SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle

by S. M. Butler

“Great. More mushy stuff. You don’t mind if I text Jenna, do you?” Sunny said. “Give you guys some space?”

  Luke grinned. “I didn’t raise a dumb kid. I’ll double your texting minutes if you keep using your noggin like that.”

  “Suhweet!” Sunny raised her fist into the air and immediately started texting.

  Taking her hand, Luke led Ysabeau down a dirt path. Although, she couldn’t feel her legs, or the dirt path beneath her bare feet, they were moving smoothly. Effortlessly.

  “Just around the bend is the best photo op spot,” Luke told her.

  And suddenly, they were there. The sparkling Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, the coastline of the City, all of it stretched out before her like a treasure to be seized.

  “What a gorgeous sight,” she whispered.

  “Yes. It is.” He was looking at her with that intensity that singed her down to her toes. “Are you happy?” he whispered in her ear, sending sparks everywhere.

  “For the first time in my life,” she said.

  He cupped her cheek and kissed her so deeply her toenails nearly caught on fire.

  Ysabeau knew she was dreaming, or hallucinating, or maybe she was dead. For the moment, she didn’t care. She wanted this—the man of her dreams, Sunny, happiness—more than anything. She wanted this.

  Chapter Thirty

  ‡

  Thirty-eight hours after…

  Luke felt like he’d been stuck in the squad car for three centuries. His cop buddy brought him food and removed the handcuffs but refused to let him out until the Search and Rescue teams arrived. His hands were free to pull his hair, scrub his face, and check his stupid watch every minute. Damned watch! He should have let Tico keep it for all the good it was doing him at the moment. It felt like the hands of time had frozen in place in this never-ending night.

  The sun finally came up, streaking the sky pinky-orange above the mangled Hotel Montana. His heart warmed at the sight of it. Today, the rescue teams would arrive and pull Ysabeau out of that wreckage. Today, the two of them would start forever together.

  At six forty-five a.m. trucks began pulling up to the hotel.

  “Now we’re talking,” Luke said to himself.

  Men and women dressed in dark blue suits and florescent yellow-green helmets, jumped out and hit the ground running. Their hands were full of packs, boxes, and equipment. When two of the rescuers walked past the squad car, Luke read the patches on their backs. Written in bright yellow were the words—Fairfax County. White letters below the yellow spelled out “Urban Search and Rescue.” On the left shoulder was a beautiful American flag. He thought his heart might explode with relief.

  They were from the United States!

  He cheered his joy.

  One of the guys threw a bewildered glance over his shoulder and kept going. They hadn’t seen him in the back of the squad car. Time to rectify the situation.

  He kicked the passenger door as hard as he could. “Hey! Let me out! I know where the survivors are! Hey!” he screamed. And kicked. And kicked.

  The cop-kid showed up. “Cool it, man. Do you want to get me fired?”

  “No. I want you to get me out of here. Now,” he growled.

  “All right.” The kid opened the back door. “You can go. Please, do not steal anything or threaten my captain with any weapons, okay?”

  “I promise,” Luke said and was off running. “Wait!” he called to the two rescuers. “I want to help!”

  The men stopped to look at him. One of the guys was over six feet tall. His nametag said S. Mitchell. The other guy was short, barely five foot five, and named A. Lopez.

  S. Mitchell spoke first, “I’m sorry sir, this is a restricted area. Off limits to everyone but the rescue teams. You can understand that, right? It’s dangerous. Stand back and let us do our jobs.”

  “No,” Luke answered. “I won’t.”

  A look passed between the men as if they wondered what to do with the lunatic standing before them. Would he attack? Foam at the mouth?

  “Listen, I was here all day yesterday and all night last night using a sledgehammer until it broke. I found survivors. When I pounded, they yelled back,” Luke said, his voice rising with excitement. “I’ll show you where.”

  S. Mitchell didn’t know that Luke saw the eyebrow lift he gave the other guy. “Sir, rescues are tricky. You could have heard all sorts of things. The building shifting, the wind, what you wanted to hear—”

  “No. I heard people. I know where they are.” Luke had the distinct feeling that they were blowing him off. “Are you going to help me get them out, or do I have to do this myself?”

  The shorter man cocked his head, studying Luke’s face. “Someone you care about is in there.” It was a statement, pure and simple.

  Luke pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes. And no, that doesn’t mean I wanted to hear her and I did. I heard trapped victims. Period. And now I’m going to start pulling this hotel apart with my bare hands until I get them out. I’m warning you, stay out of my way.”

  S. Mitchell’s voice clicked up a few notches. “Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to—”

  He didn’t wait to hear more. Luke took off running toward the spot where he’d been working. Was that last night? Had it really only been five or six hours ago? Would he be able to find it in the daylight?

  “Wait! Sir!”

  Luke sped up, searching for tale-tale landmarks as he went—the downed air-conditioner, half of a bathtub, the paved steps to nowhere. They were chasing him down, leaping over the same piles of debris, crunching broken building beneath their thick-soled boots.

  He stopped. This was it.

  “Sir!” S. Mitchell bent over to catch his breath. His hands were on his thighs, his breathing labored. “We can’t…have civilians…here. You need to go—”

  “This is it.” Luke said. “See the piece of my broken sledgehammer?” He pointed to a long splinter of wood. “That’s where I was working.” Both men stared at the broken pile of concrete that Luke had pulled out of the wreckage.

  S. Mitchell studied the hotel. “We should get the hotel’s floorplan to figure out where we are. Exactly.”

  “The lobby,” Luke said. “I checked in on the twelfth at four.”

  A. Lopez’ mouth dropped. “That wasn’t even an hour before…”

  “I know. The point is, this is the lobby and there are people trapped in there. At least they were six hours ago,” he groaned. If only the sledgehammer hadn’t have broken, he might be kissing Ysabeau right now. “You’ve got to help me get in there.”

  “It’s possible. There could be survivors, especially if the lobby had pockets of protected space.” S. Mitchell nodded. “Okay. Anthony, get the dogs and the team. This is where we start.” He turned to Luke. “Good call.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Luke said. “You can use me.”

  “He did a good job all by himself,” A. Lopez said. “In the dark.”

  S. Mitchell’s gaze covered Luke’s beat-up and filthy body. “No.”

  “I’m not asking. I’m doing it, with or without you,” Luke growled.

  S. Mitchell put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “You need to understand. Our USA-1 team members are all highly skilled. With the exceptions of the dog trainers and the canines, every one of us is a firefighter who has undergone ten years of urban SAR training. You haven’t. You’ll be a liability.”

  A. Lopez pointed at the structure. “Who’s in there? A friend? Relative?”

  “I’m trained too. Ex-Navy SEAL.” Luke looked him in the eye. “The woman I plan on spending the rest of my life with is in there.”

  S. Mitchell groaned. “Stay out of the way and we’ll look for her. Get in our way, or get yourself injured and you’ll slow us down. Do you understand?”

  Luke shrugged S. Mitchell’s hand off his shoulder. “You’ll have to shoot me to stop me from searching for her. Do you understand?”

  “I say we let him help. He’s done pretty we
ll for himself so far,” A. Lopez said.

  “Anthony, look at this guy. He’s in no shape to help us. Looks like he’s about to keel over.”

  Luke pulled his shoulders up and caught a glimpse of a familiar face coming around the corner. “The Haitian police have already authorized me to be here. See that cop over there? He told me to search. Ordered me, actually.”

  Luke gave the kid cop a thumbs-up. The kid gave him his insanely huge smile and thumbs-upped him back.

  “See?” Luke asked. “You really want me to disobey his orders?”

  “I don’t have time for this…” S. Mitchell grumbled.

  A woman came around the corner with a black German Shepherd. “Where do you want us?”

  “Over here.” S. Mitchell directed the dog trainer. Then he turned toward A. Lopez. “We’re getting started. He’s yours Anthony. Don’t let him get in the way.”

  “Yes, sir!” A. Lopez raised his fist. “Come on, um, what’s your name?”

  “Luke.”

  “Call me Ant, everyone except the Commander does.”

  They shook hands.

  “Okay, Luke, come with me. We need to get you suited up. Everything you’ll need is in the truck.”

  Having a suspicion that he meant to toss him in the truck and leave him there, Luke said, “All I need is a tool.”

  “Nope. There will be several teams arriving this morning and we can’t have a civilian wandering all over the site looking like you do.” Ant scrunched his nose. “And smelling like you do.”

  Luke frowned, still skeptical of his motives.

  “Do you know the expression—if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably not a guy trying to loot the hotel?” Ant paused. “If you are dressed like one of us, people will leave you alone.”

  “You’re really going to let me?” He got choked up.

  “Only if you promise to do as I say. This sort of rescue is highly dangerous. The building could shift and pull you under like quicksand, or a chunk from above can slip down. You could be crushed to death before anyone has a chance to yell, ‘Look out!’”

  Luke swallowed a mouth full of dust and fear. “I know.” He lifted the collar of his T-shirt and scrubbed at his eyes. If the hotel caved-in further, Ysabeau’s chances would be gone.

  Ant’s hand rested on the door handle at the back of the truck. “You are my responsibility. I’m the expert and you’ll be my assistant. I tell you to jump back. You do so without an argument. I tell you to sit it out for a while. You do. I tell you to go get us a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast?”

  “I got it.”

  “Damn. I’m hungry.” Ant opened the back of the truck revealing supplies, boxes, medical kits and a stack of dark blue workmen’s suits. There were several boxes of boots stacked up against the wall. “Find a pair of boots that fit and get dressed. The helmets are over here.”

  “Thanks. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothing to say. Hurry and change. Your clothes smell ripe.” Ant grinned. “We wouldn’t want you stinking up the place when we get your lady out of there.”

  Luke had never changed his clothes faster in his life. When he was ready, he jumped out of the back of the truck and noticed other teams were arriving.

  Good. Go rescue my girl, he mentally commanded.

  “Hold up,” Ant said. He tore off a two-foot long piece of duct tape and cut it with his teeth. With a pen he wrote, ‘Ant’s Assistant’ on it and stuck it on the back of Luke’s suit. “There. Now there will be no question who’s in charge.”

  “Great,” Luke mumbled. “Can we go now?”

  “Not before you get the accelerated version of urban SAR training. I don’t want to haul your dead ass out of the rubble today. Got it?”

  “I told you, I’m SAR trained.”

  “More than two years ago?”

  Luke nodded.

  “Things change. I doubt you’ve ever seen crappola like this.” Ant found a sledgehammer. “Can you use one of these without breaking it?”

  Luke rolled his eyes and yanked it out of Ant’s hand.

  “Not smashing your foot with it would be a good idea, too. Oh, and keeping it away from my head would be ideal.”

  “No promises if you keep giving me shit like this. Let’s go.”

  Ant shook his head, clearly becoming annoyed with his student. “Here’s how it’s going to go down. The dogs are sent in first to locate the survivors. We’ve already got a couple of them sniffing out the spot where you heard voices. The dogs will trail a person’s raft—it’s the odor stream from a person’s skin cells and bacteria that waft up to the dog’s nose. Your raft a few minutes ago would have been amazingly easy. A dog with a cold could have found you in an avalanche.”

  Luke rolled his eyes. “Can we go yet?”

  “No. Your training is not complete, Padawan. Where was I, oh, yeah, when the dogs are hot for a person’s raft, their tails go up, their muscles tense, and they circle around. It’s amazing to watch. The trainer will mark the spot as a possible site to check again. But when the dogs go into full alert mode—rapid short barks full of intensity, we know that there is a person in there. Hopefully, alive.

  “When we’ve found a survivor, we start systematically delayering the structure with our tools. This is where Ant and his trusty assistant will come in.”

  Luke lifted his sledgehammer. “Gotcha.”

  “It’s not going to be easy. In fact, we train for this, but this sort of rescue is one of the toughest. Worse than an avalanche, or searching the woods for lost hikers. It will be hard to find the survivors, even harder to get them out.

  “This was a five-story hotel that collapsed quickly. One story smashed down on top of the next.” Ant demonstrated by clapping his hands. “Survivors will be in protected pockets. A counter in a lobby might be strong enough to deflect the collapsing floors. Maybe. I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass, this is destruction at its finest. We will find far more dead bodies than living ones.”

  Luke nodded. “I won’t stop until I find her. As long as there’s a chance…” He let the sentence hang mid-air.

  “Yeah.” Ant clapped him on the shoulder. “There’s a chance.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‡

  Forty-five hours after…

  “Over here, Rook!” Ant had taken to calling him “Rookie” and the last few minutes it had shortened to “Rook.” It beat his first choice which was “A’s Ass” for Ant’s Assistant. “Lift this corner.”

  Luke had never been more exhausted. His arms felt like they belonged to someone else. It took all his strength to hook an edge of the rubble with his sledgehammer and pound. And pull. Finally, he ripped off a large chunk of concrete and tossed it out of the way. A good sized-hole, about two foot in diameter, was opened up.

  “Nice,” Ant said. “Okay, everyone quiet!”

  Ant fed a thin machine similar to a stethoscope into the hole and put his ear to it. Luke held his breath and prayed. Come on, please…

  “I hear them,” Ant whispered, and then louder, “I hear them!”

  The USA-1 team members cheered. Luke sank to his knees, exhaustion and joy hitting him like a ton of bricks.

  Ant turned to him. “You did good, Luke. You knew right where to look.”

  He tipped his head up. “Did you call me Luke?”

  Ant grinned. “Yeah, I’d say you passed the accelerated course. You still need to do what I say, but, Luke suits you better than Rook. Now, buck up your strength, ’cuz this is where the hard part starts.”

  Three Search and Rescue guys, equipped with sledgehammers and jack hammers joined Luke. Together they yanked, pulled, tugged, grunted, and pounded to make the hole bigger. Every now and again, Ant would peak his head through the hole and yell words of encouragement to the survivors.

  Luke was running on pure adrenaline. The image of Ysabeau’s sweet face kept him motivated. Over and over again he ripped away the wreckage an
d prayed.

  She had to be alive.

  *

  Ysabeau woke to the sound of cheering. She was confused. Where am I?

  Trying to move brought the familiar excruciating pain in her leg. She was awake now and whimpering.

  A loud noise startled her. “Rescuers?” she whispered. “Help!”

  Men cheered again. The sounds were next to her and above her. It had to be rescuers! They were going to be saved!

  “Marisol! Do you hear that?” Ysabeau asked. Her voice wobbled, sounding strangely weak.

  There was no reply.

  “Can you hear me? Hang on. We are going to be saved.”

  She listened intently, hearing only the pounding above her head.

  Dear God, no! Marisol had to be all right. They were being rescued. She couldn’t die, not now. Let her be all right!

  “Please, Marisol. Answer me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ‡

  Fifty hours after…

  Luke thought he was going to die from the suspense. He was ordered to hang back while Ant and another rescuer crawled inside the tunnel to pull out the survivors. Nearly delirious from fatigue and anticipation, he swayed on his feet. He was dizzy and seeing spots while he stared at the hole. He couldn’t take his eyes off that black open mouth. Any second now, the first survivor would come out. Each second was an eternity.

  “Come on, come on, let it be Ysabeau…” he mumbled.

  Suddenly, there was a flurry of movement as several rescuers jumped in and helped to pull the first survivor out. They blocked his view.

  Who is it? He wanted to scream. Unable to stand back, he rushed in and saw…a man.

  Covered in white dust, the guy mumbled, “Thank God…thank God…”

  Leaning over the man, Luke asked, “What about the others? Was a woman with you?”

  “Step back!” S. Mitchell demanded. “He’s injured. Give him air.”

  The man blinked at Luke. “Six of us. One…one dead.”

  “Take him to medical!” S. Mitchell shouted.

  One dead? Luke stumbled backward. No. No!