CHAPTER SIX
Joy’s Mac and Gruyere for Brad
0615 Monday Morning Whidbey Island, Washington
JOY ALEXANDER FORCED herself to ignore the clock and leisurely sip her morning coffee. She had more than an hour until her first day at the law firm—her first civilian job after a decade in the Navy. Since the law office was seven minutes away, tops, and she’d already showered, she could afford to enjoy the view a bit longer.
Five minutes. She waited for the satisfaction she usually felt when she thought about her new life, her new career. But this time she didn’t feel it. Had to be first-day jitters, that was all.
The blue of the water changed to gray as the Strait of Juan de Fuca glistened in the morning light. Even though she’d planned to make the switch to civilian life for the last three years of her career as a Navy JAG, right now it felt as though it’d happened in the blink of an eye. She stretched her arms over her head, enjoying the taut feel of her muscles after last night’s yoga class. She’d traded years of Navy PT tests and the sweaty gym for poses in a pristine studio, and she had no regrets.
The flutters in her stomach were purely physical reactions to her excitement at her new job.
The rumble of jet engines reached her ears a split second before two Navy F-18 Growlers shot across the sky, overflying her house, leaving the Whidbey Island airspace for the Pacific Ocean. She wondered if an aircraft carrier was waiting for them. She watched their shapes grow smaller as they gained altitude and distance. A second round of jet noise rushed over her house, but this was lower, slower. Turbojets. Sure enough, a P-8 Poseidon, followed by its predecessor, the P-3 Orion, flew by and their flight appeared slow and laborious after the showiness of the fighter jets.
The P-8 and P-3 platforms didn’t land on carriers, but instead performed reconnaissance and antisubmarine missions. No doubt a Naval exercise was afoot. She’d often observed the aircraft over the past year from her home base of Naval Air Station, Whidbey Island. They always made her feel comfortable—they were that familiar to her.
She tried to ignore the pang of nostalgia; it would do nothing but increase her anxiety about starting her civilian life.
Joy had no room for anxiety in her carefully structured routine.
Scanning the horizon yielded nothing in the way of wildlife, the real reason she loved sitting out here. Not one whale spout. A cargo ship and a smaller fishing vessel floated in the distance, and she wondered if the small boat was out there to whale watch. Maybe it belonged to an amateur photographer, hoping to get shots of the Navy’s power. Aviation buffs were serious about observing Naval flight operations and referred to the loud noise of the jets as the “Sound of Freedom.”
She certainly felt it was. She’d proudly been part of supporting the operators who served all over the globe in missions that ranged from humanitarian aid to the ugliest aspects of war.
Would working in a civilian firm ever be as rewarding? She doubted it. But it was time...
A single burst of bright light came out of nowhere, as if an invisible finger had lit a match against the sea. She gasped at the immediate appearance of a fireball, followed by dark smoke.
As the reality that she’d seen an explosion registered, the tiled floor of her sunroom shuddered, and a soft boom rolled across the beachfront.
Normally, she’d associate the blast and its vibration with one or both of the F-18s breaking the sound barrier. But she’d seen the explosion. Had it been an aircraft exploding?
No, the fireball was too low.
Fighting her shock she forced her gaze to remain steady on the same distant spot where she’d identified the cargo ship with a fishing boat in the foreground. Her observation could prove instrumental in helping Search and Rescue.
She blinked as the reality registered.
Only one of the two vessels remained. The smaller fishing boat was gone, vanished in the few minutes it had taken the smoke to appear.
She waited for her brain to make sense of the images. Migrating whales, inbound storms, cargo ships—those were all common sights on the ocean. But clouds of dark black smoke rising above the horizon, spewing from the flash of a fireball? Never.
It was what had preceded the explosion that made her hands shake, made her know with certainty that while she’d resigned her Navy JAG commission last month, she would never let
