Sign, SEAL, Deliver

by Rogenna Brewer

  “One more thing,” Miller called after him.

  Zach stopped and turned.

  “Get a good look at that ship’s bell as you walk by. You’re going to ring it sooner or later.”

  Zach knew all about ringing the bell. Coronado had been his father’s last command before retirement. Zach had often tagged along. He’d been about nine when his father explained that only quitters rang out before graduating from SEAL training. Of course, once SEAL training was over, the bell was rung with pride. And his father’s unspoken implication was that Zach would ring the bell at his own SEAL graduation.

  “Do you have a problem with me, Miller?”

  Miller closed the distance, getting right in Zach’s face. “I have a problem with the fact that you don’t want to be here. You didn’t have to take the test. You didn’t have to pass the physical. I’ve got the guys on a two-year waiting list who’d do just about anything to be in your boots right now. So if you want to take that personally, hotshot, by all means do.”

  “I didn’t ask to be singled out for special treatment.”

  “That’s good. Because you’re not going to get it from me.”

  No one would accuse his brother-in-law of playing favorites. And that was okay with him. Zach wasn’t in the mood to be coddled.

  “Dismissed!” Miller ordered.

  If he’d been in uniform, Zach would have snapped a sharp salute. His godfather hadn’t done him any favors by getting him into the SEAL program.

  And he hadn’t done himself any favors by showing up. But he’d made a deal. One he intended to keep. And he knew how much this meant to his own dad.

  Besides, if he hadn’t accepted the challenge, what would he be doing right now? Trying to patch things up with Michelle? No, he’d never be able to look at her the same way again. He couldn’t just forgive and forget—even if his heart didn’t want to let go. She’d given him back his wings and he intended to soar.

  Zach eyeballed the bell in passing.

  His father’s directive about quitters was so ingrained that Zach didn’t think he could ring out before graduation if he wanted to. Failure was not an option.

  After waiting in line for what seemed like hours, the clippers breezed through Zach’s hair in less time than a textbook takeoff from a carrier. He scrubbed his hand over the stubble as he rose from the barber’s chair.

  Following the haircut, he walked through the issuing of fatigues and rack assignment. Afterward he stowed his gear and changed into the uniform of the day—battle dress and combat boots.

  The very last thing he did to settle in was rip his lucky charm—the photo of him and Michelle—in half. He couldn’t bear the reminder of happier days. But he’d also carried it for so long he couldn’t bear to get rid of it. After a few moments’ hesitation he hung both halves in his locker as a different kind of reminder.

  Despite his father’s expectations, he’d grown up and gone his own way, never thinking he’d find himself back here where he didn’t belong. Even though he’d flown fighters for a living, he’d considered himself a lover.

  Now he just considered himself a loner.

  But training offered the fresh start he needed. This time, his mission wasn’t to find Michelle, but to forget her.

  Same day

  DR. TRAHERN’S OFFICE,

  Bethesda Naval Hospital

  THE MORNING’S media circus had been even worse than Michelle had predicted. Her makeup had been applied with a heavy hand and her shorter hairstyle teased to astonishing heights. At the end of her interview on “Good Morning America,” America’s Favorite Daughter had braved throngs of adoring fans to catch the first flight from New York to D.C.

  She went straight from the airport to Sloan’s office.

  “How are you feeling today, Michelle?”

  “Alone.”

  “How does alone feel?”

  “Like I’ve been torn in two and the best part of me is gone.”

  1200 Tuesday

  NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER

  Coronado, CA

  THEY WERE on their way to noon chow, running in formation along the strip of sandy beach parallel to the highway called Silver Strand.

  A carful of babes honked. Another stopped to watch. A couple even showed off a little drive-by skin for encouragement. The Navy SEAL wannabes tried hard to keep their bearing, knowing they’d impress the girls that much more if they did.

  Zach had once thrived on that kind of female attention. Somewhere between yesterday and today, he’d grown up.

  But right now he had nothing better to do with the rest of his life than run until his sides ached. Physical exertion proved to be the outlet he needed.

  Better than booze. Better than babes.

  Real aches and pains to replace the ones in his heart he couldn’t define. And after weeks of being little more than a couch potato he really suffered. He’d let himself get out of shape. The rest of these guys had at least come prepared. They’d been tested, meeting minimal physical requirements. Zach had met those requirements as part of his annual flight physical, sure. But that had been almost a year ago.

  Another fact he’d discovered firsthand, the maximum age for SEAL training was twenty-nine for a good reason. The body fell apart at thirty. His original orders had been cut just before that occasion.

  The sun beat down. Sweat poured from his body. The stitch in his side almost doubled him over. And his lungs felt ready to burst. But he kept putting one foot in front of the other, even though they moved like weighted-lead diving boots as they came in contact with the shifting resistance of sand.

  Nausea roiled through him, his stomach clenching and unclenching in time to his cadence. When he couldn’t stand it another minute, he dropped out of formation for the second time that day to step behind an outcropping of rocks where he could suffer the dry heaves in private.

  This time Miller ordered the other trainees to halt. “Why don’t we show our buddy how much patience we have? Drop and give me ten. In fact, we’ll just keep doing push-ups until Prince decides to join us.”

  The unit let out a collective groan, but dropped to the sand. When Zach rejoined the formation, they turned on him. Some mumbled under their breath. Others told him right to his face what they thought.

  “Hey, hotshot,” Miller called out from the front of the line. “If you can’t run and puke at the same time, you’re not Navy SEAL material.”

  No kidding.

  Like a siren calling her sailor home, the bell beckoned in the distance. A dozen or so trainees had rung out the first day. A handful more had quit today.

  Zach itched to pull that rope. But with grudging respect for what his sister must have endured, he refused to be the family member who rang out.

  Five weeks later

  DR. TRAHERN’S OFFICE

  Bethesda Naval Hospital

  LONLINESS HAD BECOME Michelle’s best friend, but she’d learned to embrace it and herself.

  Perfection was overrated.

  Mistakes were par for the course.

  She’d started keeping a journal to express emotions she’d buried for too many years. She’d also used it to record every detail of her ordeal from the moment she was shot down.

  Michelle folded her hands over the book in her lap.

  “How are you feeling today, Michelle?”

  She heaved a heartfelt sigh. “Ready!”

  “Well, on that positive note, let’s get started.” Sloan walked across the room to dim the lights, then returned to her seat across from Michelle.

  They’d cut back her sessions to once a week, but she was to start eye movement desensitization and reprocessing today. And they’d be meeting daily for as long as it took, one session or a dozen, although eighty to ninety percent of patients needed only three sessions.

  EMDR made time irrelevant, allowing the brain to heal at the rate it took the patient to recount the trauma during rhythmical stimulation of eye movements. Innovative in its simplicity, the th
erapy had gained widespread acceptance and helped more than a million individuals already.

  “Follow my pen with your eyes. Tell me about the day you were shot down. You can begin when you’re ready.”

  “Can I start the summer I turned seventeen?”

  “You can begin wherever you like.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Hell Week

  NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER,

  Coronado, CA

  THE FIRST FIVE WEEKS had passed in a blur of physical training. While Zach’s body grew stronger, his mind played like a broken record, one song, one refrain…

  Michelle.

  But it was Hell Week that really tested his endurance. And mental stability.

  It had started Sunday night with blowhorns. “Move it! Move it! Move it!” And wouldn’t end until rock portage later that afternoon—when they landed rubber rafts on the rocks in front of the Hotel Del Coronado.

  They’d slept only four hours the whole week and had just completed their last one-hour rest period—this time in mud trenches. A weathered SEAL senior chief with a leathery tan that made him appear older than his forty-some years began drilling them on weapons assembly.

  Under camouflage netting providing partial shade, Zach stood at attention in front of a sawhorse and plywood workbench, trainees on either side of him. Somehow he was supposed to make sense of the parts on the table and assemble his weapon.

  Over the past few weeks he’d done it hundreds of times in timed drills. But never after five days of little to no sleep.

  His hands were shaking. His knees were knocking.

  He itched to swipe the buildup of sweat and grime rolling down his face. When he tried to focus, his gritty eyes felt as if someone had taken sandpaper to them.

  And his mind had started playing tricks on him. Hallucinations were part of the sleep-deprived training package. He just wasn’t prepared for the wavy blue image, taking on a female form as the sun reflected off the ocean. She waved and called to him in her hauntingly familiar song.

  Ring my bell.

  “Prince!” the senior chief yelled.

  Zach blinked away the muse. The old sea dog stood directly in front of him on the opposite side of the workbench. He tossed a condom onto the tabletop and continued making his way down the line passing out rubbers.

  “There’s no better protection. For either of your weapons. If you get my drift.”

  That was a lesson he knew, but hadn’t applied twelve years ago. I was scared. We were stupid.

  Zach went through the robotic motions of putting the German-made Heckler and Koch MP-5 semiautomatic back together. All around him trainees in equally sleep-deprived states attempted to do the same.

  Click. Snap. Click.

  Each blink of his eye lasted longer than the one before, until he was more or less sleeping on his feet….

  Zach pushed aside the shower curtain. Wet and inviting, Michelle greeted him with open arms. He stepped under the steamy spray, his shoulders touching two walls of the small stall as he crowded her into a corner.

  “Make love to me, Zach.” Michelle smiled up at him as she unzipped his flight suit, sliding it past his shoulders. The jumper rode his hips as he held up his arms and she worked his T-shirt over his head. Neither of them could contort their bodies enough to remove the rest of his clothes, and trying became a lesson in frustration.

  Soaked through to the skin, he didn’t really care about removing them or his boots when he had his arms full of the woman he loved, wet and willing. He traced her lush curves. Cupped her full breasts and round bottom.

  Her arms went around his neck and he brought his lips to hers. She teased him, never quite letting him capture her mouth. When he tried to hold on, her soap-slick body slipped beneath his arm.

  Her inviting laughter tinkled like a bell.

  He turned toward her and the small bathroom shape shifted into a long corridor. Michelle backed farther and farther away from him down the hall. She curled her finger and beckoned him to follow.

  He tried to move, but his feet felt like lead. At first he was walking, then running in weighted boots. Sweat poured from his body, but he couldn’t catch up.

  There was a door at the end of the endless corridor and he begged her not to go in. As she turned the knob, her skin turned gray and cold, so cold.

  The room was so cold.

  He was sweating and freezing at the same time.

  Michelle lay down on a gurney. “Why didn’t you come for me, Zach? Now it’s too late,” she accused. Why, why, why? The single word echoed in his head.

  The gurney rolled through a set of double doors. Michelle’s color turned rosy. Another man appeared in the sterile setting. Michelle’s flat stomach rounded and grew. She smiled up at the other man. The next thing Zach knew, Michelle was panting and bearing down to deliver a baby.

  Not his baby.

  A wave splashed Zach full in the face. How had he gotten in the water? He barely recalled the senior chief waiting until the last man hollered, “Clear.” “Yahoos, get wet. Weapons above your heads! Move it! Move it! Move it!”

  But the dream had been real enough.

  Zach barely noticed the burn in his biceps as he held his weapon above his head. He’d make it through Hell Week.

  Then what?

  1300 Friday

  HOTEL DEL CORONADO

  Coronado, CA

  HOTEL GUESTS GATHERED on the terrace of the famous hotel to watch rock portage—the last exercise of Hell Week.

  Zach’s parents stood among them.

  “Michelle!” Lily Prince waved her over. “You look wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a dress. Not since you were a little girl anyway. Love that floral print. Yellow is definitely your color.” Mrs. Prince hugged her. Michelle had always felt like a giant next to Zach’s petite mother. But if she wanted to feel small all she had to do was look up at Zach’s father.

  “He’s in the lead raft.” Tad Prince offered her the binoculars.

  Michelle brought Zach into focus. He looked wonderful.

  Shaved head. Stubble-covered jaw. Smudges under his eyes, his muscles bunching and tightening with his movements. As boat captain, he didn’t man an oar. His job was to guide them to shore. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with crisp California air.

  She returned the binoculars to Zach’s dad. The boats were coming closer, and Zach’s mom began taking pictures with a camera that had a huge telephoto lens.

  “Zach will be so happy you could join us for dinner,” Lily said.

  “I’m not staying.”

  “But you have to.” Lily lowered her camera.

  “Zach doesn’t know I’m here. And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell him. I just came to see for myself that he’s okay.”

  “At least stay until he lands,” Lily coaxed. “I still have a whole roll to shoot.”

  When Michelle hedged, Tad Prince added his assurance. “We’re just a blur up here. They’re sleep deprived and concentrating on the task at hand. He’d better be. Or those waves are going to hurl him into those rocks.”

  Michelle turned back toward the water. She hadn’t realized how dangerous the exercise could be. The first seven-man raft pulled close to shore. Zach hopped out. Followed by the rest of his men.

  “His job is to lead,” Tad explained.

  She could see what a struggle working against the waves was. There were a couple of close calls that caused her to suck in her breath. Before she knew it, though, the trainees were safe on the beach.

  He really was okay. And now she could leave.

  1900 Friday

  MANNY’S DIVE,

  Coronado, CA

  ZACH LEFT Manny’s Dive before the party ever really got rocking. He wasn’t in the mood to celebrate with the rest of the guys.

  Hell Week was over.

  Phase I of SEAL training was almost behind him, but there were two more phases and twenty more weeks to go.

  He didn�
��t belong. He wasn’t a team player.

  He knew it. And they knew it.

  But as soon as he stepped outside the SEAL bar, Zach realized he wasn’t exactly in the mood for his own company. He’d showered and shaved, even managed a nap that afternoon. All dressed up and no place to go except back to base.

  He thought about heading to the Officers’ Club at Miramar to hang out with other pilots, but he didn’t belong there, either.

  He had no gold wings. No wingman. No friends.

  That left family. And dinner at the Hotel Del Coronado. He drove with the top down on his Mustang, fiddled with the radio.

  “…Khanh Asad al Ra’id…” Zach’s hand stilled. “…arrived in the nation’s capital today to collect on a blood chit.” The newscaster went on to briefly define the term blood chit and explain the role Asad had played in the rescue of fighter pilot Michelle Dann.

  Zach switched stations.

  He’d been out of touch, but he’d thought the story would have died of natural causes by now. Apparently it was about to be revived. How was he ever going to get that woman out of his head if she became a media darling once again?

  Kalilah. Darling. Sweetheart.

  Zach pulled up to the hotel entrance and gave his keys to the valet. He’d try his parents’ room first. They’d given him the number after rock portage. He hadn’t committed to dinner, but his parents liked to dine late to avoid the crowds and he knew they’d wait even longer, if they thought there was a chance he’d show up.

  He knocked.

  His dad opened the door. “Right on time,” he said, adjusting his tie. “Lily, Zach’s here.”

  “Give me a minute,” his mother called from the bedroom.

  Zach followed his dad into the suite. The TV was on, volume down. Asad flashed across the screen and Zach reached for the remote to turn it up.

  “That’s been the top story all day,” his dad said. “Asad’s decided on a boon as he calls it. There’s to be a state dinner at the White House in his honor. Michelle’s attending. And the press picked up on the scent of romance. Now they’re blowing it out of the water with speculation.”

  “What kind of speculation?” Zach asked, but the camera cutie answered before his dad got the chance. Footage of Michelle’s return to the States preceded the reporter’s segment-ending question. “Sources say the sheik wants only one boon. Did love bloom in the desert?”