Chapter 1

It's two days after the explosion, and I'm in an evac ride to Germany. A little background is in order. Maybe somebody I don't know is gonna read this someday, so I'll watch what I say.

Officially, I was part of what we euphemistically called Operation Sandbox. Oh it had an official name or three, but it was just the U.S. Army's way of making things more complicated than they had to be. I was running a small squad of drones out of a rented space in Abu Dhabi. That's me over in the corner desk, Captain James Monroe Dreyfus: 'Captain' or 'Sir' to the unit, 'Cap'n Jim' when I was out drinking with some pals, and 'Jim' to civilians, and 'Hey you' to those higher ups in the Army. I was 6'2" of (semi-) solid muscle (and adipose tissue, to be fair), with a moderately good build. The Army would only let senior officers and non-coms get seriously out of shape. I had sandy hair that was buzzed off at regular intervals by an Army butcher ... er, I mean, barber. I liked my blue eyes and had developed a mustache while I was in ROTC, trying to look older.

We were unofficially on loan to the CIA, and shooting our missiles at evil-doers in Yemen and Somalia. We were pretty good and only killed some innocents if they happened to be very close to our target. The drones carried a laser-sighted missile and we never missed the target that was painted by a high-flyer, also loaned to the CIA from the Air Force. We never got involved with the selection of targets; it was a target, painted with a laser at coordinates xx, yy, and we'd hit it.

Me and my small troop of six Sergeants – actually five Sergeants and a Staff Sergeant, my second in command – were doing quite nicely until some asshole decided we needed additional supervision. We were already a screwy unit: one Captain, no Lieutenants and only Sergeants, who reported to a civilian in the CIA with a dotted line to some staff flunky on the Theater Commandant's staff. Well, the Theater Commandant was senior Admiral J. Fuckwad Ass Hole – if I used his real name my journal would just get redacted. I didn't think he was an asshole until he decided I needed some supervision.

So, Adm. Hole, sent someone from Naval Intelligence to be my superior officer. According to the orders I received, SHE was a Lieutenant Commander C.J. Johnson. In the first five minutes after I told my guys about the change, she got the moniker of 'Circle Jerk Johnson.'

"Look guys," I was pretty informal in the only room we had assigned to us, "a Lt. Cmdr. is the equivalent of a Major. She's going to be my superior officer. So there's some things I want to make clear. First, she's THE senior officer here, so you'll all address her as Ma'am – or Commander. I don't want to hear 'The Old Lady' and certainly not 'Circle Jerk' mentioned even in passing – even if she's out of the country. If she get's a whiff of any of that, you'll probably get a sighting laser pointed at you. Second, I don't want to see or hear that you are second guessing her decisions about what to do, here. If she gives you an order, that's it. You don't need to be looking at me to see if it's ok. You'll still get your operational orders from me. The chain of command is the same: the Staff Sergeant, then me. It's only a little blip above me, and then the same ol' same ol'. Is that clear?"

I got six nods and things settled down quickly.

"Our Fearless Leader, Adm. Hole, has put her in charge. Period."

Three days later, the aforementioned Lt. Cmdr. Johnson came into our room, at about 0930 local, unannounced – except by her Warrant Officer, a still wet-behind-the-ears boy who looked like he was about twelve. Okay, maybe he was a young looking twenty.

The W.O. opened the door and shouted, "Ten-HUT!"

Part way through his 'Ten-Hut', I snapped a louder: "Belay that." I had made an effort to learn some Navy lingo. "As you were." Then I turned to her, getting to my feet – at attention – and said, "Excuse me, Ma'am but these men are in combat right now." She got my best salute. I completely ignored the W.O., who was busy turning a bright shade of red at his gaffe.

The men didn't even look up.

C.J. Johnson, according to the papers she gave me as part of the taking command procedures, was Cynthia Jeowhal Johnson, a Lt. Cmdr. from the Admiral's personal staff and had spent six years in Naval Intelligence. I didn't have any idea if she knew a battleship from a PT Boat, but the Admiral certainly had a good taste in women.

The old joke went, a blonde, a brunette, a red-head and two men all applied for the same job. All had nearly the same skills and qualifications. With no other information, which do you hire? Answer: You hire the woman with the biggest tits.

So ... I'm an old school Army chauvinist.

Well, Cmdr. Johnson didn't have the biggest tits. But if you combined the strong angular face, with wide set gray/green eyes, a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the auburn hair (the sign of Irish ancestry, I guessed) pulled back in a military bun under her officer's cap, the sharply tapered jacket that accented the difference between her ample bosom and her tiny waist, all tied together with very shapely tanned legs that seemed to go on forever (actually they only reached the ground, but... ) – combine all that, and one couldn't fault the Admiral's judgment in decorating his Intel unit with her. She was single, as befitting the only woman on the Admiral's staff – proving nothing, except that maybe she was his 'personal' staff, if you know what I mean. Now, if she was only competent.

"Captain,..." she said to me in a tight alto voice, returning my salute.

I interrupted her with an upraised finger, then pointed it out to the hall. "Rosie, I'll be outside the door, if you need me." And then I stepped out pulling the door closed behind me.

"I need to keep it quiet when there's a mission going. No distractions that way. Certainly not a change of command, now," I explained.