Strike Force Delta by Mack Maloney

that.
    Ryder told Li the story as concisely as he could. She stared up at him throughout, her face very serious, drinking in every word.
    â€œMartinez was a good guy,” Ryder concluded. “But there’s no way he could go on this mission. I just hope they get him back to his family, before it’s really too late.”
    Li thought about this for a while, then just smiled again. “Thanks,” she said. “I’d heard of him—and I know you all respected him. But I wasn’t sure what the full story was, and I didn’t know anyone I could ask, without making a fool of myself. Well, except you.” She laughed because her words had come out so funny.
    He smiled, too. “Is there a compliment in there, somewhere?” he asked her.
    Here they sat, dodging the spray and looking up at the moon and stars. The minutes turned into an hour. And as always, she was full of questions. It took some prodding, but Ryder finally told her about his adventuresas a top-secret test pilot years before he joined the Ghosts. Flying missions deep inside Area 51, participating in bizarre war games, doing things so way-out, even he didn’t believe some of them had happened.
    He regaled her with tales of the team’s exploits not just at Hormuz but in the Philippines, too—those heroic days before they wound up hiding in the attic of her house. He spoke sincerely of how the twin foundations of the team were its patriotism and the shared loss of loved ones. He told her how cool it was that the team was not affiliated with any of the country’s military services, that they served the people of the United States directly, and that despite his career in the Air Force he wouldn’t have it any other way now.
    On these subjects, Li mostly listened, enthralled and, strangely, a bit envious. She had helped the Ghosts immensely in ending the threat of the Al Qaeda missile teams inside the United States—and she had done so at great personal risk. But it was obvious that she still didn’t consider herself a member of the team. Not yet anyway. . . .
    They wound up talking about many things, except the upcoming mission and Murphy’s plan to assault the impregnable fortress of
Casa Diablo
. It was all pleasant and comfortable and exciting. And so,
so
different for him.
    During all this, they were consciously inching closer to each other. At times Li would tap his knee to make a point. His body would reverberate at her touch. Ryder felt like he was back in high school, on a date with the most beautiful girl in math class. Again, this was a monumental step for him. His heart still felt like a stone, the same cruel weight he’d carried around since the day his wife died. But now, with this gorgeous girl so close, itwas like he was in another place, on another world, where the gravity wasn’t so bad. When a particularly huge wave of spray came up over the bow, she went right up against him to escape getting doused—and this time, she stayed.
    â€œI had something else I wanted to ask you,” she said, her hand suddenly touching his.
    Ryder went numb, but in a good way. “Sure, anything,” he blurted out.
    She opened her mouth—she was about to say the words—when suddenly every bell and whistle—and Klaxon and siren—on the ship went off at once.
    Captain Bingo’s deep voice came over the intercom. “Condition Blue. All hands to battle stations. Unidentified aircraft incoming. . . .”
    Ryder and Li were stunned.
    â€œBattle stations?” she gasped. “Where the heck is
my
battle station?”
    It was a helicopter. It popped up on the Combat Room’s air defense screen at exactly 0200 hours. Just 20 miles out, it was flying low and fast, coming out of the northeast and heading right for the ship.
    This was very strange. At the moment, the
Ocean Voyager
was almost in the mid-Atlantic. The nearest land, in either direction, was hundreds of