Now We Are No Longer Strangers

"This was your competition?" asked Johnny, amused contempt dripping from every word. "Trisha must have been drunk, desperate, drugged, or deranged to have gone out with him. Annapolis graduate or not, I can't tell what she even saw in him."

"Accept the facts. Trisha dated you for awhile, decided you weren't right for each other, and broke up with you rather than lead you on. Get over it. Accept your loss and move on to the next blossom without a further investment of energy, time and good booze on the one you lost. There are lots of girls who'd go for a guy like you."

Brackett was focused on Wally, stepping close enough to get in his face. "But I don't want another girl, Michaels. I want my girl back. You have her, and I want her!"

Wally leaned back out of range of Brackett's breath; he'd had a couple before commencing his exercise in futility. "Brackett, Trisha and I are engaged. If you ever had a chance with her, you don't any longer; she's off the market. Give it up and go home."

Brackett's hands balled into fists. "I think I'm going to make you make me go home."

"We can do that," said Johnny, moving to flank Wally.

"Two on one? How brave you must be!"

An arm whipped around Brackett's neck under his chin and locked into a blood strangle sleeper hold. "No, Tuh-Tuh-Tuh-Torrance, three on one. Go to sleep now, there's a good boy." Brackett struggled for a couple of seconds before the blocking of his carotid arteries and jugular veins induced unconsciousness. Billy held the chokehold for a few seconds more before lowering him to the deck. Wally nodded approval and fished in his pocket.

"Well done, Billy. There's a roll of duct tape in my trunk, that Z-3 over there." He tossed him the keys.

"Gotcha, boss." He trotted down the steps as Wally reached into Brackett's pocket to get the keys to the '69 Charger again. He handed them to Johnny.

"I'd count it a favor if you'd take him and his car back to Mayport Bachelor Housing, Johnny."

"We can do that for you," the pilot said calmly. "I'll flip Billy to see who gets to drive your car." Billy returned with the duct tape and expertly trussed Brackett up, finishing with a strip of tape across his mouth. Watching the SEAL work, Wally commented, "It sounded as if you knew him."

"Hate to admit it, but the bastard's a classmate. He was on the cheer squad when I was on the football team at Canoe U. His daddy's a state senator from someplace up north, and grandpa is or was in the House of Representatives, which explains how he got an appointment in the first place. What good is being a politician if you can't indulge in a little nepotism, I ask you? The idea was Torrance here would graduate from Annapolis, become a naval aviator, get a law degree in his copious spare time, then go into politics.

"But his eyes went bad first class year, before his pre-commissioning physical. Grandpa had enough pull with the Navy to keep them from denying his commission, but it was with the understanding that he not be commissioned as a line officer. Since he's not a doctor, a dentist, a nurse, a civil engineer, or a preacher, and he isn't as yet a lawyer, that left either the Medical Service Corps or the Supply Corps. A big comedown from wearing wings of gold, that was. I notice he doesn't even have a SWOS -- Supply badge. Looks like he's spent his entire career on the beach." Wally helped him pick Brackett up and drape him over his shoulder. He pointed out the Charger, and as the two brothers headed that way went back inside to rejoin the admirals.

"The problem has been handled, sir," he reported.

"So we heard," said Admiral Corcoran dryly. "The windows are open. Have you a suggestion as to what should be done about your non-friend?"

"I would suggest that a transfer is in order," said Admiral Fulton.

"A good idea, Steamboat," said Corcoran. "Bergy, do we still have a supply depot at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica?"

'You know the old saying that if you have a number of problems, sometimes they can be made to solve each other?" Admiral Rothernberg asked. "It happens that I'm top-heavy with junior officers just now, and I've had a levy laid on me for an O-3 or O-4 supply officer to be assigned to support Patrol Craft Squadron One in Bahrain at the depot in Manama."

"If I may be so bold as to suggest it, sir, I think Lieutenant Joseph Brackett, Supply Corps, presently assigned to the supply depot at Naval Station Mayport is singularly well suited for that assignment," said Wally.

Admiral Corcoran smiled with evil humor. "I am quite certain that when Bergy here explains certain facts to him, he will understand why he is volunteering for an overseas assignment in Bahrain." The other officers chuckled as in the distance they heard a car horn play the first eleven notes of "Dixie."

6.

On the way home from her father's party, Trisha said, "Master, Mother asked us to come for dinner tomorrow afternoon. It was in the nature of a royal command; she wants to get to know you better."

"That is certainly understandable, given that we sprang the fact of our engagement on them with no warning. I suspect that your father's flag lieutenant will be burning up the phone lines to BuPers to have my personnel file emailed to him five minutes ago come morning. That is, if you father hasn't ordered him to accumulate a complete dossier on me already."

"Don't worry, my darling. Elizabeth Vincent showed me your file, just so I'd be sure of what I was getting myself into. You have been far busier -- and much more discreet -- than most. The FBI checks that were run on you when you received your security clearances indicated that the only thing out of the ordinary was your passion for vintage military firearms, and that the agent who ran the check envied you some of the guns in your collection. They had nothing on the relationships in Brazil and the Philippines you've told me about, my darling love. According to your record, you are a dedicated, focused sea officer who has no vices worth mentioning; just the sort of officer the Navy brass likes. The fact you weren't married didn't seem relevant, as the agents said you played the field."

"If they were to check again now -- and they might, because Admiral Fulton wants me back at the Surface Warfare Center in connection with Project Sword -- the fact we're engaged and you're from a Navy family will reassure them. There used to be a saying in the British Army: 'Captains may marry; majors should marry; colonels must marry.' The powers-that-be see marriage as a sign of maturity and stability, it reassures them that someone in a position of authority is not going to run off with the family silver, so to speak."

Trisha was silent for a minute. "Admiral Fulton offered you a job?"

"Yes. I'll be on the design team for Project Sword; I think I'll be running it, from what he said. It's a big opportunity that should lead to a command of my own when the Swords are deployed. Should I have discussed this with you before I took the job, pet?"

"Of course not, Master. Orders are orders; and where you go, I go, as your wife, your lover, and your submissive. It will be like it was when I was growing up. I haven't moved since I took my teaching job here in Mayport; I have to get used to the gypsy life again, that's all. If Mother could deal with it, so can I. Fortunately, I'm a teacher and that means I can always find a job. There has been a shortage of teachers for the past 30 years and it won't go away any time soon. When will we be leaving?"

"The orders haven't been cut yet. Once they are, I'll speak to Dad about finding us a house up there. He's a real estate lawyer and has all sorts of contacts. I've been sending him half of what I make and a broker friend of his invested it for me, so we ought to be able to pay for it if I liquidate my holdings. He should be able to line up something for us by the time we're ready to move, my sweet."

"Have you told him about us, my love?

"Not that we're engaged, but that I am seeing you and I think it's serious. As we saw with your mother and father, it's better not to drop it in his lap with no warning. I think he'll understand about us. My mother was the great love of his life, and after he lost her and what would have been my baby sister in childbirth, while he has dated other women he's never gotten serious about any of them."

"You concentrate on buying the house and moving our stuff, Master. I'll concentrate on organizing the wedding with Mother. I presume you wouldn't mind a traditional Navy wedding?"

"As long as the officer in charge of the arch of swords does not swat your ass with the flat of his sword, that's fine with me. Swatting your ass with the flat of a sword is a privilege I reserve to myself for our wedding night, pet, right before I ravish you."

She took his hand and held it to her breast. "Please do, Master. Please do."

Dinner on Sunday at Quarters No. 4 was strictly a family affair: Admiral Corcoran, his wife Amanda, their three children, and Wally. The food was served by the Admiral's personal chef and houseman (even in the 21^st Century Navy, rank still hath its privileges, which for flag officers includes personal staff), who retreated to the kitchen and left them alone. Wally ate sparingly, aware of the tryptophan in turkey and suspecting that this meal was some sort of a test. He drank little wine for the same reason.

When the meal had reached the point of coffee and dessert liqueurs, John Senior settled back in his chair at the head of the table, eased his belt, and said, "I noticed that your decorations include the Philippines Legion of Honor. What's the story behind it?" Although the Admiral had phrased it as a question it was really an order, and Wally knew it. He took a sip of his coffee and set the cup down.

"You know the Filipino government have been forced to deal with a Muslim insurgency for the past 40 years, sir. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has attempted to establish a presence in the Mindanao River basin, the way the Viet Cong did in the Mekong Delta. The Philippine Army was beating them on land, so they took to the water for transport and intimidation purposes. The government ordered the Navy to deal with them, and as part of Operation Enduring Freedom their Navy asked our Navy for help. I was part of the detachment that was sent to advise them.

"We got there and found the Navy of the Philippines was even less prepared to fight a brown water war than we are. However, being as they are a nation of islands they have small shipyards and lots of ex-naval craft and small craft around that we could call upon. Captain Worden had heard I was resourceful, being a Merchant Mariner used to doing more with less. He set me and Lieutenant Sobrero of their Navy the task of building a squadron of river craft to take back the Mindanao Basin.

"We built the squadron around the Magsaysay, the ex-patrol gunboat USS Benicia. The Filipinos bought her as a hulk from a South Korean scrapyard with no guns and no engines. They'd re-engined her and installed Bofors 40mm cannons forward and aft as her main guns, but then laid her up because they couldn't figure out how to use her. I know the Ashevilles well, having skippered one at Maritime, and knew what she could do. I took command of her, unofficially since she isn't one of ours and I'm not a Filipino.

"Ramon scrounged up half a dozen cuddy-type 35 foot Boston Whalers that we reworked and armed like Zumwalt's old PBRs. He recruited crews for them, found an old repair ship that wasn't doing anything important, and got Captain Worden to have her assigned to us. Warden persuaded the Philippine Navy to give Ramon command of her with a joint Filipino - American crew; they ran the ship, we handled the intelligence and most of the repair and refit work, and used her as a floating barracks too. That gave us a mobile base, and we were in business.

"We went to work using the Colombian 'piranha' concept with my Maggy as the command ship and the Challengers as the swarm that could take down anything that moved on the Mindanao. It wasn't too long before the MILF learned they had serious opposition on the river. We fought them for months wherever and whenever found.

"Then in the spring they took over a village to use as a base. It was about 10 miles up one of the tributaries, and with the spring flood the water was high enough for me to get Maggy up there. Army Intelligence said the Islamists were coming downriver to prey on the Moro fishermen. On a night when local intel indicated the Bad Guys would be on the river, we went up the tributary after them. I left the swarm hidden against the banks a mile or so below the captured village and continued upriver alone.

"I came on them as they were setting out, a little ways downstream from the village. My exec called for them to surrender. They declined. We opened fire and blew three of them out of the water. The fourth one got past us, but the aft Bofors put a round into his engine and the Challengers didn't have any trouble taking it. We went on to the village, but the Islamists had already faded back into the boonies." He fell silent and looked down at his plate.

"Is that all, Commander?" asked the Admiral.

Wally looked up. "No. Some of the villagers were hit by stray rounds; no way to tell whose, but I suspect ours. Two of them were killed. The village was upriver from the firefight, and Maggy was pointed upriver. Even with all our maneuvering, we were mostly shooting upstream. And I lost three men and had five wounded, including my exec and my chief. A third of your crew killed and wounded is a damned high price for a successful mission. Why the Filipinos ever gave me that medal beats me."

Admiral Corcoran was silent, contrasting what Wally had said with what his friend in the Philippine Navy had told him about the Upriver Raid, as the Filipino river rats called it when they were sitting around the bar telling sea stories, when he had called him earlier that day.

"El Teniente Michaels learned that the insurgents had captured a village up the Mindanao and intended to use it as a strategic hamlet, a base from which they could slip down to the main river, attack local fishing boats and shipping and collect tribute, and from which they could expand their influence. The Islamists thought that if they put gun crews with rockets and heavy machine guns at bends along the bank, they could make it too costly to come after them, thus creating a safe haven.

"It was the time of the spring flood, when the rivers overrun their banks for a few days. What it meant to Michaels was that for a very short time, he could bring his flagship, the Magsaysay, up to that village, smash the MILF forces, and take the village away from them with more firepower and manpower than they could muster to stop him.

"He took his mothership and her chicks, Boston Whalers bristling with machine guns, up the river. He left the six piranhas below the town and went ahead. He caught the MILF boats forming up in midstream by the village for their trip down to the river.

"His second in command that night is the son of an old friend. Alferaz Elipidio told me it was like the movie, True Grit. Four Islamist patrol boats with .50 caliber and .30 caliber machine guns and perhaps RPGs, against the Magsaysay with two 40mm cannon and some machine guns; and they had the current with them. Speaking through Elipidio, he called for their surrender on the loudhailer. They replied that they would send him to Gehenna, that one old broken-down ex-Yankee gunboat was no match for them. Michaels, perhaps aware of the similarity of his situation to that John Wayne movie, grabbed the mike, snapped, 'Fill your hands, you sonsofbitches! Gunners, commence firing!' and rammed his throttles to the stops.

"Throwing a rooster tail, he charged the insurgents, every gun that would bear spitting lead and fire at them. Their machine guns chewed on the Magsaysay, shattered every piece of glass on the bridge, and wounded him, Elipidio, and his helmsman; but his guns sank three of the insurgents, and his piranhas captured the one boat that tried to flee downriver. It's on display in Manila today.

"A grateful government of the Philippines presented him with the Legion of Honor and the Wounded Personnel Medal for the Upriver Raid. Your government gave him a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for the same action. He should have gotten your Navy Cross. As the movie said, four on one is no dog-fall."

"I get intelligence briefings, you know. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has been driven completely off the main island of Mindanao. They've been beaten back to the islands in the Sulu Archipelago, and even the leadership of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao has disavowed them. The government dates the decline of the MILF from the time of your raid. The unit you, Lieutenant Sobrero and Captain Worden put together did much of the driving.

-

"Yes, a few civilians may have been killed by friendly fire, but it happens. No one in the Philippines blames you for that. In fact, you are something of a hero over there. You can be proud of that Philippines Legion of Honor."

"Thank you, sir. That means a great deal, coming from you." Some of the tension that had marked him since he walked into the house left Wally's body. Studying his face, Amanda stood up and said, "Trisha, why don't you and Wally join me for a walk in the garden? There are some rare flowers that I think you'll appreciate."

She led the couple through the house and into the garden, showing them flowers and bushes brought from around the world that previous occupants of Quarters No. 4 had planted over the years. They ended up in the small Moorish gazebo at the far end of the garden, and sat.

"Honey, why don't you go back to the house and get us a pitcher of sweet tea?"

"Of course, Mother," said Trisha, politely ignoring what was clearly a pretext for her mother to have a private word with her fiancé.

Once she was on her way, Amanda turned to Wally and said, "Let me be honest with you. When you and Trisha became engaged on such short acquaintance, I wasn't at all happy. My first thought was she had gone and gotten herself pregnant and that you were simply doing the honorable thing. She disabused me of that notion right away and made it clear that she wanted to marry you for the reasons you told us at John's birthday party: that you complete each other and you know it. I still wasn't very happy.

"Then I remembered my great-grandmother, my namesake. I was closer to her than her other great-grandchildren, because our personalities were so alike. She told me all sorts of family stories, including the one about her own courtship and wedding.

"In her youth, she was an actress and a famous beauty, the toast of Broadway. She could have had any man she wanted simply by crooking her finger. One businessman in particular took a serious fancy to her and never missed one of her performances. One night, he arranged a private dinner with her at Delmonico's that stretched into the wee hours. Next day, he sent her flowers and chocolates, and an emerald bracelet that she sent back to him with a note explaining she could not possibly accept such a magnificent gift.

"A few days later, a coach was waiting for her at the conclusion of that evening's show. It took her to Delmonico's again, where the businessman again had a magnificent dinner waiting. Again the meal stretched into the wee hours as they enjoyed each other's company. At the end of the evening, he reached into his pocket, took out a ring with a diamond the size of an aggie marble, and proposed.