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  “Do you ever have a problem with the men passing the word that you’re on the prowl?”

  “Communications are monitored. The first idiot who tries to pull that stunt is going to answer to me.”

  “I see.” Tough little cookie, he thought. “By the way, Captain, I’m here tonight strictly as an observer. Anything I see or hear won’t go any further.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Finally Andrea answered, hating having to say it, “Thank you, sir.”

  MacLendon half smiled into the dark. Spitfire, he thought. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “No, sir. My whole family smokes.”

  “You?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How’d you miss it?”

  Again there was a pregnant silence. Turning, he saw the struggle on Andrea’s face. It was over quickly, but he caught it.

  “Girls,” she said finally, “don’t smoke.”

  “Oh.” He lit his cigarette and cracked the window to let the smoke trail out. “But they go to the Air Force Academy and become regular officers?”

  “No, they don’t do that, either. But if you want something badly enough, that doesn’t hold you back.”

  “I guess not.” He felt another inkling of real respect for her. It didn’t mean he was necessarily going to like having her around, or that she wouldn’t be a headache, but it gave him some of her measure. “Married?”

  “No, sir. Are you?”

  She turned the personal question back neatly, and he decided it was time to change tacks. “No,” he replied. “How long have you been at the base?”

  “Two years come December.” She paused, then decided to make an effort to be friendly. Only God and Uncle Sam knew how long she was going to have to put up with this cowboy. “December is a wonderful time to arrive in North Dakota. No chance to acclimate. Winter hits you like a ton of bricks.”

  “This is my third tour here,” he offered. “There’s something about surviving a North Dakota winter that leaves you feeling a little smug.”

  “Smug?”

  “Like you went eyeball to eyeball with Mother Nature and came away whole.”

  She surprised him with a throaty chuckle.

  “Where are you from originally, Captain?” His question was a traditional military icebreaker, a perfectly legitimate query from one transplant to another.

  “All over. I’m an Air Force brat.”

  “Who’s your father? Maybe I know him.”

  “Charles Burke. He retired four years ago as Chief Master Sergeant.”

  MacLendon suddenly swiveled to look at her better. “Charlie Burke. Was he air crew chief at Mather in ‘74?”

  Such coincidences no longer surprised Andrea. Everywhere you went in the Air Force you met old friends or friends of friends. It was, at heart, really just a large family. “Yes, sir.”

  MacLendon’s brain clicked. He hadn’t spoken to Andrea Burke at Mather, but he’d seen her. A teenage girl in a ridiculously frilly dress at chapel on Sundays. Thin, leggy, coltish. He’d seen her a couple of times rough-and-tumbling at football and basketball with a gang of boys who all had her hair and freckles. He’d noticed her because she’d struck him as out of place in both those situations. And he knew Charlie Burke. No girl would have found it easy growing up under his thumb. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and let the subject drop. Pursuing it any further would require getting more personal than he chose to get with his officers, or than she would like to get with her CO. Nonetheless he could still recall some of Charlie Burke’s more outrageous statements about God’s whys and wherefores in creating women. The worst of it was, the man hadn’t been joking.

  So he knew her dad, Andrea thought. She waited to hear all the hearty male things men always said about her father and was surprised when they didn’t come. Could it be that somebody in the world didn’t think her father was the best mechanic, the best sergeant, the best good ol’ boy, in the Air Force?

  Everything MacLendon learned about Andrea Burke raised his opinion of her another notch. A pretty remarkable young woman, he thought, as she turned off the truck’s headlights and proceeded slowly down a narrow access road toward the perimeter of the weapons depot. She was approaching from the base side of the huge, hangarlike building that sat near the Main Gate, the side from which security would least expect an illegitimate approach.

  Turning the truck to one side, Andrea pulled onto the grass and switched off the ignition. In front of them, to the right, lay the alert shack where B-52 crews spent a week at a time waiting for the war they all hoped would never happen. In the old days of the cold war, they often hopped aboard those planes and flew to the Fail-Safe line. These days such alerts were much rarer, but from time to time, when a chip failed in the computers at Cheyenne Mountain, or when international tensions raised the country’s defense status to a war footing, they raced to their planes and took to the air.

  To the left was the weapons storage building, where nuclear warheads from both missiles and bombs were stored and repaired. Most warheads were in place on their launch vehicles or in the bellies of the bombers, but maintenance had to be performed on a rotating basis, and it was here the work was done.

  Unarmed, those weapons were safe, but MacLendon always felt a swift clenching in his gut when he was near them. More than once in his career he’d taken to the air with his bomb bay full of these weapons and his blackout curtains drawn, not knowing if this was the big one.

  If Andrea Burke felt a similar reaction to the destructive forces nearby, her face betrayed nothing. She looked at MacLendon. “How are you on stealthy approaches, Colonel?”

  “I used to be fairly good. After I was shot down in Nam, I evaded the Vietcong for six weeks.”

  Andrea didn’t want to be impressed. For some reason she didn’t understand, she didn’t want to like this man. She didn’t want to respect him. She was impressed anyway.

  “Well, sir,” she said, “the idea is to get up to the depot without being detected.”

  “And if you get that far?”

  Andrea’s expression turned grim. “I damn well better not. If I do, there’ll be hell to pay.” At the back of her mind was the belief that tonight, of all nights, she was going to make it through security. Why not? Everything else had gone wrong since Alisdair MacLendon had set foot in her life. And what kind of name was Alisdair, anyway? Did people actually call him that?

  “What kind of security is there inside the building?” MacLendon asked her.

  “None. Once you get inside, it’s assumed you have a right to be there.” Seeing the dubious look on his face, she explained. “I didn’t set up the security arrangements, Colonel, but I assure you they’re excellent. There’s only one way in or out, and as long as you guard the access adequately, you don’t need internal security. The inside of the building is entirely open. The warheads sit on high platforms that allow them to be viewed clearly from any place within the hangar. It also makes it impossible to move them surreptitiously. Maybe you should arrange to take an escorted tour.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  Andrea pulled off her beret and opened the glove box. Taking out two black ski masks, she tossed one to MacLendon. “Terrorists are a big concern,” she said automatically, as she pulled a mask over her head. “They’d love to get their hands on one of those little babies.” From behind the seat she brought out an M-16.

  MacLendon looked at the ski mask in his hands and then at Andrea, who sat, M-16 in her hands, head tilted questioningly. He’d trespassed far enough, he decided abruptly. He’d learned what he needed to know about her, and he had no business involving himself in her actual functioning.

  “I’ll wait here, Captain,” he said. “I’d just increase the chance of alerting the sentries.”

  After the briefest hesitation, she nodded. “Yes, sir.” So the man knew when to back off. Well, that would make the next few years a lot easier to take. Moving si