by Sandra Hill
“Oh crap!” F.U. said again. “Now we gotta learn redneck.”
“Not redneck, asshole.” Cage glared at F.U.
“Enough, boys!” Slick said. “In between our other drills, there’ll be a shortcut language course to give you, not a proficiency in the local dialect, but a feel for key words and phrases.”
Communal groans followed. If there was anything SEALs and other warriors hated, it was classroom work.
“Back to your folders,” Slick directed them then. “Timing is everything, especially on this mission. As a result, a group of you, Team Red, will go out on Saturday. These will be the ones who will be openly infiltrating the school and community.”
Harek checked the sheet in front of him and saw that Camille Dumaine would go in as a student. How the hell she would manage that, Harek had no idea. In addition, SEAL Sylvester “Sly” Simms, a former black underwear model for GQ and other magazines, with his wife, Donita Leone, an ebony-skinned ex-Olympic swimmer, would be newly hired as assistant principal and teacher, respectively. Omar ben Sulaiman, aka Teach, a rare Arab–Native American SEAL—forget rare, the only one of his kind—would pose as a new janitor at the school. Those would be the only inside contacts.
Harek felt an odd chill of foreboding go up his spine at the prospect of Camille placing herself in the midst of so much danger. If she were caught . . . well, her fate did not bear thinking about. He shouldn’t be concerned. She was a trained soldier, after all. God forbid that he should place undue emphasis on her being a woman in such a situation. Still . . .
“The following Monday, Team Yellow will go into the LZ marked on the map behind me. It will be a nighttime drop from a lights-out C–147. The aircraft will be in and out of the zone within five minutes. From then, you’re on your own. Covert and quiet are the key. Do not engage the enemy, unless absolutely necessary. The longer the tangos are unaware of our presence, the better. That’s the reason for the sporadic insertions.
“As you can see, Team Green will enter here.” He pointed to a spot on the map about a football field away from Insertion Point B. “That will be two days later. The drop will be a fast rope down from a copter. Again, quick entry and exit. By Friday, Teams Blue and White should be in place. No more than ten operatives per team. Each with the appropriate specialists: snipers, explosives, communications, recon, etc. I realize that this is a large number. We SEALs operate best in small units of less than five. The logistics of this project are different, though. Any questions so far?”
“I sense a goat fuck coming on, with us tripping over each other,” Geek said.
“It will be your job with logistics to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Slick told Geek.
“Great!” Geek muttered.
There was silence for a moment as everyone searched the lists to see where they, or their comrades, were on the teams. Harek was on Team Yellow, along with Henry, the FBI guy next to him; a CIA agent, Brad Omstead; and SEALs Jacob Alvarez Mendoza, or JAM, the team leader; and Justin “Cage” LeBlanc; F.U.; and Geek. Trond was on Team Green. Slick was leading the last unit, Team White, in, which would allow them to cover the four corners of the square perimeter, about one mile on each side.
SEAL Torolf Magnusson spoke up, probably expressing the opinion of some others in the room, “Man, I don’t like the timing on this. Flash and dash, quick in and out is more our speed.” Magnusson was a Viking whom Harek had met several times before. No, he was not a vangel. He was from the Norselands, though. The tenth-century Norselands! But that was another story. “The longer we’re in hostile territory, the more we become targets,” Magnusson pointed out. “The more time for shit to go wrong.”
“I understand your concern, Max, but we’re dealing with a whole other animal here. BK is expecting shock and awe. We have to give them the unexpected. Silent but deadly.”
“It’s not called unconventional warfare for nothing,” someone remarked.
“Right,” Slick agreed. “This mission will be well-orchestrated down to the last detail. No blind date here. In the most successful mission, no shots are fired; we had that message hammered into us throughout BUD/S. That will not be the case here, I damn-fucking-guarantee. But let’s make sure there are no mistakes. We do not want another ISIS debacle.” Slick’s warning referred to the failed attempt to rescue one of the American captives in Iraq, who later had been beheaded.
“We go in as ghosts. Full-ruck ghosts,” he added with a smile. The backpacks and weaponry SEALs and other military carried often weighed as much as seventy-five pounds and contained everything from camelback water packs to night-vision goggles to KA-BAR knives to medical kits to breacher bars to heavy radio equipment or collapsible machine guns. “Now, you may have noticed that some mission-essential people are absent this afternoon.”
Harek glanced around quickly. He hadn’t realized . . .
“Let me introduce you to Desmond Buhari and Fatima Tinibu, the new assistant principal and the language arts teacher at the Global School in Kamertoon.” Sly and his wife Donita came out, dressed in traditional African professional attire. They nodded to the group and stood to the side.
“And this is Abdul-Karim, a new janitor at the school. He is an Arab Muslim, new to the country, interested in joining Boko Haram.”
Omar came out wearing regular clothing, but a checkered cloth was wrapped around his head, Middle Eastern style. A keffiyeh.
“Next up,” Slick said, “is the new assistant attaché at the American embassy in Abuja, Mr. Gerald Larson and his wife, Sally Larson, from Alexandria, Virginia.” Out came Kevin “K–4” Fortunato and Trond’s wife, Nicole. K–4 wore a tan business suit with a brown and white striped dress shirt and a solid brown tie. Nicole, who must have dyed her hair red since he’d seen her this morning, wore a conservative green sheath dress with medium height, darker green high heels. Both K–4 and Nicole seemed to have aged by ten years, due to makeup or something.
“And their daughter, Linda Larson, who is about to enroll at the Global School, a fifteen-year-old ninth grader. The school only goes up to grade nine. We had originally planned for three students, but decided later that three would be pushing it. So, only four bodies inside the school. The KISS principle.”
That would be: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
“As few operatives in plain sight as possible.”
Out came a slightly pudgy young girl in a school uniform of short-sleeved, white blouse tucked into a navy-blue, pleated, knee-length skirt, white anklet socks, and loafers. She had frizzy red hair, the same color as her mother’s, and a light smattering of freckles. No breasts at all, to speak of. And knobby knees. The sulky expression on her face was typical of young teens, and her posture was pure hunched-shoulders, insecure-pubescent girl child.
Holy frickin’ clouds!
It was Camille.
Harek blinked several times to make sure his eyes weren’t betraying him.
There was a ripple of applause at Camille’s appearance, and she did a little bow, immediately resuming her young girl posture.
“As usual, Camille has earned her WEALS nickname of Camo for camouflage. Those of us who know her have witnessed her transformation in the past to Persian crone, Iraqi boy, beauty pageant contestant . . . some say the movie Miss Congeniality was based on one of her experiences. I’m not saying that’s true. I’m just sayin’.” Slick winked at Camille.
Harek didn’t like Slick winking at Camille. In fact, he didn’t like the too-handsome SEAL knowing her better than he did. Not that I have any proprietary rights. I’m just sayin’, or thinkin’. Or going out of my blippin’ mind.
How was he going to focus on killing Lucipires in Nigeria when Camille was walking around like a blinking neon sign to Boko Haram? Take me, take me!
He wondered for one brief moment if he could “take her” to his private island and hide her for the duration.
A voice in his head asked, What island?
“Um.”
Thou art a fool.
<
br /> “A fool in love?” he jested, a lame attempt to divert attention away from his careless mention—rather thinking—about the island.
Can anyone say Siberia?
Archangels had no sense of humor.
Wet T-shirts, wet panties, same thing!
By Friday evening, Camille was alternately bone-weary with physical exhaustion and pumped with adrenaline about the upcoming mission.
Also, scared spitless.
A person would have to be brain dead not to fear these radical extremists. What they did with women captives didn’t bear imagining. What they would do with an American girl would probably be even worse.
The answer is, don’t get captured, Camille, she told herself. She was sitting at the desk in her bedroom of the small cottage she shared in Coronado with her WEALS roommates Marie Delacroix and Bobby Jo Franklin. Marie, a Cajun from Louisiana, was a former Marine who’d joined WEALS after 9/11. Bobby Jo was a lesbian bodybuilder and looked like it. Entering the service under its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy a few years back, Bobby Jo rarely discussed her sexual orientation, and, as far as Camille knew, she didn’t date, but the SEALs, known for their political incorrectness, liked to tease Camille and Marie about apples in a shared barrel and nonsense like that. They even had the nerve to give Bobby Jo the nickname Butch. The women just ignored the teasing, most of which was harmless. Besides, Bobby Jo could probably arm wrestle a few of them to the ground.
Following a late-afternoon dismissal back at the base, Camille showered, ate a quick dinner, and packed her bag for the trip. While her red hair dried into a frizzy mess, she sat at her desk “taking care of business,” as special ops soldiers were told to do before any mission. Last wills and testaments updated, bills paid, family good-byes, that kind of thing. She’d even called her parents, who were blissfully happy and planning a cruise. A themed cruise with some academic purpose. Instead of shuffleboard, there would be lectures. Yippee!
They hadn’t seemed worried about Camille, but then she’d made it sound like this was a routine mission. In fact, she might have said she was going to France, not Nigeria.
Tomorrow morning, Camille would board a military transport to Dallas with K–4 and Nicole. From there, they would take a commercial flight to Nigeria. All day in the air! She’d downloaded Game of Thrones onto her Kindle and planned to start the series, if she didn’t conk out and sleep. Sunday they would settle into the embassy housing, and Monday morning, Camille’s “parents” would take her to the boarding school. She was on her own after that, except for Sly, Donita, and Omar, who should already be in place, having arrived over the weekend.
“Hey, get a move on it, darlin’. Good times t’night down on the bayou . . . uh, bay.” A head popped into the half-open doorway. It was Marie who hadn’t lost her Cajun accent even after all these years on the West Coast. And, yes, she was dressed for a night out, in her favorite skinny jeans and scoop-neck T-shirt.
“I don’t think I want to go out tonight,” Camille said.
“C’mon, chère, the Wet and Wild is callin’ your name.”
Camille laughed. The Wet and Wild was a bar that catered to military personnel from the naval base, including SEALs and WEALS. It was traditional to down a few the night before a live op, for the single folks, anyway.
“Look at me,” Camille said, waving a hand toward her wild hair. “The only way I could tame this frizz is by putting it into pigtails.”
In the end, Camille agreed to join both Marie and Bobby Jo for a few hours, and she didn’t look too bad, if she did say so herself. She’d managed with a little gel to draw all of her hair up onto the top of her head, where she held it all together with one of those claw thingies. This only drew attention to the semipermanent freckles on her face (they would wear off in time, or by using some potent chemicals), but a little makeup covered them. Mascara and red lip gloss, and she was good to go. She, too, wore jeans. Not skinnies, in her case. She had a little too much butt for those. But they were tight and black, like her tank top. With her red high heels and hair piled atop her head, she looked taller than her five-eight.
“I’m going to lose my gay creds by hanging out with you two,” Bobby Jo complained as they crossed the parking lot. Camille and Marie had talked her into ditching her cargo shorts and man’s dress shirt for a “Walking Dead” T-shirt and white capri pants and sandals. There wasn’t much that could be done with her short, short hair, but she had agreed to a small amount of blue eye shadow, which made her eyes look huge.
The three of them opted out of the politically incorrect, wet T-shirt spraying machine at the entrance, a longtime fixture at the Wet and Wild, which meant they had to pay a small cover charge. Friday nights meant a live band, and this was how the owners paid for it. Plus it was a big attraction for certain folks.
It was eight o’clock and the place was already crowded and loud with laughter and conversation and the clinking of glasses, not to mention the country music band, which was just tuning their instruments, about to start playing. Camille was glad she’d come, suddenly. It would be nice to relax with friends. Morbid as the thought was, you never knew who might be missing the next time they met.
They were wending their way train-style through the crowd toward a table on the far side where Marie recognized some people. Being the caboose, Camille couldn’t see much.
But then she did.
Two tables had been pushed together. Sitting there were several WEALS, and SEALs: K–4, JAM, Geek, F.U., an FBI agent who was part of the Deadly Wind mission, and several others.
Including Harek Sigurdsson.
All week she’d been pretending that they were just pals, that the mind-blowing (and other body parts–blowing) night she’d spent with him hadn’t meant anything. How was she going to keep up the pretense when he stood and stared at her like she was the answer to his prayers? Or at least the answer to his lust.
He wore a pure white T-shirt, untucked, over faded jeans. His dark blond hair had been spritzed into that ridiculous designer disarray. A gold watch on his left wrist sparkled with richness (could that be a Rolex?) against his tan skin. His blue eyes sparkled with something else. And even from ten feet away, even with the stale beer/perfume/body heat stink of the dive, Camille smelled chocolate.
She was wet before he even said hello.
And she hadn’t needed any frickin’ spray machine to get that way, either. Just a hot-as-hell Viking with chocolate body odor.
Then he smiled.
One!
Two!
Three!
She was down for the count.
Chapter 14
Love was in the air, or something . . .
Harek knew Camille had arrived before he saw her. Those fucking roses!
And he meant that literally. He got a hard-on every time he smelled roses these days. Case in point: He’d been ready to jump the bones of a woman coming out of the supermarket the other day before she turned and he realized she was eighty years old and carrying a jumbo bouquet of cellophane-wrapped roses.
Talk about embarrassing. And, just his luck, Trond had been with him at the time. They’d stopped on the way home to buy some feta cheese for the Greek salad Nicole was making. (Yes, Harek was still staying at Trond and Nicole’s house, but he’d bought a pair of earplugs to wear at night.) Trond had been calling out older woman/younger man jokes and ribald limericks ever since, some of them rather creative. “There once was a youth with big feet, who had a taste for old meat . . .” That kind of nonsense. Trond must be getting them from the Internet. And the gossip hound told every vangel in the world about the incident. Vikings did love to gossip, being confined together for months at a time in a longship when they went a-Viking. Vangels were even worse, having so much spare time between missions.
But no mistake this time. It was Camille arriving in a cloud of essence of roses, apparent even in a room more noted for essence of stale beer.
Camille had that silly red hair piled on top of h
er head and the silly freckles, but she didn’t look silly to him, and not at all like a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. Not in skin-tight black jeans and a tank top, both of which outlined every curve of her luscious body. And he knew just how luscious it was—lucky him!—from personal experience. The interesting thing to Harek was how Camille could change her appearance so dramatically. It was an aspect of her persona that would always keep a man on his toes. Among other things.
His only saving grace at the moment was that he probably smelled, too. Like a bleepin’ chocolate bar. Forget that. He was a whole supersize Whitman’s Sampler, and Camille didn’t have a clue what she was going to get. Yet.
He smiled.
And she tripped, just catching herself.
Good! No, bad. Bad, bad, bad! Holy smokin’ clouds! Did she have to wear those sinfully sexy red high heels? Roses and red high heels. Sounded like the title of a romance novel. He might as well throw in the towel right now.
Without being asked, Henry, his new FBI friend, moved over a seat to make room for Camille. When Harek raised his brows in question, Henry, who was closing in on forty, twice-divorced, and as cynical as an atheist at a revival meeting, sang in a quite good baritone, especially considering he was on his fourth beer, “Love Is in the Air.” Then added, “Or something.”
“Or something,” Harek muttered. But he wasn’t so sure.
He waved for Camille to come sit beside him. He saw her hesitate for a second, then sigh with resignation and head his way.
He wasn’t going to get bent out of shape over that hesitation. He’d been waiting all week to corner her, and his window of opportunity here might be too short for quibbling over small stuff. Pick your battles, soldier, he told himself. “I was hoping you’d come tonight so I could say a proper good-bye,” he said when she sat down.
“Were you?”
He had always been of the opinion that sarcasm ill-suited women, but perhaps he shouldn’t share that sentiment with her just yet, or ever.
