Sandra Hill (3 page)

By the time Britta stood at the edge of the cliff, she and Sister Margaret were both a bit
drukkinn
. As a result, she nigh killed herself climbing down the steep incline to place the bloody scraps of fabric. Instead of helping her or urging caution, Sister Margaret sat in the grass singing a song about farm maids and randy soldiers.

“Well, that should suffice,” Britta called back to Sister Margaret. “We can be off now.”

“Are you sure?”

Britta started, not realizing that Sister Margaret had come up behind her. Sister Margaret screamed as Britta teetered on the edge, vainly attempting to get her balance. She slipped and fell head over tail, desperately managing to grab the branch of a bush sticking out of the cliff side. Her hands were bleeding, as were various other parts of her scratched body, but she was alive, thank the gods. At least she was no longer under the influence of mead, the fall having shocked the fumes from her brain.

“Have a caution,” Sister Margaret yelled, peeking carefully over the lip of the cliff. “Are you all right?”

Odin’s breath! Is she blind as well as drukkinn?
“Nay, I am not all right.” Her hands had a firm grip on the bush about three body lengths from the cliff edge, but her arms and shoulders burned with the strain.

“Should I pray?”

Oh, that will help!
“Can you pray and throw me a rope at the same time?” Britta tried to get purchase with her booted feet, to no avail.

“Yea, I can.” Sister Margaret disappeared, then soon returned with a coil of thick rope, then disappeared again.

Britta peered upward carefully but could see nothing. Presumably, Sister Margaret was tying the rope to a rock or a tree.

“Catch,” the good nun said then, tossing out the heavy coil of rope. Unfortunately, the coil of rope did not immediately uncoil. As a result, it knocked Britta in the head, tearing her loose from her hold on the branch. “Yiiiiiiikes!” She went careening downward once again.

Britta screamed her outrage to her father, Sister Margaret, and the pretty man who’d caused the chain of events that led to this final catastrophe. For some reason, though, she blamed the pretty man most of all. Unfair? Possibly. But who could care about fairness now? If the lout had not laid a burden on her heart and loins, she would still be at The Sanctuary, safe and sound.

“’Tis all your fault, you loathsommmmmmmmme…”

My punishment will be…WHAT?…

Zach had been back in the USA for two weeks, but this was the first time he’d been summoned to discuss his “problem” in detail since the original, not-too-pleasant debriefing, which had been more like a “Chew Floyd’s Ass” session. He pushed open the office door in the training compound, knowing full well that he was late.

Lieutenant Commander Ian MacLean ran his fingers through his receding hair, which had been recently trimmed into the traditional military high and tight, and glared with disbelief at him. “I swear, you would arrive late for your own funeral. Do you have any clue what kind of trouble you’re in, Lieutenant Floyd?”

“Yes, Commander, sir,” Zach answered, standing at attention before the commander’s desk. “But there was an accident involving my…uh, babysitter, and—”

“Lieutenant Floyd!” the commander interrupted.

Protocol required his speaking to a higher ranking officer only in response to questions or when given permission to speak freely. “Sorry, Commander, sir.”

MacLean breathed in and out, clearly trying to calm his temper, which Zach knew was formidable. MacLean had been his BUD/S instructor, and he hadn’t been known as Lean Mean for nothing. “At ease, Lieutenant.”

Zach relaxed his stance and folded his hands behind his back.

“What happened?”

“Here or in Afghanistan?”

MacLean literally growled. “Don’t screw with me, dickhead. I can make that hot water you’re dog-paddling through turn to boiling and peel your stupid skin off. While I’m at it, I might as well burn off that wayward dick of yours.”

Okaaaay!

Picking up a pile of pink telephone message slips, he began to flick through them, making a comment about each:

“John Sylvester from the State Department. Wants a meeting with you ASAP.

“Mullah Ahmed Bejah from the L.A. chapter of Muslims for Peace. They’re demanding that the boy be returned because of his religious background.

“Admiral George Wilson, CENTCOM. He wants your ass in the brig.

“Your grandfather, General Floyd, is trying to make it all go away, which is of course impossible.

“A representative of the Afghan embassy in Beirut—we no longer have one in the United States—is demanding immediate and unconditional return of Samir.

“Aljazeera TV. Five calls from them.

“One each from Larry King, Katie Couric, and Diane Sawyer. Not to mention
People
magazine and the
New York Times
.

“If you dare talk to any media, I swear, I will personally take the hide off you. Oh, and did I mention some image consultant at the Pentagon thinks you would make a great poster boy for recruitment…once this brouhaha all dies down?”

Zach tried to look suitably surprised and outraged, but, frankly, he’d had just as many calls, some even wackier, and some downright scary. Like death threats. How they’d gotten his unlisted number was even scarier. That didn’t count the two attempts to kidnap Sammy, once in D.C. when he first came back to the States and several days later at the airport in San Diego. That was before he’d taken security measures.

The commander inhaled and exhaled deeply, presumably to tame his temper. “What happened today?”

“My son kicked the babysitter, who already had a bruised hamstring. We had to call an ambulance because he was unable to walk, possible shin fracture, and then I had to get a backup babysitter. By that time, I was already late, and I did call in, but—”

Commander MacLean raised a halting hand. “The babysitter with the bruised hamstring? You wouldn’t be referring to Ensign Omar Jones, would you?”

“Roger that. Omar has custody of his little girl, you know, but she’s visiting his parents in Arizona this week. I figured he has experience with kids. Hah! Lotta good that did. Actually, I begged Omar after the first five babysitters quit. My son is not the most pleasant gremlin on the planet. Omar is multilingual, as you know, and a SEAL, both positive attributes when dealing with an Afghan version of Attila the Five-Year-Old Hun.”

His humor—his whole frickin’ monologue—didn’t go over big with MacLean, who continued to frown at him. “I thought your mother came here from Florida to help with the kid.”

“She did, but she quit two days ago. Her exact words were, ‘You made your bed, sonny, now sleep in it.’ Besides she had a modeling gig…something for the AARP magazine, I think.”

Still not a hint of a smile.

So, he blathered on, “My brother, Danny, is on leave from his Iraq deployment. He’s an Air Force pilot. But he just laughs at me. People do that a lot lately.”

MacLean frowned. “Who’s the backup babysitter?”

Zach hesitated before revealing, “Your wife.”

“Madrene?” MacLean’s eyes about bulged from their sockets.

“I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask.”

“And the kids?” The commander and his wife had two children, three-month-old and two-year-old sons, Ranulf and Ivan, the latter better known as Ivan the Terrible. He had been given that name before anyone had met Sammy. Now he was considered a saint by comparison.

“They are there, too. My son seems to behave better in their company, under your wife’s iron control.”

The commander gave him “the look,” the one that put him in the same class as dipwad newbie tadpoles. “Your babysitting woes—in fact, your being late—are the least of your worries, boy.”

Zach knew things were bad when MacLean referred to him as “boy,” seeing as how the commander had only a few years on him.

“I will not send him back…Commander, sir.” It was telling how often he referred to his son as “him” or “the kid,” he realized with an odd sadness.

“I understand that. You better have bodyguards around the kid, though, because, believe me, Mullah Arsallah has friends in low as well as high places. He won’t give up.”

“Two of SEAL Team Thirteen’s inactive members are stationed outside my building, sir, for the time being. Including Scary Larry Wilson.”

His boss didn’t find that reference as amusing as Zach did. Scary Larry watching over Sammy the Snot. Whooboy! Actually, Wilson was a nice guy…a thirty-something SEAL who was on temporary suspension for breaking some ass-backward Navy rule. He’d hired him in the interim to help guard his son.

“I promise I’ll get this resolved soon.”

MacLean rested his elbow on the desk and put his chin in one hand, staring at him as if he were mud under his boondockers. “The Pentagon wants to know why—and how—you had sex during a live op in Afghanistan six years ago.”

Zach grinned. “Under a tarp in the mess tent.”

“Pfff! I’ll be sure to tell them that. Not!”

“I didn’t ask for this situation, sir, but I take responsibility for all of it. And I
will
resolve all the…issues.”

“Floyd, you’ve got as much sense as an armadillo crossing a four-lane highway.” MacLean shook his head at him. “What a cluster fuck! I hope you have a good lawyer.”

“I do, sir. My grandfather retained Jack Delaney for me.” His grandfather, Army General Frank Floyd, retired, was a notorious World War II ace pilot who still served in the Pentagon as a consultant, despite his advanced age. Delaney was a D.C. attorney with a reputation for winning at all costs.

The bill, which would be monumental, was being footed by his father, an aging lothario who still thought he was Hollywood’s answer to Cary Grant, playing just such a role, Dr. Lawrence Bratton, in one of the long-running TV soap operas,
Light in the Storm
. Incredibly, the old blowhard thought he could still give George Clooney a run for his money.

His mother, who’d divorced his father about twenty affairs ago, back when they all still lived in Bangor, Maine, had her own life as a senior citizen model. She’d kill him if she ever heard him refer to her that way.

His family, dysfunctional as it was, were there for each other in times of need. And, man oh man, Zach sure was needy now.

MacLean nodded at the mention of Delaney. “Well, for the time being, you’re assigned here at Coronado as an instructor.”

Zach had expected that. In fact, he’d expected far worse punishment as he’d worked out every day, waiting for his sentence…uh, assignment. Gig Squad, at the least.

“Don’t look so smug, Floyd.”

Uh-oh!
Zach didn’t like the smirk on his commander’s face.
Incoming bomb about to zing me.

“You are the brand-new assistant commander of the Navy’s half-assed, birdbrained, in-your-face WEALS, boy.”

“WEALS? Oh, no! No, no, no! Not that SEAL wannabe bunch of women!”

“Exactly. Women on Earth, Air, Land and Sea. The latest BUD/S class just ended, and another won’t start for three months to accommodate this program.”

“What the hell do I know about teaching SEALs or WEALS or anyone, for that matter?”

“SEAL instructors aren’t professional teachers, as you well know. It’s a temporary duty billet like any other. Behave yourself, and you might be put back on the teams.”

So much for that argument!
“Who’s the commander?”

MacLean’s face flushed a bright red. Even his partially bald head was red.

“Wha-hoo! What did you do wrong to get this assignment?”

“Nothing. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Zach knew how that could happen. Best to make yourself as invisible as possible in the military. “Man, I never thought I’d see the day that they’d allow women into the teams.”

“They’re not. Listen, terrorism has escalated so much in the past five years that we can’t keep up with the demand for SEALs out in the field. Same with all the other special forces units in other branches of the military. Women can fill a need.”

“You’re talking about lowering the standards, aren’t you?”

MacLean nodded. “Let’s face it. There’s no way a woman, no matter how strong, would be able to withstand a real Hell Week. For example, I think we’ll pass on log PT. Those telephone pole buggers weigh three to four hundred pounds each.”

“So do IBSs.” Inflatable Boats, Small, were heavy rubber boats, an integral part of BUD/S training. “You gonna eliminate those, too?”

He shook his head. “No, we’re gonna give them a try. Somehow they seem more manageable. I don’t know. We’re playing by ear…or muscle. But don’t worry, we’ll push them to their limits. They’ll have to work harder than they ever have in their lives to survive…till they can kick ass and take names like any special forces unit.”

“And afterward?”

“Once trained, they’ll be incorporated into the new U.S. Liberty Teams.”

Zach frowned. “That antiterrorist squad? I heard about it starting up a year or so ago, then nothing.”

“It’s still in the works. Just ran into a few snags, which could be expected when you try to combine SEALs, Green Berets, Army Special Forces, and every other Rambo-like idiot warrior group in the world, not to mention, now, WEALS.”

“I can see dozens of complications with this WEALS program. Sex, as in instructors and officers hitting on the women. Serious distractions, like breasts bobbing all over the place. Female periods. PMS, for chrissake!”

“That’s not the half of it. In pretraining last week, we were doing duck squats when one of the women accidentally farted. F.U. and one of the other instructors laughed. She burst out bawling with embarrassment and ended up ringing out.”

Any SEAL trainee, or WEALS trainee for that matter, could DOR, drop on request, at any time. All they had to do was walk to the northeast corner of the grinder where there was a ship’s bell, place their personalized helmets on the ground, and ring the bell three times. In fact, there was a 40 percent dropout rate during the first phase of BUD/S. He had no idea how high it would be for WEALS, which had started with ninety-five women.

“And there’s more. The Navy has appointed a female ombudsman, Captain Lenore Feldman, to handle complaints from the WEALS trainees. Think anal with a capital A. Her big thing is memos.” The commander picked up a memo as if it were something repugnant. “Look at this,” he added, shoving a pink slip his way.

Zach shook his head at the absurdity. “I can only imagine the scenario: ‘Please, Instructor Floyd, sir, can I be excused from PT today? I’m in a bad mood.’”

“Here’s another one. Can you believe it?”