True Devotion (29 page)

Kelly waved to get his attention. Joe hesitated and then moved toward her. He could see she had been worried, had spent a hard weekend waiting, wondering. Her smile now was broad, full of relief. What would she think if she knew how close it had really been? If it had turned out differently, could she have handled a second time having someone tell her a SEAL in her life was dead?

He could hide behind the secrecy that was part of his profession and deny to himself just how close it had been; he could forget this mission. He wanted to do that for selfish reasons. He didn’t want to have to deal with the implications. But he had to. He loved this lady.

“I’m so glad you’re home.”

Joe returned Kelly’s hug but didn’t let himself draw her close, didn’t let himself do anything more than accept it and then step away. He wanted to wrap his arms around her waist, hug her tight, and kiss her breathless. He loved her so very much.
Lord, what have I done?
It would destroy Kelly if she came to meet a return flight and I wasn’t on it.
The real risk he was asking her to accept was suddenly clear. If something happened, it would destroy that smile. Raider had set him up once; there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
What am I supposed to do?
The question was agonizing to answer, for the truth cut into the happiness he longed to have with her.

He saw some of the happiness in her expression turn to wariness. He brushed his fingers through her hair, forced himself to smile. “Thanks, Kelly. I’m going to be busy here until late tonight. Could you keep Misha for me another night?” He was shutting her out but didn’t know how else to respond. He had to think this through, fast.

“Of course.” She took a half step back. “Are you okay?”

“Not even a sprained ankle. Everyone on the team is fine.” He wanted to add “it’s been a very long plane ride” to give her an excuse for his behavior, this distance, but couldn’t do it. It would be hiding behind a convenient excuse. “Call you later?”

“Sure.” Her disappointment was obvious, but she covered it quickly. “Whenever you’re free.”

He nodded and reached down for his equipment bag, hating the situation. “Thanks.”

* * *

Joe had been so distant.

Kelly stretched out on the couch, the house around her silent, the time passing slowly as she waited for his call. When she had hugged Joe she wanted to reach up and kiss him, to truly welcome him home. Seeing him had been such a relief, but then she had felt the distance. He was there with her, but not in spirit. His attention was still elsewhere. Had something happened? some-thing gone wrong? She wished she could ask.

Lord, I don’t know what’s wrong. I only know something is. I can feel it.

She hoped for the phone to ring.
Please let him call. We can talk and clear this up. The silence is disquieting.

The dinner she had planned was slowly turning into something fit for Misha. At least she had left the steaks in the refrigerator and changed at the last minute to lasagna. The page had come, letting her know the men were on their way home. She had felt enormous relief, much larger than she had ever expected. Joe was back safe. She was going to hold on to that even as the situation roiled with uncertainty.

She forced herself not to call him. Maybe she had read the situation wrong. He wasn’t Nick. He couldn’t walk home from a mission and let someone else deal with its wrap-up. Joe had a different burden to bear after a mission; he was still working.

When he was done, he would turn his attention back to her; then she would find out if there really was anything wrong. She didn’t like this delay, but she had to get used to it. Joe wasn’t Nick. She couldn’t expect the same response from him.

How was she supposed to respond when she saw him next? With Nick it had been simple: launch herself at him and trust him to catch her. Those welcome home hugs had been wonderful. Maybe by the next mission she would have figured out with Joe how this was supposed to work. She buried her head in a pillow at the idea of repeating this night.

* * *

“Lincoln, they knew we were coming. The cargo wasn’t on board, so they got word while we were still some distance away. Someone tipped them off.” Joe felt like tearing up the summary as he dropped it to the stack on the desk. His notes written during the return trip were extensive, but they didn’t come close to figuring out how it had happened.

“We’re looking into it, Bear. When your men have been debriefed, give them a few days liberty, but tell them to stay close. You are unofficially on short notice. Make sure they know that. I can’t put you back into rotation until we get a handle on what happened, make sure the leak didn’t come from our end.”

Bear was surprised at that. “Sir?”

“We think Raider is manipulating what is happening from here. Echo and Foxtrot were sent chasing a ghost. Your platoon was set up. And in the middle of it we have Iris Wells turning up dead. Coincidences don’t run in threes.”

“You think a shipment got through.” It became clear where Lincoln was heading, and it was something Joe had wondered about. The setup they had walked into had been elaborate.

“I do. I think all too soon we are going to be reacting to something in the world. This Taiwan–China–Hong Kong triangle didn’t appear out of the blue. I want your men rested and ready to go—and on the assumption Raider does have a contact inside, it won’t hurt if he thinks the platoon is standing down for a few days of R and R.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have the equipment repacked and reloaded. We’re going to put a C-130 on thirty-minute standby until I get a better feel for what’s going on.”

Joe nodded at the order, accepting the precaution as wise. He did hope they would get a second chance. He needed one. His men needed one.

“How are the men taking it?” Lincoln had the same perspective he did.

Joe smiled slightly at the question. “They don’t like getting set up.”

“Any enemies, Bear?”

“What?”

“You got shot; Nick was killed. Three years later it’s your platoon that gets set up. Any reason to believe this is personal? Did you know Iris Wells, by any chance?”

Joe blinked at the question, at the reach back in time, and was startled to realize he had never connected them that way. The thought shook him that this might be personal. “I didn’t know Iris other than by sight, to walk paperwork over. She was good at her job, didn’t mind sorting out the red tape for us.” His thoughts were racing. Iris. Nick. This setup of his men. Was there a link that ran through
him
?

He thought about his trips to personnel, trying to remember where Iris sat, who was around her. “Boomer has a cousin in the personnel department who sits somewhere near Iris. I took her out to the symphony once when Kelly was unavailable. But that’s a reach.” But he had known her. His men had twice faced danger attributed to Raider. If the man was able to follow their movements, manipulate them . . . The possibilities exploded in the back of his mind.

“Pass that on to the investigators. Pass on any glimmer of a connection between Iris and your platoon. Ask your men to do the same.”

“Yes, sir.” He’d start his own aggressive search for any such connection. He’d found Iris washed up on the shore and her death was now a critical unknown to solve. “Have they determined what happened? How she died?”

“There was heavy oil found in her lungs that she could have swallowed only if she had been pretty far out to sea when she went into the water. She had to have gone off a boat, been swimming for quite a while, then couldn’t make it back to shore.”

“There’s still been no indication of what boat she was on?”

“Her car was found at a parking lot down at the harbor launch. No one has come forward indicating they saw her. They are checking every boat in the San Diego and Catalina areas that was out of its slip Sunday.”

“A needle in a haystack.”

Lincoln nodded. “They need a break. Desperately.”

* * *

He should go get Misha. Joe thought about it but didn’t move from where he sat at the dining room table. He didn’t want to face Kelly yet, didn’t want to look at her and have to deal with the fact he had let the man responsible for killing Nick get away. Tonight he wished he still drank. He sat at the dining room table pushing around the little carved bear with his finger, drinking a 7-Up that tasted stale and wishing another five hours had passed so he would have an excuse to go to bed. He would call Kelly tomorrow. When he figured out what he was going to say.

“Bear.”

Joe went to the door, surprised to find his second-in-command here on the night he would’ve expected him to be solely focused on Christi. Joe pushed it open. “Come on in, Boomer.”

“Got a minute?”

“Got a year. You want something?”

“Whatever you’re drinking.”

Joe scowled at the can. “You don’t want it. This case must have cooked in a truck somewhere. Hold on; I’ll be back with something passable for both of us.”

He found two root beers and brought them back with glasses of ice, too tired to wonder why Boomer was here. With anyone else he would have covered his own comedown from the failed mission—Boomer understood it without putting it into words. Joe had led the mission; the mission had failed. The fact it had been a setup, the fact he had brought all his men out alive, didn’t cover his fatigue of what might have happened.

“Joe, I’m getting out. I’m not going to re-sign when my tour is complete. My son needs a father, and this one was too close to seeing mortality for me to want to risk it again.”

Boomer said it simple, straight, and Joe felt the numbness like he had when he had been shot. His friend was quitting. In place of words, there was only silence. Yesterday he would not have understood; today—he understood.

For Boomer to quit—he bled Navy. This was not a quick decision. He was a lifer, and for him to make this decision . . .

Joe didn’t even try to talk him out of it. “The team will miss you. You’re the best AOIC in the SEALs.” Joe wouldn’t have the team he did without Boomer’s leadership through the years. Boomer had been close, not as close as Nick, but when he was gone—“I’m personally going to more than just miss you.”

“I’ll miss the action, Joe. When I’m in the middle of it, I love it. When I come home and look at Christi, my perspective changes.”

“You’re sure this is what you want to do?”

“It’s time. I have Christi to think about, and soon a son. Some younger man is going to try to fill my shoes only to find out it isn’t as easy as it looks.”

“Very true.” Joe sighed and studied the boots he had not yet taken off. “How are the men doing?”

“Blowing off stress like they usually do. Angry. Frustrated. I passed word along to their favorite hangouts if trouble brews to give you a call.”

“I appreciate that.”

“They want to find the person responsible for the foul-up and convey their disappointment in person. The men who knew Nick are taking it the hardest. They wanted Raider. It’s personal.”

Joe nodded. “Raider is the worst kind of enemy. The kind you can’t seem to catch. He does make mistakes. He does bleed like everyone else. He isn’t this perfect criminal who leaves no trail, but he’s eluded us so many times . . . And this time he set us up.”

“Almost got a lot of people killed,” Boomer agreed. “He steals. That’s the problem. He doesn’t want glory, power, recognition. He simply steals for money.”

“It can’t be just for money, not after all these deals he’s pulled off. If even half the deals attributed to him were his, he became self-sufficient for several lifetimes over many years ago. He doesn’t need the money.”

“Is it ego? An oversize ego that can never say enough is enough?”

“I think he’s doing it just because he can,” Joe replied. “And the hard thing to accept is that he may just get away with it for longer than we will be around to hunt him. He’s going to be the prize that got away.” Joe looked at his second-in-command and didn’t say the obvious. Raider had just taken his second casualty. Boomer was leaving the SEALs. “What will you do when you get out?”

“There have been a few people asking if I would work construction demolition. I know how to take a building down—there’s getting to be more demand for it all across California.”

“If you quit, you will never have blown your safe.”

Boomer smiled. “A child’s dream, never to come true. But you have to admit, it was a nice one to hang on to.”

“The guys are going to want to plan a send-off.”

“I’ve been to those farewell wakes. No thanks. I’ll tell them when it’s official and do a small farewell.”

Joe shook his head. “You can try. But it will never happen.”

“Are you going to tell?”

“Christi will tell Kelly. Sorry, Boomer—as soon as Kelly knows, your party is a given. You’ll just have to wade into the fray and survive it.”

“Thanks a lot, Bear. Now that I’m feeling maudlin, I’d best get home to Christi and remember why I’m doing this. I’ll see you at the base in the morning.”

Their handshake was firm. “Anytime you need someone to cover your back, I expect you to call.”

“That’s a given.”

As Boomer walked down the steps and Joe closed the screen door, he felt a sense of void creeping in and longed to no longer be alone. He needed Kelly to turn to at this moment, someone who would understand what it meant for a platoon leader to lose his assistant officer in charge. Boomer was closer than family.

Remind me You are here in this quiet empty place, Lord.

He wanted to turn to Kelly, and she was the one person he could not turn to. In a week, he had managed to lose the freedom to turn to the one person he would have sought comfort from in the past. She didn’t need to know the mission had almost been fatal.

Boomer was leaving the SEALs because he wanted to be around to raise his son. If Boomer didn’t see how to make marriage, children, and the SEALs work, Joe knew the obstacles were larger than they appeared.