Point Of Departure

“That ruins a lot of marriages,” Callie agreed soberly. She reached over, placing her hand on his arm for just a moment. “I’m sorry. You seem nicer than most of the navy pilots I’ve known. It’s too bad it had to happen, Ty.”

Ty rallied under her soft, hesitant touch and the use of his first name. It was a start, and for that he was grateful. “Yeah, well, as the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Look, I gotta run. I’m due to teach a class at 0800 over at Fightertown.” He pushed the chair away and stood up. Before he left, he placed his dishes and silverware in the sink.

Callie blinked at the abruptness of Ty’s departure. She sat back and watched a mask drop over his rugged features. Unable to take offense at his sudden retreat into silence, she felt deeply for him. Ty had really loved his wife. That was a new twist for her. Most navy pilots loved ’em and left ’em without so much as an “I’m sorry,” in her experience.

“Thanks for coming by…for everything,” she managed in a small voice. She wanted to apologize for raking up the painful coals of his past. His suffering was obvious.

“Thanks for letting me barge into your life,” Ty said. He picked up his cap and settled it over his military-short hair. “I’ll be seeing you around. Maybe I’ll call you in a couple of days—see how you’re recuperating?” He’d never wanted anyone to say yes as he did now. Callie’s upturned features were bathed with a pink blush that made her blue eyes sparkle with life—and suddenly Ty realized that his presence had helped her a bit. He felt good about that. He was just sorry he couldn’t hide his hurt over the divorce. He cursed himself for bringing it up in the first place.

“A phone call would be fine,” Callie agreed quietly. She saw a fierce longing burning in his gray eyes as he stood so proudly before her. The aura of a navy pilot was enough to knock any woman off her feet, she thought dizzily. And Ty Ballard was a very special man. Very special.

“Great.” He smiled and lifted his hand in farewell. “I’ll see you later, Callie. If you need anything, just call me at the office.” He pointed to her ankle. “With that injury, you aren’t going to be able to get to the commissary to buy groceries. Sure you wouldn’t like me to help in that department, now that I’ve proved myself in the kitchen?”

With a laugh, Callie shook her head. “No, thanks, Ty. Maggie is going to shop for me after she gets off work this evening.”

“I’ll be seeing you around,” he promised thickly.

Chapter Four

“Ty, Captain Martin wants to see you,” Jean Riva said.

His cup of coffee in hand, Ty halted in the passageway of the Top Gun facility. He had exactly fifteen minutes before he was scheduled to start class. As always, the facility buzzed with muted excitement. Still euphoric over the possibility that Callie might actually like him, he nodded and stepped toward his commanding officer’s office.

A short, dark-haired woman with piercing brown eyes that missed nothing, Riva was a GS-12 in Civil Service and was Captain Martin’s very able assistant and secretary. But right now she looked unhappy. Ty halted at her desk.

“What’s up, Jean?”

“A lot,” she muttered. Leaning over, she announced Ty’s arrival to the CO.

“Send him in, Jean,” the gravelly voice on the other end ordered.

She straightened and nodded. “Go right in, Commander.”

“No hints?” Ty teased. The woman was a no-nonsense, strictly-by-the-book civil servant of the best kind. She was famous for her organizational ability, because it was she, more than anyone else, who kept the facility glued together and functioning properly.

“No hints, Commander,” she announced brusquely and gave him a cardboard smile.

Ty never liked that smile when Jean chose to use it. It meant she was holding back a lot of feelings about something—and usually it meant bad news. Girding himself, he sighed and opened the door. Bob Martin was one of the youngest captains in the navy. He was a highly decorated Vietnam veteran—an ace with six kills to his credit—and was even more no-nonsense than his vaunted assistant.

Martin’s head snapped in his direction as Ty closed the door behind him. “Come in, Ty.” He gestured toward one of the two chairs in front of his large walnut desk. “Have a seat.”

“Yes, sir,” Ty murmured, sitting down and balancing the cup of coffee on his left thigh. He often thought that Martin looked snakelike—but in the most positive way. He could keep his narrow face absolutely devoid of expression, and he had coal black eyes that never seemed to blink. They just stared down the other party with such an intensity that Ty figured Martin could mesmerize them into immobility—much the way a cobra would hypnotize its prey.

Martin’s black hair was peppered with strands of gray at the temples, and now he was wearing his summer white uniform, the four gold stripes on black boards positioned on each of his shoulders shouting his authority.

“I understand you were a witness to the assault on Lieutenant Calista Donovan?”

Ty felt as if a bomb had been dropped in Martin’s office. He straightened unconsciously. His CO must have received Dr. Lipinski’s report via the legal department, he realized. “Er…yes, sir.”

“Tell me exactly what you saw and what happened,” Martin demanded in a clipped tone.

“Yes, sir,” Ty said, and he launched into a brief sketch of the incident. He watched Martin’s thin, black brows dip lower and lower as he completed the report. The man’s mouth was a flat line by the time he’d finished, his dark eyes flashing with anger.

Leaning back in his chair, Martin turned and looked out the window that viewed the revetment area where the jets used for training sat. “Commander, I was hoping against hope that Dr. Lipinski was embellishing this whole damn thing.” He turned around and placed his hands on the desk. “Obviously, she wasn’t.”

“No, sir.”

“You’ve recently returned from a two-week stint at the War College, where you took accelerated courses in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, right?” he barked out, so abruptly that Ty almost jumped.

The UCMJ, as it was known, was a huge, legal compendium of articles that applied to every phase of military organization. Ty nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Picking up a file near his left hand, Martin opened it. “And you were number one in standing, out of fifty attending officers?”

Flushing a bit, Ty murmured, “Yes, sir.”

“Do you realize that somehow, by someone, this incident involving Lieutenant Donovan has been leaked to the major newspapers in San Diego and Los Angeles, as well as to press organizations around the United States?”

Stunned, Ty sat frozen, his grip on the coffee cup tightening. “No, sir, I hadn’t.”

“Any idea who did it? Not that it matters anymore—the horse is out of the corral now.”

“I have no idea, Captain.” Ty began to sweat. Did Martin know that he had fraternized with Callie after the incident? He felt as if the walls had suddenly grown eyes and ears. The discussion was on shaky ground, and he didn’t know what Martin wanted from him.

“Well, within the next couple of hours, our station is going to be inundated with media attention. After that newspaper article by the Donovan sisters, things were already explosive.” With a shake of his head, Martin muttered, “We’ve got a real problem, Ty, and we’ve got to move quickly to institute damage control, or the navy could end up looking very bad—not only to our own tax-paying public, but around the world.”