Forgive & Forget (Love in the Fleet) Read Free

they ate dinner and discussed sailing and Hallie’s journalism classes, Philip kicked himself with both feet. He cursed himself for leaving his sunglasses on the sailboat, which—with his regular glasses being repaired—left him trying to pick up a major babe in his BCGs. No wonder his nickname was Bill Gates. And not because of the money either.
    He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d sounded after meeting the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, with innocent blue eyes that searched his while he talked about sewage. “Way to go, dumb ass,” was what his best buddy, Sky, would’ve said. “Just keep talking about sewage. That’ll win her over.”
    After dinner Philip invited Hallie to walk on the beach. The sun sank in the west, but its fingers reached around and reflected the foam on the waves as they crawled onto the sand. The air was thick and scented with the sea—and the essence of Hallie McCabe. As they walked barefoot through the surf, he mentioned his upcoming deployment to the Persian Gulf in July.
    “How do you feel about that?” she asked.
    “Excited. I’ll be responsible for the plumbing network of essentially a small city. And I’m charged with keeping the A/C up and running. The temperature gets well over a hundred degrees in the Middle East and I hear it’ll be a daily ordeal keeping all our electronic equipment cool.” He chuckled. “And it’s not like we could just open the windows, because one, the air is filled with blowing sand. And two, there are no windows on an aircraft carrier. But I like a challenge. Plus I’ve never been through the Suez Canal, so hopefully I’ll have some time to get off the ship to explore.”
    “But what about the danger? We’re still at war and you’re headed into a hot zone.”
    “I worry about my friends who are pilots. I know guys in the boarding parties too. That’s got to be scary, boarding fishing boats and merchant vessels, not knowing if there are pirates or weapons on board.”
    Hallie jumped in. “You know what I think is the scariest? This enemy knows the terrain. They watch and wait and strike whenever they choose. And they take advantage of rules designed to prevent casualties. Actually, they don’t even care about casualties, even civilians. I say it’s changed the face of warfare.
    “Used to be combatants only took chances up to a certain point, but the bottom line was to stay alive while completing their mission. Now, the terrorists don’t care if they die because it makes them martyrs. Just like the Kamikaze pilots in World War II.”
    Philip stopped walking. He stared at her, stunned this insight was coming from her pretty girl mouth.
    “So the Middle East is a frightening place, but I guess an aircraft carrier would be safer than any other kind of vessel. I mean, carriers are huge,” she said.
    “Its size makes it a bigger target,” Philip responded, finally catching up to her. Like there’s a big, red bullseye painted in the center of the flight deck—or rather on the sides. That’s what we worry about most, floating bombs disguised as fishing boats. We’ll be traveling with five smaller ships as escorts. While they protect us from other ships or, say, a missile attack, it’s the common fishing boats that tend to be the biggest threat. That’s what happened with the USS Cole .”
    “Surely you have ways of knowing what’s out there so you can protect yourselves.” She gazed at him with trusting eyes, as if he had the answers to all the world’s problems.    
    “Yeah, but the Rules of Engagement are tricky. Even if we know there’s a threat, we often can’t fire unless the bad guys fire first. And then it may be too late.”
    He thought the rules sucked, but he wasn’t going to say that.
    Hallie didn’t miss a beat. “Wasn’t that the problem in the Cole bombing? We knew what was happening at the last minute, but had to wait for permission to fire on the terrorists. By then it was too late and seventeen