Free Girl Rides the Wind by Jacques Antoine Page B

Corporal,” she growled. “Marines make eye contact.”
    “Yes, ma’am. It’s just that Tarot’s got a video he wants to ask you about.”
    Emily frowned and turned away.
    “It’s not bad, ma’am,” Tarot said. “I got it from a buddy at Pendleton. He says it’s all over the net.”
    When she turned back, not knowing what to say, she expected the worst. But what she saw playing on the screen Tarot held out for her did not feature her stabbing Jiao Long through the neck, a red fountain blooming behind her – she’d seen enough of that video. Instead, the scene that had the Jarheads so worked up must have been taken that night in Roppongi. She smiled at the sight of Durant and Ishikawa singing duets in the street like Sonny and Cher.
    “I thought…”
    “You thought it was gonna be nasty?”
    “Like when you took down that little guy from the Jietai ,” Siegersen added. “The whole MEU’s already seen that one, too.”
    Of course, to Siegersen, everyone must seem little, Emily thought.
    “We were thinking of calling the sergeant Pavarotti,” Stallings added. “How do you think he’ll take it?”
    “You’ll have to take that up with him,” she said, and started for the door.
    “The guys want to call you Ninja,” Siegersen called after her.
    Of course they do. Yet another reminder that she hadn’t escaped the violence she’d left in her wake. The thought reduced her to standing in the passageway, just out of their sight, head pressed against a bulkhead. Warfighters, they liked to call themselves, especially before a mission, though few of them had actually killed an enemy close up – she was grateful they’d been spared that – but they’d endured hardships and shivered in the expectation of death for purposes not entirely their own. Their fascination with her was based on the very thing she wished to forget about herself, since why else would they have anything but disdain for her, ‘a tiny slip of a girl’ in their midst. Sure, she could carry a fully loaded pack, and meet the rest of the infantry standards (barely), but no Marine would imagine having any use for her in combat judging solely from appearances.
    “I gotta get some better sleep,” she grumbled, and pushed herself off the bulkhead. “Too late to run on the flight deck.”
    “Watch it there, Lieutenant,” a familiar voice said, as she stepped back into a broad chest. “You okay, Em?”
    “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, turning to look up into Perry’s warm eyes. If only she could curl up in his arms. But proprieties had to be observed.
    “Were those clowns giving you a hard time? Maybe I should sort ’em out.”
    “Nah,” she said, pulling him back. “It’s just Tarot and Racket. They don’t mean any harm.”
    “I have no idea why you put up with those muscleheads, Em.”
    “They’re just big kids.” She withdrew her hand from his and hoped he wouldn’t fuss. “Anyway, I have to finish my workout.” Already halfway down the passageway, looking to find a clear space to run in, and to put some distance between herself and those unhappy reflections, she squeezed past a knot of sailors and squirted up a ladder to the first deck.
    “Good,” Perry said, following after, but clearing a much wider path. “Because there’s something you’ll want to see in the hangar bay.”
    Emily glowered back at him and turned up another ladder, and stood by the hatch nearest the port elevator.
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    T he hangar bay of the Bonhomme Richard was not much smaller than a football field. It felt cavernous with the Harrier squadron out on exercises, and the SH-60 Seahawks on the flight deck, preparing for another practice anti-submarine sweep. More than a couple dozen Phrogs with rotors folded back crowded the area by the ramp leading down to the Lower V. When Emily saw the crowd gathered in a dense pack by the starboard elevator, she thought of running up the ramp to the flight deck. But Perry’s gentle hand turned her shoulder in