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“We could have reached it, sir. I chose not to do so.”

Black’s eyes narrowed. “So when your friends told me you hadn’t been able to get to the Black Hawk in time, they were lying?”

“It’s what they believed to be true, sir. They had no way of knowing I had decided that the princess and I would not go with them.”

Not a lie. Just a harmless evasion. Would Black accept it? Dec waited. Finally, Black strode to his desk and sat down behind it.

“Sanchez. Stay where you are. The rest of you are dismissed.”

Spanos, Maguire, Sullivan, Romano and Olivier got to their feet. All of them looked at Dec.

“Sir,” Romano said, “maybe we could—”

“Out!”

“Yessir, captain, but we were talking on the flight home and Lieutenant Sanchez told us that—”

“OUT!”

The men left. Black waited until he and Dec were alone. Then he looked at Dec.

“Sanchez.”

“Yessir.”

Black slammed his fist on his desk. The stack of papers scattered.

“What the fuck were you thinking? You had a clear mission. You were sent to rescue three Americans. You got to where you were supposed to go, slipped into that camp, found and freed the three hostages, took out a handful of human slime, got the hostages and yourselves through rough country and to our rescue helicopter when all the odds were against you, evaded a band of lunatics who tried to kill you—and then you grabbed a horse—a horse—and rode off into the sunset with the Royal Princess of Qaram.” Black shot to his feet. “What the fuck, Sanchez? Did you think you were starring in an old movie? Who’d you think you were? John Wayne? Errol Flynn? Jesus, don’t look so blank. How about something more recent. Daniel Day Lewis? That name ring a bell?”

“Sir. Captain Black. I know how it looks…”

“How it looks,” Black said tightly, “is like grounds for court-martial.”

Dec didn’t say anything. What could he say? How could he argue with that?

“So I’m waiting, Sanchez. Tell me what happened. Why you did what you did. I know you’d had a prior involvement with this woman. Did the prospect of being alone with her for a farewell fuck mean so much?”

Dec was out of his chair before Black had finished the sentence. “If you weren’t wearing that uniform…”

“Answer the question, Lieutenant. Were your actions personally motivated?”

“I have more respect for my unit, for the men I serve with, than to have done something like that.” His eyes narrowed. “And I have more respect for Annie—for the Princess Anoushka—than to let anyone talk about her that way.”

Black sighed. He sat down, folded his hands and looked at Dec.

“You disobeyed orders.”

Dec started to say that he had not—but he had. He’d been charged with freeing the hostages. He had done that—and then he’d gone further, strictly on his own.

He felt sick to his stomach. He was finished in the Units. Finished in the service. If he got lucky, he’d be allowed to resign, but it was more than likely he would receive a dishonorable discharge.

And yet, if it meant saving Annie from the life her uncle had planned for her, he’d have made the same choices all over again.

Black jerked his chin at the chair Dec had abandoned. “Sit down, son,” he said quietly.

Dec, head reeling, fell back into the chair.

“You love this woman.”