Fleet Hospital. Anne Duquette Marie

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      None too soon. She’d paid almost all her money to a Los Angeles forger for two fake IDs, both in her pen name: one a bogus driver’s license, the other an Associated Press card that had gotten her permission from the Marine Base General to report on Fleet Hospital. All she had now was a stash of about a hundred bucks to hit the thrift shop for some new clothes—if there was anything left after renting a computer to type out her story and then fax it in.

      But first she had to find that story. She’d better start interviewing as many people as possible—and that meant she could stay in the shade for a while. Anyone who had any sense would join her after mustering.

      “Finally!” she murmured as roll call ended. She scanned the crowd again. She needed to locate the handsome CO, Michael James McLowery, and then that boring-looking chaplain. What was the guy’s name and rank? She checked her notes one more time. Oh, yeah, there it was….

      HERE HE WAS, Daniel Preston, Lieutenant, CHC, USN, a chaplain straight out of OIS—Officer Indoctrination School in Newport, Rhode Island—and about to undergo an exercise that would teach him about dealing with the dead and dying. His years in the Navy Reserves hadn’t acquainted him with a chaplain’s most solemn duties, which was why he’d finally made the jump to full-time sailor. Like most of the population in a wealthy country usually at peace, he’d never seen an adult die. In fact, he’d never seen anyone die…

      Except for a small child. Anna McLowery. That was back when he was Daniel Klemko, Jr., known as “Dennis.” But his father, Daniel Senior, had died in ’Nam, from friendly fire, no less, and his mother had remarried and let his new stepdad adopt him. He became Daniel Preston, minus the Jr.

      The memory of that little girl’s death had stayed with him, made his new name welcome and had later driven him to bars, booze, women’s beds and, finally, to the ministry. He doubted he had any genuine calling as a man of God, but he could certainly identify with other tortured sinners. So here he stood, an honest-to-goodness military chaplain, expected to counsel, pray with—or pray for—moulaged military personnel made up with eerie Hollywood expertise to look like dying patients.

      Soon “the enemy,” the instructors and support staff, would quit mustering them and start the attack. He’d been waiting for it since early morning. Two hundred personnel from all over North America were also waiting.

      “Back to your stations. Disssssss-missed!”

      Everyone except the armed on-duty compound guards at the gate fell out and shuffled back to the two hospital entrances, either Triage and Casualty Receiving or the main hospital entrance to the command center.

      An African-American female with an M-16 slung across her back and a radio attached to her shoulder fell out beside Daniel. She reached up to adjust the security earpiece/radio she wore, swiped at the sweat on her face, then stared at her hand.

      “Damn heat’s melting my mascara—” She broke off at the sight of Daniel’s subdued black lieutenant’s garrison emblem on the left of his uniform collar and the Cross of Christ emblem on the right. “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to swear, sir.”

      Daniel read her Second Class rank on her collar and her Master-at-Arms rank, rate and name, A. Jackson, by the embroidered badge on her pocket. “I’ve heard worse, MA2.” He reached into his pocket for the ever-present wad of tissues he carried. Prayers and Kleenex, a chaplain’s stock in trade. He gave her a handful and gestured toward another area of mascara on her skin.

      “Sorry, sir,” she said again. He noticed—couldn’t help noticing—Jackson’s flawless feminine features and trim but voluptuous body. Her accent was as thick and heavy as her weapon. Thanks to his internship in the South, he’d bet money she was a Bible Belt Baptist.

      “People act as ridiculous around chaplains as Friday-night drivers do around MPs,” he said. “I get tired of it—don’t you?”

      “Yes, sir. It’s a…pain, sir.”

      “You can stop with all the sirs, too.”

      She grinned, the smile definitely making her feminine and attractive despite the unflattering uniform and the melted mascara still speckling her cheeks.

      “Missed a spot.”

      She scrubbed at her face with the wadded tissue. “All gone, Chaplain?”

      “It is now, Petty Officer Jackson.”

      “Thank you, sir. Duty calls, sir.”

      He watched her military-trot toward the guard shack.

      From behind Daniel, a pleasant voice commented, “Now that’s an oxymoron—a military chaplain.”

      Daniel swiveled around to find another woman. Her face was more pretty than classically beautiful, and there was little delicacy in this sassy lady. A lightly tanned white civilian in scruffy jeans, she didn’t bother with a cap to shade a head of untidy, shoulder-length dark-blond curls. Her gray-eyed gaze met Daniel’s. He noted the two cameras slung over one trim shoulder. A piece of masking tape hand-printed with “Press” was stuck to her shirt below the neck with its two open snaps. He observed she had a very nice bust line, the only part of this woman that didn’t seem to need fattening up.

      She caught the quick flick of his eyes. “Judging by that look, I’d say you’re not a Catholic chaplain. Or a married Jewish one.”

      She had seen his cross. Jewish chaplains wore the Star of David, not that religious insignias mattered to a dying sailor. As with all military chaplains, Daniel had been trained in the rites and prayers of the three major religions, and was expected to use them.

      “Protestant chaplain, right? Single, too.”

      “Yep.” Not that he could’ve bypassed that figure even if he had been married. The smiling woman before him was in her early thirties and was as sexy as the MA2 was businesslike. Daniel warmed to this woman’s sensuality as quickly as he’d warmed to Jackson’s honest personality. The cross on his collar didn’t cancel out his masculinity, and as Ms. Reporter had noted, he wasn’t bound by a Catholic priest’s vow of celibacy.

      However, as a chaplain, he was bound to marital sex only. He wasn’t married, and his days in strange women’s beds were long over. He was only human, however, and sometimes that human side overcame his spiritual calling. Breasts were breasts, even if he refused to ogle them. But he had no plans for a girlfriend, fiancée or wife.

      “Lt. Daniel Preston, CHC.”

      She held out a friendly hand, which he shook. “I’m Jo Marche—that’s Marche with an ‘e’—AP. That’s Associated Press.”

      Daniel knew what AP meant.

      “I’m here to cover the training exercise, starting with you.”

      “Me?”

      “Yes. Everyone does stories on the poor wounded men and the Florence Nightingales who treat them.”

      She didn’t sound disparaging in the least, but as a good citizen in uniform he couldn’t help commenting. “That’s what war’s about—death and destruction, wounded men and women.”

      “Sadly, yes,” she said with real feeling, apparently not СКАЧАТЬ