Sign, SEAL, Deliver

by Rogenna Brewer

  The pounding in his head became insistent before he realized someone was knocking at the door.

  “Go away!” he shouted. He realized his mistake when the echo of his words reverberated throughout his aching head.

  The pounding persisted. He could hear doors opening and closing up and down the breezeway as neighbors added their complaints. Great. Just great.

  “Keep your socks on,” he grumbled, searching for something to cover his bare butt. “I’m coming!”

  Zach found a pair of boxer briefs, discarded near the foot of the bed and stepped into them. He needed a shave. He needed a shower. And he had no idea where the rest of his clothes were until he tripped over them on the way to answer the door.

  Wanting to connect his fist with whomever waited on the other side, Zach flung open the door. A naval officer stood on the stoop.

  “Shit!” Zach eyeballed his brother-in-law, Marc Miller, with the shiny new rank of captain pinned to the collar points of his khaki uniform. “What do you want?”

  Zach turned his back on the other man and headed straight for the waiting bottle. He’d managed to avoid his family for the better part of the past month. He’d even unplugged his phone.

  But they must have decided to send in reinforcements. The last thing he wanted or needed right now was his family descending on him. When Miller didn’t speak, Zach was forced to turn around and look at him.

  “You didn’t show up for rehab,” Miller said at last, closing the door behind him.

  Zach tipped the bottle to the glass. “So I’m a couple hours late. Can you blame a guy for one last binge?”

  “Must have been one hell of a party.” Miller scowled at the pizza boxes and other remnants of fast-food trash scattered around the place. “You’re two days late. You were supposed to report to the naval hospital in San Diego on Wednesday. It’s Friday.”

  “Hours, days. So I’m late. Is that what you came to tell me? Message delivered.” Zach offered a mock salute with the bottle.

  Miller didn’t look the least bit amused. “The thing is…you’re all out of chances, Prince. Those billets in rehab are reserved for personnel who really want them.”

  “What the hell. It doesn’t matter.” He set the bottle aside and clung to the glass.

  “Probably not,” Miller agreed. “But by not showing up you’re UA—unauthorized absence, in case you forgot. Good thing for you you’ve got friends in high places. If it was up to me, I’d leave you to wallow in your self-pity. But you’re right, I’m just the messenger. So here it is.” Miller handed him a folded piece of paper. “Orders to SEAL training starting Monday, 0700.”

  Zach took the orders, but didn’t bother to read them. He’d forgotten about submitting the request. It didn’t matter now, anyway. He had no intention of falling back on the family tradition of becoming a Navy SEAL, commando of sea, air and land. His father had been a notorious Navy SEAL frogman before his retirement. His sister, Tabby, had become the very first female SEAL. And his brother-in-law was the commanding officer in charge of SEAL training.

  No way in hell would he subject himself to that.

  He was already in hell. And like Miller said, he was out of options. He’d sabotaged rehab because he couldn’t stand the thought of opening a vein and bleeding his emotions in front of fellow substance abusers.

  Zach unfolded the orders with more curiosity than enthusiasm. Any blood he might shed in SEAL training would likely be real. There’d be blisters. And punishing endurance tests metered out to make his body stronger—physical pain to mask the raw emotional pain in a way that alcohol couldn’t.

  And rehab wouldn’t.

  Besides, he could quit drinking any time he wanted to. He just didn’t want to.

  Famous last words. He set down the glass of bourbon with disgust. Actions spoke volumes.

  He didn’t want to drink his life away.

  He didn’t think Michelle would want that for him, either. He felt the all-too-familiar stabs of pain.

  Zach gave the paper in his hand a cursory glance, looking for the signature he knew he’d find. “Why’s he doing this?”

  “Maybe he thinks you deserve one more chance.” Miller stalked over to the window and mercilessly drew back the curtains, letting in the blinding light of day. He threw open the sash, a cool California breeze diffusing the stench. “The family’s expecting you for a late dinner tonight at the Hotel Del Coronado, 2100 sharp.” Marc completed his circle of Zach’s small one-room apartment. “This place stinks. Think about picking up after yourself once in a while.” He stopped on his way to the door and looked Zach up and down. “A shower wouldn’t hurt, either.”

  Put on the defensive, Zach scoffed at the suggestion, even though he intended to shower. Most days it was all he managed.

  “Don’t let the admiral down, Prince. Or the next time someone comes knocking at your door, it’ll be the shore patrol.” With that parting shot, Miller left.

  Zach sank onto the mattress, all the wind knocked out of his sails. The Chief of SEALs, Admiral Mitchell Dann, had stepped in to keep him from going back to the brig where he’d spent the better part of the past four weeks. And now the man had pushed through his request for SEAL training.

  Michelle’s father.

  His godfather.

  A man whose grief probably equaled Zach’s own, yet the admiral managed to put on a better face for the world. How could Admiral Dann be so forgiving of the one person who didn’t deserve it?

  Zach threw the glass of bourbon. It smashed against the wall and shattered. Shards of glass fell to the carpet. Amber liquid rolled down the wall-paper like the tears he wouldn’t allow himself to shed.

  Moving to his dresser, he pushed aside his wallet with the paltry sum of forty-two dollars—all that was left of his military paycheck after drinking most of it away. He touched his lieutenant’s bars and tried not to think.

  He’d been reduced to the rank of lieutenant junior grade right after he’d punched Captain Greene. That incident had landed him in the brig the first time. The hard drinking that followed had taken its toll, too, costing him his flight qualifications until he got his act together. Hence rehab. His one and only chance to do that.

  A formal inquiry into the incident over Iraq had absolved him of any responsibility. The Navy had gone over everything with a fine-tooth comb. From cockpit banter to maintenance logs. And found nothing. In the end, top brass had determined enemy fire responsible.

  He and Steve could have told them as much from their eyewitness accounts.

  But he couldn’t let himself off the hook that easily.

  He picked up the gold wings he was no longer allowed to pin to his uniform. Closing his hand over them, he stared at the stranger in the mirror.

  Miller was wrong.

  Zach couldn’t even muster pity for the poor bastard with the empty eyes. He shifted his gaze to the snapshot tucked into the corner of the frame, the same photo he’d once carried in the cockpit of his fighter. Now water-stained and tattered, the picture hadn’t fared any better than he had.

  Zach stared at it, at Michelle’s achingly familiar smile. When was the last time he’d even seen her smile?

  That day in the shower? In the briefing room?

  Across the flight deck the corner of her mouth had turned up in a sort of sad smile. He’d wondered what she was thinking.

  Now he’d never know.

  As much as he blamed Greene for not letting him take that shot, he blamed himself even more. If only…

  If only he’d taken it, anyway.

  In one angry swoop he cleared the dresser and laid his head down. Every night Michelle called to him to come fly with her. And every morning he awoke from the nightmare of losing her all over again.

  In the end he’d shot all three MiGs from the sky—except it was too late. Shooting down a hundred enemy aircraft wouldn’t bring her back. Wanting to made him what kind of a dogfighter? A vengeful one?

  But revenge wasn’t sweet. It
was bitter.

  And the aftertaste made him less than a pilot. Less than a man. Less than human.

  He could still feel his hand gripping the stick, his thumb poised over the trigger, his eye on the pickle. His entire life had changed course in a split second. If only he’d taken that shot, Michelle would still be alive.

  He wrapped his fist tighter around his gold wings. Felt the pin prick. Then a piercing pain. And finally nothing.

  No, that was a lie. There was so much pain bottled up inside he didn’t know what to do with it.

  Blood oozed from between his clenched fingers, but he barely noticed. Tears rolled from the corners of his closed eyes. A sob escaped on a ragged breath. Then another. Until the pain he’d tried for so long to hold back racked his entire body. Finally he held nothing back, and the floodgates opened, allowing him to mourn Michelle’s death for the first time.

  God, he missed her.

  His best friend.

  His wingman. His woman. Dead.

  And he had no one to blame but himself.

  Same day

  SOMEWHERE IN IRAQ

  MICHELLE’S HEAD POUNDED, reminding her she was alive, which she was grateful for, at least. But the searing pain behind her eyes made her want to vomit. Though she didn’t dare, for fear of asphyxiating on her own bile.

  Bound and gagged, she lay on the floor of a moving panel van in her underwear. The spaghetti-strapped camisole and matching cotton underpants that had been white when she’d left ship were now a less discriminating color. Her bra had disappeared along with the rest of her gear.

  She didn’t know which was worse, the way she smelled or the way she looked. Not that it mattered.

  After ejecting from the cockpit, bruised and battered as she was from the explosive force of twelve thousand pounds of thrust, she’d still fared better than her RIO. Closing her eyes against the all too vivid memory, Michelle offered up a silent prayer for Skeeter.

  Alone, with nothing but her survival vest, Michelle had managed to evade capture for four days in the mountains of northern Iraq, where her plane had drilled a burning hole into the ground. Even when she’d realized her beacon wasn’t working and rescue wasn’t imminent, she hadn’t given up hope.

  Zach knew where she was. He’d find her.

  But he hadn’t.

  And she’d been captured.

  She didn’t know if it had been weeks or even months from the day she’d been shot down.

  Had he fared any better?

  She’d left him outnumbered and outgunned three to one. He was good, maybe, as far as F-14 pilots went, the best, but the odds were against him.

  She missed him with an ache so deep it left her empty.

  She’d let him down. She’d let Skeeter down. She’d let herself down….

  Her father. Her country. The list was endless.

  There were no points for second place. Just one of the fighter pilot’s credo. For once she wasn’t jealous of always being second best to Zach Prince. It gave her hope that he’d pulled off the impossible.

  Something she’d been unable to do.

  Since she’d been taken prisoner, day passed into one long nightmare without end, making it hard to care about anything. She tried to push the self-defeating thoughts aside and remind herself she had a family who loved her.

  All she had to do was survive.

  She didn’t know anymore if she had the strength to make it through this. Or for another escape attempt. This time they’d caught her trying to break out a boarded window in her prison. So they were moving her again in their overheated van.

  Zach’s sister, Tabby, had once shown her how Navy SEALs learned to swim with their hands and feet bound. If there was any way out of here, she’d willingly swim all the way back to the ship.

  The ship. Zach.

  Please don’t be dead….

  She didn’t know how she’d go on living if he was.

  The steady motion and oppressive heat had her drifting in and out of consciousness, where she dreamed of ships and planes. And of a hotshot pilot who made it though the flames of hell just to reach her.

  THE NEXT TIME Michelle came to, her mobile world had come to a standstill. In fact, she didn’t think she was even in the van anymore. Awareness of her new surroundings came in slow degrees as she blinked open her eyes.

  She looked around the dark cell. A basement, judging from the small, high grimy window with its wrought-iron bars.

  From the dampness beneath her cheek she suspected she lay in a pool of blood coming from the gash on her forehead. Couldn’t they come up with a better knockout drug than hitting her over the head every time they wanted to relocate her? At least the headache was gone.

  Lying there, she listened to the sound of rats and roaches scurrying about, glad the corners of the room were too dark for her to see the creatures that kept her company.

  With a great deal of effort, Michelle pushed herself into a sitting position and leaned back against the cinder-block wall. Her hands tingled as blood circulated back into the restricted appendages. She pulled at the restraints, testing the bonds securing her wrists and ankles, but they held fast.

  The basement door creaked open.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Instinctively she drew her knees toward her body and hunched her shoulders.

  Ali, the fat one she called Ollie, stood in the doorway. She avoided eye contact as he stepped into the small cell and began shouting at her in Arabic. He waved his arms impatiently when she didn’t respond. Knocking her onto her side, he planted one booted foot on her matted hair. As Michelle struggled to free herself, Ali motioned to Ihassan, his nervous sidekick, to cut her bonds. She called him Stan.

  Only then did Ollie remove his boot from her hair. She sat up, rubbing her unbound wrists. Then freed herself of the rope at her ankles and the gag in her mouth. “Bastard,” she croaked out between parched lips.

  That bit of defiance earned her a slap that started her ears ringing. Cradling her cheek, she stared daggers at Ollie.

  As captors, Stan and Ollie were as inept as the comedic duo she’d named them after. If it wasn’t for the automatic weapons that gave them a distinct advantage, at least one of her escape attempts would have been successful.

  She suspected they moved her so often because they didn’t know what to do with her. That, and because, for some unexplained reason, she made them nervous.

  Ollie wrenched her arm. Pointing at the Norplant just beneath her skin, he argued with Stan. They’d discovered the implant in their initial strip search, and from what she gathered, they thought her birth control was some kind of tracking or explosive device forced on her by the Devil President of the United States.

  After the lengthy argument, Stan disappeared, then reappeared with a bundle she recognized as the drab olive green of her confiscated flight suit. He threw it on the ground in the front of her. Then the two men left her alone.

  As soon as she heard the key turn in the lock, Michelle reached for her uniform. She picked up the bloodstained cloth and hugged it to her. Even though her survival vest and equipment were still missing, this was something. Her heart beat so fast she felt as if it would implode.

  Unbound. Uniform.

  They’d decided what to do with her.

  Michelle scrambled to her feet only to find her legs couldn’t support her. Her hand touched solid bedrock where the cinder blocks had crumbled away. She wouldn’t be digging her way out of this prison. But where there was a will there was a way.

  And she had to find that will.

  Michelle used the wall to steady herself. She shook out her jumper with its red, white and blue flag and various other patches signifying her ship and her squadron.

  Gingerly stepping into the flight suit, she zipped it up only to realize the outfit dwarfed her. For reassurance, she touched her identifying leather wings. Still hers. She knew she’d lost weight. She just hadn’t realized how much.

  Her bare toes curled into the dirt floor. Aside
from the lack of food and relatively poor treatment, they hadn’t seriously harmed her. At least it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It was the uncertainty, not knowing, like now, that tortured her.

  When it became obvious Stan and Ollie weren’t coming back anytime soon, Michelle sank down to the dirt again. She patted down her pockets, looking for what, she didn’t know. Something useful they hadn’t taken. A pencil. A piece of paper. A loaded gun.

  A memory flashed.

  Preflight briefing. Zach winking at her from across the aisle.

  She dug into the cargo pocket of her left leg where she found lint—and one squashed piece of Bazooka bubble gum.

  She put a hand to her mouth to keep the hysterical laughter from bubbling up. “Oh, Zach,” she murmured. “I could really use a good joke right about now.”

  She wiped away a sniffle as she unwrapped her gift. There wasn’t much light, so she scooted over to the beam from the single window, all the while keeping a wary eye on the door.

  What she found made her choke back a sob.

  Zach had erased the joke and penned the words Marry me inside the little cartoon balloon. Pressed into the gum was a small gold band with an equally unassuming diamond. So unlike Zach. But just her style. Of course, it could be cubic zirconium for all she knew.

  She blinked back the salty tears. She hadn’t cried once since her capture. And now she was about to fall apart over a ring that could simply be the man’s worst joke to date.

  In the interests of her very survival, she pushed aside thoughts of Zach. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

  Or hurting. And needing her.

  Like she needed him now.

  I don’t love you! I’ve never loved you.

  Why can’t you just leave me alone?

  “Please, don’t let that be my last face-to-face words with him,” she prayed. “I do love you, Zach. I’ve always loved you. And I’m scared here all alone.”

  Michelle closed her eyes against the flood of tears that threatened to overwhelm her. “I can’t fall apart now. I can’t.”

  Oh, God, she was talking to herself.

  She sucked up a ragged breath, then concentrated on her discovery. Bits and pieces of pink goo stuck to the band as she freed it. She put every last bit of gum in her mouth, relishing the sugar rush.