Over the Top

by Cindy Dees

  “Come now, Chief Vance. That’s a bit of an overstatement. All of you guys have your limits. And it appears you’ve reached yours. The doc was clear. Your back is done for. Your career as a SEAL is over.”

  He stared at McCarthy until the man finally looked away.

  “I’ll rehab it. Strengthen it—”

  “Chief Vance. You don’t understand. I wasn’t offering you a choice. I was giving you an order. You’re finished as a SEAL.”

  Goddamn, I’m dense.

  “I’ve put in an order for you to get a desk job where you can finish out your twenty years and retire. I can keep you in the SEAL community, but not as an active team member.”

  The paperwork had already been filed while he was knocked out. They knew he’d fight it tooth and nail, so the fuckers had gone behind his back.

  He rolled onto his side at great cost, stoically bearing the pain of moving his body. But it was worth it to turn his back on the admiral, to silently let McCarthy know he didn’t appreciate being treated like some meathead grunt. He was a senior NCO, for fuck’s sake.

  He listened bleakly to McCarthy’s footsteps retreating from his room.

  Jesus. Now what?

  He’d joined the Navy straight out of high school and gone into the SEALs as soon as he was eligible. He had never done anything else, been anything else, in his life. And they wanted him to spend the next eight years driving a damned desk? Pushing paper? He wasn’t some damned admin weenie. He despised being cooped up inside. But he was also pushing thirty years old, a lethal special forces operator with an aging back. He had nowhere else to go. Nothing to do. No assignments to save the world. No wars to stop—or start.

  He had nothing. He was… nothing.

  He lay back and stared at the ceiling in shock. He passed through dismay to rage and from rage to tired, cynical acceptance. He was just passing through cynicism into the cold dread of having to face the real world—a world he’d never really lived in and had no idea how to live in—when his phone rang.

  He was inclined to ignore it, but old habits died hard. It could be something important. He reached out painfully to the bedside table and picked it up, looking without interest at the caller ID…

  Chasten Reed.

  His childhood best friend and worst enemy.

  What. The. Actual. Fuck?

  Chapter Two

  CHAS CROUCHED beside a fetid-smelling dumpster, chanting under his breath, “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

  A familiar voice, deeper than it had been the last time he heard it and with an edge he didn’t recall, growled in his ear without even a greeting, “To what do I owe this surprise?”

  Not a pleasant surprise, Chas noted. Just a surprise.

  He whispered urgently, “I’m in trouble and couldn’t think of anybody else to call. There’s been a shooting in Misty Falls. All the police are dead. A woman died on my front porch. She was carrying a baby. I’ve got the kid with me now. I don’t know where to go or what to do. The shooters seem to be… hunting… someone. They’re killing everyone who gets in their way.”

  “How many are there?” Gunner’s voice was clipped, abruptly terse. The SEAL had taken over his old friend.

  “I don’t know. I saw an SUV. Or maybe there was more than one SUV. I never did catch any license plates.”

  “How big are their weapons?”

  “They look like, umm, rifles. They fire a lot of rounds fast. Like a machine gun.”

  “Assault weapons. Heavily armed, then. And you say they took out the police? How do you know that?”

  “I was heading for the police department to turn over the kid when a cop ran out on the sidewalk. A bad guy followed him out and mowed him down. No other cops came out, and the shooter left super casually, as if he knew nobody else would be giving chase.”

  Gunner swore. “Where are you now?”

  “Hiding in an alley behind a dumpster.”

  “Can you get indoors?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone’s inside hiding. The town’s locked up tight. I knocked on a few doors of people I know, but nobody’s answering. Everyone’s panicked.”

  “Break a window if you have to, preferably at the back of a building. Let yourself inside and find a hiding place. A small room you can barricade yourself into. Hunker down.”

  “Then what?”

  “Don’t come out until you’re absolutely certain the threat has passed and law enforcement is on the other side of that door.”

  “How will I know? What do I do with this baby? Is she the reason these guys went on a rampage?”

  “Just get inside, okay? I’m on my way. I’ll call when I get close.”

  “Are you close?”

  “No, but I’ll call in a favor. I can be up there in a few hours. Just sit tight until then, okay?”

  “Okay. And Gunner?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hurry.”

  “Got it.”

  The line went dead in Chas’s ear.

  He looked around the alley. It was mostly brick walls and security doors. But down near the end, he spied a window. He crept toward it, hugging the wall. He reached the window, which was conveniently right beside a rusted metal door. Using his elbow, he hit the glass hard.

  Ow.

  Sharp pain shot up and down his arm. He probably should have looked for a rock to smash the window with. But soldiers and cops on TV always used their elbow. Of course, they were busting out prop glass, and he was an idiot for not thinking of that before attempting it.

  He did pick up a rock, though, and used it to knock the remaining shards of glass out of the frame. He bent down to set the kid on the ground so he could reach inside and grope around for the lock. But she wailed the moment he set her down.

  Crap! He scooped her back up, joggling her and whispering frantically to her to hush. He looked up and down the alley in panic, expecting men with assault weapons to come around the corner and make swiss cheese of him any second.

  Fortunately, the little girl quieted almost immediately. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so much that she was a good baby as a traumatized one. But he would take it if it meant she was quiet and didn’t draw the shooters to this alley.

  It was awkward as hell to reach through the window while holding the kid, and he had to use his left hand to find the lock, but he did eventually feel a deadbolt. He turned it ninety degrees and tried the door. Still locked. Damn. Must be another lock. This time he groped lower and found the doorknob. It had one of those little turn locks in the center of it, and he gave that a twist. This time, when he tried the door, it opened.

  Thank God.

  He slipped inside and quickly locked the door behind him. Using his cell phone flashlight, he took a quick look around. He was in the storeroom of a pub or restaurant. He found an empty cardboard box, put it up against the broken window, and held it in place with a tall coat stand he dragged over to the window. If it looked like the window wasn’t recently broken and had been patched over, maybe the bad guys wouldn’t feel the need to come in and slaughter whoever was hiding inside. What the heck did they want, anyway? And what did this kid have to do with it? For as sure as he was standing here, Leah had brought the baby to his front door for a reason.

  He grabbed several coats and a sweatshirt from the coat stand and went hunting for a hiding spot. A pair of disgusting bathrooms were a possibility, but there was nothing inside to use to barricade the doors. He kept searching and found a tiny, cluttered office with an oversized desk taking up most of the space. And the door opened inward. Better.

  He locked himself and the baby inside and braced his feet against the far wall to shove the massive desk up against the door with his hip. He pulled the desk chair out of the way and made a nest out of the coats under the desk. He crawled under it, curling up awkwardly in the little cave with the child.

  Finally, he could stop and take a real look at her.

  Using his cell phone light again, he examined her, looking more closely for
wounds. She had big dark eyes, straight black hair, and almond skin. Petite. She was Asian, Japanese if he had to guess, and cute as a button. He stuck with his first estimate of around eighteen months of age.

  She was starting to tremble—maybe cold, maybe shock setting in. He wrapped her in the sweatshirt and cradled her in his arms so her ear was pressed against his heart. He didn’t know much about toddlers, but in his experience with the occasional freaked-out five-year-old, the sound of a heartbeat was calming.

  His own shock started to set in, and he pulled one of the coats around both of them, then huddled together in the dark under the desk. All they needed was a blanket over the desk to have a perfect fort. If only.

  He was too wired to sleep, too scared by every little noise to do anything but sit there, clutching the little girl close and periodically reassuring her that they were both going to be fine. He hoped.

  GUNNER SWUNG his bare feet to the floor, so relieved to have a mission to do, a crisis to handle, that he was nearly sick with it. He eased his weight onto his feet and straightened carefully.

  What the hell were they all going on about? His back felt fine. In fact, he didn’t feel it at all. Must be the meds they’d allegedly injected him with. Hell, all they had to do was keep him on these painkillers and he’d be good to go for another few years.

  A quick search of the wardrobe in the corner of the room revealed a large plastic bag holding his personal possessions. And more importantly, his rucksack stuffed full of combat gear was stowed inside. Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes. He tried to dress quickly, but truth be told, it was a slow, creaky affair. He pulled on camo pants and his olive-green undershirt and carefully zipped up his jump boots.

  All the while, images and snippets of memory kept flashing through his head. Riding banana-seat bicycles with Chas out to the reservoir to swim in the icy cold pond. Sitting in the back of seventh-grade English class blowing spit wads at the blackboard. Getting sent to the office together for that stunt. Crying in Chas’s arms when his dad left him and his mom.

  Gunner shook off the flashbacks and used his cell phone to call an old buddy, Rafael Adler, who’d been medically retired from the Air Force after a helicopter crash a few years back. Nowadays Rafe flew chartered jets, mostly. He’d been flying since he was a kid, starting out with crop dusting. He even did some stunt work in Hollywood before landing in the military. Dude had never met a flying machine he couldn’t handle like a pro.

  “Hey, Rafe. It’s Gunner Vance.”

  “Gun, man. How ya doin’?”

  “I’ve been better, but that’s another story. I need a favor, dude. I gotta get to New Hampshire ASAP.”

  “How ASAP? I get to stick around a few hours and fuck this hot guy I’m with ASAP, or ditch the date and get my ass to the airport ASAP?”

  “Ditch the date. This one is life-or-death. I need to go now.”

  Rafe muttered off the line for a second, telling someone to hit the road, and then said briskly, “Where am I filing a flight plan to?” It sounded like he was jogging as he talked. Good man. The guy had worked with the SEALs long enough to understand that now meant now.

  “I need to get to a little town upstate called Misty Falls. North of Manchester.”

  “’Kay. I’ll find it. How long till wheels up?”

  “I can be there in a half hour.”

  “I’ll be ready. White Learjet with a red stripe down its side. Tail number Yankee X-ray 84 Zulu.”

  “Got it.” He added, “Any chance you could bring me a couple of boxes of 7.62 mm ammo?”

  “Regular or Teflon? And do you want hollow points or hydra-shock rounds?”

  “Bring me whatever you’ve got on hand, and I’ll be mighty grateful.” Since it had been a training jump, he had his sidearm in his gear, but he hadn’t been carrying live rounds.

  “See you soon, Gun.”

  “Soon.”

  Sneaking out of the hospital turned out to be as easy as looking like he was supposed to be walking down the hall and knew where he was going. He stepped outside just as the ride-share car he’d called pulled up.

  “Norfolk International Airport?” the driver called through the open window.

  “That’s me.” He was tempted to offer the guy an extra twenty bucks to get him there fast, but the man looked to be pushing sixty years old and was not likely trained in combat driving.

  The car pulled away from the hospital sedately, and he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The memories of Chas continued to flow. Sneaking Playboy magazines into his bedroom. He looked at them for the naked women, Chas looked at them for the fashion and the articles. Who in the world opened a Playboy for the damned articles? He snorted over that, even now.

  He recalled Chas surrounded by a half-dozen football players taunting him for being a fag and working themselves up into beating the life out of him. He’d stepped in on that one, and as captain of the football team, he’d threatened to kick their collective asses and turn them in to the coach if they didn’t scram. Chas had cried in his arms, that time.

  They’d been to hell and back together as kids. He’d had to survive his parents’ rotten marriage, and Chas had had to survive being gay in a small conservative town.

  He felt like a steaming pile of crap by the time he reached the airport, checked in at a fixed base operator’s hangar, and walked out to the plane.

  Rafe was indeed waiting for him, along with another pilot he introduced as Noah. The new guy didn’t offer any information about himself, so Gunner didn’t ask. There was an understood etiquette among operators about such things, and Noah had the hard look of one around his eyes and in the set of his shoulders.

  “You look like death warmed over, man,” Rafe declared as Gunner hauled himself up the steps into the plane.

  “I feel worse,” he grunted as he eased down carefully into a seat.

  “Sleep, then. We’ll be there in about an hour and a half. That fast enough for you?”

  “No, but it’s gonna have to be.”

  “Balls to the wall, I can make it in an hour and fifteen. But that’s the best I can do.”

  “Thanks,” he sighed.

  Chasten Reed had reached out to him, huh? That was a name he’d never thought to hear again in this life. Not after the way they’d parted. Chas had figured out Gunner was gay, or at least bi, before he had, for Chrissake. And he’d never forgiven Chas for it.

  The jet’s engines whined to life. They made a short taxi out and then lifted off into the night. He had no idea what kind of shitshow he was walking into, but it couldn’t be any worse than the one he was leaving behind.

  CHAS LEARNED quickly that time passed differently when a person was scared half to death. Each minute dragged on forever. He kept expecting to hear sirens, but they never came. Instead, almost exactly two hours to the minute after his call to Gunner, his cell phone vibrated, startling the living heck out of him.

  The little girl, who’d finally dozed off, lurched awake, flinging her arms wide in terror and whacking him on the face. She started to cry, and then, as if she abruptly remembered to be frightened, went silent. For which he was inordinately grateful.

  The caller ID on his phone said it was Gunner.

  “Hey,” he said, low.

  “You still alive?” Gunner asked.

  “Obviously. You’re talking to me.”

  “I just landed at the airport. Where are you?”

  “In the back of a restaurant, or maybe a bar. Northeast corner of Fifth Street and Maple Avenue.”

  “Got it. I’ll come into the building, so don’t shoot me when I do.”

  “You’re hilarious. I wouldn’t know the front end of a gun from the back end.”

  “That’s the bore from the butt.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” Gunner bit out. It sounded like he was running, the way he was breathing hard. “I’ve got to acquire wheels, and then I’ll have to move in cautiously, clear the area before I make my
approach to your position. I’ll text you when I’m about to breach the building so you’ll know it’s me. Hang on, dude. I’m almost there.”

  The wash of relief that flooded his gut was overwhelming. Not much longer now. He continued rocking the toddler, murmuring nonsense to her, but the rigidity never left her little body. Still, he took comfort from her presence, and goodness knew having someone else to focus on helped him not obsess about how freaked-out he was.

  It was perhaps twenty minutes later when his phone vibrated with an incoming text. Cardboard over a busted window?

  He texted back, That’s the place.

  Coming in.

  In an abundance of caution, Chas stayed under the desk, waiting in an agony of anticipation to hear Gunner’s voice on the other side of the door. He, by God, wasn’t unlocking the thing until he knew for sure it was safe out there.

  A quiet knock made him jump violently. Dang, he was on edge.

  “Chas, it’s me. You can open up now.”

  “Just a sec. Gotta move the desk. It’s against the door.”

  “I can help with that.”

  Chas crawled out from under the desk and watched in shock as the door lock clicked and the door began to slide open. A large dark shadow filled the doorway, and the beam of a flashlight abruptly illuminated the space. Familiar dark hair. Same dark eyes. The tan was deeper now. And that face—

  He raced forward, baby and all, and shocked himself by throwing himself against Gunner. The man was a living, breathing wall of muscle, and every inch of him felt like safety. Strong arms came up around him, forming a cage of protection that he huddled within. He realized his whole body was shuddering.

  Gunner mumbled, “I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Or at least safer.”

  “What’s going on outside?”

  “Town’s locked down. Cops are crawling all over the police department and your house. What the hell did you get mixed up in?”

  “Nothing. I was sitting in my living room having a beer when I heard noises outside. And then my neighbor died on my porch and—” He broke off, the horror of his memories too graphic for words.