"Uh. It's not bad, really," he said, taking a pull of his own beer. The mellow home-brewed concoction dropped to his stomach like lead and started doing dances with the butterflies. Sharon was really going to hit the roof.

"Oh, shit, just spit it out," she snapped. "What, did you get fired?"

"No, no, I got called back up. Sort of." He turned back to the stove, picking up the pot and dumping the al dente pasta into the colander.

"What? By the Army? You've been out, what? eight years?" The words were low but angry. They tried to never argue in front of the kids.

"Almost nine," he agreed, head down and concentrating on getting the pasta just right. The smell of garlic permeated the air as he tossed the crushed cloves into the mix. "I'd been out nearly six months when we met."

"You're not reserve anymore!" She reached out and touched his arm to get him to turn around and look at her.

"I know, but Jack called Dave and twisted his arm into letting me go for a while." He looked up into her blue eyes and wondered why he could not tell Jack, "No." The hurt in her gaze was almost more than he could bear.

"Jack. You mean General Horner. The `Jack' who wanted you to get a commission?" she asked with dark suspicion, setting the wine down. It was her way of clearing the decks and he took it for a bad sign.

"How many Jacks do you know?" he asked playfully, trying to lighten the mood.

"I don't know him—you know him." She had moved in close to him, crowding his space and more or less making him back up.

"You've talked to General Horner before." He turned back to the pasta, running from the argument and he knew it.

"Once, and it was until you got to the phone."

"Mmm."

"And why the hell do they want you?" she asked, still crowding in. He could faintly feel the heat from her body, raised by a combination of the wine and the argument.

"I don't know." The fettuccine ready, he added the Alfredo sauce, covered and warming on the stove top. The heady smell of parmesan and spices filled the air.

"Well, call General Horner and tell him you're not coming until we know why. And fettuccine Alfredo will not get you out of anything." She crossed her arms again, then relented and picked up the wine for a sip.

"Honey, you know the drill. When they call, you go." He portioned out the kids' supper, readying trays for them to eat in front of the TV. Normally they tried to eat together, but tonight seemed like a good night to create a little distance from them.

"No. Not with me," she retorted, gesturing sharply enough to slosh the Chardonnay. "Not that anybody has asked, but they'd get a little more argument if they tried to get me back in the Navy. The hell if I'm ever serving on another carrier." She tossed her head to move an imaginary hair out of the way and waited for a response.

"Well, I guess I don't know what to say," he said softly.

She looked at him for a long moment. "You want to go back." It was clearly an accusation. "You know, I'm going to have a hell of a time keeping up with both work and home if you're gone!"

"Well . . ." The pause after that looked to go on forever.

"God, Mike, it's been years! It's not like you're eighteen anymore." With her mouth pursed into a frown, she looked like a little girl "saving up spit."

"Honey," he said, rubbing his chin and looking at the ceiling, "generals don't recall you from civilian status, personally, to go run around in the boonies." He dropped his eyes to meet hers and shook his head.

"Whatever it is, they'll want me for my know-how, not my biceps. And sometimes, yeah, I wonder if being, maybe, by now, a company commander in the Eighty-Deuce wouldn't be a little more . . . important, useful, I don't know, something more than building a really boss web page for the country's fourth largest bank!" He garnished the generous helping of fettuccine with a chicken breast in garlic and herbs and extended it to her.

She shook her head, understanding the argument intellectually, but still not happy. "Do you have to leave this evening?"

She took the plate and looked at it with the same suspicion as the wine. A little alcohol and complex carbohydrates to calm the hysterical wifey. Unfortunately she knew that was exactly how she was acting. He knew all about her knee-jerk reaction to the military and was trying to compensate. Trying hard.

"No, I have to be at McPherson on Monday morning. And that's the other thing, I'm just going to McPherson. It's not like it's the back side of the moon." He picked up a rag and wiped away an imaginary smear on the gray countertop. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but with Sharon on the warpath it could just as well be a train.

"No, but if you think I'm taking the kids to south Atlanta you're out of your mind," she retorted, losing ground and knowing it. She sensed that this was a critical argument and wondered what would happen if she said it was her or the Army. She had thought about it a few times before, but it had never come up. Now she was afraid to ask. What really made her mad was that she understood her emotions and knew she was in the wrong. Her own experiences had poisoned her against the military as a career, but not against the basic call to duty. And it made her wonder what would happen if she faced the same question.

"Hey, I may be commuting. And it may not be for long," Mike said with a purely Gallic shrug and rubbed his chin. His dark, coarse hair had raised a respectable five-o'clock shadow.

"But you don't think so," she countered.

"No, I don't think so," he agreed, somberly.

"Why?" She sat down at the kitchen table and cut a bite of the chicken. It was perfectly done; delicious as usual. It tasted like sand in her mouth.

"Well . . . just say it's a gut call." Mike began to fill his own plate. He suspected poulet avec herb was going to be lacking in his diet in the near future.

"But we have the weekend?" she asked taking a sip of the oaky Chardonnay to wash down the wonderful meal in a mouth gone quite dry.

"Yes."

"Well, let's see what we can think of to do." The smile was weak, but at least it was a smile.

* * *

"Can I see some ID, sir? Driver's license?"

I got up pretty damn early for this crap. Three hours driving separated his home in the Georgia Piedmont from Fort McPherson, Georgia, home of the Army's Forces Command. Perched just off of Interstate 75-85, the green lawns and numerous brick structures hid a mass of secure buildings. Since it commanded all the combat forces in the Army its secure meeting facilities were top-notch but the press hardly noticed it. If a large number of military and civilian personnel suddenly congregated in Fort Myers, Virginia or Nellis AFB it would be noticed; places like that were carefully watched but not Fort McPherson. Serviced by Hartsfield Airport, the largest in the United States, and covered by Atlanta's notorious traffic, the only people who noticed the gathering were the carefully selected soldiers acting as military police. But, while the soldiers had been carefully selected, they had not been selected from the ranks of MPs.

"Thank you, sir," said the somber gate guard after a thorough study of Mike's driver's license and face. "Take the main road to a `T' intersection. Turn right. Follow that road to Forces Command; it is a gray concrete building with a sign. Go past the main building to the guard shack on the left. Turn in there and follow the MP's direction."

"Thank you," said Mike, dropping the Beetle into gear and taking the proffered ID.

"Not at all," the guard said to the already moving Beetle. "Have a nice day." The Delta Force commando in an MP uniform picked up a recently installed secure phone. "O'Neal, Michael A., 216-29-1145, 0657. Special attention Lieutenant General John Horner." For a moment the sergeant first class wondered what all the fuss was about, why he was wearing rank three grades inferior to his real one. Then he stopped wondering. The ability to quell curiosity was a desirable trait in a long-term Delta. Damn, he thought, that guy looked just like a fireplug, then dismissed him from memory as the next civilian car pulled up.