This week, he was standing night duty, which left his days delightfully free. He'd brought Christine Jordan, his girlfriend of the past two months, to the beach for a picnic. She was nineteen and a freshman at San Diego State, a gorgeous, tanned California girl with fantastic long legs, long, sun-blond hair, and a face and body right out of Playboy. His tactical plan for the day called for considerably more than lunch and a swim. So far, their relationship hadn't passed the heavy petting and fondling stage, though they'd talked about going further often enough. With no other beach-goers closer than half a klick off, Sterling had decided that now was the time to make his move. He might show up for duty tonight without having slept in thirty hours, but what the hell? He'd done worse stints during Motivation Week, and man, this was going to be worth it!

"C'mon, babe," he told her. They were lying face to face on a beach blanket. Minutes before, he'd coaxed Christine into slipping off her black and red bikini top, and for emphasis now he reached over and delicately kneaded her left nipple until it popped up like a bullet. "SEALs do everything in the water! You know that!"

"David," she said, dimpling. "You are absolutely nuts!"

"That's what you love about me, right?"

"But suppose someone sees us!"

"Who's to see? The beach is deserted! We've got the place to ourselves, at least until school lets out."

"Gee, David, I don't know."

Bending his head to her breast, he gave her nipple a long and lingering kiss. Chris moaned, her head back, her mane of long blond hair spilling across the beach blanket.

"Ooh, David... you are persuasive."

"Come on, Chris! Let's get naked and get wet! It'll be fun!"

Impulsively, Christine stood up. She stood there for a moment, hesitating, her arms crossed protectively over her bare breasts as she looked first one way up the beach, then the other. Then she stooped, skinned off her bikini briefs, and scampered toward the water, her long brown legs scissoring in the surf.

"Yes!" Sterling tugged off his own swimsuit, dropped it on the blanket, then raced into the waves in close pursuit. She squealed as he grabbed her from behind and dragged her down. A wave crashed over them, knocking them together as he encircled her with his arms. Their lips met.

Clinging to one another, they made their way to a point about one hundred yards off the beach, beyond where the surf was breaking. Each wave lifted them high as it surged beneath them, then sent them plummeting into its trough, a wild and exhilarating ride with Christine shrieking in his arms. It was probably too rough today for any serious sea-borne docking operations, but the clinging and grappling were tremendous fun and promised better things for later.

He was trying to maneuver himself between her thighs despite the ocean surge when Christine gave another scream, this one of a sharply different timbre from the others. "What's wrong?"

Eyes wild, her wet hair plastered across her face, she pointed past his shoulder toward the beach. "David, look!"

Turning, he saw the people winding down the path from the road where they'd parked Sterling's VW. It was a fair-sized crowd, five or six adults and at least that many children. Some of them carried beach umbrellas, coolers, blankets, and the other paraphernalia of an afternoon's outing at the beach. A teenager sent a frisbee sailing across the sand, and a small dog yapped after it.

They were setting up shop less than five yards from the towels, picnic basket, and swimsuits that Sterling and Christine had left on the beach.

"Oh, God, David!" She was trembling in his arms. "What are we going to do now?"

"That's okay. They can't see anything but our heads out here.

"No! I mean what about our clothes! We can't go back now!"

"Why not? We just go ashore, walk over to our stuff, get dressed, and leave. What can they do?"

"David!" She pushed back against his embrace, staring into his face. "You can't be serious!"

"I'm perfectly serious."

"I can't walk up onto the beach in front of people naked!" A wave carried them higher, and she turned to stare at the beach again. "Oh, God, no! NO!"

"Now what?"

"I know some of those people! They're from my church! And that... that's Pastor Kline! David! It's a church picnic! What am I going to do?"

"Okay, listen. I'll tell you what. You stay here. Just tread water. I'll swim back, get our suits, and bring yours out to YOU."

"No!" The word was nearly a scream.

"Why not?"

"They might know you! They know I've been going out with you! If they saw you come out of the ocean like this, they'd know I was with you, and they'd know what we've been doing! You can't!"

"Well, we sure as hell can't stay out here all day." The water was pretty cold. Sterling was feeling fine so far, but Christine's lips were already blue, and her teeth were starting to chatter. "Look, it's easy. Just ignore them. What can they say? Just go up and..."

"God, David, sometimes you can be so damned arrogant!"

He blinked. "Arrogant? Me? I'm just being practical! Christine, you're freezing. Come on. I know you're a bit embarrassed, but..."

"It's so humiliating! David, I can't possibly let my pastor see me like this! I'll never be able to show my face again! He'll tell my father! Oh, why did I even listen to you? I knew this was a mistake!"

Sterling sighed. Impasse. Christine wasn't going back to the beach, she wasn't going to let him go back to the beach, and if she stayed where she was she'd succumb to hypothermia in thirty minutes or less. Her fingertips and the dusky aureoles around her nipples were already starting to wrinkle up like prunes.

There had to be another solution. A SEAL solution...

"Okay," he told her. "I've got it."

Turning in the water, he presented his back to her. "Grab hold. Hold onto my neck."

Reluctantly, she slipped her arms around his neck, and he felt her body pressing against his back and buttocks. "What are you going to do?"

"We're going for a little swim, babe."

Launching into a powerful breast stroke, Sterling began swimming south, moving parallel to the beach and in the general direction of the La Jolla headlands, which rose from the sea about half a mile away.

It would have been a stiff swim for anyone but a SEAL, but Sterling made it seem almost effortless, hauling Christine through the water with a sure and practiced ease. As they drew farther and farther away from the picnickers on the beach, he could feel her starting to relax a little.

The rough part came when he reached the surf line just below the cliffs, where the waves broke in savage, white fury over the boulders scattered along the beach. "Wrap your legs around my waist," he called to her. "And for God's sake, hang on!"

Somehow, he plunged out of the crashing water and sprinted up a narrow shingle of wet sand without being smashed against the rocks. In the distance to his left, the picnickers were visible as a cluster of colored dots, too small for faces to be made out. South, around the headland, Sterling had thought he'd glimpsed some fishermen on the rocks as he'd come in, but if they'd seen the two swimmers they gave no sign. And apparently Christine hadn't seen them either. Her face was buried against the back of his neck.

"Okay," he told her, straightening a bit and bracing her legs with his hands. "We're ashore, but I want you to stay where you are. We have a little climbing ahead of us.

"Why? If we find someplace to hide in the rocks..."

"Babe, in another hour or so this beach is going to be wall-to-wall people, okay? Besides, I can feel you shivering. We've got to get you warmed up before you catch pneumonia."

It was a grueling climb up a slanted rock ledge that ran along the face of the bluff like a narrow path. Fishermen had probably used this route for years to get down to the beach from Torrey Pines Road, which followed the headland around its crest, overlooking the ocean. Or it might have been a beach maintenance access path, a part of La Jolla Heights Park. Christine weighed perhaps 120, close to the weight of a SEAL's full RAHO gear, and it was a struggle to keep moving.