But Jack heard him, too, and he stopped kissing Arlene to say, “No, that’s okay. Thank you, Jules, but it’s best if I stay here.”
With Maggie. He didn’t say those words, but he didn’t have to. Arlene knew that whatever happened—what was it that Mike Milton had said? That line from that movie? Come what may …
Come what may, God help her, Jack would be there for Maggie, forever, too.
That vow he’d made may not have been legal, but it was real.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” the woman from the airline said, and she really was sorry. She actually had tears in her eyes. This was probably the most up-close-and-personal she’d ever been to the reality of a war that was being fought on the other side of the world.
Arlene picked up her carry-on bag, but then she dropped it so that she could hug Jules, and then Jack, and then Maggie one more time.
And then Jules was holding out her bag for her. She slipped its strap over her shoulder as she gave her boarding pass to the woman and started down the ramp. But she turned as she walked, to look back, one last time.
Jack had his arm around Maggie, and Jules was standing solidly on her other side. “We’ll keep the home fires burning,” Jack called.
She nodded. “See you soon,” she said, and got on the plane.
EPILOGUE
Sgt. Arlene Schroeder Lloyd received an honorable discharge from the Army in February 2009. She, Jack, Maggie, and three-year-old Ian live in Needham, Massachusetts, in a small house where they are joined several times a year by Jack’s sons Luke and Joey.
Jack recently sold his first novel, and has found some significant acclaim as a political blogger for a popular online news site. Arlene works part-time at a little bookstore five minutes from their home.
They are happy, but life is not without turmoil. Especially ever since Mike Milton joined the Marines.
He currently serves in Afghanistan.
And Maggie emails him every day, without fail.
A SEAL AND THREE BABIES
March 2009
This story takes place several weeks after Hot Pursuit, and a month or so before Breaking the Rules.
CHAPTER ONE
The tiny country of Tarafashir
A narrow portable stairway had been pushed up against the commercial airliner, and the metal pinged and shuddered under Sam Starrett’s boots as he squeezed his way down to the airport runway. He had his son, Ash, in one arm, Ash’s diaper bag over his shoulder, and not just one but two car seats in the other hand.
They were bulky and awkward, and it was all about getting a good grip—and having large enough hands.
Robin and Jules Cassidy were right behind him, wrestling with the third car seat along with a variety of the group’s carry-on bags. Then Sam’s wife, Alyssa, muscled down the two strollers they’d need for this months-long adventure, followed by Max and Gina Bhagat, who carried their freakishly polite three-year-old daughter, and their eight-month-old high-decibel soliloquist son, who was still bewailing the entire traveling team’s frustration, discomfort, and bitter disappointment.
This little multifamily outing had quickly turned into a misadventure when their first flight was delayed—nearly six hours at the gate, and well over two on the tarmac, at J-Effing-K. As a result, they’d arrived in London at WTF o’clock, having missed their connecting flight, an event that had dominoed and created a need to take this latest several-hours-delayed flight which in turn had had a mild midair emergency with the electrical system, requiring that they land here, in the tiny country of Tarafashir, still a four-hour crapfest from their final destination.
Sam was well aware that there were definitely worse places to make an unplanned landing—Libya, Pakistan, Kazbekistan, to name a few. At least T-fashir was U.S.-friendly and safe, although mostly piss-poor. The government was a monarchy, and their leader a king who had, at one point, not just been a monk, but, according to legend, a stoner monk.
The country’s major exports in past decades had been marijuana and opium. And although there was a vaguely successful program in place in which farmers who replaced their crops with soybeans received sufficient food and medical care for their villages, it was clear to Sam, just from looking at the badly patched and pitted runway, that the also-promised modernization of the Tarafashir infrastructure had again been delayed.
Possibly because the entire country still had a raging case of the munchies.
“They’re holding our flight to Kabul. Gate one. It’s on the other side of the terminal,” Max Bhagat announced as he ended his phone call and slipped his cell into the pocket of his jeans before helping Gina juggle their two kids. Mikey, the eight-month-old, was usually as goofily, droolfully cheerful as Sam’s son, Ash.
Usually.
Today Mike had fussed and worried his way through the seemingly endless flight, needing all four parental hands to cope. His sister, Emma—age three-going-on-forty—had been safely tucked in between her Uncle Robin and Uncle Jules. Emma had played for a while with one-year-old Ash—who’d gone into pissed mode, no doubt at Mikey’s stellar example, and who had decided he wouldn’t even think about napping unless he sat on Uncle Robin’s lap—until he’d finally fallen unconscious. Ash, that is, not Robin. At which point Em had no doubt spent the remaining hours of the flight discussing the socioeconomic ramifications of The Cat in the Hat with her patient pseudo-uncles.
The little girl was freakishly smart, impossibly polite and well-behaved, and way too somber for her own good. Plus, she was a tiny sponge—always, always watching and listening to the grown-ups around her.
“Shit.” Jules now swore at Max’s news about the flight to Kabul, not quite under his breath. He then made a face at Emma, whose brown eyes had become even bigger at his slip.
Sam found that to be one of the biggest discomforts of parenting—the inability to say shit in times like these, when a pungent and heartfelt shit was clearly needed.
In the past well-over-twenty-four-hours of nonstop, cranky-child-inducing, slow-mo travel, this was the one flight they could’ve stood to miss.
But as Emma giggled at the silly face Jules made, Sam made a note and filed it under useful information. The fact that Emma was capable of smiling, let alone giggling, was good to know.
Of course, Uncle Jules was special.
And not just because he was an FBI agent, or because he was fabulous and gay-married to a movie star.
Jules was … Jules. One of a kind.
“It’s all right, babe,” Robin murmured, giving his husband a smile and a nudge with his shoulder. “We always know this might happen, anytime we travel. And it’s good. You need to get there.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jules muttered back on a sigh. “I just wanted … at least to be able to say goodbye properly.”
“We got time,” Sam pointed out. “They’re holding the flight.”
Max’s announcement was good news in the big-picture sense—and not entirely unexpected considering that Max, a high-level FBI agent, had the President’s private number among his list of contacts on his phone.
Sam turned to look at Alyssa, who took Ash from his arms.
“Mommy wants to say a bad word, too,” she told their son, who gave her a drooly smile as he burbled some of his near-perpetual joy back at her, unaware of his own impending misfortune.
Alyssa looked back at Sam then, and he could see her unhappiness. This was the hardest part—she hated this kind of separation. She preferred working with him, but she knew damn well that they couldn’t both go out into dangerous, terrorist-filled countries. Not together. Not anymore. Because of Ash.
He and his wife risked their lives for a living—that wasn’t going to change—but they could no longer risk them both at the same time.
And that sucked.
But it also didn’t suck—again, because of Ash.
“We’ll be fine,” Sam told the woman who was not just the love of his life, but the best team leader he’d ever had. She was commandi
ng, decisive, cool under pressure, compassionate, intelligent, and hot as hell when she barked out orders. Yeah, he was going to miss working with her on this op, too. But he’d survive. “We’re gonna be okay.”
“I know that.” Lys managed a smile as she locked Ash into the frontpack she wore, so she could carry those strollers while Sam humped it with the car seats and their carry-ons.
Together, with Max and Gina leading the way, with Jules and Robin on their heels, Sam and his family went into the airport’s crowded terminal—assuming this rusting and ancient World War II–era Quonset hut could be called a terminal.
It was cooler inside, but only slightly. The building wasn’t air conditioned, and the big fans overhead spun slowly, lazily. Sam could see the fading red paint of a sign for gate one on the other side of the structure.
“I just really wanted to help get you settled,” Lys told him as they threaded their way through the crowd of locals, most of whom wore the unmistakable white robes that identified them as monks, their shaved heads gleaming in the cheap fluorescent lighting. “And I really don’t like leaving you here. Tarafashir was not part of the plan. We shouldn’t be the ones to leave first.”
“We’re gonna be okay,” Sam said again. “Our flight’s in just a few hours. Those of us who are small will change our diapers, those who are bigger will get something to eat that’s hopefully neither dog or goat, and we’ll all stretch our legs. We’ll be fine, and then we’ll be in a resort hotel on a private island in the Aegean sea.”
Alyssa, Jules, and Max, however, would be not in a seaside resort hotel. They’d be in landlocked Afghanistan, sleeping in barracks or maybe even in drafty tents. They’d barely have time, after touching down in Kabul, to grab a meal before they went wheels up again, this time to the first of a half dozen FOBs—remote military forward operating bases in the mountains. The chosen FOBs were all regular stops on the standard USO tour, and the President was determined to visit at least one of them during his upcoming trip.
As members of the special advance advisory team in charge of providing information to ensure the President’s security during his impending visit, they would have to evaluate them all.
Over at gate one, Max had set down the various pieces of luggage he’d been carrying, and was group-hugging his wife and children. It wasn’t until he kissed Gina that Sam realized exactly what Jules had said.
I just wanted at least to be able to say goodbye properly.
Jules’s wanting to say goodbye properly had nothing to do with time, and everything to do with the fact that while Tarafashir was ruled by a U.S. approved monarch-slash-dictator, and while visiting Americans were treated with respect, the royal family and governing body was socially conservative, and homosexuality was illegal.
And that meant that even though Jules and Robin were lawfully wed in the state of Massachusetts, saying goodbye with a PDA more extreme than a handshake was likely to get them thrown into jail.
And that—a goodbye said with a handshake—was not okay with Sam.
Not while there was a chance—a slim one, but definitely a chance—that Jules wouldn’t return from this mission.
So Sam unloaded the car seats next to Max and Gina, who were still lost in their own private world, and he quickly kissed Alyssa on the mouth. “Don’t get on that plane until I get back.”
She laughed at that. “I won’t, because I’m not taking Ash to Afghanistan.”
“Good.” He grabbed Jules with one hand, and Robin with the other, and pulled them over toward the obvious international sign for the men’s head. The bathroom was a single-seater with a door that didn’t lock. Pushing it open, Sam saw that it was, at least, empty.
“Tech check,” he said to Jules, who nodded his understanding as he ushered Robin inside, closing the door tightly behind them.
Sam then stood in front of that door, arms folded across his chest, his message clear to everyone despite the potential language barrier: Find another bathroom. This one’s taken.
CHAPTER TWO
“Tech check?” Robin repeated, confused as Jules closed the men’s room door behind them.
No doubt Jules had understood Cowboy Sam’s cryptic message, because he was scanning the ceiling and the walls, and even looking along the concrete floor and behind the toilet that hadn’t been cleaned. Ever.
“No surveillance cameras,” he told Robin. “We’re good.”
“Ah.” Now he understood. And it seemed a shame to waste the privacy that Sam had conjured up for them, but there were things Robin needed to say. “I know I’m not supposed to tell you to be careful. I’m supposed to say be safe.”
“I will be,” Jules said as he pulled Robin into his arms. “Both as careful and as safe as I can manage.”
Which was great, but in reality, that might not be careful and safe enough to bring him home alive.
Two trips to Afghanistan ago, Jules had come perilously, heart-stoppingly close to coming home in a body bag.
One trip to Afghanistan ago, Robin didn’t eat or sleep the entire time that Jules was gone.
“I love you,” he managed to say now.
“I don’t have to do this,” Jules started to tell him, but Robin cut him off.
“Yeah, you do. And I’m gonna be okay. Sam and Gina need me to help with the kids. It’s going to be fun.”
Jules laughed. “You’re a terrible liar.”
Robin corrected himself. “It’s going to be as fun as it possibly can be.”
“Hmmm,” Jules said as he looked at Robin.
“Call me,” Robin said. “Or email. As often as you can.”
“I hate doing this to you. Putting myself in danger. It’s not worth—”
“Oh yes it is.” Robin cut him off. “It’s worth it. You’re worth it. You’re you. I love you for being you. Why would I want you to be anyone but who you are?”
Jules’s beautiful brown eyes welled with emotion. “God, I love you,” he whispered.
“Then kiss me, babe,” Robin said. “And then go get on that plane.”
And Jules did.
CHAPTER THREE
“I’m sorry, what?” Sam turned to look at Gina, who was the closest thing he had to a languages expert in his current six-person team.
It was a team that consisted of an eight-month-old, a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and two twenty-somethings who were hopelessly in love with their partners—partners who’d recently left for a war zone.
And that meant that Sam’s team’s major skill sets were eating, pooping, crying, and/or trying not to cry or otherwise appear worried so as not to frighten the super-short team members.
Of course, none of the short people were fooled by the badly hidden stress levels. Certainly not Emma, who was looking pale and was watching Sam glumly with those eyes that reminded him a little too much of her father.
Max had tried to hook up with Alyssa back when Sam was married to his first wife, Mary Lou, and … Or maybe it was Alyssa who’d tried to hook up with Max back when Max was trying desperately to keep his distance from Gina because she was nearly twenty years his junior.
It had all been a screaming charlie-foxtrot, and even though Sam had had no right to be jealous, considering he had been married to another woman at the time, seeing Max reminded him of that time of pain. And the fact that mini-Maxine here was the spitting image of her father was vaguely disturbing.
Yeah. This was going to be one long month—not counting the next apparently-destined-to-be-insanely-grueling twenty-four hours of ongoing travel.
“He said our flight’s been canceled due to …” Gina, who was possibly even paler than her daughter, repeated the heavily accented words uttered by the heavily accented man behind the World Airlines counter.
But it was Robin who understood the last part. “Weather,” he inserted. “The incoming flight from Tunisia’s been canceled—and that’s the plane we were supposed to leave on, so our flight’s been canceled, too. The next flight to Athens isn’t until �
�� When?”
Gina leaned toward the counterman, her expression echoing Robin’s dismay. “I’m sorry, did you just say Thursday?”
It was Monday. Late Monday—almost Tuesday, but still, sadly, Monday.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Robin’s voice went up an octave.
In Sam’s arms, Ash started to cry. He may not have understood all of the words, but he clearly got the tone. “Shhh,” Sam soothed him, automatically starting to rock. “We’re okay. It’s okay, Little Bit. We’ll figure this out.”
Meanwhile, Robin was getting taller, looming over the airline representative. “Oh, no,” he said. “No, no. No.” He was an actor, and was usually low-key, but in times of stress he was capable of going big with the drama. “Thursday? No. No, no. We’ll take your next flight. Tonight. To anywhere.”
“Pakistan,” the man said. To give him credit, he was trying to be helpful. But he was mostly clueless.
“Except there.”
“Libya?”
Gina made a guttural sound of intense pain. “Or there,” Robin said.
“Tomorrow morning,” the man told them in the lilting accent that Sam was starting to be able to understand, “we have a flight to Roma. At … six-oh-five.”
That was only seven hours away. And Rome was marginally closer to Athens. Sam spoke up. “We’ll take it.”
“But … alas, my friends, only two seats are available.”
Of course. “Please find the next flight with the number of seats that we need.” Sam forced himself to be patient and to not jump over the counter and look at the computer monitor himself.
“Two-seventeen P.M.,” the man said but his triumph quickly faded. “But, oh, that takes you back to London.”
“London works,” Robin said. He looked from Gina to Sam. “I was there just a few months ago. I know a great hotel where they’ll upgrade us to the presidential suite. I mean, if it’s not occupied. We can take a few days to decompress, take showers please God, get some sleep and some real food, and then, when we’re human again, we can get a direct flight to Athens.”
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