"David, where are we going?"

"We left the car on the road," he told her. "It's just a hundred yards or so up the road. All we have to do is get to the top of this hill."

"And walk down the road like, like this?"

"I don't see too many options, Chris. Should be okay, though. The traffic won't be heavy this time of day." He staggered on, hot rocks and gravel pressing against the bottoms of his bare feet. He thought of all the long, long runs — as much as fourteen miles in the sand — supporting a 300-pound log with six other guys, and knew he could make it. Piece of cake.

At last they reached the top, where a metal guard rail separated Toffey Pines Road from the edge of the cliff. Far down the road to the north, Sterling could see his blue Volkswagen parked where he'd left it in the shade of a palm tree. He let Christine down, but picked her up again when half a dozen steps on the hot gravel at the side of the road reduced her to tears and a slow and painful hobble. Carrying her piggyback again, he trotted along the side of the road. A truck thundered by, the driver happily leaning on his horn. Sterling could feel Christine trembling against him, hiding her face, certain that the whole world was staring at them.

And she may have been right. There were lots of houses in view up here, mostly the elegant, architectural dream homes of the wealthy southern Californians who inhabited this strip of prime, ocean-view property. If any of them happened to be looking out those big, expensive picture windows now, Sterling thought, they were getting one hell of a great view.

"David!" Christine wailed. "I just remembered! We locked the car! Your keys and everything are down on the beach!"

"Don't worry about it. I'll get us in."

A Cadillac drove past, and the driver beeped his horn. "Oh, this is awful!"

At last they reached the VW. Sterling let Christine down, and she immediately scampered for the partial shelter behind the car's body. "How... how are we going to get in? Can you pick the lock?"

"Easier than that, Chris. I left the trunk open." Walking to the front of the car, he opened the hood. "Shit," he said conversationally. "I thought I had a blanket stowed in here. Guess not."

"David, what are we going to do?"

He hesitated, faced now with the moment of truth. That battered, blue VW was something of a classic, an ancient car dating back to the years when they actually manufactured the VW Beetle in the United States, lovingly preserved and rebuilt through a long succession of enlisted Navy and Marine personnel, passed down from owner to owner each time a tour of duty was up. Sterling had lavished hundreds of hours on the vehicle until it ran like a Swiss watch. Damaging it was a kind of sacrilege.

"David!" Fists clenched, face red, Christine bounced rapidly up and down on her toes, a movement that communicated her urgency while doing delightful things to other parts of her anatomy. "There's a bus coming!"

He sighed. "Okay." Balling up his fist, Sterling smashed through the back of his glove compartment, a dark brown box shaped in thick, heavy cardboard like the material egg cartons are made of. Reaching into the hole from the trunk side, he fiddled with the latch for a moment until the glove compartment door popped open. Then, leaning in as far as he could, he reached through the open glove compartment and pushed open the small ventilation window on the passenger's side. "I hated it when they stopped putting these on cars," he said conversationally as he moved to the side of the car, reached through the open window, and unlocked the door. Christine slipped in through the door just before a yellow high school bus loaded with cheering students roared past. It looked like a field trip of some sort. Sterling cheerfully waved as the bus groaned past them and on up the hill. Christine was huddled on the VW's floor, possibly in an attempt to crawl beneath her seat.

Sterling reached across to unlock the driver's side door, walked around to the trunk, where he fished out a screwdriver, then slammed the hood shut. Sliding into the driver's seat, he turned his attention to the VW's ignition.

Damn but he hated doing this. Well, it could be repaired. In seconds, as Christine watched from the floor with wide eyes, he popped the ignition mount out, engaged clutch and gas, and pressed two lengths of bare wire together. The VW's engine gunned into life.

"Thank God," Christine said. "Now what?"

"Now we get you home," he said, backing into the road, then turning south. "I'll let you out in your driveway where it's pretty well screened from the street. You run in and get dressed, then bring me something to wear. A pair of your brother's shorts maybe."

"Okay."

"Then I'll hightail it back here, grab our stuff, and pick you up in plenty of time for us to have lunch. How about Delaney's? Sound good?"

"David Sterling! If you think I'm going out with you after what you've just done to me, exposing me to the whole world and humiliating me in front of God knows how many people..."

"Hey! Would you rather walk home? You can get out now, if you want."

"No! You wouldn't!"

"Try me!"

Christine lived in La Mesa, a San Diego suburb twenty miles from La Jolla, nestled into the hills between Route 8 and Route 94. Once they pulled onto the main highway, traffic was fairly heavy. Christine got off the floor and onto her seat, but she held her arms awkwardly to cover her breasts and lap. The VW was pretty low to the ground, and plenty of truck drivers seemed to be doing their best to peer down at her from their cabs as they drove past. The last part was the worst, when they actually had to drive through downtown La Mesa, getting stopped by three traffic lights in a row.

At last, Sterling turned into Christine's driveway. Her home was a small, neat ranch house where she lived with her parents. Turning in his seat, Sterling checked the street at their back.

"Okay. Looks clear. Go!"

She slipped out of the car and scampered up the walk toward the door. Just as she reached it, the door opened wide. Her father was standing there waiting for her, his face like a darkening thunderhead.

"Oh, shit!"

Sterling had a feeling that Christine wasn't going to be bringing her brother's shorts out to him. As Christine's father advanced down the walk, he decided that a tactical withdrawal was definitely the order of the day. Throwing the VW into reverse, he backed swiftly onto the street, straightened out the wheel, then headed back the way he'd come.

Forty minutes later he was parked once more on Toffey Pines Road, just above a beach that had grown considerably more crowded in the past hour and a half. He really had no alternatives now, for he couldn't get back on base without showing his ID card to the sentries at the gate, and that was in his wallet on the beach with his clothes.

Climbing out of the VW, he started picking his way down the path toward the beach.

The police officer who arrested him a few minutes later was very nice about it. At least she allowed him to get dressed, but she was most unreasonable when he tried to suggest that the incident had been perpetrated by a couple of Sterling's friends who'd stolen his clothes and abandoned him on the road as a crude prank. Apparently, there'd been a number of complaints from residents in the area about a couple of nudists along the highway.

Eventually, and after a long and unpleasant phone conversation with the Officer of the Day at Coronado, the La Jolla police agreed to relinquish the case to the military authorities. The Navy would deal with David Sterling.