Navy Rescue

  She saved a baby, but can she save her marriage?

  Navy commander and pilot Gwen Brett is shot down in a disastrous mission—and survives six months in terrifying circumstances. She manages to escape with an orphaned baby she rescued and is determined to bring home.

  Devastated when she was presumed dead, her ex-husband, Drew, is overjoyed by her survival. He offers Gwen and the baby a place to stay, to recover. Gwen accepts, convinced their love is gone. But almost losing her for good makes Drew realize he wants her back—and Gwen feels the same…. However, this rescue might be the hardest one yet!

  Gwen saw him as soon as the plane pulled up to the hangar

  Drew.

  He was the tall one with the sure stance, waiting for her with a group of other people. Relief eased some of the tightness in her chest.

  She straightened and walked to the hangar. She was at least one hundred feet from the open doors and the welcoming group, but Drew’s features were as sharp as if he stood six inches away.

  His sunglasses hid his eyes so she had only his facial features and posture by which to judge his demeanor. He looked taller, his face defined, more mature. Not as young as she’d remembered him for six long months.

  Before she finished her train of thought, Drew was in front of her. She hesitated. Was he angry about taking her in? Having her stay at his house?

  “Gwen.” He closed the distance between them and embraced her. He kept his arms tightly around her, and she relished the feel of his winter jacket against her cheek. Relished the way she could almost convince herself she still had him to come home. That this was real.

  She felt a sudden urge to pull back, look him in the eye and tell him that now she understood what really mattered in life.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for your support of the Whidbey Island series! Your positive comments on Facebook and Twitter, and your emails, mean so much to me. It’s heartening to know you’ve enjoyed meeting the fictional heroes and heroines of Naval Air Station, Whidbey Island, as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. While my characters are always made up, their virtues are not—courage under fire being the most common. Whether the heat is felt on a war-torn battlefield or in the home of a military spouse who’s keeping the family together while his or her warrior is deployed, it’s what makes today’s military family stronger than ever. I’m honored to bring you these stories, and I hope they lift the spirits of our friends and families in service.

  Navy Rescue started in my mind years ago when I had the gift of a conversation with a senior enlisted aircrew man who survived a P-3C ditch in the ocean. Unfortunately I don’t remember his name but I’ll never forget how he so honestly described the details of the ditch. His real-life story made me think about the repercussions of one of the crew getting lost at sea, and how difficult it would be to come back home after being assumed dead.

  Gwen and Drew have been divorced for several years when the story starts. Two life-changing events for both of them force the reassessment of why they split, and make them consider whether the love they shared is worth resurrecting. Or maybe they now have a chance at a newer, deeper love.

  I look forward to your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads. For the latest news on the next book in the Whidbey Island series, check out my website, www.gerikrotow.com, and sign up for my newsletter. As always, thank you for your unwavering support of our men and women in uniform and the families they love.

  Peace,

  Geri Krotow

  GERI

  KROTOW

  Navy Rescue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Former naval intelligence officer and U.S. Naval Academy graduate Geri Krotow draws inspiration from the global situations she’s experienced. Geri loves to hear from her readers. You can email her via her website and blog, www.gerikrotow.com.

  Books by Geri Krotow

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1547—WHAT FAMILY MEANS

  1642—SASHA’S DAD

  1786—NAVY RULES*

  1865—NAVY ORDERS*

  HARLEQUIN EVERLASTING LOVE

  20—A RENDEZVOUS TO REMEMBER

  *Whidbey Island books

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  For Bob Coughlin and Jack Stoner, two heroes who rescued me when I didn’t even realize I needed rescuing!

  Acknowledgments:

  Much appreciation to John Weiss, DPT, and his staff for their professional insight and patience with my very fictional questions.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NAVY RESCUE/WHIDBEY ISLAND SERIES ACRONYMS

  EXCERPT

  PROLOGUE

  COMMANDER GWENDOLYN BRETT adjusted the power levers on her P-3C-Orion aircraft as another gust of wind racked the airframe. Lightning lit up the night sky over the Philippine Sea and she wished they’d finished the mission hours earlier.

  Terrorist insurgents in the remote southern islands of the Philippines hadn’t shown their hand until the last possible moment before she had to turn the plane around while there was still enough fuel to make it back to base. Besides streaming live video to government troops on the ground, her crew got their location, captured excellent photos of their camp and transmitted them via satellite to be disseminated to the intel weenies who’d figure out what it all meant.

  They’d completed the mission; now she had to get her crew back to base.

  Alive.

  Thirteen souls, including herself.

  That awareness kept her from letting the monotonous drone of the four turbo-prop engines lull her into drifting off—into thinking about anything other than the flight...

  For some reason, the image of Drew as she’d driven off just before deployment had haunted her all day. She’d wondered why he’d bothered, why he showed up at the hangar. He’d said, no one should go off on deployment alone. He’d given her a friendly hug.

  They were friends, in spite of all the hell they’d put each other through as young junior officers. So why had his platonic hug been worse than if he’d tortured her with a kiss, reminded her of all she’d lost when they’d divorced five years ago? More important, why was she allowing thoughts of him now, during a key mission?

  The old mesh fabric pilot’s seat gave little support to her spine, and she shifted her position, trying to stretch her lower back.

  “You’ve got to do those ab moves I told you about, XO.” Her copilot’s gentle chiding made her smile.

  “No amount of exercise is going to shave the years off me, David.”

  “Aw, ma’am, you’re still young.”

  She chuckled, even as the sharp stab of a lower back spasm made her wince. Simple tasks that she’d managed through brute strength as a junior officer were becoming more difficult as her birthdays added up.

  Thirty-seven was yo
ung in the civilian world, but not in the navy.

  She was tired of the constant reminders of the years passing too quickly. When she got back from deployment she was going to follow her best friend, Ro’s, advice and get herself back into the dating scene.

  Not that she’d ever been in the dating scene. Because of Drew. Because they’d been together since flight school in Pensacola, Florida.

  From the beginning they knew their marriage faced more challenges than most—long deployments, geographical separation, war. Hurdles that wouldn’t go away until one or both of them resigned from the navy. Drew didn’t have the passion for flying that Gwen did and they’d agreed that she’d stay in while he got out. They both assumed Gwen would eventually resign her commission and fly for a commercial airline.

  They’d survived three intense years after Drew got out of the navy and went back to school to earn his doctorate in Physical Therapy. His PT practice had thrived after only a year.

  As his career took off, so did hers. Unfortunately, their marriage tanked.

  She still mentally kicked herself for not seeing the inevitability of their divorce. That would’ve saved them both so much emotional distress. Very few dual-active-duty couples made it for the long haul. Factor in how young they’d been when they got married, and the odds had never been in their favor.

  The long deployments and wartime assignments had been hell for both of them, but her performance earned her top marks and led to this tour. The ultimate goal all career officers chased after—the command tour.

  Serving as the Executive Officer of Patrol Squadron Five-Two, the Grey Sharks, she’d had two more months until she’d become the commanding officer. A coveted twelve-month stint that had taken her entire career to reach and taken her marriage with it.

  Her squadron’s mission was to conduct reconnaissance and antisubmarine warfare all over the globe. They provided real-time intelligence to operational ground forces and operational commands, no matter which theater they flew in. Often her missions kept civilians safe from unspeakable terrorist events. Sometimes it was simply reconnaissance. Other times, Gwen’s aircraft carried weapons, or helped others aim their weapons on the enemy target.

  “See the flashes, XO?” David pointed starboard of the nose, to where sharp points of light lit up the not-distant-enough horizon.

  “They’re not happy. Good. That’s our job.” She referred to the insurgents who were shooting off AAA, antiaircraft artillery, in an effort to take her aircraft down.

  “We’re too far away for those triple-A rounds, Commander,” one of the radar operators said over the ICS or intercommunications system.

  “And we’re going to keep it that way, crew.” Gwen spoke into her microphone as she eyed her fuel levels.

  She glanced over at her copilot, his profile relaxed but alert in the starboard seat. Young and supersmart, he reminded her of Drew and of herself. Once again she lamented that they’d been so young when they started out in the navy and in life. Too young to know how to make a marriage work.

  She contracted and relaxed her abs and her glutes. It eased the discomfort in her lower back.

  At least she and Drew had remained good friends. That was more important than a marriage, in so many ways.

  Drew hadn’t been impressed with her selection to command. He was proud of her, unquestionably. He’d supported her through the wartime deployments—by getting her mail, doing basic admin stuff a spouse often did, handling household responsibilities. But they’d been divorced for five years when she left last month. Neither of them had remarried, but she expected he’d be the first one to make that leap.

  He’d wanted to start a family. She’d wanted to wait.

  Tonight, at the end of a long mission, flying through a hell of a storm, she wondered if she’d been nuts to stay in the navy, to go through so much, for this last operational tour. Had it been worth it, giving up so much to become a commanding officer?

  Lately she’d begun to suspect that she’d lost more than her marriage in the process. She didn’t know who she was anymore, except for her military vocation. If she hadn’t screened for command, would she have stayed in to make the twenty-year mark required for retirement?

  “Shit! Incoming starboard, three o’clock! Probable missile!” The aft observer’s scream in her headset shattered her thoughts.

  “Confirmed surface-to-air. Son of a bitch!” The radar operator validated that the sighting wasn’t another aircraft or fireworks.

  Cold dread gripped her.

  “I see it. Hell, it’s closing, XO!” Her copilot had his hands on the yoke, his head swiveled around to the right as he sighted the missile off their starboard side.

  Preflight intel confirmed the existence of AAA during their mission brief, but never mentioned manpads—portable surface-to-air missiles.

  They had an incoming that could blow them all to bits.

  She heard screams and shouted curses over the ICS.

  Drew.

  Shudders buffeted the fuselage of the P-3, and Gwen’s operational instincts pushed anything else out of her mind. The plane rolled alarmingly to port and she threw a quick shout at her copilot. “Help me out here, David!”

  “Engine number four, gone. Wing on fire.”

  She never lifted her gaze from the control panel, where she confirmed that they’d lost an engine. Annunciator lights in the cockpit also indicated that number three, the other engine on the starboard wing, looked as if it was going to quit at any moment.

  “We’ve lost both hydraulic systems,” the FE shouted.

  “Roger. Pull the boost out handles!”

  The FE leaned down and pulled the three yellow-and-black striped handles by his feet.

  This left them with only manual control of the aircraft.

  “What’s next, XO?” David yelled into his mic, even though he was right next to her. They’d never hear each other over the roar of the aircraft as it struggled to maintain altitude.

  It was a losing battle. The altimeter showed they were dropping at an alarming rate.

  One, maybe two minutes was all she had to prepare her crew.

  They’d trained with the hope of three minutes.

  “We’ll never make it to land, David.” She tore her gaze from the instrument panel and looked at him. His profile was set and determined, but she recognized the same fear she felt.

  No one wanted to die. Not like this.

  “You with me?”

  He turned his stare on her and an understanding passed between them.

  Whatever it takes.

  Yells and shouts mixed with expletives over the ICS as the crew went through their trained-for responses.

  The flight engineer pushed the button that issued the deadly warning—one long ring on the command bell. The sound she never wanted to hear while flying a P-3 reverberated through the entire aircraft.

  They were going to ditch.

  “Prepare to ditch!” She yelled what might be her last command—she had no choice. They’d lost two engines and were damned lucky they were still airborne.

  The controlled panic of the crew aft of the flight station was palpable. Gwen heard swear words, prayers then silence as the country’s best-trained professionals prepared to fight for their lives.

  Lives in her hands.

  “Everyone got their LPAs on?” She referred to the survival vests that would be their only flotation device, other than the three life rafts, once they were in the harsh seas.

  “Condition One set!” Lizzie, the TACCO or tactical communications officer, confirmed that everyone was prepared to ditch.

  God help us all.

  Ten thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, approximately five miles off the southwest tip of the Philippines, they were about to ditch. The condition of the sea was abys
mal, with waves that were ten feet and higher, And it was quarter past midnight.

  Pitch blackness.

  Her worst nightmare come true—a nighttime ditch in rough seas, miles from land, oceans from the nearest naval vessel.

  Robert “Mac” MacCallister, the flight engineer, worked in sync with the copilot to complete the ditching checklist. It was standard procedure they’d all practiced and prayed they’d never need to use.

  I’m ditching in the ocean.

  She’d practiced it in the flight simulator countless times, mentally rehearsed the most undesirable event for any naval aviator.

  “I’m here if you need relief, XO.” The voice of the third pilot rose above the rush of air that swept through the cabin. He clutched the back of the copilot’s seat as he shouted in her ear.

  Gwen couldn’t spare him a look.

  “Go back to your station and strap your ass in, Aidan!” If any of them were going to survive they had to be properly secured. She had to bring the bird onto the water safely and in one piece so they could get out before it sank.

  “But ma’am, if you—”

  “Take the freaking order!” Before she even finished her statement, Gwen had to grab the yoke back after it was wrenched out of her hands.

  “Help me out here, David!” she shouted to her copilot.

  “I’m pulling as hard as I can!”

  Gwen didn’t have to see David’s face to know the young officer spoke through clenched teeth.

  “Come on, gal, give us one more break!” Gwen yelled at the old bird, then groaned as she stretched her shoulder and back muscles to their limit in her effort to pull back. Losing hydraulics after two engines had been blown apart by the surface-to-air missile wasn’t just bad luck.

  It was fatal.

  She had to beat it.

  That was her crew’s only chance.

  “Five thousand feet.” Scott reported each time the altitude dropped another thousand feet. Soon it would be every hundred feet.

  “Wind direction is two-four-five at 45 knots,” her navigator, Bryce Griswald, shouted from the nav station, aft of the cockpit.