JUSTICE

January

Coronado, California

NAS North Island

HSC-85 Firehawks

       The hangar was a massive, cold, steel-encased space, filled with all the clutter needed to keep mechanical monsters in full working order: grease guns, hydraulic jacks, tools of every ilk, nuts, bolts, screws—you name it. The place stank of transmission fluid, and somewhere a pneumatic tool was rrrrrrring repeatedly.

       Double doors were shoved wide, exposing the flight line outside—an expanse of concrete painted with white circles at regular intervals: parking spaces for helicopters. The wind sock was snapping in the breeze. Weak sunlight streamed in through the open doors, illuminating two helos to the left of the personnel door that Justice and the CO had just passed through. These birds were at rest, rotor blades folded back.  

       A third helicopter was off to the right in a private corner of the hangar. This was where Justice and Commander Quinn headed.

       Three men in the requisite olive drab flight suits were inspecting this bird. One guy had his head stuck inside the belly of the creature, another man with bright red hair was balanced on top of the bird near the rotor blades, a third was standing under the tail out in the sun, sunglasses on, looking up at the rear rotor.

       The redhead on top of the aircraft noticed them first. “Hey,” he called to his buddies.

       The pilot near the rear rotor headed over.

       Justice’s first thought was, holy shit, he has hair!

       It was cut to meet Navy regs, but she was so used to seeing men with extreme buzz cuts that the stuff on this man’s head seemed luxurious. Pure black in color, rich and lustrous—shit, it was luxurious.  

       His flight suit was decorated with patches of eye-catching Americana, and clung impeccably to a form that was tall—an even six feet, she’d say—broad-shouldered and lean: a strong man, but with his strength distributed economically. The sleeves of his flight suit were shoved up on forearms displaying some impressive vein-work.  

       He had the smokin’-hot pilot-jock look down to perfection. Aviator sunglasses hugged a face that was obscenely handsome, and he sauntered with a gunslinger’s rolling stride, a supple ease that was deceptive about how relaxed he truly was. As he drew closer, Justice could feel a vitality equal to Keith’s radiating off him—though where Keith’s energy held an aggressive edge, this pilot’s was totally of the let’s party! variety.  

       After living in survival mode for so long—stuck with a bunch of men doing the same—the vibe was…oddly refreshing.

       “Whoa!” the pilot exclaimed as he swept off his shades. “They working you out much over there at the Amphib Base?” Laughing, he offered her his hand to shake. “Lieutenant Pete Robbins, head pilot.”  

       Diamond dust clearly had been ground into this guy’s tooth enamel—his movie star smile visibly sparkled—and Justice’s second thought about him didn’t exactly come from her brain. More like her heart and her vagina, the first went thump! the latter, jumping Jehoshaphat!

       Was this guy for real?

       Or had too many weeks spent around nothing but sweaty, dirty, tension-ridden men smacked a pair of hot-to-trot glasses squarely on her face? Her nipples were actually tingling.

       She shook his hand. “Ensign Justice Hayes.”

       “Justice?” Robbins’s brows slid up. “As in, fight for?”

       She shrugged. “If that’s what smokes your shorts.”

       Robbins laughed again, deep and barrel-like, his chin dipping down just low enough to give her the impression that the things that smoked his shorts were plentiful and diverse.  

       And why that thought should raise prickly little hairs of curiosity along her arms was a curiosity in its own right.

       “Is Hayes’s Special Missions crew here yet?” Commander Quinn demanded.

       “No, sir. Those boys had to check in with their day jobs first.” Tucking his sunglasses into a breast pocket, Robbins added for her benefit, “Your crew has been temporarily assigned to IT while they wait for you to finish BUD/S.” Back to Quinn. “They should be along any minute, sir.”

       Frowning, Quinn checked his watch. “You have a launch time to make, Lieutenant.”

       “Yes, sir. My guys”—Robbins gestured back at the other two flight-suited men—“are just finishing up pre-flighting the aircraft.”

       “Very well. See that you don’t back up my flight schedule.” The CO turned and stalked off.

       Robbins gave Justice a sardonic look. “The CO doesn’t like us very much.”

       “So I gathered.”

       “Ah, here are your guys now.” Robbins gestured to a spot over Justice’s left shoulder.

       She turned around, catching a first glimpse of her crew.  

       The two men were both dark-haired—basic brown—and wearing the Special Missions uniform of the day: black T-shirts and black-and-gray cammi combat pants bloused into black boots. They wore fatigue caps, but removed them as they entered the hangar, tucking the bills into the back of their pants.

       Justice would wear the same clothes once she officially joined Special Missions, but when military etiquette demanded that a cover be worn on the head, she would don an all-black narrow hat, known as a “piss-cutter,” instead of a fatigue cap.

       The taller of her two guys wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses secured in place by a strap around the back of his head. His hair was cut a little more high-and-tight than the Navy required. He was thickly built, but his muscles were of the smooth type that generally came from winning a genetic lottery ticket rather than the result of much actual physical effort. The glasses only added to her assessment that he was techie geek rather than weight room warrior.

       The second man was short, and after one look at Justice, he tripped and fell.

       He didn’t fart around about it either, but landed flat on his face.

       She tensed, but didn’t move forward. Probably rushing over to help the poor guy up would just make him feel worse.

       “Judging by your lack of reaction,” Robbins drawled next to her ear, “I take it this is a common male response to you?”

       She cut Robbins a sharp look.

       He only smiled, giving her a full blast of Bradley Cooper.

       She walked over to the two men as 6’3” helped up 5’6.”

       Robbins stayed by her side, gesturing at the tall guy. “This is Petty Officer Ron Glinski and”—the shorter one—“Petty Officer Charlie Morris.”  Whose cheeks were now fire-extinguisher red. The metaphor worked on several levels—he could’ve used one to put out his face, obviously embarrassed through every heated layer of his skin over his inauspicious greeting.

       “You okay?” she asked Morris as she shook his hand. Miraculously, his nose wasn’t bleeding.  

       “He’s just nervous,” Glinski explained when Justice shifted over to shake his hand.  

       She smiled at Morris. He had the puppy eyes of a dyed-in-the-wool follower, and the current slack-jawed expression he was aiming her way conveyed that he’d been really worried his new female boss wouldn’t be able to pull off Alpha Dog for him. But now…maybe she could.

       Pete Robbins turned to face her. “The boys have been…hmm, how to put it?” He reached sideways—didn’t even look—stuck a finger under Morris’s chin and snapped the man’s mouth closed. “The guys have had their skivvies in a knot over being the only Special Missions team with a female leader.”

       Now both Morris and Glinski needed a fire extinguisher.

       She gave Robbins a glib look. “Maybe you shouldn’t have put it at all.”  

       Robbins laughed, a boisterous, swashbuckling sound this time. “Aw, no big deal. We’re going to be one big, happy family, right?”

       This was said just as the other two flight-suited men arrived.  

       “Here are my guys. My AW, Ketchup”—Robbins gestured at the Aviation Warfare specialist who’d been on top of the aircraft—“and my copilot, Willie.” This brown-haired guy was pretty much nondescript in every way: not tall, but not short; not handsome, but not ugly; not thin, but not built.  

       He was chewing gum with lively vigor and smiling broadly, the expression reeking of I’m-just-so-glad-to-be-here. He probably made a very bouncy sidekick.

       Justice shook the hand of each man, reading their nametags: LT. Nate “Willie” Wojno and Petty Officer Jett “Ketchup” Murphy.  

       Ketchup made sense in light of the red hair, but Willie? “Why do you go by Willie?” she asked the beige copilot.

       He snapped his gum and widened his smile until the sides of his mouth were in danger of disappearing into his ears. “It’s my call sign.”

       Well, yeah, she knew that much, but why that name in particular? She checked out Robbins’s nametag. “And yours is Bingo?”  

       “Correct-a-mundo.”

       “Like the dog?”

       A smirk toyed with Robbins’s mouth. “I bring to mind a dog?”

       Her nipples having been hard as bullets throughout a lot of this exchange would lend itself to a no answer on that. “I mean like the song—Bing-O was his name-O.”

       Robbins shook his head slowly—back, then forth, one time—a mischievous light in his eyes. “Nope.”

       “You’re not going to tell me?”

       His brows came together sagely. “The origin of a call sign may only be divulged in places with low lighting and the plentiful distribution of alcoholic beverages.”

       Hmm, one of the smoother ways she’d been asked out for a drink. “Oh, well, shucks,” she said. “Shall we go brief our training run now?”

       Robbins chuckled, clear undertones of resistance is futile in the rumbling noise. “Now? Yes. Tonight? First round’s on me.” He headed deeper into the hangar. “Ready Room’s this way.”

       She kept pace with him while the others followed.

       “Aw, hell, you know what?” Robbins chin-nodded hello to the mechanic with the pneumatic tool. “I might as well give up Willie’s call sign now. He used the relief tube in-flight and forgot to zip up until after he’d stepped out of the aircraft…”

A star athlete and a master thief, Justine “Justice” Hayes is recruited by the U.S Navy to head up one of the new units Special Operations Forces command is creating to gather high-tech intelligence.

This is a dream job for her—she’ll get to break in places and steal stuff, but legally. Only problem is she first has to survive the Navy’s most intensive and grueling SPECWAR training program:

BUD/S.

In the following excerpt, Justice has spent three weeks at BUD/S and now is meeting her Special Missions team for the first time: the two enlisted men she will lead as well as her support flight crew.

** Please note this teaser has not been fully edited.