Mackenzie's Pleasure. Linda Howard

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       CHAPTER ONE

      ZANE MACKENZIE WASN’T HAPPY.

      No one aboard the aircraft carrier USS Montgomery was happy; well, maybe the cooks were, but even that was iffy, because the men they were serving were sullen and defensive. The seamen weren’t happy, the radar men weren’t happy, the gunners weren’t happy, the Marines weren’t happy, the wing commander wasn’t happy, the pilots weren’t happy, the air boss wasn’t happy, the executive officer wasn’t happy and Captain Udaka sure as hell wasn’t happy.

      The combined unhappiness of the five thousand sailors on board the carrier didn’t begin to approach Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie’s level of unhappiness.

      The captain outranked him. The executive officer outranked him. Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie addressed them with all the respect due their rank, but both men were uncomfortably aware that their asses were in a sling and their careers on the line. Actually, their careers were probably in the toilet. There wouldn’t be any court-martials, but neither would there be any more promotions, and they would be given the unpopular commands from now until they either retired or resigned, their choice depending on how clearly they could read the writing on the wall.

      Captain Udaka’s broad, pleasant face was one that wore responsibility easily, but now his expression was set in lines of unhappy acceptance as he met the icy gaze of the lieutenant-commander. SEALs in general made the captain nervous; he didn’t quite trust them or the way they operated outside normal regulations. This one in particular made him seriously want to be somewhere—anywhere—else.

      He had met Mackenzie before, when both he and Boyd, the XO, had been briefed on the security exercise. The SEAL team under Mackenzie’s command would try to breach the carrier’s security, probing for weaknesses that could be exploited by any of the myriad terrorist groups so common these days. It was a version of the exercises once conducted by the SEAL Team Six Red Cell, which had been so notorious and so far outside the regulations that it had been disbanded after seven years of operation. The concept, however, had lived on, in a more controlled manner. SEAL Team Six was a covert, counterterrorism unit, and one of the best ways to counter terrorism was to prevent it from happening in the first place, rather than reacting to it after people were dead. To this end, the security of naval installations and carrier battle groups was tested by the SEALs, who then recommended changes to correct the weaknesses they had discovered. There were always weaknesses, soft spots—the SEALs had never yet been completely thwarted, even though the base commanders and ships’ captains were always notified in advance.

      At the briefing, Mackenzie had been remote but pleasant. Controlled. Most SEALs had a wild, hard edge to them, but Mackenzie had seemed more regular Navy, recruiting-poster perfect in his crisp whites and with his coolly courteous manner. Captain Udaka had felt comfortable with him, certain that Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie was the administrational type rather than a true part of those wild-ass SEALs.

      He’d been wrong.

      The courtesy remained, and the control. The white uniform looked as perfect as it had before. But there was nothing at all pleasant in the deep voice, or in the cold fury that lit the pale blue-gray eyes so they glittered like moonlight on a knife blade. The aura of danger surrounding him was so strong it was almost palpable, and Captain Udaka knew that he had been drastically wrong in his assessment of Mackenzie. This was no desk jockey; this was a man around whom others should walk very lightly indeed. The captain felt as if his skin was being flayed from his body, strip by strip, by that icy gaze. He had also never felt closer to death than he had the moment Mackenzie had entered his quarters after learning what had happened.

      “Captain, you were briefed on the exercise,” Zane said coldly. “Everyone on this ship was advised, as well as notified that my men wouldn’t be carrying weapons of any sort. Explain, then, why in hell two of my men were shot!”

      The XO, Mr. Boyd, looked at his hands. Captain Udaka’s collar felt too tight, except that it was already unbuttoned, and the only thing choking him was the look in Mackenzie’s eyes.

      “There’s no excuse,” he said rawly. “Maybe the guards were startled and fired without thinking. Maybe it was a stupid, macho turf thing, wanting to show the big, bad SEALs that they couldn’t penetrate our security, after all. It doesn’t matter. There’s no excuse.” Everything that happened on board his ship was, ultimately, his responsibility. The trigger-happy guards would pay for their mistake—and so would he.

      “My men had already penetrated your security,” Zane said softly, his tone making the hairs stand up on the back of the captain’s neck.

      “I’m aware of that.” The breach of his ship’s security was salt in the captain’s wounds, but nothing at all compared to the enormous mistake that had been made when men under his command had opened fire on the unarmed SEALs. His men, his responsibility. Nor did it help his feelings that, when two of their team had gone down, the remainder of the SEAL team, unarmed, had swiftly taken control and secured the area. Translated, that meant the guards who had done the shooting had been roughly handled and were now in sick bay with the two men they had shot. In reality, the phrase “roughly handled” was a euphemism for the fact that the SEALs had beaten the hell out of his men.

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