SEAL Firsts

by Sharon Hamilton

  “What the hell are you up to, Armani?” Kyle whispered.

  He’d spent days buried in sand with the man. They’d put their lives on the line for each other as well as for the rest of the team. Having spent three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq together, he and Armando had survived the battle of Fallujah when their unit reported record kills without losing many of their own. He could practically read Armando’s mind. They’d been scared shitless together. They’d cried over a fallen Team guy and still had the presence of mind to jump in and save someone else the next minute. That kind of brotherhood couldn’t be taught. It had to be lived.

  Without Armando as his swim buddy, Kyle knew he never would have completed the grueling BUD/S training, the qualification all Navy SEALs had to pass in order to begin their real training. He owed his gold Trident, the insignia of a SEAL, to this man. Armando’s problem, whatever it was, would now become Kyle’s problem.

  Armando swam like a fish with the explosive strength of a bull. He used to joke with the members of his unit how he could bring a cruise ship to port in his native Puerto Rico by holding the tie line with his teeth.

  Kyle and a couple of other teammates had been granted ten days leave, and Kyle intended to spend every day of it searching for Armando. He knew deep in his soul that the guy would do the same for him. Kyle and his chief had a silent understanding. If he needed more time he would have to ask for it, and the request would be denied. If Kyle couldn’t find Armando, no one could. But the Navy could hardly afford to have one missing SEAL; two missing men could get a commander stripped or booted.

  His thoughts wandered to the girl.

  The scent of her perfume lingered on his skin. He couldn’t get the little hellcat out of his mind. No denying his body liked what Christy felt like under him; his erection had never fully settled down, even with the pain above his knee. His traitorous body part now started rising again, as if it had been summoned.

  Damn. It had been too long since he’d held a woman that close. Was his training such that consorting with females ended up posing a danger to their health? He hated how he’d treated her. He shook his head, thinking of how the woman seemed to be one of those feisty, angry types who wouldn’t allow herself to become a victim. This woman, a stealth survivor of the love wars, did a damn good job at self-defense.

  Except she shouldn’t have experienced this today. She was an innocent. She didn’t deserve to be tied and treated like a suspect. The honor in Kyle’s chest, the vow he made to protect the innocent even if it meant his own life, was wounded. He’d have to make it right somehow. He’d caused her the fright of her life, and he needed to make amends. Later.

  But maybe she was somehow involved. Otherwise, why would she break into Armando’s house? And why had she mentioned something about a bank and a wife?

  Would Armando be losing his house? Kyle didn’t think this was possible. Armando was frugal as all hell, even managing to send money home to parts of his family still in Puerto Rico. Kyle also doubted he would sell it.

  Who is this Wayne guy? Does he know Armando?

  Kyle stepped into the shower and washed the glorious smell of her off his skin, pouring over the other questions in his mind.

  Enough of that.

  That kind of lapse in concentration could get a good squid killed. He needed to stay sharp, not distracted by the fantasy of a woman he barely knew. A woman who he didn’t believe was involved in his friend’s disappearance. He’d been trained to challenge other warriors, and if his time came, trained to take several bad guys with him. Not like this, mistreating an innocent.

  He shut the water off and thought of his deep admiration for Armando. It made no sense that the man would just walk away from his country, his proud heritage, his family, and his SEAL community. Kyle doubted any one man would be able to take Armando down without a big fight, something so high profile it would alert one of their friendlies.

  Even on leave, his team would email or text or run into several of their buddies every day. They hung out in the same bars owned by former members, got their tattoos at the same parlors, even picked the same beaches in San Diego to hang out on—away from the base, of course—but never far away from another Team member. The community was their family, and the blood in their veins pumped to protect it. They never even considered the cost.

  So something very wrong happened, he thought as he dried off. A quick sniff to the towel told him a tiny amount of her perfume remained a scented shadow. Yeah, he’d wait a day or two before washing that towel. He hung it on the back of the door.

  Staring at his image in the bathroom mirror, he didn’t see the face of a killer. It was his warrior persona, his part of an exclusive brotherhood. Hesitation had been drummed out of him. Was he succumbing to fuzzy judgment of the female kind? Thank God he’d been able to accurately assess the danger she didn’t pose to him before he’d caused her unintentional harm. Other than scaring the wits out of her, of course.

  He decided to shave tomorrow. He straightened the bed, then threw on some mid-calf khakis and a green T-shirt. Today was a flip-flop-out-of-uniform kind of day, as it usually was whenever he was home. He had one pair of non-military dress shoes and they hurt his feet. His BUD/S trainers told him he’d develop webbed feet eventually, and although it was a big joke, it had a ring of truth to it.

  He completed his dress by adding a sweatshirt hoodie, then took the dark wire-rimmed sunglasses from the pouch in his duty bag and smoothed them across his eyes.

  As he left, he noted the two red sandwich signs leaning against Armando’s front porch. Then he spotted the one in the front lawn, and added it to the other two, leaving all three of them there. He knew it would be a mistake to try to track her down.

  Leave the poor woman alone. He hoped she would come by when he was gone.

  Kyle hit the button on his key fob and his black Hummer squawked. It reminded him of a greeting a good horse would make. As if saying the machine was ready to do his master’s bidding. He hardly washed the beast, and knew the salt air wasn’t a friend, but he just couldn’t bring himself to drive something clean and sanitized and smelling like hospitals, the one place he tried to avoid.

  He’d parked across and down the street from Armando’s house. He’d intended to bring the Hummer inside the garage after dark, erasing evidence he was there in case bad guys watched the house. He’d checked the garage when he’d first arrived. It smelled like it had been a couple of days since a gas-fired engine had turned over there. Armando’s Land Rover was missing.

  Not a good sign.

  Kyle hopped into the Hummer and headed toward Coronado.

  He came to the strip, one block off the beach, and passed familiar haunts, cruising past a couple of Team guys watching girls and drinking beer at an open-air cafe. He honked and was rewarded with two three-finger salutes, which he returned. His anxiety lessened somewhat by that quick check-in with fellow Team guys.

  Up and down the strip he looked for Armando’s Rover, but without any luck. He headed to Gunny’s gym.

  He liked the iron smell of rusty, well-used equipment that assaulted his nostrils the instant he pushed his way through the glass door and tinkled the bell. But he hated bells.

  The DOR, or Drop On Request, bell they used during their BUD/S training didn’t survive the class. He’d had his share of looking at that damned thing, tied to the back of a pickup truck that headed down the beach as some poor Team hopeful tried to catch it to end his torment and pain. There was no shame in quitting. Not everyone was cut out to do this job. Even at the beginning of Hell Week, the new class of recruits were one in ten thousand regular Navy guys who would gladly trade places with them for a shot at becoming a SEAL. But, the instructors didn’t make it easy to drop out. DOR guys had to chase the damned thing a mile down the beach, catcalls being shouted at them from the back of the pickup, like these hopefuls were sissies.

  Not a surprise to anyone that he and Armando had given that bell a really good deep-sea buri
al. Out of the 190 who started their class, they were part of the twelve who’d successfully graduated. That bell was homage to the 178 brave souls who’d given it a shot. God bless them for trying.

  He and Armando worked out at Gunny’s almost every day when they were home. The smell of sweat and the ancient equipment suited him just fine. No Nautilus stuff here, no digital anything except a scale that couldn’t be rigged. The house rule reigned: when you finished with the dead weight, you had to throw it on the black rubber matted ground so it would bounce, not just place it carefully at your feet. That part he liked best about the place. And of course, he could always spot a Team or former Team guy there.

  Gunny had been Marine Recon, a Gunnery Sergeant. He’d gone in just as troops were pulling out of Viet Nam, but saw a little combat at the tail end. He called himself a serial husband, and had a pack of ex-wives and kids littering the whole globe. Some of them didn’t even speak English.

  Everyone knew, including his ex-wives and their lawyers, that Gunny didn’t have anything but his pension and this crusty, run-down gym that barely broke even. Gunny had told Kyle if any of his kids wanted to see him, they’d have to come to San Diego. There were no birthday or Christmas cards exchanged, and as far as Kyle knew, Gunny had never met any of his progeny, except one.

  Gunny was known for rescuing Team guys at bars in the middle of the night if they were too drunk to drive. He’d get them home safe, keeping them from the local or military police looking to make a trophy bust. Gunny made sure no one got booted for a DUI or Acts Unbecoming, and called the MPs and even regular police who were also ex-military “Rent-A-Cops.” He held them with about as much respect as he had for security guards. Kyle guessed there would be some interesting reading if he ever got his hands on Gunny’s personnel jacket.

  Gunny was violating his own sign, a cigarette full of ash protruding out the right side of his mouth. But the gym was empty today.

  “Thought you’d have quit by now. You got that scare last year, Gunny.”

  “Nah, I’m gonna burn it out.” Gunny’s grizzled gray chin stored a line of sweat in the deep crease under his lower lip.

  “But you dodged the bullet, right?” Kyle knew the gym had closed for a week when Gunny went in for lung surgery. Later, Gunny had gotten a tattoo over the scar that read, I Already Gave, just in case anyone would have some crazy idea to harvest his lungs and heart upon his demise.

  “What do you think, kid?” Gunny gave Kyle a wary look and continued. “Not one of us gets out of this tour alive.”

  So Kyle knew the rumor was true. They’d opened Gunny up and then put him back together again. No cure. That’s why he’d never lost his hair. No further treatment. Team guys had been making bets on what Gunny would look like—maybe pink and hairless like a newborn, since his normal pelt made him resemble a grizzly. Kyle and Armando just figured Gunny’s system was too ornery for the chemo to affect him.

  “I’m not happy to hear this, Gunny.”

  “Hear what? I never told you nothing.” Gunny grinned, showing his stained teeth, then removed the cigarette and put it out in the palm of his hand. He shook the ashes into a wastebasket by the entry glass display case filled with Gunny’s Gym T-shirts bearing the picture of Popeye holding up a barbell with an anchor tattoo prominent on his forearm.

  “You don’t look like you’re here to work out,” Gunny stated the obvious fact.

  “No. I’m looking for Armando. You seen him last day or two?” Kyle watched the old man’s eyes flash with alarm, and then the older man shook his head.

  “Not a good sign,” Gunny said as he looked at the floor. “What are you thinking?”

  “He’s never done this before. Timmins is freaked. Armando left the base without checking in with him.” Kyle leaned toward the older man. “And I didn’t tell you that, either.”

  “Got it.”

  The tinkling bell over the door broke the awkward silence. Two older ex-Team guys entered, carrying their well-worn workout bags. In their late forties, they still bore developed chest and arm muscles, maybe even more than the younger guys. Both of them sported graying ponytails and were covered in tattoos.

  “Hey, guys,” Gunny said, addressing them.

  “Shit, Gunny, you’ve been smoking again,” one of them said as he propped open the door. “All your brains go south on you?”

  “There’s a reason I have twelve kids and five ex-wives.”

  Kyle laughed inside at this comment. He knew Gunny well enough to know he married every one of those women before he had sex with them. This was a little known fact he and Armando had been privy to—hardened and tough Gunny was also a gentleman. He’d even married one in a jungle temple in Southeast Asia, the rites performed by a yellow-robed priest who’d painted both the bride and groom with symbols. Gunny told Kyle he couldn’t wait and had consummated his marriage on the way back to the family celebration in the covered litter pulled by water buffalo, piloted by his new wife’s brother. They had a hard time calming her mother down when she saw the disarray of their intricate face paintings, meant to ensure good luck, fertility, and great fortune.

  The two men nodded at Kyle and went about selecting the equipment for their workout. Gunny motioned to the outside, so Kyle followed him through the entryway.

  “So, what have you found out?”

  “Timmons is tracking down Armando’s cell signal. Said it would take a day, maybe two. But this is Sunday and Timmons has to wait until tomorrow to call it in.”

  “The waiting must be a sonofabitch.”

  “I don’t do ‘wait’ very well.” Kyle thought about the waiting they used to do, buried in sand, perched on rooftops. Waiting for the enemy to show up. Waiting to be told to get the hell out of there. But this was worse.

  “Looks like he’s trying to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Not checking in with Timmins might be his first clue. I just don’t know where to go from there. I’m missing something important.”

  “He didn’t tell you anything?”

  “I’m thinking about the last few times we were together. He got a lot of text messages, but I’m not sure from who,” Kyle continued in a whisper, “Now that I think back on it, he didn’t look too pleased when he got them.”

  “Can’t get the cell location any sooner?”

  Kyle’s thoughts exactly. “Timmons says to wait until we have a location. Don’t want to alarm the locals or ask them for help.”

  “Understood. Meantime, you’re hoping he’ll show up somewhere and it was all a false alarm.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Possible he got offed?”

  “Nah. No fucking way. Not alone, anyway.”

  “He have a girl?”

  “Between girls.”

  “Someone who pulled him back into the dark ages?”

  Kyle recognized this as Gunny’s way of dosing out a bit of his personal philosophy about not getting permanently involved with women. Gunny felt women were the biggest threat to a man’s freedom and always told the men to steer clear, advice he seldom took himself. Kyle tended to agree with him.

  “No. The only people outside the community who could pull him away like this would be someone from his family in Puerto Rico.”

  “Then you start with them.” Gunny leveled a dead-serious stare. “Kyle, they don’t know how many months I got. I never made it to your ranks, but I feel like a father to all you Team guys. If you want me, I’ll help.”

  Chapter 3

  Christy straddled the line between fury and fear all the way back to her condo. She checked her rear view mirror every thirty seconds to make sure that cretin hadn’t followed her home. Trying to remember evasion strategies she’d read in some of her favorite thriller novels, she’d doubled back, turned right, then drove for ten minutes in the opposite direction, finally headed for her place. She planned never to go back to that damned house or even the street again for the rest of her life. She’d just take that page and rip it from her Thomas Brothers Map Book. She
would familiarize herself with all the other streets and buildings of San Diego County except for the ones on page 68.

  Then she remembered she’d left all three of Wayne’s red Patterson Realty signs back at the house.

  “Damn!” Well, it served Wayne right. Christy wasn’t entirely sure of Wayne’s involvement in this afternoon’s caper. Let him go back and get those signs. She chuckled at the thought of Wayne finding the naked crazy guy at the front door. Now that would be a sight she would go back to see.

  She drove into her condo garage, double-checking dark corners of the structure for evidence of someone lurking there. She’d never worried about this before.

  All kinds of possibilities and scenarios ran through her mind as she rode the elevator to her floor. Perhaps Wayne wasn’t who she thought he was. Could there be a jealous husband or jilted lover from one of the affairs Christy imagined he’d had?

  Wayne must have been the real target, she thought. After all, the worst thing she had done was help some guy max out his credit card at Madame M’s lingerie shop. She was the shop’s best saleswoman. Last she checked, this wasn’t a crime.

  Once inside, she put the whole afternoon’s incident out of her mind by stripping her clothes and donning her workout gear, and then she headed for the upscale gym on the top floor of her condo complex.

  Every area of the complex had a terrific view of San Diego Harbor. A few minutes into her spin class, her body was covered in glistening sweat as she worked out to her iPod playing her favorite Secret Garden piece. The beauty of the poignant viola speared her heart. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Damn, I’m lonely.

  All her relationships with men ended badly. And the guy she’d just met had some sort of sick death wish for her. She barely knew him, well, except for how nicely he fit between her legs. Though she tried, she couldn’t get that image out of her head. Why were all these weird men coming into her life now, just when she wanted to embark on a professional career?