Troubleshooters 16.8 - Free Fall

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Free Fall

  An exclusive short story featuring characters from the Troubleshooters Universe

  by Suzanne Brockmann

  www.SuzanneBrockmann.com

  Ready for more pulse-pounding action? Read the whole Troubleshooters series!

  The Unsung Hero

  The Defiant Hero

  Over the Edge

  Out of Control

  Into the Night

  Gone Too Far

  Flashpoint

  Hot Target

  Breaking Point

  Into the Storm

  Force of Nature

  All Through the Night

  Into the Fire

  Dark of Night

  Hot Pursuit

  Breaking the Rules

  Headed for Trouble (Short story anthology, includes a timeline of the TS series)

  Troubleshooters: Reluctant Heroes

  Do or Die

  All or Nothing

  Troubleshooters E-Short stories

  When Tony Met Adam

  Beginnings and Ends

  Fighting Destiny Series

  Born to Darkness

  Shane’s Last Stand (e-short prequel)

  Night Sky Series (co-written with Melanie Brockmann)

  Night Sky

  Wild Sky

  Dangerous Destiny (e-short prequel)

  Free Fall is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Suzanne Brockmann Books eBook Original

  © Copyright 2014 by Suzanne Brockmann

  All rights reserved.

  eISBN: 978-0-9863284-0-4

  www.SuzanneBrockmann.com

  www.facebook.com/SuzanneBrockmannBooks

  www.twitter.com/SuzBrockmann

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Author’s Note:

  About The Author

  Chapter One

  Timeline: This Troubleshooters story takes place in early January 2010, about eight months after the end of Breaking the Rules, and several weeks before Home Fire Inferno (Burn Baby Burn) the TS short story included in Way of the Warrior benefit anthology (coming May 2015 in ebook and paperback from Sourcebooks, with all proceeds going to The Wounded Warrior Project.)

  “Shit.”

  Tony Vlachic’s voice came through the radio headset loud and clear, right as Izzy hopped and popped.

  Shit was right. The force of their chutes opening was intense—they were all gonna feel it for days—and Tony V wasn’t the only SEAL giving voice to his pain. Izzy chimed in with a little inadvertent Holy what the fuck falsetto descant of his own, even as Markie-Mark Jenkins gave forth with a sternly worded reprimand to his sweet baby Jesus. Meanwhile, the FNG, Ferd McTurd—not his real name, but it would do until the youngster had earned the team’s respect—laughed his crazy ass off.

  “Let’s at least try to pretend it’s the dead of night,” their LT and CO “Big Mac” MacInnough said mildly.

  “Radio silence,” their newly minted chief, Jay Lopez, ordered and all complaining stopped.

  It seemed pretty pointless to play at stealth when the sun was shining with all its might. Still, it wasn’t all that hard to shut-the-fuck-up, considering the awe-inspiring splendor of the scenery.

  Up here, the world was a pretty freaking beautiful place.

  The sky was crystal clear over the desert, but not too many miles away, well before the curving horizon, there was a full array of picture-perfect clouds stretching as far as the eye could see. And up here, Izzy could see pretty freaking far.

  Beneath him, his fellow SEALs’ open parachutes stacked in formation, one atop the other. Mark Jenkins had jumped first and was on point, with Tony V just after him, then Jay Lopez—the chief, gonna take some time to get used to that—then young Ferd, then Big Mac, then Izzy’s SEAL-in-law Danny Gillman, then finally Izzy himself, last out of the plane and still at the highest altitude.

  Of course, they were currently all at such a high fricking altitude, the few hundred feet between them didn’t mean squat.

  This was a HAHO jump—high altitude, high opening. They’d hopped out of a rather swiftly moving aircraft and within seconds popped open their chutes. The force of doing that was always teeth jarring.

  Long before Ferd had joined the team, when Izzy himself was the Fuckin’ New Guy—just a wee tadpole fresh out of BUD/S—he’d heard a story about a SEAL who’d dislocated his jaw on a HAHO when his lines got tangled. That had to have sucked—dude had had to cut away and slam his own jaw back into place to be able to talk so he could tell his teammates WTF. Happily, the gentleman had survived. SEALs were good at that—in fact, honing their survival skillz was one of the reasons they regularly did training exercises like this one.

  And that initial brain-shaking jolt was usually the worst of a HAHO. After that, it was all slow and peaceful and gentle, a seventy- to eighty-minute ride, just gliding silently down from thirty thousand feet to the waiting earth below.

  Assuming, of course, that enemy troops weren’t also waiting for them to come within deadly rifle range. Which was why HAHOs were usually done in the dead of night at oh-dark-thirty, when the SEALs and their chutes would be invisible as well as silent.

  Today’s training op had been originally scheduled to include the covering pitch of black, but their flight had been delayed, and then delayed some more. LT MacInnough eventually had decided to jump despite the fact that the sun was already up. Izzy wasn’t sure if that was because the BigMacster loved jumping or hated it.

  Either way, here they were, flying through the bright blue morning sky.

  Up! In the at! Mosphere! Up! Where the air is clear . . .

  It was funny how the words to the old Mary Poppins song always came into Izzy’s head whenever he HAHOed. In truth, the air up here at thirty-K feet was so clear, i.e. thin, that the SEALs needed oxygen to survive. They not only pre-breathed pure O2 for thirty minutes while up in the plane, but they jumped with masks and tanks in place.

  The math that went into a jump like this was intense. The team leaders and aerospace physiology techs didn’t merely calculate the altitude and timing for when to jump and when to deploy chutes. Numbers were also needed to make sure the team had enough oxygen to keep them breathing until they got down to a thicker part of the at! Mosphere!

  But the techs also weighed each SEAL and each necessary piece of equipment that the SEALs would be strapping to their backs, and they distributed said necessary equipment among each team member so that they would all weigh close to the same amount. This was done so that they all floated to earth at the same precise rate. It meant that the smaller guys like Jenkins were carrying a shit-load, while the bigger guys like the LT—the nickname Big Mac had been given to him with exactly zero irony—jumped with barely more than phone, dive-watch, and weapon.

  “You . . . guys.” That was Tony V. again, breaking radio silence. “Do you see that . . . um . . .” His voice trailed off. “Uh-oh . . .”

  He sounded strange—a little slurred and whole lot of weak, like the SEAL was full-on drunk after forty-eight hours of chugging jello shots.

  Except just before they’d boarded the plane for this training mission, Tony had been super-lucid while giving Markie Jenkins and Danny-Danny-bo-banny a glowing report about the extremely awesome trip he and his fiancé had made up north to Seattle for some hipster indie film festival. Even though it had ra
ined the entire time, they’d been put up at some fancy B&B and treated like movie stars.

  Lots of grilled wild halibut and sleeping late with the sound of the rain against the roof. Tony had been out to his teammates for years now, so he didn’t hesitate to tell when they’d asked—thank God DADT was finally on the verge of ending—adding that seeing Adam’s latest film on the big screen was also pretty great, of course.

  But here and now, as Izzy looked down, he saw that one of the canopies was meandering drunkenly off course, to the south. It was Tony. And Izzy knew instantly that his teammate was in some fucking serious trouble.

  T’s oxygen access was malfunctioning—had to be—and up here pulling off his mask wouldn’t help. With their chutes deployed, it would take maybe twenty minutes—shit, maybe even more—to float down to an altitude where they could breathe without aid.

  “Hypoxia!” Izzy said it aloud even as Tony self-diagnosed his own problem. Only what he said came out “Pox . . . See . . . Uh . . . Fuck me.”

  Fuck me, indeed.

  “Vlachic, cut away! Now!” Izzy said it at the same time that Chief Lopez did. MacInnough gave the exact same order.

  “I’m going,” Izzy announced to both men, not waiting for the order before he veered sharply south so that he could cut away, too. Because he was at the top of the stack, it made sense for him to be the one to go. He’d have the best shot at helping Tony. He popped his chute free and released himself from the harness.

  And just like that, Izzy was back to heady free fall, zooming past his teammates, with only his reserve chute—packed correctly, please Jenkins’s baby Jesus—to keep him from becoming a stain on the glaringly bright desert below.

  In that instant, Izzy thought briefly of his wife, Eden—God, he loved her with his heart, with his soul, with every cell in his being—and of Tony’s partner, Adam, who was just as thoroughly cherished.

  Then he focused only on Tony, praying his teammate would find the strength to cut himself away. And Izzy tucked in his arms and turned his body into a rocket that would allow him to reach the other SEAL before it was too late.

  If Tony didn’t cut away . . .

  Izzy would have one and only one chance to grab Tony as he hurtled past.

  Please Gods, don’t let him miss.

  ****

  Chapter Two

  When Ben Gillman punched Wade O’Keefe in the face, he heard an echo of his older sister Eden’s voice.

  No drama, please, while Jenn and I are away.

  Eden had said those very words to Ben yesterday, before getting into the cab that took her and their brother Danny’s wife to the San Diego airport. The two women were flying to San Francisco, and then driving up to Napa for a wedding shower for one of Jenn’s best friends. Eden went along because Jenn was pregnant and Danny couldn’t go with her. His SEAL team was in deploy-any-minute mode.

  Sixteen-year-old Ben had only been living in southern California with his brother and Jenn, and with his sister Eden and her Navy SEAL husband, Izzy—bouncing between their two equally awesome apartments—for just over seven months, but even in that short amount of time, he’d learned that deploy-any-minute mode also meant dialing back the drama to a negative five.

  But here in the high school corridor, the drama-knob had been cranked to a hot eleven. The world had gone into a kind of weird slow-mo, with Wade staggering backwards as blood erupted out of his nose—an apt visual to the sharp explosion of pain in Ben’s hand.

  Holy crap, punching someone in the face hurt!

  It was entirely possible Ben had broken his hand.

  Wade hit the lockers with a rattling bang as two of the three kids he’d been torturing skittered away, booking it down the hall. Ironically, it was the smallest of the three, Ryan Spencer, who stayed. Ryan now shifted his weight back and forth as he attempted to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ben. He even put up his dukes like an old-school boxer—assuming boxing had an “elf” weight.

  The kid was adorable with his sweet face and big blue eyes behind vaguely Harry Potteresque glasses. Fucking Wade had been targeting Ryan for weeks with all kinds of asshole-ish behavior—from name-calling and taunting slurs to knocking into him in the hall.

  Today’s assault was one of full-on intimidation, with Wade blocking the exit to the boy’s bathroom—keeping Ryan and his friends from leaving and getting to class on time. Ben had rounded the corner and seen the upperclassman’s aggressive body language along with Ryan’s stiff shoulders and courageously lifted chin, and something in him had snapped.

  No one hassled Ben like that anymore—at least not here at his new high school. Sure, he still got whispers and stares—but that could be for any number of things. He was the new kid, he was diabetic, plus ever since he’d gotten his hair cut he was a ginger again, and he frequently got dropped off in the morning by a variety of camo-clad Navy SEALs. So the murmurs and looks weren’t necessarily because he was gay. But some of them probably were—the world also being home to people who still clung desperately to ignorance and fear, like Wade O’Keefe, asshole jock.

  But Wade had carefully kept his distance from Ben—probably because Ben’s latest growth spurt had taken him into six-three territory. Yeah, he was still too skinny, but living with Danny and Izzy had inspired him to work out, and under their guidance, his hard work was starting to show. And, of course, Wade had probably made note of the whole dropped-off-at-school-by-SEALs thing.

  Bullies targeted kids who were unlikely to fight back.

  But it hadn’t been that long ago that Ben had been in Ryan’s shoes. And it had sucked. Especially when the other kids pretended not to notice the ongoing abuse. They were fearful—for good reason—of becoming the bully’s next target.

  But Wade didn’t scare Ben.

  And enough was enough.

  “Hey, Wade,” Ben had said, heavy on the faux-friendly as he’d approached all four boys. “Either ask Ryan to the prom, already, or back the fuck off.”

  As the words were leaving his lips, he could imagine his sister’s heavy sigh. Drama-free meant not taunting the homophobe with implications that he was also gay. Yeah, Ben got that. Although truth be told, Wade pinged Ben’s gaydar far more even than adorbs little Ryan did.

  Of course, Wade now immediately got defensive, and Ben just tuned out the football player’s fugly faggot-filled word-vomit, instead rolling his eyes and laughing as he looked at Ryan and his two equally wide-eyed little friends.

  It may have been the laughing that pushed Wade over the edge.

  Or maybe it was Ben moving in closer, because he knew that would make Wade take a step back—which would give Ryan and co an opportunity to get out of the bathroom and run for cover.

  But instead, Wade shoved Ben, both hands against his chest.

  “Ah, so it’s me you want to dance with,” Ben said as he held up his arms in a graceful waltz position, even while imaginary Eden face-palmed from her perch on his shoulder. His sister could face-palm like no one else on the planet. Of course, it didn’t help that Ben could hear Izzy, over on his other shoulder, laughing his ass off.

  And yup. That was when Wade swung at him.

  It was less of a punch and more of a wild flail. Wade sent his arm roughly in Ben’s direction, and yeah, there was a clenched fist at the end of it. But it was slow and ugly—in fact, it looked exactly the way both Izzy and Dan had described it, when each had given Ben their personal version of a crash course in self-defense. Idiots and/or douchebags who lost their temper and erupted in violence tended to be careless amateurs when it came to fighting—both SEALs had told Ben that.

  Ben blocked the flail easily with his left hand, pushing Wade’s arm to the side and causing the heavier boy to lose his balance and stumble. Thank you, Izzy and Danny.

  But it was too early to take a final bow.

  With a roar, Wade came back around, this time attempting to grab Ben in a bear hug and knock him down to the ground. But again, his charge was fueled by anger—a mindless,
blind rush that Ben easily sidestepped.

  It was, however, time to run because Wade had at least fifty pounds on Ben, if not more. And now it was Danny and Izzy’s friend Mark Jenkins’s voice that rang in Ben’s head. Mark was what Izzy called height challenged—a lean, compact, quick-footed SEAL with freckles and hair that was not quite as vibrantly red as Ben’s, but close.

  When you’re up against a bigger guy, Mark had told Ben, never let him get too close.

  If Wade did knock Ben down, someone was going to get badly hurt. But Ryan and his friends were still frozen in the doorway of the boy’s bathroom, and there was no way Ben was going to run away and leave them there.

  Unless he was absolutely sure Wade was chasing him.

  But before he could dance away, using his body language to taunt the heavier boy into following, Wade came at him again.

  Only this time, as Ben moved to sidestep the lunge, he slipped. His foot skidded, just a little bit.

  Just enough to slow him down.

  He recovered and didn’t hit the floor, but Wade got close enough to grab his T-shirt with one ham-sized hand. Wade used his other arm like a cudgel, and—wham!—whaled Ben in the side of his face. The blow ricocheted his head into the concrete block wall next to the boy’s room. He hit with a sick-sounding thud—it was hard enough so that he saw actual stars.

  No tweeting birds, though. But stars were definitely twinkling.

  And so okay, now death was a possibility, up there along with an ass-kicking, and as Ben felt Wade raining even more blows on him, he ducked, arms over his head, so the other boy’s giant fists hit his back.

  If you do get trapped, Mark Jenkins had stressed, don’t try to pull away, you’ll never get free. Step toward your adversary—he won’t expect that.

  Or throw up on him. Eden’s advice. That always works.

  That was a serious possibility. His stomach was heaving, his head was throbbing as Ben turned back toward Wade and moved toward him, straightening up into a full-on embrace. And yup, Wade wasn’t expecting that. Not only did Ben get a surprise greeting from Wade’s giant-ass boner—What?—but he also caught a break as the bigger boy couldn’t keep hitting him, at least not as effectively, from that face-to-face proximity.