Light Up the Night (19 page)

Roland was watching her.

“Thanks, I'll…” She looked down at her clothes. Loose sweats with nothing underneath, sneakers, Army T-shirt but no bra. Where the hell had her brain been that she'd gone out on a Navy ship without a sports bra? “Sure. What the hell, I'll be down in a few.”

***

Bill stood along the port bulkhead of the ammo storage room. It still smelled strongly of cleaning fluid and fresh paint. Munitions storage spaces were always kept immaculate. Minimum number of ways to spark something you didn't want sparked, and maximum visibility to see if something was leaking that shouldn't be.

Other than its smell, the room was wholly unremarkable. The bomb racks had been pulled along with the bombs since there were no Harrier jets aboard to use them and the
Peleliu
was destined for decommissioning after this operation. A couple-ton elevator filled one corner, big enough for a pair of bomb carts. Three different access hatches, each with a fire hose coiled close beside it. Matching ones would be out in the hall in case the crew had to fight their way into the room. The two big drains in the floor were buried under the mats. Incandescent lights in glass shields and steel cages lit the room brightly, lending it a yellowish cast.

And, he almost wished Trisha were here to remark on it, unremitting gray. After a couple hours of searching the ship for her, including their haunt on the afterdeck, he started thinking about accessing the ship-wide paging system, which would be a really bad idea. When he'd heard about this matchup, he figured she'd be here and had come looking. Just as well that she wasn't. Who knew what he'd do to her in his present state of mind.

The space was crowded despite its size. Maybe forty-foot square, with about a hundred guys pressed into the room. One of the chief petty officers was acting as the referee over a blond ensign Bill recognized and a bald Ranger that he didn't. They were both stripped to their pants and barefoot, going for it on the mat. Side bets were trading hands despite the CPO forbidding them when he started.

The senior officers had made themselves scarce, allowing the men a chance to defuse and burn off some of the energy at being cooped up shipboard.

Wrestling for now, but there was room in here for some serious sparring. Maybe he'd bring O'Malley down here and pound some sense into her.

He grimaced. Bill could feel the heat of his emotions and knew that was a bad sign. He needed to be careful, calm down, and find the center of his anger so that he could let it go. Control the emotion before it controlled him. Maybe he should bring Trisha down here to pound some sense into him.

Someone sidled up beside him, moving so smoothly and quietly that he almost didn't notice. He didn't even have to turn and see.

Michael.

They exchanged nods and continued to watch the crowd.

“Blond guy,” Bill said quietly, watching the two wrestlers shoulder to shoulder, both grappling for a hold that would knock the other over onto his back.

“If the bald Ranger shifted his left foot back about six inches, he'd have him.”

Billy studied their positions and then nodded. It would be an unconventional move, based on his own weight distribution, but it would absolutely unbalance his blond opponent. Would he think to do it himself? Maybe, hard to judge a fight without being in it yourself.

The bald guy shifted in the opposite direction and moments later found himself slammed to the mat, both shoulders pinned for the crucial moment before the kneeling ref slapped the mat to declare the victor.

“You giving it a go?” Michael asked after another Ranger had come forward and squared off against the winning ensign.

Billy had been assessing the crowd. There were some guys bigger than him, but watching them move showed they were no real threat. There were a couple of Navy seamen first class, a petty officer or two, and one Ranger master sergeant that would be a good challenge, but as long as he kept his head, none of them worried him.

With a single grunt, a slam, and a groan from the gathered Rangers, their comrade was slammed into the mat and pinned on the first move.

“Doesn't seem fair for me to play. Maybe if Navy gets backed into a corner, I'll give it a go.”

After that it went back and forth for a while. The blond guy made it through four matches before a fellow Navy man took him down. A Ranger planted him down hard in the longest match yet, lasting well over a minute.

The space was heating up and starting to smell of sweat and anticipation. A bloody nose that was apologized for and shrugged off as unimportant added a coppery bite to the air.

One of the Navy petty officers came forward, a lifer rather than some young punk. Several of the younger Rangers, not being smart enough to know they were beaten before they stepped on the mat, went at him one by one. Bill had been right. He was good. Damn good. He even cleared off the Ranger Master Sergeant. That pretty well put paid on Bill having to join the fray. Go Navy!

The Navy PO second class, having won boasting rights and a pretty massive adrenaline rush, stood barefoot in the center of mat. His fists bunched and held low in front of him as he pumped up his shoulders. He roared like the Incredible Hulk. A crow of well-deserved victory that elicited rounds of cheers and laughter and an answering roar from the rest of the Navy contingent. They shouted out his name, Sly Stowell, then broke into another round of “Go Navy!”

With hardly a ripple in the crowd, the man beside Bill was moving forward. Michael had shed shirt, shoes, and belt without even Bill noticing. No one saw him until he was well past the front edge of the crowd and standing near the Petty Officer.

The room went quiet. The senior Delta Force operator was about half the size of the Petty Officer.

Bill tried to understand what he was doing. If there was a “no contest” in the room, it would be against Colonel Michael Gibson.

They squared off, the Navy PO pumping himself up, knowing that putting in a good showing was the best he could hope for. Even as the ref raised a hand, ready to start the match, Bill figured it out.

He didn't even bother to watch the Navy man go down.

Bill just bent down to remove his own shoes and socks.

***

Billy was gone and hadn't made her bed. Trisha decided to shower and make her bunk before changing into more appropriate clothes. She'd known the wrestling match would probably be going on a long while yet. She'd thought to go down and cheer on a few friends while they burned off some testosterone. It was a common enough game, one the commanders were wise to turn a blind eye to. It also let any inter-crew tensions be worked out safely in a controlled environment.

She entered the room about twenty minutes after she'd left Roland in the corridor. She had to squeeze in among the wall of bodies that blocked any visibility into the center of the room.

It had the same low ceiling that the other decks did, but it wasn't Smurf-high. She'd have to remember to harass Billy about that, a good tool to show him that she was over being mad at him. Mostly.

The shouting in the steel chamber made her ears actually hurt. She wished she had earplugs. Cheers of “Rangers lead the way!” and “Go Navy!” echoed back and forth with all of the power of cannon broadsides.

And she couldn't see shit. Most of these guys' shoulders were higher than her head, never mind her eyes.

She shoved and struggled and pushed toward the front as all the Rangers groaned and Navy cheered even more loudly. She spotted a couple of Night Stalkers shouting for the Army Rangers as she worked her way forward.

The room went silent the moment she came up against a final barricade. Two guys blocked her view, both shirtless and sweaty. A blond Navy guy almost as big as Billy and a shaved-bald Ranger who each showed the bright red of palm prints on their skin from having been in a wrestling ring. Moments before, they'd been showing how hoarse they'd become from cheering the matches.

And now they both stood stone still.

In the moment of slack silence, she managed to wedge between the two big guys without getting too much of their sweat on her.

Then she saw why the silence had fallen. Sly stood in the center of the ring, the fuelie she'd chatted with about twenty minutes earlier. Now Sly was clearly the man to beat. And he was facing a guy about half his size.

Michael.

Michael wasn't as scarred up as Billy, but as she knew, his body had definitely seen its own share of hard wear and tear.

The Navy guy slowly chose his spot, made a show of testing that there was no sweat under where he'd planted his feet on the mat. Assuring himself that he'd have good traction for his first move. Then he half crouched and waited. Michael stood opposite him, one foot slightly back, his knees bent.

The referee looked intently at his Navy comrade, clearly ready to call off the match before it started. A slight shake of the combatant's head, then he turned to concentrate fully on Michael.

The referee shrugged, took a deep breath, and raised his hand high. Then he sliced it down between the opponents and jumped back to clear the melee.

Mr. Navy decided that to close fast and grapple was a good strategy. Leverage his size and strength against the smaller D-boy. Not a bad choice, and probably his only good one.

Michael stepped underneath Sly's swinging arm and, turning aside, tapped him on the shoulder as he went by.

Sly spun and missed grabbing Michael by mere inches.

Michael ducked low inside the curve of Sly's arm. Close to the ground he hooked a knee under Sly's barely raised foot and rocketed to his feet. Sly slammed to the ground as Michael continued to use the leg as a lever. It only took a moment, but Sly's shoulders were pinned past any recovery.

Less than five seconds and the referee slapped the mat, looking relieved to do so.

The echo of that slap could be heard easily coming back off the room's walls. There wasn't another sound in the packed room.

Michael reached out a hand to help up Sly. Once they were both on their feet, Michael grabbed Sly's wrist and raised his arm high, indicating Sly as the victor. Clearly he wasn't of this match, but Michael was giving him the honor due the best man in the room other than himself.

When she began to applaud the gesture, the slap of Trisha's palms was the only sound in the room. But within seconds, as if she'd unleashed an entire artillery barrage, the guys—Rangers and Navy both—went wild. Hoots, cheers, applause.

The two men in the center shook hands and did that manly half-hug, hard-slap-on-the-back, while-leaning-over-the-handshake thing.

Why had Michael even bothered to enter the ring? There wasn't a soul in the room who could beat him.

That's when she spotted Billy pushing his way into the ring from off to her right. He too had stripped down to just his pants. And the heat so sated just a few hours before roared back into her body. He looked magnificent in a room that contained many partly clothed, exceptional men.

Then she thought about who he was facing and she wanted to tell him not to be such an idiot. But the applause was dying and the room quieting as they saw the next matchup.

Billy saw her and offered one of his scowls, one of the ones with heat behind it. “Couldn't find her when he wanted to, but now he'd found her when he didn't want her here” was how she read it.

Well, tough. This was bound to be a spectacle and she didn't want to miss it.

The room finally settled. Aboard the entire ship, these were the two odd men out. More so than SOAR. Even more than the most senior officers versus the enlisted crew.

The D-Boy and the SEAL, both top-flight operators. Tier One assets is what they'd be called in the terrorist world, those prime targets that you really, really wanted to take out. Even Rangers who harassed every non-Ranger on the planet, including Delta operators, didn't have the balls to mess with Colonel Michael Gibson or Lieutenant William Bruce. Mostly everyone just went silent when the two of them were around.

What was it like living that way? You might belong to a team, but it would be a very small one. Even in the current Operation Heavy Hand, the camaraderie broke down around these two men. She and the Captain were among the few who broke “party” lines to sit with them. Most others left a clear perimeter. At a number of meals she'd seen the two of them sitting at a corner table, and the three tables around them left empty except for the other D-boys and the occasional Night Stalker.

Now the two of them stood in the center of a circle of a hundred men, so silent that all you could hear was their breathing.

The referee sidled into position, but Billy waved him back. The man looked glad to go. Though he joined the front row and stood with his big arms crossed over his chest, still ready to intervene if he deemed it necessary.

For a long minute neither Michael nor Billy moved. A questioning buzz built slowly in the room, reinforced, made far louder than it was, by the close space and the gray metal walls. The two of them hadn't moved, except for their eyes.

Trisha felt like a voyeur. One of these men had been her lover for a brief time and the other was now. She knew both of the bodies very well, and she could feel the tension sliding back and forth between them.

Billy increased the weight on his right foot without much moving his hip. Michael shifted his left hand forward about two inches and Billy settled back. Move and countermove. They both knew what could come next and decided it wouldn't work.

Michael leaned forward an inch at most. Billy dug his toes into the mat, which responded with a sound between a squeak and a groan. Again, they both relaxed.

With no warning she could see, like the moment a gun fired when you didn't quite know the trigger's break point, Billy dove and rolled himself at Michael's feet. Michael jumped up to clear Billy's back. But just as Billy rolled onto his face, he shoved down with hands and feet and sprung upward. His back caught Michael's knees and sent him tumbling through the air. As he fell, Michael planted a single hand on the mat. He used that to push off as his tumble continued, now twisting his fall into a backward somersault. He stuck the landing, standing dead still even as Billy rolled up to land on his feet.