Korea Strait (18 page)

“No. Sorry. I don't really have time. Maybe Bonnie could help you with that—”

“He sounds funny. Can't we talk?”

She smelled like candy. He swallowed and looked away. “I really need to do some things on the computer. Thanks, but I'd better not.”

He craned toward the dining room, wishing Henrickson would come out looking for her, or better, Wenck would—the South Carolinian was closer to her age. Single, too.
Why
had she attached herself to him? He couldn't help looking down her blouse. No, they weren't freckles. Damn it! He suddenly realized his erection was clearly molded by the damp thin nylon shell of the shorts. And the hell of it was, she couldn't be any older than his own daughter.

She laughed, turned to put herself between him and the corridor, took a grip on his handle, and squeezed. “You are afraid of me? Why? I am just little girl.”

“Let go of that! That's pretty much the problem. By the way—I'm married. So's Rit, actually.” He glanced toward the elevator. Third floor and coming down. “Does your friend know that?”

“I don't think matters to her.” She looked at the elevator too, and a mischievous smile tugged at her lips. She squeezed again, then bent him as if she were working a slot machine. It didn't feel too great, but the thought kept suggesting itself that it might be nice to teach her what did. “What floor your room is on?”

“Look, you seem like a nice person. A very beautiful girl. But I just can't,” he told her in his firmest Dad voice. “Go find somebody your own age and have a good time.” He patted her arm and got hold of her wrist and peeled her fingers off his dick.

The doors pinged and slid open at last. He got on quickly and jabbed the button with the “close” symbol on it. They slid shut on her pouting lips, her saucy ass as she whipped around and flounced off, flipping up her skirt behind her to show him peppermint-striped panties.

HE was wondering if that had been the right decision, half sorry he'd turned her away, as he got his key out of where he'd tied it into his shoe and let himself into his room. Shit, if Leakham got wind of that, the bastard would
know
he was gay. His erection wasn't going away.
He fingered it through the nylon as he kicked off his running shoes. Time for a shower, all right.

Then he noticed it was already running, a hollow roar behind the thin partition. He smelled the hot water.

He froze as the door clicked shut behind him. Was he in the wrong room? That was his hanging bag on the rack. His uniform cap on the side table. His case with the Compaq and power supply brick. This was his room.

So who was in the shower?

Just at that moment the water went off. He frowned. Tapped at the door, then tried the knob.

The air was opaque with steam. Suddenly he knew who it was. The other girl. Yung-Chul. They were double-teaming him. And he was giving way. Those legs. He couldn't resist those legs. He coughed into his fist, feeling his stomach go light, noting as if from far away as his last inhibition or scruple snapped from “on” to “off” like the last binary “fire inhibit” signal in a launching system. He was good to go.

“Uh—Miss Lee?” he said.

His wife slid open the frosted glass. She glanced up and started, then blinked back at him, her hair stuck wetly to her cheek, eyes slightly vague, slightly myopic without her contacts.

“Blair! What the hell are you doing here?”

She laughed. “What a great expression! You should see your face!”

“Well, I'm—I'm flabbergasted. You never said anything about coming to Korea.”

“They needed an official body for the events tomorrow. Naturally I had to volunteer.” She narrowed her eyes as she stepped carefully over the rim of the tub onto the wet slick tile, steadying herself on his shoulder. “Hand me that towel, will you? What was that you said?”

“When?”

“When you opened the door. What did you say?”

“What did I say? Uh—I forget. I just wondered who was in my shower. Events tomorrow? What events tomorrow?”

She gave him a hot damp kiss and told him the next day was the annual commemoration of the Korean War. “Nine a.m., at the International Cemetery. The ambassador will speak, and the Korean MOD.

I'm representing DoD. Wear your uniform, you can represent the U.S. Navy.”

“Sounds good to me. We're not getting under way till the day after. Last I heard, and considering the weather east of Japan, it might be longer than that.” He ran his lips along the side of her neck. Her damp short hair tickled his nose. His erection had shifted gears, but it was still on the same interstate. His hand slid up under the towel, up smooth damp skin into an even smoother slickness that parted before a probing finger. “Good shower?”

“Great shower,” she said. “Ow…
ow.
But do me a favor and just file those nails a little, okay? I'll give you an emery stick.” She scrubbed at her face, then rummaged through the cabinet over the sink.

“What are you looking for?”

“Just seeing who else left her mascara. You know what they say about sailors in foreign ports.”

He kept his face bland. “Sorry. One woman's all I can handle.”

She loosened the towel, eyeing him. “Miss me?”

“Do you have to ask?”

“Just checking. The indicator pointer looks like the answer's yes, though.”

“Come over here and I'll show you the reading up close.”

“Oh, no,” she said, and reached back to turn the shower on again. “You're all sweaty, and I am not going to rub up against that. Get over here. And let's see what a little soap and hot water can do.”

With a whisper of cotton, the towel hit the floor.

She soaped him up thoroughly: chest, armpits, his neck, his hair. Her nipples were already erect and he ducked his head to kiss them, one after the other, nipping gently and circling them with his tongue. Her fingers circled him and he closed his eyes. He pressed against her slick belly.

Her fingers went away and soaped down his back. They moved in slow circles. Then they came around his hips and met beneath his balls and slowly closed where another woman's had only minutes before.

He lost it. Cornered her against the tile, lifted her leg to curl around his back and he was in her, like that, starting to thrust, just gone. Just not really there anymore and at the same time never more there.
Out of fucking control
he thought vaguely, but actually he
wasn't thinking at all. The shower drilled down into his skull and it was like fucking under a waterfall.

She said into his ear, the breath whuffing out of her as he drove in, “Well now. That little…
problem
we used to have… all gone away is it?”

He didn't answer. He didn't have enough computing capacity left to generate words and choose among them. He was all the way in and he came back out as slowly as he could. Then he went back in for more.

He felt like he was made out of cast iron still hot inside. There was a narrow place and he went all the way through it. He saw white thighs beneath a slit leather skirt. He saw calves swelling against the tightly laced straps of cork-soled platforms. Soap burned at the corners of his eyes. He came out as slowly as he could and went all the way in. The narrow place was parting. It tightened and then parted again.

A crack snapped through the universe and he went in again. There was nothing beyond it, no thought, no consciousness, no self, no existence. She put her head back against the green and white tile. She reached around him with both hands and pulled him into her. She had fingernails too. The shower roared on his skull like fuel-fed flames. The violet rubber mat with flowers molded into it squeaked and skidded down toward the foot of the tub as their feet thrust against it.

She almost always came before he did but this time it was an awfully close race.

THEY lay on the bed sweating with the air-conditioning on full and blowing over them. Her leg was thrown over him and she lay with her head on his chest. His hand moved over her hair, over and over. It was shorter than he remembered it. She looked bled out in the cruel light. Her eyes were closed tight as if she didn't want to see. They didn't say much, just little words that didn't have much meaning in them.

When he stirred against her again she gave a muffled chuckle. She breathed her warm breath down onto him again and then lowered her head and took him in, all the way.

The crack opened again and this time it was lined with livid lightning. The nothing wasn't waiting on the other side this time. Instead it was an all-obliterating something he couldn't look at directly because it was too hot and too bright. He went into it and became it for maybe a thousandth of a second. It was like being eaten by a nuclear fireball. And just for that moment he thought he glimpsed something. But after that thousandth of a second then another and maybe one more the white hotness bloomed out, cooling with expansion, fading to fiery yellow, orange, dull red, fading but still incredibly hot and powerful. The shock wave rolled out over his body. It hit the roof of his brain and his toes and rolled back. It gathered again at the center and pulsed one last time as she shifted her hips and sat up and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

A frown gathered between her eyes. “What's wrong?”

“I thought I saw them.” He rolled away from her, to the far side of the bed. “That must have been what they saw. Just as it hit.”

“You're talking about the
Horn?”

He took several deep breaths and didn't answer.

“What's wrong?” she said again. Then her voice came closer. He felt her fingers on his cheeks and turned his head away. “Are you crying? Damn. Don't be ashamed, Dan. I'd say it's long past time.”

LATER, after another shower, they dressed and went down for dinner. He kept an eye peeled for Asian Lolitas, but neither was in evidence. He didn't see the other Taggers either. Except O'Quinn, who was leaning against the desk, talking to the clerk. The bar was filled with Japanese businessmen. Their wives were in the gift shop bargaining shrilly over Korean vases painted with sunflowers and carved jade translucent as wax and delicate lacquered boxes full of nothing. He sat across from her in the restaurant, feeling like the boxes.

Blair looked more tired than he'd ever seen her. He didn't think it was the sex. She ate like a wolf, exclaiming over the Korean dishes Dan had gotten his fill of already. He had a steak. They caught up on the rezoning issue on the street in Arlington where they lived, and on the new front porch and renovations to the upstairs bathroom. She always had six projects going, along with the business of the assistant secretary of defense for manpower and personnel. Dan considered
himself a hard worker, but he was in awe of how wide her span of control and attention extended.

“How's things working out at TAG?” she said, moving on from the renovations. “Is that far enough away from DC?”

“I was there a total of forty-eight hours. Met the CO. That's about it. He cut me orders and I was on my way.” He cut the steak carefully. Took a bite. Not a trace of kimchi flavor. No radishes. He sighed. “Anybody miss me?”

“People call. Reporters. They leave numbers. I don't call back.” She tried something Dan could have told her was loaded with enough garlic to clear out every vampire south of the DMZ, and closed her eyes in bliss. “Ooh, this is so good. And how about you? Are you happy with it… careerwise?”

“Well, it's not exactly the usual postcommand tour. The kind you want in your jacket when it's promotion-board time.”

“It isn't? It's bad?”

“It's not
bad.
Just out of the… mainstream. For a surface-line type.”

“Refining tactics is out of the mainstream?”

“It'd take too long to explain.”

“Well, where should you be? At this point? I just wish you had a law degree. We'd get you in the secretary's office. I could get you taken on at Test and Evaluation. No, better yet, Modeling and Simulation. They're looking for operators, we're planning a huge effort there—”

“Where I should be as far as the Navy's concerned is on a headquarters staff. Maybe SURFLANT. Then a major command tour.”

“Didn't the White House count for that? The staff thing.”

“Some would say so,” he said carefully. “Some wouldn't. As far as a promotion board goes, I'd say it'd hurt more than it'd help. With the way the president's cutting the active forces. It would've been better if I'd gone right to another command, I mean another ship command, instead of TAG. I'd be in the running for a squadron after that.”

“Surely they can't blame you for that. Just for being on his staff.”

“They can for being married to one of his appointees,” Dan told her.

A dangerous storm-light glittered. “Well, anytime you don't want to be—”

“Take it easy! I'm teasing. You've always been more concerned about my career than I have, anyway. It'll take care of itself.”

“A career never ‘takes care of itself.' Yours especially.” Her lips set. “All you've done for the Navy, all your decorations. Are you going to make O-6?”

“I don't really know. And frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a—”

“I'll ask some questions. Find out what's going on.”

He sucked air. “Blair,
please
do not involve yourself in my career. The single worst thing you can do for me is start screwing around with that. No matter how subtle you think you are. And I never did things ‘for the Navy.' If I ever did anything beyond the call, it was for the people who worked for me, or because somebody had to do it and I happened to have the watch. Anybody else in my shoes would have done exactly the same.”

She shrugged. Was this his night for making women pout? He tried to change the subject. “Anything new from the investigation? The attempted assassination?”