Her job was to cover the secretary of state. She was here to work, not to find a lover or rediscover her previously dormant libido.