Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  The next several hours are a blur of medical activity.

  As soon as I’m at the hospital, a horde of specialists descends on me, trying desperately to coax a reaction out of my battered, barely alive body. It’s a period of sensory overload, punctuated by moments of excruciating and profound pain, as I’m poked, prodded, and cut open.

  Apparently, the squadron representative is told no fewer than three times I’m not going to make it. Everyone should prepare themselves; I’m not expected to live through the night.

  Eventually, the drugs take effect, and, once again, I am without consciousness.

  When I wake up, I’m alone. Tubes are jammed down my throat, and the rhythmic rising and falling of my chest indicates I’m hooked up to a respirator. My arms are immobilized, and there is an astounding array of IVs protruding from my body. My neck is in a brace, limiting my range of motion.

  I feel terrible.

  Then I see a face come into view. My wife! She finds a small piece of skin not covered with tape or with something sticking out of it, and touches me as she gives me a kiss. I immediately feel a whole lot better.

  Then, more faces.

  I recognize them from my helicopter squadron. And it hits me—I’ve been in a helicopter crash. Memories come flooding back. My copilot! Where is my copilot…? I can’t talk with the tube down my throat, so I try spelling out his name by waving my fingers.

  Only much later did I find out he was never recovered.

  Somehow, by some miracle, I end up living. The next day I’m transferred from Intensive Care to the ward. Three days after that, I go home.

  To this day, I don’t know how I got out of the helicopter after getting lodged in the bulkhead. I can only surmise that I simply floated through the hole where the pilot’s windscreen used to be. I’ll never really know. I do know one thing, though. Training saved my life. If I hadn’t had the presence of mind to activate my life preserver during my brief period of consciousness, I probably never would have surfaced. Estimates put me at about sixty feet down, near the point of negative buoyancy. And once I did surface, only the quick, decisive action of my crewmen kept me alive long enough to be rescued. I owe them. Big time.

  In time, all of my injuries completely resolved themselves, and I’m returned to full duty, including flying.

  However, I have never fully recovered from the loss of my copilot. He was a good friend, the best. They say if you stay in this business long enough, you will lose a friend. I guess that’s true. Flying is a dangerous business. I never forget that. It takes a special type of individual to put it all on the line every day. I don’t consider myself a hero. Just an average guy doing a tough job.

  But my friend and copilot, Walt…he’s a hero. He gave everything he had for something he believed in.

  I will miss him.

  Walt Hogan, farthest right…

  From left: Pat “Flash” McConnell, Tony “Steamer” Perez, Anthony “Alpha Tango” Tracy, Walt “Goat” Hogan.

  Picture curtesy of Anthony Tracy. Printed by permission.

  * * *

  Author’s Notes for ALLIED OPERATIONS

  The militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, or JEM, is a real terrorist organization, and the events surrounding the American solider Bowe Bergdahl are drawn from actual news events. These aspects of the story were presented to the best of my research. The four American engineers who were taken by JEM as hostages are a fabrication.

  Although Pakistan and India have suffered from a troubled past, these two nations were never in open conflict during the time period encompassed by ALLIED OPERATIONS. Other aspects of the Pakistani culture, government, and landscape I’ve tried to present as accurately as possible, with the exception of the area between the small town called Chhajja and Mangla Dam. There was actually much more than a few thousand feet between the two, providing ample room for the helicopters of the rescue operation to land. I couldn’t have that!

  The International Humanitarian Medical Relief organization is imagined.

  MAN DOWN

  Military Romantic Suspense

  BY

  Tracy Tappan

  Book Three in the Wings of Gold Series

  MAN DOWN

  Starring Lieutenant Commander Jason “Casanova” Vanderby and Dr. Farrin Barr…

  After being shot down by the Taliban on a Special Operations mission, a Navy pilot and Navy SEAL rescue a beautiful humanitarian doctor. While the three of them evade capture in a race for their lives across northern Pakistan, the two former boyhood friends heal a 10-year breach, and the pilot and doctor find a way to let go of their painful pasts to find love.

  * * *

  “Ms. Tappan can write heart racing scenes, whether they are scenes of passion or deadly gunfights and bombings that must go off at exactly the right time.”

  ~ Tome Tender

  “Tracy Tappan knows how to write. It is obvious from the beginning that she is very familiar with the subject matter. Her character development is everything you want in a good story.”

  ~ Badass Blogettes

  “I love the way she writes with such authority about the military. Her actions scenes are gripping and just detailed enough to be exciting. Her characters always draw me in and make me wish I could spend time hanging out with them.”

  ~ Romance Authors That Rock

  To those who volunteer their time and energy serving organizations dedicated to helping wounded veterans and family members of fallen heroes.

  My appreciation for your heartfelt dedication goes beyond simple words.

  Thank you.

  Lyrics to the song Summer Nights from the Broadway production of GREASE are reprinted by gracious permission of Hall Leonard Corporation.

  Summer Nights

  Lyric and Music by Warren Casey and Jim Jacobs

  © 1972 WARREN CASEY and JIM JACOBS

  © Renewed 2000 JIM JACOBS and THE ESTATE OF WARREN CASEY

  All Rights Administered by EDWIN H. MORRIS & COMPANY, A Division of MPL Music

  Publishing, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC

  Chapter One

  Ten years ago

  Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, San Diego

  Day five of Hell Week, Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Training

  Jason retreated to the padded room inside his head, making the place extra-warm this time, adding blankets and all kinds of cushions in “hot” colors, like red and orange. Not that he was cold. He had been, earlier, but now he was…away…inside his brain-room. Someplace where sounds rumbled around in a barrel, sights appeared at the end of a long tube, and only a vague, peripheral part of him felt icy water lapping at his chin. He’d managed to empty his thoughts of anything to do with—

  RING! RING! RING!

  Jason jerked all over, then winced in the way a person does when a big screen movie goes from fade-to-black to an extra-bright scene. Back. He was back to reality…a reality that seemed more like an urban legend—or a nightmare, with all its attendant horror and pain—than anything in real life.

  He gritted his teeth around a groan. He was back to being cold—no, freezing his ass off—wearing only undershorts while treading water in Glorietta Bay, one hundred feet offshore, his teeth clacking together so hard, it was if they were sending a message via Morse code. Back to compressed lungs, the air he was trying to breathe forming thick bubbles on his lips. Back to his legs cramping so hard it made his thigh muscles feel like twisted piano wire.

  Back to wanting to quit.

  Like Jimmy Newcastle just did by clanging the infamous ring-out bell.

  Newcastle stumbled down the two-hundred-foot-long steel pier the Navy used to dock its smaller boats, heading toward a small triangle of sand on shore. There, a medical crew was standing by. One corpsman in navy camo BDUs1 draped a warm blanket over the SEAL candidate’s shoulders—the dropout SEAL candidate’s shoulders—and handed him a mug of something. Newcastle
cupped the mug with shaky, white-knuckled hands and hunched over it, like he would have crawled in if he could have, sat in it like a Jacuzzi. The drink must be very hot. Deliciously, fantastically hot.

  Jason swallowed hard as muscles all over his body flexed and released, shook and spasmed, threatening to stop working altogether.

  Three rings.

  Three rings equaled a DOR—drop on request. That was all it would take to end this. He could get wrapped up in one of those warm blankets. Be given a hot drink. Eat a decent meal. Sleep more than thirty minutes at a stretch. Rest his failing body, then rest it some more. He could go back to being a pampered rich kid. Although pampered was a serious joke, wasn’t it? He almost snorted. If the outside world only knew…

  “One more man,” Chief Levitsky called out to them. Dressed in navy camo fatigues, the buzz-cut SEAL stood at the edge of the steel pier, towering above his candidates, who were treading water, most men huffing labored breaths, some struggling with chattering teeth, like Jason. Backlit by battery-operated floodlights, Levitsky looked bigger than he was, and he was already damned big.

  Levitsky crossed his muscular arms. “If one more DORs, then the rest of you can get out of the water. Come on. Someone do your buddies a favor.”

  Just three rings…

  Beside him, Jason sensed Shane wavering.

  Shane Madden was barely hanging on. The South Boston man was as tough as petrified cordwood, but Shane had pushed himself to the point of walking pneumonia. Two days ago the instructors discussed rolling him back to another BUD/S class to give him time to recover, but that would mean repeating Hell Week, and Shane fought like a dog against it. So he was still here, but ready to quit.

  Like Jason was.

  He glanced at his friend. Shane’s lips were dark purple, but his nose and the skin around his eyebrows were stark white, as if blood was already beginning to evacuate certain areas of his body. Man, he looked fucked. Maybe they should quit…

  Jason ground the thought away. What the hell was his problem? He didn’t pussy out. Didn’t back down. Didn’t give up. He dug his heels in hard when anyone tried to break him.

  You might as well take the document away, Jason. His father had swept a bored hand at the paper on his desk. I won’t sign it.

  You will sign the paper, you bastard, or I’ll carve out your eye with this fucking pen!

  Yeah. See? He was a fighter, not a quitter. So shut up and step up, Jace.

  He swam around until he faced his friend. “Get your shit together, Shane, and embrace the suck. This crap is nothing.” He tried to sound as blasé as possible—not an easy maneuver when his jaw was seizing up with cold. But that’s what he and Shane did when life sucked. Told each other the bad shit was nothing. “Remember the times your dad beat your ass. Compared to that, this is a cakewalk.” Throughout Shane’s childhood, his father had liberally used his fists to dole out abuse, while the weapon of choice for Jason’s father had been mental terror. Summed up to equally crappy childhoods, and the two of them had formed an unbreakable bond over it. Shane was a second brother to Jason, and they’d made a pact never to bail on each other and to be—

  Jason’s stomach jerked and clenched.

  Great. If he vomited, he’d probably choke to death; he was too damned beat down to throw anything up and out. His arms were rubbery, flabby things. His legs…hell, he wasn’t even sure he could feel them anymore. Doesn’t matter. “Look,” he gritted, “I’m not done here. So you’re stuck gutting it out.”

  Shane gave him a jerky nod. His breathing was coming out of him in horse coughs. Yeah, not hoarse, but horse: high-pitched, neighing, equine. Bad-sounding shit. So maybe Jason had lied. This might be the crappiest Shane had ever felt.

  Jason, too, for that matter.

  “Caspari!” someone yelled. “Don’t do it, man!”

  Jason treaded around to face the pier again in time to see Nick Caspari clambering up the temporary rope ladder hanging over the side. He was barely making it, hands trembling on the grips, feet slipping. Dragging himself belly-first onto the pier, Caspari lurched upright and staggered three feet behind Levitsky to what resembled a mini Liberty Bell set on a rain barrel.

  Ring, ring, ring.

  So much for Caspari.

  And, dammit, there went another man from Jason’s boat team. What started out as a six-man crew was now down to two—him and Shane. Two men to carry a two-hundred-pound boat. Two men who had survived the past five days on minimal rations and only about four hours’ sleep total. Two men who were worn down to the frayed edges of their physical abilities.

  “Everyone out of the water!” Levitsky bellowed.

  “Hoooooo-yah.” The remaining SEAL candidates uttered the call like a yawn, no energy behind it. They swam to the pier and, one by one, crawled up the ladder.

  “On your backs, gentlemen.” Levitsky wasn’t done with them.

  He and the other three instructors picked up buckets full of ice water—buckets Jason hadn’t even noticed; his situational awareness was long gone—and threw them on the men. When Jason was doused, with chunks of ice pattering across his bare chest, a noise between a gasp and a groan escaped him. Stupid to think the instructors couldn’t find a way to lower his core temperature even more. His entire body shook so violently with spasms of cold he couldn’t breathe. From the corner of his jarring vision, he saw other bodies flopping about. Someone ground out, “Motherfucker!”

  “On your feet!” Levitsky ordered.

  It took Jason three tries, but he finally staggered to an upright position, then helped Shane up. Shane’s face was a disturbing shade of gray.

  “Man your boats!” Levitsky bellowed.

  Another groan dribbled past Jason’s lips. Sadistic assholes. He hauled on his boots, though not easily. After two hops, he crashed back down on his ass and finished the job from the pier, then made another long climb to his feet. Fuck all you chiefs up your collective dirt holes. As the rest of the candidates took off, thankfully Jason’s legs went along, despite the pissing and moaning of his mind.

  To get from the bay side to the ocean side of the base, they jogged a straight shot along Tarawa Road, then banged a slight left onto Rendova. At the end of this road, they departed the core base, cutting across Silver Strand Boulevard, a main public thoroughfare. And considering all of them were drenched, wearing only underpants and boots, and visibly suffering from early-stage hypothermia, they earned more than a few ogles from passing motorists.

  Back on base—now the ocean side of NAB2—they joined up with Tarawa Road again, then hit the beach known as the Silver Strand. The total distance of the journey was probably five or six hundred yards, but by the time Jason’s feet met sand, his leg cramps were screwed into hot, gnarled knots. He fell onto his hands and knees. Shit.

  A pair of combat boots appeared beside him.

  “You’re done, Vanderby,” Chief Knoll told him. “You want to ring out—I saw it in your eyes earlier. Ambulance is sitting right over there, Lieutenant. Plenty of medics standing by to make all the bad go away.”

  Jason clenched his hands around fistfuls of sand. Another way to make the bad go away would be to knock your teeth all the way back to the base’s bay side. “Hoo-rah,” Jason responded in a rough frog-squawk. “This candidate still wants more mandatory fun, Chief.” He exhaled and blood drained from his nose onto the sand. That couldn’t be good.

  Shane’s hand hooked under Jason’s armpit and hoisted him to his feet.

  Wrapping their arms around each other’s shoulders, they staggered and tripped together through the sand to their inflatable boat.

  Jason stood at the rear end of the craft and massaged his thigh muscles. Come on…come on…

  “To the first marker and back!” Levitsky commanded in a foghorn voice.

  Jason looked across the expanse of boat at Shane. Two hundred feet to the marker, two hundred feet back. It should’ve been nothing. But… Shane’s shoulders sank. Yeah, it might as well be to Mex
ico and back.

  “We’ve got this,” Jason croaked, although, honestly, he didn’t see how. His lungs already were pressed flat, his leg muscles were barely managing the burden of holding up flesh and bone, and his heart was pounding so hard against his ribs, the force of it threatened to knock him down.

  “C’mon!” he hollered hoarsely, grabbing the rear end of the boat.

  Shane took hold of the front.

  “On three,” he rasped. “One, two, three!” Argh! The boat was heavy as hell! Jason’s biceps quivered, and he let out a grunt at the same time as Shane. They grappled to hoist the boat above their heads and somehow managed to get it high enough, but with them both stumbling around like a couple of tweakers, wobbling and juggling it, it wouldn’t stay above them for long.

  “Balance!” he strained out. “Arms wide.”

  They got the boat settled, then launched into a light jog. Sand clung to Jason’s feet and weighted every step.

  I don’t have anything left to give. About halfway to the marker, he decided this.

  Staring at the backs of Shane’s heels flicking up sand, listening to the other candidates pant, Jason switched to autopilot and kept running. No other choice. Because there was no quitting. No bailing out. Because Hell Week was about seeing which men could keep on giving even when they didn’t have anything left and which men let their physical limitations do them in.

  Because life was about the same thing. And fuck it. He hadn’t come this far only to come this far.

  He and Shane made it back to the group of instructors.