71
Susan was in heaven.Well, close to it, if Brunei’s tourist literature was to be believed.
She was at least inpersonalheaven.
Tanjung Batu Beach had been made to order. It had fine snorkeling when she needed to get wet, food stalls and nonalcoholic bars lined the landward side when she needed sustenance. Mostly what she wanted to do was lie in the sun and watch the waves roll in. Sadie was perfectly content under a small sunshade that offered a view of everything happening on the long expanse of pale sand.
Her bikini earned her the usual admiring looks, despite many of the Westerners on the beach also wearing as little. But most foreigners who came to Brunei’s beaches were a subset of the backpacker breed: all fresh out of school and jaunting from one place to the next. Brunei attracted the adventure and ecotourist types. The party crowd would be in Indonesia, Thailand, or Australia.
It didn’t matter, they were all too young for her to even consider as a friendly distraction.
That was okay. After these last few days working with Miranda, Susan simply needed to stop, be quiet, and enjoy the beach.
She’d ridden out plenty of crises during her career, ones that had permitted far too little sleep. She might not bounce back as she had in her twenties, but she still could. However, for the first time in her entire career, she felt as weary inside as her body did on the outside.
Such baby steps. Two satellites downed today, four more quietly launched tomorrow.
Chinese-American relationships were going to hell. Russian-American ones weren’t merelyheadedback into a Cold War, they were already there. How long until the next big war? How many small ones were running even now?
“I’ve got a choice, Sadie.”
Sadie turned to look at her from her little shadowed hutch, resting her chin on her outstretched paws.
“I know. I didn’t think I’d get here so quickly. But once I started thinking about it…”
She’d spent over thirty years chasing fires for the military. She’d successfully dowsed more than most and had the accolades to prove it. Both the Military Women’s Memorial and the US Naval Memorial Museum had featured her. Her hometown museum in Lawrence, Massachusetts, had done an entire exhibit on her once, and again in an Honoring Servicewomen of Lawrence exhibit.
“But after a lifetime of chasing fires, it might be nice to go back home and sit by one.” She’d left behind a dozen hobbies. There were languages to learn, she missed her garden like an ache in her heart, she still had a whole stack of unfinished quilts and needlepoint stashed in a trunk in the family home.
“When was the last time we hit a good old pool hall, not some place packed with fellow squids on the prowl, but hometown locals? Decent New England accents as glad to drink a beer as take the next shot? I ask you.”
Sadie didn’t have an answer.
Susan tickled her muzzle. “You’ve got some gray showing.”
Sadie probably still had a few years in her, but she’d spent her life on the road as well. No roots.
Susan thought back to the crap apartment she’d shared way back when in Honolulu. Coming back to the same place each night had been a joy, not a burden. For decades her life had been hotels or TDY, temporary duty, base accommodations—she was never still.
Four weeks a year leave. And where did she go every time?
It used to be places like this, well, with a little more action. But this wasn’t really leave. This was the twenty-four hours before she could catch a flight headed in the right direction.
For a while now, whenever she hit leave, she went home.
“After all these years, that thread is still tugging me there.”
Sadie yawned as if this was old news.
“I’d need to keep busy.” But she knew the answer to that, too. How many hours had she sat at the American Legion trading old stories? Or at the DAV, helping disabled vets file insurance paperwork? A lot. Back in the day it had all been about the convoluted paperwork for Vietnam Vets to get coverage for Agent Orange exposure. Now it was about PTSD and TBI—traumatic brain injuries. But she liked working with them, helping them. And there were always more veterans to help than she could ever assist during her brief trips home.
Susan looked out at the clouds scudding along the distant skyline, a few spilling dark rain showers on the ocean as they passed.
Above, the sky was shifting toward the hazy blue of incoming weather. Not blocking her sun yet, but it would by tomorrow.
“Not a good day for firing orbital lasers.”
Sadie shook her head, scattering sand and making her ears flap.
God, the things she’d never wanted to know.
Tomorrow was Memorial Day. A day for remembering the dead. How many would remember her when that day came? How many more if she went home to where she could help and live with the same people from one day to the next? Her itinerant lifestyle had been glorious, but was it time to move on?
“Fight the small fires of home?”
She liked the idea of slowing down and helping people. Not massive geopolitical maneuverings that mobilized entire carrier groups. But helping people who she could sit with and they’d remember each other’s names.
“Would you like to have a garden you could play in every day?”
Sadie didn’t look as if she’d mind that at all.